Family Statements in Court Jennifer Levin Versus Robert Chambers
On Aug. 26, 1986, Robert Chambers became known equally the "Preppy Killer."
He was convicted of killing his friend, Jennifer Levin, in New York City's Central Park.
Released from prison subsequently xv years, Chambers gave his but interview to "48 Hours."
He had a take chances for redemption, but that didn't happen—as "48 Hours" correspondents Troy Roberts and Richard Schlesinger report, Chambers would be making headlines again.
In 2003, Robert Chambers walked out of prison, after 15 years, a complimentary human, still pursued by his ain infamy. He was 36, but people even so remembered him from the summer of 1986 when he was 19.
In New York, a urban center where killers go titles, Robert Chambers quickly became known as "The Preppy Murderer." He looked the part. His confront was everywhere. And the story of how he strangled a beautiful 18-year-old named Jennifer Levin in Central Park was the talk of the town.
Pete Hamill was a columnist for The New York Daily News.
"This was a gruesome murder of a cute young woman," he said.
"In that location'south a rule of thumb in the tabloid business that murder at proficient address in better than your run-of-the-mill murder," Hamill continued.
It happened on Manhattan's tony Upper East Side, a neighborhood known more for coin than murder. Chambers and Levin had dated before and met the dark of August 25 at Dorrian'south Ruddy Mitt, a bar that catered to the sons and daughters of the rich.
"Robert and Jennifer left Dorrian's, by all accounts, the bar on 2nd Avenue, around four or iv:30 in the morning. At 6:twenty, a cyclist in the park constitute her body, her lifeless torso under a tree," said Linda Fairstein.
Fairstein prosecuted Robert Chambers, who became a suspect within hours of the murder. She's now a "48 Hours" consultant.
"The law went to Robert Chambers considering they knew he was a friend of Jennifer's. They went there so that he could aid identify how she got separated from her friends," she said.
"Oh, so when they first met Robert Chambers he was not a suspect?" Richard Schlesinger asked.
"Not in the least," Fairstein replied.
"He came out of the bedchamber and the minute the two detectives -- homicide detectives -- saw him, they saw deep, fresh, bloody scratches on both sides of his face. And in their minds without proverb anything they -- their immediate thought was this guy has to explain those scratches," she continued.
Chambers' offset explanation -- that his cat scratched him –quickly collapsed. After police brought him in for questioning, he admitted killing Jennifer. He said it was an accident.
Chambers to police: I didn't hateful to hurt her. I liked her very much…
The story he told police seemed to arraign Jennifer. It was shocking and graphic:
Officer: She'due south raping you in the park? Robert, come on!
Chambers: She'southward having her way with me, without my consent, with my easily behind my dorsum, hurting me.
Simply put, Chambers' story was, in what came to be called "rough sex," Jennifer injure him and he struck her to make her stop.
Chambers demonstrating to police force: I reached upwards and grabbed like this, and I grabbed like that and came downwardly on my manus. She came over this fashion and landed right there, right next to the tree.
"Do you believe whatsoever of what you lot heard on that tape?" Schlesinger asked Fairstein.
"Well … I tin can tell you that everything he said in that argument about how she died -- is absolutely untrue," she replied.
When law undressed Chambers, they discovered more scratches on his chest. Fairstein says these injuries weren't from "rough sex," but from a violent struggle in the park.
"[And] they argued about something. What it is nosotros'll never know," she said.
Chambers was charged with second-degree murder. As the trial approached, Fairstein began learning a lot near the so-called "Preppy Murderer." She believes the only matter preppy near him was his looks. His push button-downward costume covered up a life of crime and addiction.
"He looked like a male model, people treated him similar a -- like he was a graduate of -- an Ivy League college and had this prep school groundwork," Fairstein explained. "And yet, in fact, his days were really spent with the underbelly of New York drug life."
"Doing what?" Schlesinger asked.
"Stealing to get the money to buy drugs," said Fairstein.
A videotape gave the public a peek at the real Robert Chambers, Fairstein believes. It was made at a political party Chambers attended while he was on bail, surrounded by girls wearing lingerie. Chambers, holding a doll, appears to mock Jennifer Levin's death: "Oops. I think I killed information technology," he said in the video.
Jennifer's mother, Ellen Levin, appearing on "Larry King," thinks Chambers showed his true colors on that tape.
Larry King: How did you lot feel when you saw that?
Ellen Levin: I was horrified when I saw information technology, simply in a fashion I was also glad that he showed himself for what he really was.
During the trial, Chambers' lawyer mounted a defense some described as lurid and salacious that tried to damage Jennifer's character.
"I felt like I was burial my daughter every time I opened the paper and read the horrible headlines y'all know, attacking her reputation," Ellen Levin told Rex. "And the newspapers, many of them played into that."
Later well-nigh three months of testimony and ix days of deliberating, the jury appeared unable to achieve a verdict. So Fairstein made a bargain. Chambers pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter. It was a pace down from murder, simply as role of the agreement, Chambers had to admit in open court that he intended to hurt Jennifer when he killed her.
Despite all the prove she had against Chambers, Linda Fairstein never could prove one crucial point: why Chambers would want to murder Jennifer.
"You couldn't stand in front end of the jury and say, 'Ladies and gentlemen, Robert Chambers killed Jennifer Levin considering they argued about ten, y, or z," Schlesinger noted.
"Absolutely not," said Fairstein.
"Did that injure you?" Schlesinger asked.
"It hurt tremendously. I tin tell you as a thing of law that the prosecution does not accept to show motive. I can tell yous as a matter of fact that there'southward zero the jury would like to hear more than why that happened," she said.
At that place is merely one person alive who knows what happened that night. He never spoke at his trial and hasn't spoken since … until now.
ROBERT CHAMBERS TALKS
After his release from prison house, "48 Hours" brought Robert Chambers to a hotel exterior of Washington D.C. He'd reunite with his parents and, for the kickoff time, talk publicly about his criminal offense.
"Right now, if I had a choice between talking to you right at present and beingness back in the box, in solitary, I'd choose solitary in a second. It's a lot easier than this. I don't wanna be hither," he told Troy Roberts.
But Chambers felt by doing one major interview the media attending might ease upward. And he also had a personal agenda. Robert Chambers wanted to talk about Jennifer Levin.
"Did you think most Jennifer Levin?" Roberts asked Chambers.
"Every day," he replied.
As the afternoon passed, the interview would continue for four tense hours.
"And every day I know that I'thousand in prison considering somebody died, and I'm responsible for that. Information technology'southward not an easy feeling. You don't get comfortable with it. And it's part of my life for the rest of my life," said Chambers.
Over and over once more, Chambers apologized for the style he'd lived his life and the way he had stolen Jennifer Levin'south.
"I can never brand upwardly for the death of Jennifer Levin. I tin never make upward for the pain I caused her family. I've been a bad person. Am I a monster? No," Chambers told Roberts. "Because if I was a monster, I wouldn't care, but I do."
Simply to millions of Americans who saw the videotape of a teenage political party, a conventionalities had been built: Robert Chambers had no concern for the Levin family's countless pain.
"The videotape of you at that party was perchance the single well-nigh defining moment in this whole story. There were people out there who were willing to give you lot the benefit of the doubt until they saw you on that videotape," Robert remarked. "What were you thinking?"
"Huh, if I was thinking, I never would take been there. I was stupid. I was big-headed. Everybody was merely acting airheaded, and I acted sill," Chambers replied. "Reenacting a law-breaking? Certainly not."
"Information technology was not? Sure did expect like that to me," said Roberts.
Said Chambers, "I can see how it could be interpreted like that."
"You weren't trying to give someone the impression that this was Jennifer Levin. The doll?"
"No," said Chambers.
"How could you lot exist so dumb?" Roberts asked.
"That seems to be a theme that runs through many things I practice," said Chambers.
Rehearsed lines from a con artist or 18-carat repentance, Chambers seemed to want the globe that had condemned him to reconsider its judgment.
"I think people at home may suspect that what yous're doing right now is playing a office, a office that you perfected as a teenager," Roberts remarked.
"Uh-huh."
"What do you lot say to them?"
"Would I similar to be forgiven? I wouldn't even think of asking for that. Would I like the opportunity to apologize, with actions behind it, bankroll information technology up? Yes. Am I interim? I don't know how to act. I'm as well scared to act correct now. You say I'one thousand well-mannered and everything. I'm here holding my hands. I'one thousand scared, but I'm here," said Chambers.
A BLUR OF BAD Behavior
Robert Chambers was a working-course kid in a white-glove neighborhood.
"You know, the museums, all the cultural stuff, the social situations, the fancy tuxedo balls, the debutante balls. It was something that was a function of the culture of the area," he told Roberts.
His father, Robert Sr., was a credit manager. His mother, Phyllis, an Irish gaelic immigrant, was a individual duty nurse. It was her determination, not any family fortune, that gained Robert Chambers access to an exclusive world of privilege, possibility and private schools.
"You lot had to piece of work tremendous hours to pay the bills?" Roberts asked Phyllis Chambers.
"Aye, but I never minded doing it considering my parents -- education was a very big and important area in their lives," she explained.
"And you lot wanted to do the same matter for your son."
"Yes," Phyllis Chambers replied.
"She wanted the best. She ever worked hard. Gave me not only what I wanted, merely what I needed, which might have been a good pedagogy, although y'all know I screwed that upwards myself," said Robert Chambers.
Robert Chambers bounced from one prestigious prep school to another in a blur of bad behavior and poor grades. He eventually graduated and went to college -- but but for a semester before he was asked to exit there, also.
"I'm running around, partying all the time. I didn't take life seriously. I didn't take school seriously," he said.
Asked what her hopes were for her son, Phyllis Chambers told Roberts, "That he would pursue a expert education, exist the all-time person he could exist and help others."
"You disappointed her terribly, Robert," Troy Roberts commented to Chambers.
"Yes, I did," he said.
"How do you even begin to make it upward to her? How practice you practise that? "
"I think probably by letting her know that I have responsibleness for everything I did."
Simply as a teenager, responsibility was the last affair on Robert Chambers' mind.
"You get high for three days and sleep for ii days and get up and practise it again and somehow squeeze school in there. If you could manage it," said Chambers, who partied with people often twice his historic period.
"Women were very attracted to yous, even at a very young age," Roberts pointed out. "What did that do to your ego?"
"Built it upwards so large yous couldn't walk through a door," Chambers admitted.
But along with the swelled ego came a far more serious problem: cocaine.
"How often did you lot snort coke?" Roberts asked.
"3 times a week, iv times a week, somewhere effectually there," Chambers replied.
"And so would yous depict yourself every bit a drug addict?"
"Oh,aye. I have an addictive personality," said Chambers. He told Roberts he spent "probably $200, $300 a week" on his habit.
"How did y'all observe $300 a calendar week?"
"Sometimes money from my family unit, sometimes money from piece of work. Sometimes from doing things that were wrong -- taking things, selling things," Chambers explained.
The homes of the upscale neighborhood were Chambers' targets. Law estimate he and a partner stole as much equally $70,000 in jewelry and valuables.
"So you started burglarizing homes>" Roberts asked Chambers.
"Yeah, I did," he replied.
It was this Robert Chambers, a petty thief and drug addict, who on August 25, 1986, walked through the doors of Dorrian's Red Hand, a comfortable hangout on Manhattan's Upper East Side.
It was summer's end. Unlike Chambers, nigh of the young people at the bar were heading for college. Young people full of hope and total of the future. Young people like Jennifer Dawn Levin.
By all accounts Jennifer Levin was vivid and ambitious, having succeeded in the same types of schools where Robert Chambers had failed and so miserably.
"When did yous first meet Jennifer Levin?" Roberts asked.
"I believe the offset time that I ever was introduced to her was at a party," said Chambers.
"Describe Jennifer Levin," said Roberts.
"Tall, dark hair, pretty face. Funny laugh. Smart. Compassionate," Chambers replied.
Some of her friends say Levin found Chambers intriguing, wanting more of a relationship than he was actually interested in.
"Then, how many times did yous become out with Jennifer before that dark in August?" Roberts asked.
"3 times, I think," said Chambers.
"Iii times. And yous were intimate with her?"
"Yeah."
"She was your friend?"
"Hmm, she was a friend to me. I was non a friend to her. I wasn't a friend to anybody at the time, not even myself," said Chambers.
Jennifer Levin and Robert Chambers had arrived separately at Dorrian's that night, where they met past chance.
"I believe I looked over and I saw her sitting at a tabular array with her friends," said Chambers.
"Did she approach you, or did y'all arroyo her?" Roberts asked.
"No, at first information technology was but kind of like, you know, a moving ridge … 'hey how ya' doin'?'" he replied.
Simply something awkward and unexpected came up. Chambers was dating some other daughter at the time and she was at the bar, also. When she saw him speaking with Jennifer Levin, she grew angry at Chambers and stormed out. The Commune Attorney would later propose that statement then upset Chambers that it was a motive for murder.
"No, I wasn't angry. I judge the best way to say it is I was so shallow at the time that I lost a relationship. 'Well, endeavor something new. OK, you've yelled at me, sorry. I'll movement on,'" he said.
Chambers says he did not utilize cocaine that night; that he'd had a few beers, two tequilas, and that around by 4 a.g., closing fourth dimension, he and Jennifer Levin would leave Dorrian'southward together heading towards Key Park.
"And we started walking and talking and nosotros end up walking towards Fifth Avenue … and nosotros were near the museum," he said.
Chambers says when he told Levin he wasn't interested in a serious relationship, she scratched his face up, but they so continued on into the park.
"We started fooling effectually, you know, we never got undressed, undressed. And she reached downward and she grabbed my testicles. And after a couple of seconds of talking and fooling around, she squeezed and between the squeeze and possibly the nails, it hurt. And in hurting, daze, even anger, I reacted. I saturday up, I swung my arm, and I striking her," said Chambers.
"How hard?" Roberts asked.
"I would accept to say difficult. I made her fall to the side. I made her autumn off my torso," Chambers replied.
"Where did you hit her Robert?"
"In the pharynx surface area," he replied.
"In the pharynx surface area?"
"Yeah."
"And when she roughshod, did she fall silent?" Roberts asked.
"I don't remember whatever sound," said Chambers.
"Did she speak again when she barbarous to the basis?"
"No."
"At what point did you know she was dead?" Roberts pressed.
"Well, when I stood upward and tried to gather myself together and she wasn't moving, and I was saying…'Let's go, let's get out of here. Information technology's time to get. Let's go.' She didn't move. And her eyes were open up. And I knew something was wrong. I didn't get down. I didn't listen for her heart beat. I didn't get downward and do CPR. I didn't do any of the things a responsible adult person would take washed," he said.
"If this was an blow why didn't you telephone call somebody? Why wouldn't you lot call 911? Call an ambulance, call the police, if it was an accident?" Roberts pressed. "If it wasn't your fault."
"Information technology was my fault," said Chambers.
"Only if it was an blow, why wouldn't you call an ambulance, the police force?" Roberts asked.
"Because I was scared," Chambers replied.
The shattered night still hung over New York's Fundamental Park. Jennifer Levin lay dead. And Robert Chambers inexplicably stayed in that location, staring at the young woman he told the states, as he has always insisted, he killed by accident.
"I've never seen a dead person before. Her optics were open and she'southward non moving. And, I was just scared. I didn't practise anything. I only sat in that location," he recalled.
As dawn broke, Chambers remained at the criminal offence scene -- sitting quietly on a stone wall merely a few feet away. A woman on a wheel noticed the silhouette of Jennifer Levin's body. Soon the police and an ambulance arrived.
"I watched as everybody arrived. It seemed the whole globe arrived. The whole world came to run into what I did," he said.
Police force started clearing the oversupply.
"And, somewhen, they got to me and they said, 'You, go move," said Chambers.
"The constabulary told you lot to leave?" Roberts asked.
"Yes."
"And y'all walked abode."
"Yep."
"Later on you killed Jennifer Levin, you walked dwelling, you got undressed and you went to bed. And you slept?" Roberts asked.
"I recollect I slept. I don't know if I slept," said Chambers.
"You know how draconian and unfeeling that sounds?"
"Do y'all know how callous and unfeeling it feels?"
"No."
"No, you don't. Just I practise. For the residual of my life."
THE Crime SCENE EVIDENCE
When detectives arrived at the crime scene in Central Park on the morn of Aug. 26, 1986, they found Jennifer Levin's partially-clothed torso under a large elm tree. It looked like she had been in a fight for her life. Cuts and bruises marked her body, and around her neck were bright reddish hemorrhages indicating strangulation.
Police officer at crime scene: The body was lying on the footing. Some of the clothing on her had been pushed to the upper portion of her trunk.
The medical examiner estimated the time of death at approximately half dozen a.chiliad., about ii hours after Jennifer Levin left Dorrian's with Robert Chambers.
"I never intended for anything to happen. I never intended to become out that night, let alone hurt somebody or kill somebody," Chambers told Roberts.
When law showed upward at Chambers' dwelling house afterward that morning, they were stunned at his appearance. He had deep scratches on his confront and arms and injuries to both easily. Chambers commencement told police that the family unit cat had scratched him, simply under questioning at the precinct after that mean solar day, he inverse his story.
Chambers to law: I was sitting there explaining this to her, saying that I want to run across other people and that you were going away and I don't desire to be bothered and she freaked out and she only got up, knelt in front of me and she only scratched my face. And I have these marks. I didn't notice them until this morning."
"The injuries you sustained indicated a struggle. You had deep scratch marks on your face. What happened?" Roberts asked.
"She became upset almost one affair. And the 1 affair was that I did not take her seriously. And with that she scratched me. There was non a struggle for her life," said Chambers.
"Y'all're telling me she scratched your face. And then you decided to however accept sexual relations with her," said Roberts.
"It wasn't… "
"Information technology sounds ludicrous. You know that?" said Roberts.
"It wasn't done considering 'I hate you,'" said Chambers.
"Yous weren't mad afterward she scratched you?" Roberts asked.
"I wasn't happy. Merely I hateful, was I in a rage? No, I wasn't in a rage," Chambers replied.
During the interrogation, Chambers would go on to tell detectives that Levin tied his arms backside his dorsum with her panties.
Chambers: She molested me in the park.
Officer: How did she molest you lot?
Chambers: What, girls can't do that to a guy?
The media would call it rough sex and it would become central to Chamber's defence.
"You lot're a big guy. Y'all could accept defended yourself without hurting her seriously," Roberts commented.
"I could have pushed. I could have yelled. I could take pulled her hair to the side," said Chambers.
"Why didn't you lot do any of those things?"
"Because I wasn't thinking about what I should do in the situation," Chambers replied.
"If you sought medical attention, they could have saved her. Information technology's very possible," said Roberts.
"And this is something that will be in my mind forever. Would it take made a difference? I don't know. Would it have helped me? Certain. The law precinct is 50 yards abroad," said Chambers.
"But why didn't you lot get there?"
"Why didn't I do so many things?" Sleeping accommodation said, "I was scared I froze."
"When you hear all of these experts say, 'information technology just couldn't have happened the manner y'all're describing it…'"
"Certain experts. The District Chaser's experts," said Chambers.
"It is very clear from the medical examiner'south evidence and from the pathologist that yous choked Jennifer Levin," Roberts pointed out. "It was not only a split second. You had your hands effectually her neck and you squeezed. "
"No, I did not," Chambers said. "The cuts and bruises, she didn't sustain from any talk or any discussion. The bruises that she sustained came when I struck her."
"You've done your fourth dimension. Y'all've done your time and this is the moment to set the record directly," Roberts to Chambers.
"Yes," he replied.
"And this is your story."
"Aye."
"This is the story you'll die with."
"Yes. My story hasn't changed. In that location is nothing to change. It's not a story that'due south pleasant. It's not a story people like. It's non a story that fits into people's perceptions. You know why? Cause it'south non a story. It's the truth," Chambers replied.
But according to the bear witness in this case, says Linda Fairstein, who prosecuted Chambers, goose egg could exist further from the truth. Fairstein didn't believe Chambers in 1986 when she first heard his version of how Jennifer died, and she doesn't believe him now.
"How would you narrate Chambers' claim that there was no struggle that nighttime?" Richard Schlesinger asked Fairstein.
"I'd characterize it as ludicrous and completely incredible," she replied.
Fairstein studied the pattern of wounds determined by the medical examiner to be strangulation marks on Jennifer'southward neck.
"There were lines, long lines going in different directions," Fairstein explained. "…every pathologist who looked at them told me, clear indications of repeated applications of force. …And so many marks on the neck that it's completely inconsistent with one blow."
Jennifer Levin had wounds and bruises all over her body -- far too many, according to Fairstein, to believe Chambers' story that she died from a single blow to the neck.
"He would literally have her, and I don't mean to ridicule this, bouncing down a hill in the park to have received all of these injuries," Fairstein said. "It's but an absurd story."
And Fairstein says those scratches on Chambers are more evidence of a violent confrontation than the heated statement he describes.
"This is the left side of his confront," Fairstein said of the photo of Chambers to a higher place. "Hither's ane deep severe scratch mark. And Jennifer had nails. There's another long mark here. There'due south smaller ones. A long one. A long one going in different direction, once again a different management, backside that another one."
"What does that tell you she was doing?" Richard Schlesinger asked.
"That tells us that she was face to face with the person who was trying to kill her. That tells u.s.a. that she wanted him off her body. That tells usa she wanted him to stop, to let get of her, to let her breathe. And she was frantically fighting for her life," Fairstein replied.
And on Chambers hands, photographed the 24-hour interval Jennifer was killed, Fairstein says you can encounter bite marks. She believes Jennifer Levin bit Chambers when he put his hands over her mouth to stop her screaming.
Chambers argues he did zip to help Levin later on he noticed she wasn't moving because, in his words, "I was scared. I froze."
"I don't buy it," Fairstein said. "He's never reported to his friends he froze."
Fairstein says witnesses talked to Chambers while he was sitting on the stone wall watching the law as they worked the crime scene around Jennifer's dead body.
"And when they said, 'Should nosotros practice something to help?' … he said, 'No, there'south cipher to do. The police are handling it,'" she said.
"And and then he got up and walked away and went home and went to sleep. I don't call that freezing," Fairstein continued.
"What do you call it?" Schlesinger asked.
"I telephone call that complete sociopathic behavior," she replied.
And Fairstein believes Robert Chambers hasn't changed very much despite all the time he spent behind confined.
"Is it possible that mayhap he thinks now that maybe he does really take remorse? He'south older and he's done 15 years of hard fourth dimension," Schlesinger asked Fairstein.
"He'due south done fifteen years of hard fourth dimension, made harder because of his own drug abuse in state prison. I'chiliad not willing to buy his words. I'k looking forwards to seeing what his actions are in the adjacent 15," she replied.
Tin CHAMBERS TURN THE PAGE?
Robert Chambers' murder trial had all the electrical buzz of a New York City media event.
"The newspaper columnists were dissecting your entire life," Roberts noted to Chambers.
"Sure. Just as they will when they meet this. They volition look at every time I move my thumb. If I jiggle my leg, if I sit forward, if I lean back they're gonna await for information technology," he said.
The plea bargain required that Chambers acknowledge in court that he intended to harm Jennifer Levin -- something he had and always continues to deny. On March 25, 1988, Robert Chambers pleaded guilty to manslaughter 1.
"And for the start time I had to take responsibility for this," said Chambers.
"But you didn't want to," Roberts noted.
"Oh, if I could have, you know, jumped in an airplane and flown to the moon I would have done information technology," said Chambers.
He would be sentenced to five-to-15 years in prison.
"It'southward crude. It's dangerous. It'south scary," said Chambers.
"How were you lot treated inside by the other inmates?" Roberts asked.
"Umm … I think in the beginning it was more hands off. I think everybody merely watched to come across how I would act," Chambers explained.
Asked if he was ever assaulted sexually or physically assaulted during his 15 years in prison, Chambers told Roberts, "No."
Chambers says the older inmates taught him the ropes. But how he actually did his time cuts straight to the middle of his story, and possibly his character -- and the question of whether or not Robert Chambers volition e'er stay out of problem.
"Twenty-seven disciplinary violations for everything from weapons possession, drug possession, set on, disobeying direct orders. When you hear this, you're thinking this guy hasn't learned anything," Roberts said. "He hasn't learned a single affair and you lot know had you been a model prisoner, people would have maybe believed you'd changed."
"Hm-hmm," Chambers affirmed.
"…maybe you had learned something," Roberts connected.
"Correct."
"But what this demonstrates to folks is that you oasis't," said Roberts.
Chambers says many of the charges were small-scale -- fifty-fifty trumped up. But considering of his poor disciplinary record, he would spend more than four years in solitary confinement.
"You read. Yous write letters. Do a lot of thinking," he said.
Chambers did accept higher courses—even making the Dean'southward list. And he claims to have beat one habit in prison that he'd found impossible to milk shake on the streets.
"You lot are clean," Roberts noted.
"Yes, I am," Chambers replied.
"How long?"
"'93, '94. I smoked marijuana in jail. It was a stupid matter to do. Wrong selection," said Chambers.
"Heroin?" Roberts asked.
"No," said Chambers.
"Coke?"
"No."
But an Inmate Misbehavior Study from Greenhaven Prison shows that on June xix, 1997, a corrections officeholder institute heroin hidden in Chambers' prison cell.
So when it was time for Chambers to face the parole board, they were unimpressed with his efforts at rehabilitation -- particularly when eight years subsequently Jennifer Levin'due south death, he appeared annihilation but remorseful.
"I want to read to you what you told them," Roberts told Chambers. "'I guess I could give the party line, and say I have learned my lesson. But that'due south not how I feel at the moment.' Reading this, information technology sounds like you lot're arrogant, you lot're flip," Roberts noted.
"And yous know what? In many instances … y'all're probably right. Probably arrogant. Probably angry," said Chambers.
Robert Chambers is trying, he says, to go on with his life.
He has a girlfriend -- someone he met subsequently his arrest in 1986 -- and has supported him e'er since. She didn't want "48 Hours" to show her face or divulge her proper name, simply she says that Chambers has now learned how to exist a friend.
"She stood by you lot for 15 years," Roberts remarked.
"Yep, she has," said Chambers.
"Were you surprised?"
"Yes."
"Always say why?"
"In a roundabout way, but sometimes you don't want to push your luck," said Chambers.
"In that location are some people who say that young women aren't safe to exist around you," said Roberts.
"Uh-huh."
"That you're a threat, that yous're a dangerous charmer. Should women exist afraid of you lot?" Roberts asked.
"No, in that location'southward no reason to be," Chambers replied.
He claims to have no coin of his own. He says he wants to earn a higher degree and find steady work.
"It doesn't thing if it's a restaurant, a car wash, whatever information technology may exist -- just something to feel normal and something to be responsible. That's the but way you lot tin can offset, one step at a time," Chambers told Roberts.
Asked what he is willing to practise, Chambers said, "Anything."
Chambers owes the Levin family $25 million, the issue of an uncontested civil adjust. And if he lands a job -- any chore -- 10 percent of his pay goes to the Levins for the residue of his life.
"Do you programme on writing a book, or participating in a moving-picture show deal?" Roberts asked.
"I have no plans to write a volume. I practice not desire to write a volume. And, I have no interest in whatever type of moving-picture show deal. I have not made any money off of this. My family, my friends have not made whatever money off of this. None of us ever intend to," Chambers replied.
Is Robert Chambers sincere most turning his life around? Has he actually changed? What little "48 Hours" saw of him, he appeared measured and sober -- his female parent, Phyllis, setting the tone.
"This is non a time of commemoration you told me," Roberts noted to Phyllis Chambers.
"No, information technology's not," she said. "Umm … I do not feel to celebrate Robert's homecoming and Jennifer is never coming abode. It'south a sad time."
"This is existent life, this is real decease. Somebody is dead. At that place has to be some action after the words. My action of doing xv years. No… That'southward just the beginning, it'due south non an stop. The trial didn't end. The trial lives with me. Everyday I'1000 on trial," said Chambers.
EPILOGUE
In 2004, the twelvemonth after "48 Hours"' interview, Robert Chambers was arrested and charged with possession of a controlled substance and driving with a suspended license.
He pleaded guilty and spent 100 days in jail. Iii years later, Chambers was arrested again. He and his girlfriend were charged with selling drugs out of their apartment.
Local news study: Robert Chambers was allegedly selling enough cocaine out of his 17th floor apartment on East 57th St. … to put the so called "Preppy Killer" away for life.
His girlfriend pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and was sentenced to five years probation. Robert Chambers pleaded guilty in exchange for a sentence of 19 years. His earliest release appointment from prison house is in 2024.
"He got more than time in prison for selling drugs than murdering my daughter, which is pretty amazing," Ellen Levin told reporters in 2011.
The Levins have never accepted any apology from Robert Chambers. This year, Jennifer would have been 48 years old.
Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/robert-chambers-jennifer-levin-murder-the-preppy-killer/
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