SECRETS OF THE PREPPY KILLER CASE
‘Sex’ prosecutor reveals twist on 30th anniversary of Central Park tragedy
FOUR months before he smothered Jennifer Levin and became known as the “Preppy Killer,” Robert Chambers did something that could have altered the course of his life — and saved hers.
Chambers, a ruggedly handsome 19-year-old Upper East Sider who attended the most exclusive private schools, stole a friend’s credit card and was caught after using it for a shopping spree.
His mom bailed out the cokesniffing college dropout and sent him to the Hazelden Addiction Treatment Center in Minnesota to avoid charges being filed against him.
But the spoiled brat skipped out halfway through the six-month drug program and flew back to the city.
“I have always believed that if he had gone to jail for the credit-card theft and the thousands of dollars he illegally charged, or had stayed for the required amount of time at Hazelden, then Jennifer Levin would have been alive today,” Linda Fairstein, the retired head of the Manhattan DA’s Sex Crimes Unit, which prosecuted Chambers for Levin’s death, told The Post.
Friday marks the 30th anniversary of the infamous strangulation case that rocked the city during the summer of 1986 with splashy headlines, lurid tales of rough sex and privileged teens run amok.
IN April that year, the entitled Chambers walked out of a female friend’s Central Park West apartment with her American Express card.
Chambers went on a four-hour shopping binge along Columbus Avenue on the Upper West Side, ringing up thousands of dollars in charges for clothes and electronics.
He then headed to the Thom McAn shoe store at Grand Central Terminal and tried to make a purchase, but a clerk noticed a female name on the card and called American Express.
An Amex official got the young cardholder’s mom on the phone.
“The description was 6-foot-4, blue eyes, brown hair. The mother immediately knew it was Chambers because he had just been at their apartment,” Fairstein said.
The furious woman called Chambers’ mom and read her the riot act. “Mrs. Chambers pleaded, ‘Don’t call the police. We will pay you back. We are going to send him to rehab tomorrow,’ ” Fairstein said, adding that the angry woman finally relented.
The next day, Chambers was whisked off to Hazelden for a sixmonth treatment program through September 1986.
But he returned to the city three months early, setting the stage for the brutal slaying of Levin — an 18year-old college-bound beauty who had moved to the city from Long Island to live with her stepmom and prominent real-estateagent father.
ROBERT Chambers grew up an only child in a working-class neighborhood of Queens before moving to the Upper East Side. His father, Robert Sr., was a videocassette distributor and his mom, Phyllis, was a private nurse.
His parents later separated and Chambers went to live with his mom, who worked long, hard hours hoping to send him to private schools Choate, Browning and York Prep.
But Chambers was kicked out of school repeatedly for various infractions, including Boston University after one semester. He became hooked on coke as he partied at Studio 54 and oother hot spots with rich Upper East Side kids. Dorrian’s Red Hand bar on Second Avenue at East 84th Street was their favorite neighborhood haunt because it was known as a safe haven of sorts, lax about serving alcohol to preppy minors.
Chambers, who was anything but rich, was accepted by his elite peers only because he had a good line of bull and sold them drugs, Fairstein said. Levin ran in the same circles as Chambers and was smitten with him.
Chambers stood out from the rest of the pack because of his striking movie-star looks.
“I had the hots for him. So did 20 other girls. He was a player,” Chambers pal Alex Kapp Horner told The Post.
“I was 16 and madly in love with him. This was traumatic for me. He was my first boyfriend.”
At first, Horner didn’t want to believe that Chambers was a pathological liar, but she soon couldn’t deny it.
“He was making up random stories, like his mom was a doctor when she was really a night nurse,” said Horner, now a 46-year-old TV actress who has starred in episodes of “Seinfeld” and “ER.”
One time, Chambers passed out on her bed after he unexpectedly showed up at her East 75th Street apartment. He claimed that he had been with his aunt all night, but Horner didn’t buy it.
“He was sleeping on my bed and it was soaked through to the mattress with his sweat. I thought maybe cocaine and ecstasy does that to you,” Horner said.
The breaking point came when Chambers swiped a $50 bill from Horner’s wallet. It was her whole allowance for the week. She called Chambers in a huff and accused him of stealing her money, but he claimed innocence.
Unmoved, she told him to meet her at Dorrian’s so that they could hash things out. It was Aug. 25, 1986, just hours before Levin’s early-morning murder.
HORNER arrived at Dorrian’s by 8 p.m., but Chambers didn’t swing by until much later. And when he did show, Levin, who was also there with friends, moved in on Horner’s territory.
“[Jennifer] made a comment that made it clear that she was interested in pursuing more of a relationship with [Robert] and that I should step aside,” Horner said.
“In a moment of pure theater, I took out a box of condoms and threw them at him and yelled, ‘Use these with someone else because you are not going to get to use them with me.’”
Horner stormed out of Dorrian’s, leaving Levin in the hands of Chambers, who was drinking tequila shots and beer. He was also doing coke and ecstasy, Fairstein said.
Levin had been intimate with Chambers on two prior occasions and wanted to get more serious with him, even though she was leaving in a few days for Chamberlayne Junior College in Boston.
“I just want you to know the sex you and I had together was the best sex I ever had in my life,” Levin told Chambers at the bar, according to court transcripts.
Chambers allegedly bowed his head and said, “Jen, you shouldn’t have said that.”
Levin had consumed two margaritas at a Mexican restaurant where she had eaten dinner with
At the core of everything, he has a sociopathic personality.. Linda Fairstein, retired head of the Manhattan DA’s Sex Crimes Unit
her friends earlier that night, but she wasn’t drunk, Fairstein insisted. She was just in love with Chambers.
The two left Dorrian’s in the early hours of Aug. 26 and walked to Central Park to have sex near the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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AIRSTEIN theorized that Chambers killed Levin because she poked fun at him after he couldn’t get it up.
“I don’t believe as high as he was that they were able consummate it, and she may have said something to him,” Fairstein said, setting in motion a three-minute life-ordeath struggle.
Levin scratched and clawed Chambers as he savagely beat her with his fists and smothered her with her denim jacket, Fairstein said.
After Chambers had gone home to sleep, a bicyclist found Levin’s body and called 911.
Now-retired Manhattan North Homicide Detective Mike Sheehan responded to the grisly scene to examine her battered corpse clad in a miniskirt with her legs spreadeagle and her blouse and bra pushed up to expose her breasts.
“I have never seen in my entire career the strangulation marks on her neck the way I did that day, out of the 2,000 murders I’ve investigated,” Sheehan told The Post. “She had all of these half-moon marks above the mustache line because she was desperately trying to pull the jacket off her mouth and nose so she could breath.”
Detectives started interviewing everyone who was at Dorrian’s the night before. When they finally got to Chambers, they noticed deep scratches on his face and neck from the fight he had with Levin in the park. Chambers was hauled into the Central Park Precinct station house for questioning.
For the next several hours, Chambers kept spinning tales, initially telling investigators his cat had scratched him when, in fact, the feline had been declawed.
He then claimed that he kissed Levin goodnight at the door of Dorrian’s before heading home. He also said they went to a doughnut shop at East 86th Street and Lexington Avenue on their way to Central Park.
“He gets visibly upset and hits himself in the knee ’cause he knows he f--ked up by saying they were going to the park,” Sheehan said.
Sheehan then convinced Chambers to give a videotaped confession, but he only admitted to acci- dentally killing Levin during rough sex. “He took a deep breath and mouthed the words, ‘What’s mother going to think,’ ” Sheehan said, quoting Chambers.
“His story was a crock of s--t. He goes, ‘Yeah, you know, she squeezed my balls basically, and I flipped her over and she’s dead.”
“[Chambers] stood up and stretched, Sheehan continued. “He said, ‘I’m ready for that beer now. I said, ‘We’re going for a beer,’ ” meaning Sheehan and his fellow detectives. “Chambers said what do you mean? I said you’re under arrest for murder.”
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URING the ensuing 1988 trial, prosecutors had a tough time proving that Chambers intended to kill Levin primarily because they had no witnesses to the crime.
They struck a plea deal with Chambers’ attorneys after the jury deadlocked on the ninth day of deliberations.
Under the deal, Chambers pleaded guilty to manslaughter and received five to 15 years in prison.
When asked by presiding Judge Howard E. Bell if he intended to cause harm to Levin that fateful night, Chambers refuted his original claim that it was all an accident, saying, “Looking back on the event, I have to say yes. It breaks my heart to say that.”
One of his lawyers, Roger Stavis, said the plea included a pending indictment against Chambers on two burglary charges, which carried a potential of five to 15 years on each count.
“So the question was how could we not accept such a favorable plea bargain,” Stavis said, adding, “To this day, 30 years later, I continue to believe that what happened in Central Park on that evening was a terrible accident and that Robert Chambers never intended to kill Jennifer Levin.”
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HAMBERS was released from Auburn Correctional Facility in 2003 after serving his maximum sentence.
He was sent back to prison in 2008 after he was convicted of running a cocaine and heroin operation with his girlfriend, Shawn Kovell, out of their East 57th Street apartment. Kovell received probation. Chambers is currently serving a 19-year sentence at the Wende Correctional Facility near Buffalo. His earliest possible release date is in 2024.
A Post reporter went to talk to Chambers at Wende last week, but he declined to be interviewed.
“At the core of everything, he has a sociopathic personality,” Fairstein said of Chambers, now 49. “The most sociopathic part of this is killing a friend of yours face to face — no question she died on her back with him beating and smothering her.”
Fairstein then pointed to perhaps the most damning piece of evidence of Chambers’ sociopathic behavior — a home video showing him partying with four female friends in an apartment while out on $157,000 bail during his slay trial.
In the 1988 video, which aired on WNYW’s “A Current Affair,” Chambers is facing the camera, twisting the head of a doll and saying, “Oops, I think I killed her. Both its eyes are . . .”
His voice trails off as one of the young ladies kicks him, apparently for re-enacting the Levin homicide — a charge that Chambers has denied.
“The kick is [telling],” Fairstein said.