Jennifer Levin

Case background and investigation

Jennifer Levin was 18 when she was killed in Central Park in the early hours of August 26, 1986. She had spent the evening at Dorrian's Red Hand, an Upper East Side bar popular with a private-school crowd. A friend testified at trial that she left Levin at the bar between 1:30 and 2 a.m., United Press International reported. According to Inside Edition, Levin and Robert Chambers, whom she had been seeing that summer, left together at about 4:30 a.m. and walked to the park. About two hours later a cyclist found her partially clothed body near Fifth Avenue and 83rd Street, behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She had been strangled, and a medical examiner later testified that her injuries indicated compression of the neck.

Bar patrons told police they had seen Levin leave with Chambers. When detectives went to his home he had fresh scratches on his face, which he first attributed to his cat. According to accounts of the investigation summarized by Wikipedia and Inside Edition, his story changed several times; he ultimately admitted causing her death but said it was an accident that happened when he pushed her off him during a sexual encounter in which, he claimed, she had hurt him. Prosecutors rejected that account, pointing to the difference in size between the two.

Chambers was charged with second-degree murder and released on bail. The case drew intense tabloid coverage, much of it focused on Levin's private life, and the defense strategy was widely criticized as blaming the victim. The trial opened in January 1988 and lasted about three months.

After nine days of deliberation the jury had not reached a verdict. On March 25, 1988, Chambers accepted a plea agreement and pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter, admitting that he had intended to cause Levin serious injury. He was sentenced that April to five to 15 years. Because of disciplinary infractions he served the full term and was released from Auburn prison on February 14, 2003.

Levin's parents brought a wrongful-death suit that Chambers did not contest; Wikipedia's account says the judgment entitles the family to a share of his future income, up to $25 million, which the family has said would go to victims' rights groups. They also settled a claim against the owner of the bar.

Chambers was arrested again in October 2007 for selling drugs from his Manhattan apartment. He pleaded guilty in 2008 and was sentenced to 19 years. CBS News, citing state corrections records, reported that he was released from Shawangunk Correctional Facility in late July 2023, about four years early, and remains under post-release supervision for up to five years.