Judge grants new trial for Chandra Levy's convicted killer

WASHINGTON — The man convicted in the 2001 death of a federal agency intern will be given a new trial, a judge ruled Thursday.

Ingmar Guandique, 33 , who lived in the District of Columbia at the time, was found guilty in 2010 of killing Chandra Levy, 24, of Modesto, Calif., whose disappearance made national headlines after she was linked romantically to then-Rep. Gary Condit, D-Calif. A man walking his dog found Levy's remains in 2002 in Rock Creek Park here, and police who reconstructed search information on her computer believe that she had been on a running route through the park when she was attacked.

Prosecutors argued that Levy's death fit a pattern of attacks that Guandique committed on female joggers. When he was charged, he already was in prison for attacks that occurred around the same time.

The illegal immigrant from El Salvador was convicted of first-degree murder and given a 60-year sentence though he has maintained he is innocent. For the past two years, Guandique's lawyers have been pursuing a retrial, saying they have new evidence that a former cellmate and key witness, Fresno gang member Armando Morales, lied during the initial trial.

Judge Gerald Fisher of D.C. Superior Court granted their motion Thursday. Prosecutors and Guandique's lawyers are scheduled to return to court next week and are likely to set a new trial date then.

Morales testified that Guandique had confided that he was responsible for Levy's death.

Because Levy's remains were discovered more than a year after her disappearance, no physical evidence linked Guandique to Levy's murder. And Morales provided some of the trial's most powerful testimony.

Levy was finishing a seven-month internship at the federal Bureau of Prisons when she disappeared, and only when she didn't return home as planned did authorities learn she was missing. Five days after she left her DuPont Circle apartment to go running, her dad called police, saying her family had left messages on her answering machine and she did not respond.

Levy, who moved from Cleveland with her family as a child, was to graduate that week from the University of Southern California.

Contributing: The Associated Press