I lived in Washington, D.C. in the spring of 2001. That May, a 24 year old woman named Chandra Levy disappeared from her Dupont Circle apartment, and the city I thought I knew began to feel different. Twenty five years later, I still think about her.
This week on my podcast I sat down for a two part conversation with Sheryl McCollum, known to almost everyone as Mac. Mac is an Emmy Award winning crime scene investigator, forensic and crime scene expert for Crime Stories with Nancy Grace, and founder and director of the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute, a 501c3 that brings together researchers, students, and law enforcement to advance solvability techniques for unsolved homicides and missing persons cases.
A Career Built on Staying Victim Centered
Mac’s career began in 1982, when she was 17 and started volunteering at the Rape Crisis Center at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, years before she was old enough for the police academy. A detective in the Atlanta Police Department’s sex crimes unit taught her how to interview a victim and stay victim centered above all else, a lesson she has built on for more than four decades.
She went on to direct the Metro Atlanta Cold Case Crime Analyst Squad and to coordinate the crisis response team for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, including the response to the Centennial Olympic Park bombing. In 2004, a decades old missing persons case led her to bring cold case work into her college classroom, which became the foundation of the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute.
Mac introduced me to a term I had not heard before: suspectology. Where victimology builds a profile of the victim, suspectology builds a profile of who had access, motive, and opportunity. It shaped much of our conversation about the Levy case.
What Happened to Chandra Levy?
Chandra Ann Levy was 24, working as an intern at the Federal Bureau of Prisons and finishing a master’s program through USC, when she vanished on May 1, 2001. Her disappearance became a national story, and a far larger one once it was revealed she had been having an affair with her hometown congressman, Gary Condit.
That morning, Levy searched Amtrak, Southwest Airlines, and a map of Rock Creek Park on her laptop. She also searched Condit’s name and his family’s names. Her final search, at 12:59 p.m., was for a region in France that has never been explained. She left her apartment shortly after in workout clothes. Her keys and a ring were the only items missing. Her ID, credit cards, cellphone, and partially packed suitcases stayed behind.
Mac and I spent real time on one investigative failure in particular. A working security camera at the entrance of Levy’s building could have shown who came and went that day. Police never secured the footage, and it recorded over before anyone asked for it. We also discussed a 4:30 a.m. scream neighbors reported to 911 that morning, one that was never explained.
Months later, Condit gave his first public interview, to Connie Chung. He denied any involvement but would not directly confirm the affair, telling Chung he had “not been a perfect man.” Polling afterward found that roughly three quarters of Americans believed he was lying, and his political career did not survive the scandal.
In 2010, Ingmar Guandique was convicted of Levy’s murder. That conviction was later overturned after the case was found to rely heavily on an unreliable jailhouse informant, and prosecutors dropped the charges. Chandra Levy’s murder remains officially unsolved.
Why This Case Still Matters
Mac considers the case unproven rather than unsolved, and she does not rule out new forensic technology, or a long silent witness, changing that. Her Institute worked the case directly in the years after Levy’s disappearance, alongside Levy’s mother.
I have carried this case with me since I was in my early twenties, watching it unfold in a city I called home. Talking with Mac gave me a clearer picture of one I thought I already understood.
The full two part conversation with Sheryl “Mac” McCollum is out now on Reality Life with Kate Casey. Part one airs Thursday. Part two follows Friday.
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