NEW YORK, Jan 23 — It’s a common saying that the grass is always greener on the other side, and few sides are “greener” than the view of Central Park from the affluent Park Avenue neighbourhood of New York City. But on August 26, 1986, the privileged community revealed a darker side in the form of an 18-year old girl whose abused, strangled body was left exposed under an elm tree near the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
It all started when that young woman, Jennifer Levin, had left a Manhattan bar with a deceptively charming man named Robert Chambers — and it ended with what became known as “The Preppie Murder.”
The air was chilly and the sky still dark when Pat Reilly awoke at 5am. She turned off the alarm, then sank back beneath the bedclothes, thinking she just might stay where she was and skip exercising this morning. But after a few minutes she got out of bed, ate a hurried breakfast, and went downstairs, where she straddled her streamlined racing bike. She worked such long hours at her job — she was a mutual funds trader — that if she didn’t exercise now she wouldn’t be able to do it all day.
It was still too dim to ride safely in the park, so she pedalled downtown along Fifth Avenue. But a few minutes past six, when the sun began to rise, she turned the bike, headed uptown, and entered the park.
She was moving fast when, right near the boathouse at 72nd Street, a brown car came hurtling toward her, travelling in the wrong direction on the one-way road. Who is this lunatic? she wondered, and tried to peer into the car. But the windows were tinted and she couldn’t make out the driver.
She kept a wary eye out for danger after that. You couldn’t be too cautious in the park. Not if you were a biker. Because it wasn’t just traffic you had to worry about. It was predators who accosted you for your equipment. Pedalling, she kept glancing to either side of the roadway to make certain no one was lurking in wait for her.
She was just passing Cleopatra’s Needle, behind The Metropolitan Museum of Art, when something caught her eye in the trees to her left. There was someone there. Someone sprawled on the ground. Just a bag lady asleep, she told herself, and kept on going. Then she did a double take. It wasn’t a bag lady. It was something else. She braked the bike, got off, and began walking timorously toward the spot that had captured her attention.
When she was about 40 feet (12 metres) away from a tall elm tree, she saw clearly what she’d glimpsed from the road. It was the body of a young woman, naked except for a few clothes bunched up around her neck and waist and a jean jacket tossed across one of her arms. Her limbs were contorted, and she was lying motionless beneath an overhanging branch. Pat stopped walking. She didn’t want to get any closer. If the woman was still alive, she wouldn’t know how to help her. And if she was dead, she didn’t want to see what it was that had happened to her.
She ran to her bicycle, leaped onto it, and rode frantically back to the boathouse. There were telephones there. She’d call the police.
She tried one. It didn’t work. She tried a second. It didn’t work either. Someone had pulled out the wires. She tried a third. Broken, too.
Frustrated, Pat jumped back on her bike, raced it out of the park, and found a phone on a street corner.
It was around 6.15am. She dialled 911 and reported to an operator what she’d seen. But she couldn’t describe the exact location. She’d help direct the police toward it, she promised the operator; she’d wait on the side of the road near the elm tree.
At 6.21am, Sergeant Anthony Michelak and Police Officer James McCreary, whose job it was to provide security for the park’s early morning athletes, were parked in a patrol car alongside the reservoir when a voice penetrated the static of their radio. “Woman down,” the voice sputtered. “Woman down at 81st and East Drive.” It was police lingo for a woman in need of assistance.
“Let’s go!” said Michelak, who was a certified emergency medical services technician. “Let’s see what’s happening.” Seconds later he and McCreary were careening along the bridle path. Then they turned onto the joggers’ road and began heading south.
Before they reached 81st Street, they passed Pat Reilly sitting along the roadway. She saw them and gestured toward the trees. McCreary, who was driving, swerved in a U-turn. As he started the turn, he noticed several people clustered at a stone wall behind the Museum. They were standing, except for one young man who was sitting down. McCreary paid no attention to the spectators. He finished his turn and parked the car.
Michelak jumped out. In the distance he could make out a figure lying under a tree. He hurried toward it, determined to provide the required assistance. But when he reached the figure, he hesitated, wondering if the woman could be assisted. Her neck was covered with a welter of garish red bruises and she appeared to have been strangled. Maybe she wasn’t dead. Maybe some shred of life still lingered within her. Deciding to check, he reached to take her pulse. But although he’d been trained to take it at the carotid artery, he knew better than to touch the woman’s bruised neck. Instead, he placed his hand beneath her heart. It was completely still.
Michelak went to the car and told his supervisors that this wasn’t an assistance site. It was a crime scene. He asked for detectives and an ambulance. By then more spectators had gathered. He opened the car’s trunk, took out a long sheet of brown wrapping paper, and gave the dead woman some semblance of privacy from the rubberneckers across the road.
To find out how Robert Chambers was brought to justice, read Wasted. — The Line-Up/Reuters
* This story was originally featured on The-Line-Up.com. The Lineup is the premier digital destination for fans of true crime, horror, the mysterious, and the paranormal.
