Break in Levy case pleases students

Cold case club delved into Modesto intern's 2001 death

By Emilie Raguso
eraguso@modbee.com

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Atlanta criminal justice college students who spent the past year delving into the death of Chandra Levy said they're surprised and excited about last month's break in the case.

"I was half-asleep when I got the call," said Naomi Barkley, 49, of Atlanta. "I was like, 'Are you kidding?' That was the last thing I was thinking about, that they were going to make an arrest. The rest of the day, I was in shock. I think all of us were."

Barkley, a senior at Bauder College in Atlanta, is a member of a college club in Georgia that's devoted to investigating cold cases. In 2008, the group focused on the death of Chandra Levy and the disappearance of Natalee Holloway, a high school student from Alabama who vanished during a graduation trip in Aruba. In December, the group turned over its findings to the agencies working on the cases.

A 24-year-old former Bureau of Prisons intern from Modesto, Levy was last seen April 30, 2001. Her remains were found in Washington's Rock Creek Park a year later.

On Feb. 20, Police Chief Cathy Lanier told Levy's parents in Modesto that an arrest warrant was imminent. Investigators last week flew to California. Ingmar A. Guandique, 27, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador known to be of interest to investigators in the Levy case, is in the federal penitentiary at Victorville.

The college club has 100 to 150 members on four campuses, according to director Sheryl McCollum, who started the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute in 2005. She also runs the Cold Case Crime Analysis Squad for the Pine Lake Police Department in Georgia.

'Always working on it'

McCollum's students previously have examined such cases as the 1996 shooting death of rapper Tupac Shakur and the arrest of Wayne Williams, who police identified as the key suspect in more than 20 child murders in Atlanta from 1979 to 1981.

Students meet once a month to hear from criminal justice experts and discuss theories they've formed and clues they've uncovered. McCollum said students put in extensive personal time. They come in on holidays and in their spare time to cover a wall with butcher paper, taping up articles, timelines and notes with questions about case elements that don't make sense.

"You're always working on it. It's always on your mind," said Barkley, who has been a club member since 2005. "Once you get involved in a cold case, you don't just have it for eight hours and then you put it away. It's with you until you solve it."

Barkley was in a car accident last year during which she nearly died three times, medical workers told her. Even then she was thinking about the case, she said.

"They didn't think I was going to make it. They had called my family, the whole nine yards," she said. She was in the hospital for more than a week and had to return several times for treatment. "I called Chief McCollum as soon as I could and I asked her what was going on with the case, and could I take my finals. I woke up with it on my mind, I guess."

Students said they identified with Levy, who was studying criminal justice before she disappeared. And some said they would never forget a visit from Chandra Levy's mother, Susan Levy, in early 2008.

"She told us about her daughter and showed us pictures," Barkley said. "It was very touching. It just wrapped around your heart, just to see the hurt on her face. Her daughter's gone. She just wanted answers. I saw the hurt and pain on her face and I just wanted to fix it."

Kawanda Taylor said Levy's visit allowed her to see beyond the media reports on the case.