Arrest reportedly near in Chandra Levy case

WASHINGTON - Investigators in the 2001 slaying of Chandra Levy have prepared an arrest warrant for a Salvadoran immigrant convicted of similar attacks in the park where the congressional intern disappeared, a person close to the investigation said yesterday.

The person said Ingmar Guandique's arrest was imminent. The person was not authorized to discuss the case publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Levy, 24, had just completed an internship with the U.S. Bureau of Prisons when she disappeared in May 2001.

She was wearing jogging clothes when she vanished, and her remains were discovered in Washington's Rock Creek Park a year later.

Authorities questioned U.S. Rep. Gary Condit in Levy's disappearance, but he was never a suspect in her death. Condit was reportedly having an affair with Levy, and the negative publicity from the case was cited as a reason the California lawmaker lost reelection in 2002.

Guandique, 27, has denied involvement in Levy's killing. However, investigators interviewed him in the case after he was convicted of attacking two women joggers in Rock Creek Park shortly after Levy's disappearance.

Guandique was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for those attacks.

Levy's father, Robert Levy, said Washington Police Chief Cathy Lanier called his home Friday and said there would be an arrest in a few days.

Robert Levy said he and his wife, Susan, were not told the identity of the person to be arrested "but we all know who it is." He would not elaborate but said they would favor a life sentence for the killer.

"If someone is executed, they really don't suffer too much," he said from his home in Modesto, Calif.

A second person aware of the probe, a law enforcement official who spoke to investigators, said yesterday that the break in the case came in part from DNA evidence.