Due to a miscommunication, the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia (MPD) failed to follow its own search parameters in Rock Creek Park, leaving Levy's body to decompose for a year.

The MPD instead put much of its focus on the revelation that Levy had been having an extramarital affair with Congressman Gary Condit, a Democrat then serving his fifth term representing California's 18th congressional district and a senior member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

[1] Due to the cloud of suspicion raised by the intense media focus on the missing intern and the later revelation of the affair, Condit lost his bid for re-election in 2002.

[7] Her supervisor, bureau spokesperson Dan Dunne, was impressed with Levy's work, especially her handling of media inquiries regarding the upcoming execution of Timothy McVeigh, convicted of bombing the Oklahoma City Federal Building.

[8] Computer experts took a month to reconstruct the data to determine that the laptop was used on the morning of May 1 to search for websites related to Amtrak, Baskin-Robbins, Condit, Southwest Airlines, and a weather report from The Washington Post.

They questioned flight attendant Anne Marie Smith, who claimed that Condit told her she did not need to speak to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about his personal life.

[19] On March 5, 2002, Condit lost the Democratic primary election for his Congressional seat to his former aide, then-Assemblyman Dennis Cardoza,[20] with the Levy controversy being cited as a contributing factor.

[26] On June 6, after the police completed their search, private investigators hired by the Levys found her shin bone with some twisted wire about 25 yards (23 m) from the other remains.

The informant, whose identity was protected for his safety, said that Ingmar Guandique, a 20-year-old undocumented immigrant from El Salvador[34] who was also being held in the jail, told him that Condit paid him $25,000 to kill Levy.

[37] Police chief Ramsey avoided calling Guandique a suspect and described him as a "person of interest",[38] telling reporters not to make "too big a deal" about him.

Because neither the informant nor Guandique was fluent in English, D.C. chief detective Jack Barrett said that he would have preferred polygraph tests to have been administered by bilingual examiners, who were unavailable at the time.

[36] The resulting series of articles, published during the summer of 2008, focused on the past failure of the police to fully investigate Guandique's connection to the attacks in Rock Creek Park.

[46] After errors in processing contaminated some of the gathered evidence with DNA from employees of the prosecution,[47] the start date of the trial at the H. Carl Moultrie Courthouse was moved to October 4, 2010.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Fernando Campoamor-Sanchez presented the names of potential witnesses for the trial, including FBI agent Brad Garrett and the two women whom Guandique was convicted of assaulting.

Robert Levy testified that he told authorities during the early years of the investigation that his daughter Chandra would have been too cautious to jog in the woods alone, but said that he no longer believed this to be true.

"[51] FBI biologist Alan Giusti testified that semen found on underwear from Levy's apartment contained sperm matching Condit's DNA profile.

During closing arguments for the remaining charges of first-degree murder committed during a kidnapping and during a robbery,[53] prosecutor Amanda Haines contended that Guandique bound and gagged Levy after attacking her, leaving her to die of dehydration or exposure in the park.

[69] A memo submitted by the prosecution in February 2011 cited Guandique's harassment of female staff in prison, including soliciting a nurse and masturbating in front of guards.

[69] Assistant U.S. Attorney Fernando Campoamor-Sanchez disclosed that he had traveled to El Salvador with a detective to investigate allegations that Guandique had fled his native country because of suspected attacks against local women dating back to 1999.

[86] According to The Washington Post, prosecutors lost confidence in the case after learning that Morales, who now lives in Maryland, was secretly recorded admitting lying on the witness stand during the 2010 trial.

[92] According to Condit, about a hundred reporters were camped out in front of his apartment during the morning of September 11, 2001, but they all left after news spread about that day's terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.

She wrote that only the very conservative Human Events reported that the Immigration and Naturalization Service had approved his working legally while he was applying for temporary protected status.

[96] In 2005, investigative journalist Dominick Dunne said on Larry King Live that he believed that Gary Condit had more information about the Levy case than he had been disclosing.

[22] During the summer of 2008, The Washington Post ran a 13-part series billed, in part, as "a tale of the tabloid and mainstream press pack journalism that helped derail the investigation".

[97] Commentators, including The Washington Post Metro reporter Robert Pierre, wrote that emphasis on a glamorous white murder victim, when "about 200 people are killed in this city every year, most of them black and male", was "absolutely absurd and dare I say, racist, at its core".

[102][103] When Ingmar Guandique was convicted of murdering Levy in November 2010, Condit's lawyer Bert Fields remarked, "It's a complete vindication but that comes a little late.

For example, Levy's parents quickly requested help from the Carole Sund/Carrington Memorial Reward Foundation,[11] a nonprofit group that was established in Modesto after three female tourists disappeared from a 1999 trip to Yosemite National Park and were later found slain.

Susan Levy later joined forces with Donna Raley, the mother of another young woman who disappeared from Modesto in 1999, to form "Wings of Protection", a support group for people with missing loved ones.

[112][113] The Mary Ann Liebert company, the publisher of the Journal of Women's Health and Gender-Based Medicine, presented its annual Criterion Award to Susan Levy for her work with "Wings of Protection" in May 2002.

[117][needs update] Condit retired from politics and moved to Phoenix, Arizona with his wife to manage real estate and open two Baskin-Robbins franchises, which have since closed.