Chandra Levy - Aftermath

Aftermath

Levy's death had a lasting impact, in part due to the efforts of her family and friends. Levy's disappearance came after a number of other high-profile cases that led to the creation of resources for missing young adults. For example, Levy's parents quickly turned for help to the Carole Sund/Carrington Memorial Reward Foundation, a nonprofit group that was established in Modesto after three female hikers disappeared from a 1999 trip to Yosemite National Park and were later found slain. That foundation, which offered the Levys staff support and contributed towards a cash reward for information about Chandra's disappearance, was merged into the Laci & Conner Search and Rescue Fund in 2009; Susan Levy had previously participated in the efforts to find Laci Peterson, another missing woman from Modesto. In 1997, 18-year-old Kristen Modafferi mysteriously disappeared from North Carolina and her parents turned to their congresswoman for help when Kristen was deemed too old to be helped by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. As a result, Congress enacted "Kristen's Law" in October 2000, which established the National Center for Missing Adults (NCMA) within the U.S. Department of Justice to coordinate such missing person cases. By the time Levy disappeared, institutions were in place to provide her family with support and to assist in a nationwide search to locate her. Although the Levy family moved quickly to mobilize all such available resources, including offering a cash reward for information, hiring their own investigators, and seeking media attention, those efforts to locate Chandra Levy or find her killer were overshadowed by the speculation surrounding her possible relationship with Condit. Susan Levy later joined with Donna Raley, the mother of another young woman who disappeared in 1999 from Modesto, to form "Wings of Protection", a support group for people with missing loved ones. The Mary Ann Liebert company, publishers of the Journal of Women's Health and Gender-Based Medicine, presented their annual Criterion Award in May 2002 to Susan Levy for her work with "Wings of Protection".

Newsweek magazine stated that the media may have become more skeptical of "herd mentality" and open to alternative suspects after the Levy case. The D.C. police claimed that they would have discovered Levy's body earlier, if not for a miscommunication regarding the scope of the search. Commanders had ordered a search within 100 yards (91 m) of each road and trail in Rock Creek Park, but searches were focused within 100 yards of roads only, resulting in the body remaining undiscovered for a longer period of time. Both the Chief of Detectives, Jack Barrett, and the Chief of Police, Charles H. Ramsey, have since left the force in D.C. Ramsey became head of the Philadelphia Police Department; Barrett, who became an analyst for an intelligence support firm in Arlington, Virginia, stated in hindsight that the media had imposed "enormous amounts of pressure" on the D.C. police. Morales, who is serving time for conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine and crack cocaine, is scheduled to be released on August 5, 2016. Condit retired from politics and moved with his wife to Phoenix, Arizona, to manage real estate and open two Baskin-Robbins franchises, which have since closed.