Four decades ago, the notorious “Preppy Killer” Robert Chambers killed Jennifer Levin in New York City. He now walks the city streets among everyday people under 13 parole conditions, such as he is not allowed to leave the state without prior permission and is not able to possess drugs or guns.
The guilty party will remain under those conditions until July 2028, when his parole is lifted, and then who knows where he might go or what he will do.
New York Prep Student
On August 26, 1986, a cyclist passing through Central Park came across the body of 18-year-old Levin. Police arrested the former 19-year-old preparatory school student within the following 24 hours.
The press quickly named Robert Chambers the “Preppy Killer” given his extensive attendance of several of New York City’s finest private schools, including Saint David’s School, York Preparatory School, Browning School and Choate Rosemary Hall. He was described by one of his headmasters as “bright, charming, and not a particularly good student.”
“He didn’t like the kids in the scene, but I think he was jealous of them,” a friend of the murderer told New York Magazine. “He wanted to have as much money as they did, to come back in twenty years and show them. He wanted power, a place in society.”
Murder in Central Park
Chambers said that he and the victim were engaging in rough consensual sex in the park, claiming she died just after. The night before Levin’s body was found, she and Chambers were at a bar on the Upper East Side, Dorrian’s Red Hand. The pair reportedly left around 4:30 a.m., and while they were not a couple per se, they seemed interested in one another.
Levin’s body was found nearly naked, her arms and legs crooked, and at trial, one of the responding officers testified that she had a wound all around her neck. At the beginning of the investigation, the victim’s friends told police that she was last seen with Chambers. When officers arrived at his apartment, he had cuts and scratches all over his face.
Chambers alleged to investigators during his interrogation that Levin was angry when he told her he did not plan to visit her at college and scratched his face. In the middle of sex, he also said he reached up and “pulled back on her neck as hard as he could” to get her off him.
After Levin died, Chambers remained in Central Park, standing at the stone wall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art instead of contacting the police. He was arrested the following day and was indicted two weeks later on two counts of second-degree murder.
Manslaughter Plea
Prosecutors charged him with murder, but his defense argued that Chambers was defending himself when Levin got too rough during sex, and discovery documents revealed ahead of trial the victim’s diary of sexual liaisons.
Many activists and professionals were outraged at the assertions of Levin’s character, suggesting she was a rough, sex-crazed maniac. A Justice for Jennifer group was formed and claimed she was “maligned by innuendo, misinformation and outright distortion.”
‘‘Nobody would be the least bit surprised to find Chambers was sexually active,’’ a former associate professor at Brooklyn Law School, Elizabeth M. Schneider, said at the time. ‘‘But the fact that Jennifer Levin was young and appears to have been sexually active added a whole new dimension to the case. Somehow we’d be more at ease if Chambers had dragged her unwillingly into the park.’’
After nine days of deliberation following testimony at his trial that began on January 4, 1988, the jurors were deadlocked. They offered Chambers a deal that if he pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of first-degree manslaughter, he would only serve 15 years behind bars, which he accepted. He spent nearly two decades at the Auburn Correctional Facility.
Continuing A Life of Crime
Chambers was released in 2003 after serving his full manslaughter sentence, but quickly went back two years later in July 2005 after pleading guilty to drug possession and driving with a suspended license.
He was sentenced to 100 days and released afterward. However, he ended up back in prison in 2007 after being charged with distribution of cocaine and heroin out of his Manhattan apartment.
The Preppy Killer pleaded guilty to criminal sale of a controlled substance and assault on a police officer, which gave him another 19-year prison sentence, which he carried out at the Shawangunk Correctional Facility. Chambers was released again in July 2023 to a halfway house in Hillcrest, New York, and remains on probation until July 2028.
