Episode 665: Robert Chambers: The Preppy Killer

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Hey, weirdos. I'm Elena.

I'm Ash.

And this is Morbid.

This is the Beatle. Hi, everybody.
Hello. What's up? Not a lot.
No. No, it's not a lot.
Oh. I haven't checked on my Finch today.
Oh. Oh, my God.
I'm like 30 days into my Finch, so we're really rocking and rolling. Yeah, I'm like 20.
I think today's day 28. I'm going to have to have you take the mic for yeah let's start today well my finch is in uh sydney australia so mine is in taipei hey guys in australia if you see my finch gatsby walking around there tell me that i well big ang my finch said i can't decide is it better to be super strong or super fast oh i think super fast i mean whatever you feel super fast she says i wish i was fast that would mean the yellow cat that chases me would never be able to keep up with me oh and she got 6.1 points for security oh she's a queen bee um this isn't sponsored i genuinely needed to check in on my finch yeah i'm saying she's all set yeah you can't just siri i'm not talking siri's like i'm sorry she's like i can't check in on your finch you have to and i'm like well i did guys i hope you i mean i talked about this like weeks ago the finch app yeah i want to know if you guys did it did you do it did you do it what's your finch's name just yell it really loud and all this and Oh, they did.
Okay, yeah. A lot of you did.
I heard app. Yeah.
I want to know if you guys did it. Did you do it? Did you do it? What's your Finch's name? Just yell it really loud and all this in.
Oh, they did. Okay, yeah.
A lot of you did. I heard you.
Yeah. Somebody.
Oh, Larry. We have a Larry.
Larry, thank you for trying. Yeah.
No, no. They named their Finch Larry.
Oh, I thought it was Larry who tried it. No.
I'm sure we have a Larry who may have tried it as well. Maybe.
I don't know. I believe you.
I'm just fucking with you. We just finished watching season six.
Yeah. Final episode of Buffy.
If you listen to the rewatcher, you know how we feel about season six. Yeah.
I left the room during the season six finale. So we're feeling some type of way right now.
I faked a walkout. Yeah, it's true.
If you want to. She did like a, she did a housewife style walkout of the reunion.
I really did. But I came back and that's all that counts.
If you want to hear our extra thoughts on all of Buffy because the beginning seasons of Buffy are fantastic. They are.
We've had so much fun talking about it. And we've even had fun talking about this season.
Go listen to the re-watcher you should we're about to end season six and go into season seven so i have a whole new season adventure awaiting me join us all right um i have a bummer of a case today we were talking i think the last time we got together maybe we were talking about um david carpenter david carpenter the trail side killer the trail side killer and that was just like a very uh it was riddled with misjustice injustice if you will misjustice i like that misjustice misjustice that's a good drag was in here but she left yeah she left halfway through that case she did yeah uh this is another case where justice is interesting oh okay okay all right we're gonna be talking about the preppy killer robert chambers who killed jennifer don levin um we're gonna talk about that entire case so jennifer don levin was born may 21st 1968 in port washington new york her parents were steven and ellen levin a realtor and a homemaker Jennifer and her older sister Danielle were raised on Long Island's North Shore pretty much a haven for wealthier families who wanted like quiet home life kind of vibe but still have access to the city that makes sense I love Long Island even though she came from a wealthy family and she really didn't want for a lot, Jennifer insisted on doing things for herself.

When she wanted anything, like if she wanted a new Walkman or new clothes, anything like that, she didn't go to like, oh, let me go ask my parents. She figured out how she could get it without their help.
Yeah. And she.
So she's like, she's an independent woman. She is, yeah.
She's getting her shit done. She did.
And like at an early age too. Yeah.mother, Arlene Levin, said her first thought was, how can I make the money to get it, not buy it for me? Which I love.
I love that. Yeah, it's fantastic.
That's honestly such a rare viewpoint for such a young person. Yeah.
To be like, well, I'll figure out how to get it myself. Usually it's just like, well, mom and dad won't do it.
That wasn't my viewpoint. But in 1973, when Jennifer was five years old, her parents did end up divorcing.
Stephen, her father, moved to an apartment in Manhattan. And Ellen stayed on Long Island with Danielle and Jennifer.
Despite the separation, Jennifer and her sister managed to remain close to both their parents. And they even developed a good relationship with, years later with steven's new wife arlene ellen jennifer's mom said about jennifer she just made people smile by just walking into a room oh which is like you can feel that yeah and her charm and affection wasn't just limited to friends just not limited only to family once just before she was scheduled to take her driving test she talked to man a Manhattan cab driver into teaching her how to parallel park.
Fucking iconic. What a savvy, savvy person.
That is wild. And like, picture a Manhattan cab driver.
Yeah. They don't have time for your shit.
No, they're always like, on to the next. Somehow she had the charm to be like, listen, I got a test coming up and I got a parallel park.
You got to help me,? Yeah, help me, man. I love that.
And he did. So after finishing junior high on Long Island, she moved in with her father and her stepmother in Manhattan, mostly so that she could attend the Baldwin School, which was a private high school on New York's Upper West Side.
According to Arlene Levin, Jennifer's desire to attend private school was as much a matter of fear as it was anything else. She actually believed all urban public schools were dangerous places.
She was very afraid to go to public school. Oh, okay.
Which, I don't know, maybe at the time it was like a little bit rough. I'm not positive.
Yeah, I don't know how, like in that area, how they are now. Yeah.
I'm not sure. Yeah.
But anyway, she thrived at Baldwin School and quickly developed her own really independent personality. She wasn't really your typical teenager.
Her friends and classmates mostly kind of gravitated toward pop music and television. But Jennifer herself preferred adult contemporary music.
And she said that she'd rather work out than watch TV. And she also became a vegetarian at a pretty young age just for the health benefits damn she sounds cool as hell she does sound cool i want to be her friend yeah now also unlike her peers who relied mostly on their parents for money as soon as she was able to jennifer got a part-time job as a hostess at fluties a bar in lower manhattan i feel like i don't know if i've been there but i've definitely heard of it yeah right it really does i don't know if it's like from something uh but her manager said never once did i see her come to work with anything but a smile more on her uh job at fluties later there's like another anecdote in my tale here but when it came to romance and relationships jennifer who had been voted best looking in her senior class oh jennifer snap snap she was pretty non-committal.
You're in high school. You don't need to be committal.
Exactly. So when she started dating in her junior year, she spent a lot of time with Brock Pernice, a student at York Prep, which is an elite prep school, pretty similar to Baldwin.
That sounds fancy as hell. Pretty much all of them are fancy as hell.
Anything prep sounds like, whoa. I always think that.
Now, Brock said jennifer was a really cute girl fun happy-go-lucky she loved the club scene and she was very innocent i took her to a billy idol concert on our first date oh my god yeah that's what a fucking sick ass first date and then he said but it wasn't until weeks later that i first kissed her at the peppermint lounge and then I couldn't leave her. It sounds like he really, really

liked her a lot.

It gives me butterflies.

Wow.

It's very young love.

Brock surprised me because to be

honest, the name Brock gives me

pause sometimes. We're conditioned

for a certain television show.

I've been conditioned. Actually, two television

shows where my Reba fans at.

So it's like

I love that. I love that about Brock.

I don been conditioned. Actually, two television shows where my Reba fans at.
Yeah, so it's like I love that.

I love that about Brock.

I do too.

Now, around that same time, Jennifer and her friends all managed to get fake IDs.

Whoa.

You gotta.

You are a New York Upper East Sider.

Don't do that.

I'm not telling you to.

But I'm just saying retroactively, you had to.

Retroactively, yeah. Of course.
So they became regulars at dorian's red hand great name for wow i love that yeah it was a manhattan bar popular with college students damn now even though she was dating brock pernice at the time jennifer also started casually dating a couple of the guys that she met at dorian's because remember you can do whatever the fuck you want to do yeah and she's casually dating casually dating. She's in high school.
Yeah. It's high school.
It's high school. It doesn't matter at all.
But that included a short period where she dated Robert Chambers, a guy who had attended York prep with Brock himself. Now, I also feel like guys date multiple women all the time, and it's never— One hundred? You don't even need to feel like that.
That's reality.

That's just a fact.

And it's never a part of the story.

No.

But as soon as a girl dates multiple guys,

it becomes part of the story.

Well, it becomes part of her personality,

part of her character,

part of her.

Every facet.

DNA that goes on her,

you know, resume.

Like it's normal to date around

and find out what you like

and who you want to hang out with.

And like you're not dating to marry in high school.

No.

I mean, maybe you got so lucky

the It's normal to date around and find out what you like and who you want to hang out with. Like, you're not dating to marry in high school.
No. I mean, maybe you got so lucky that you meet that person that you're going to marry.
Yeah. I wish I had dated, like, more different people in high school.
I wish I had dated less people in high school. Than the same person that I dated for all of high school.
Yeah, you heard. Yeah.
With PURD. You know? Yeah.
But I support this and it I'm harping on it because it becomes a major aspect of this case and it pisses me off. Yeah, I get it.
She gets very much slushed. She gets railroaded for it.
Yeah. So let's talk about Robert a little bit.
Robert Chambers. Sure.
Robert Emmett Chambers Jr. was born September 25th, 1966 in Queens, New York.
He was the only child born to Phyllis and Robert Chambers Sr., a nurse and an employee for MCA. For the first few years of his life, the family lived in the working class neighborhood of Jackson Heights, and then they actually moved to a more upscale neighborhood in the Upper East Side.
Oh. I just can't, like, hear the Upper East Side without thinking of Gossip Girl.
Ah. Hey, Upper East Siders.
I think of Cruel Intentions. Oh.
I'm the Marsha fucking Brady of the Upper East Side. And sometimes I want to kill myself.
That's a direct quote, not me. Movie.
Yeah. I love that movie.
I'm going to go watch that later. She's a fucking icon in that movie.
She's so good in that movie. So scary.
Honestly, everyone is so good in that movie. Oh, everyone's A plus in that.
That movie is A fucking plus. The fact that they tried to remake it.
Don't get me started. I think they're actively remaking it into a TV show right now.
Yeah, stop. Because you can't remake that.
You can't bottle. Stop.
You can't bottle that time. No, you can't.
And that kind of, and that it cast, you cannot bottle that. So good.
Like you just can't. And just the lore.
It's got Tara Reid in it. You can't.
What are you doing trying to make that again? I always forget that Tara Reid isn't. She starts the whole damn thing.
She sure does. Hell yeah.
Oh my God. Her crying scenes are always the best.
That movie. That movie is in my DNA.
It's a retweet. Me too.
I cry every time. Oh my God.
When she's going up the escalator. Yeah.
Oh, and the end. When she drives across the bridge.
Coffee black and egg white. Oh my God.
We've gone on too long. So the Upper East Side period.
Sorry. That's what makes us think of that.
By a lot of accounts, Robert's parents were in a lot of ways pretty hands-off and they were kind of emotionally unavailable. Like they struggled to provide the best education for him.
That was a drive that they had. But they didn't really support him like emotionally and like they didn't support his social development.
They just wanted the best education but they weren't thinking of like making him a well-rounded individual. Yes, exactly.
They were very focused on education, which is great. Yeah.
But there's more aspects to a child's upbringing. There's definitely more to life.
Yeah, exactly. More to a human.
Yeah. Now, he would be portrayed by the press, interestingly, later in his later years, but Robert Chambers' background was a lot more modest, actually, than it appeared.
Throughout a lot of his life, he attended elite prep schools, but his mom worked nights as a nurse in order to pay for his tuition. Oh, wow.
And her income rarely covered the entire tuition. So the fees, he were covered by like a scholarship.
Damn. He was there on scholarship and by his mom's hard work.
His mom sounds like a badass in that respect. She does, definitely.
Really working her ass off for a kid. She was, yeah.
And his status as one of the least wealthy kids in school usually made him feel kind of inferior, socially isolated. Think Dan Humphreys and Gotham Girl.
I was just going to say, this sounds very written by a showrunner. It does.
You know? It's very that. Yeah.
But the thing was, even though he felt that way internally, outwardly he seemed pretty popular. He had a lot of friends.
His classmates liked him. So this was very much an internal struggle that he was going through.
But outside of school, he was an altar boy at the family's church. He was a member of the Children of the American Revolution, which is always interesting.
It always makes me think of Gilmore Girls. It always makes me think of that.
And he was an officer in something I've never heard of before, but gives very American Revolution-y vibes. And he was an officer in the Knickerbocker Grays, which is a drill team for children of wealthy New York families.
That doesn't even sound real. I know.
That sounds like something somebody made up. It does make me feel stupid maybe they did like this is a real thing maybe they did wow well phyllis his mom served as the board president of the greys at the time wow and she told a reporter it's a very tough world out there a boy who receives this training is less likely to fall by the wayside later on the greys teaches what society should be be about, the niceties of life.
Wow. It's very like, pinkies up.
Yeah, see, I'm psyched about my kids knowing karate. There you go.
And how to, you know, Beat the shit out of a man. Chop someone in the throat.
There you go. But like, I guess, yeah.
Different strokes for different folks. Different vibes for what's important, I guess.
I think you should go be the president of the Knickerbocker Greys, personally. It sounds wild.
I'm looking it up right now because I've just never heard of this. I had never heard of it before either.
I mean, the good news is their 142nd season is starting. Whoa.
A lot of seasons. I didn't realize they had seasons.
Yeah, apparently. It's like a team.
This is very interesting. It is.
Well, like I said, Robert might have felt like an outsider, but the messages he got from his peers pretty much contradicted his self-image entirely, like I was just saying. Yeah.
He was 6'4". He weighed 220 pounds.
He's a sturdy guy. He was very popular with the girls.
And they were all drawn to his, quote, shy and secretive charm. Oh.
Yeah. Secretive charm? I don't know.
I don't know about that. know it was a different time so the combination of his sense of inferiority and the overwhelmingly positive encouragement that he got from his classmates resulted in him becoming the kind of guy with a chip on his shoulder ah like a hundred percent a very huge sense of entitlement also oh i could yeah i could i could feel that vibe starting to come he's giving Oh, yeah.
Without writing poetry. See, and let me just like quick little thing.
Secret of charm is never charming unless his secret is he's like a vampire. Like that's the only.
And even then that's a little messy. That's the only like a real vampire.
Legit, babe. Legit.
Yeah. You never want secrets.
It's not a good thing to go after.

Yeah, no.

No.

Secret of charm isn't really like a descriptor I've heard before. No, secret secrets are no fun.

Secret secrets hurt someone.

But he started to deal with his insecurities by engaging in some casual drug use.

Casual?

Casual.

And other illegal activities like petty theft and vandalism. Very casual casual you have to deal with your secret of charm in a certain way uh soon his grades began to slip he lost his scholarship which is real shitty because his mom worked her ass off i was gonna say and he was also kicked out of school oh yeah damn yeah you buried that lead so your secret of charm didn you anywhere, bud.
This increasingly destructive behavior even took a toll on his relationship with his oldest friends. His closest friend at the time, John Tolinko, said, I just realized it was a dead end.
One night, a group of us were hanging out at this bar on East 85th Street. I remember thinking how pathetic the conversation was.
We were just joking around in this cynical manner that we have, but I had stopped drinking a few weeks before and I couldn't relate to it at all. I stood up and told them to go to hell and walked out.
Whoa. This whole thing is like a TV show slash movie.
It is. It's very dramatic.
Yeah. Looking back, John Delingo said that, you know, he wished he'd been more honest with Robert and tried to help him make some kind of positive change before it was too late.
But hindsight's 20-20. Yeah, and that's not totally up to everybody else.
No, and also he's a teenager, so he doesn't have all the resources that he needs to make Robert better. Exactly.
But thankfully, Robert was able to enroll at York Prep, a new school, but it was with the understanding that he would get his life together, work hard to graduate, and get into a good college. It's unknown whether he maintained good grades during his senior year at York, but what is clear is that his drug use unfortunately did not stop.
Actually, if anything, it got worse. Throughout that year, he got in trouble for alcohol abuse.
He developed a very serious cocaine habit, and that cocaine habit affected almost every part of his life, of course.

As it does.

But somehow, even with all that going on, he did manage to get accepted to Boston University.

Shit.

Yeah.

In large part, according to one former friend, because of his high test scores.

That's a good school, man.

That's a great school.

It's very impressive.

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Start your free trial in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or the Wondery app. So after his graduation from York in 1985, so he did graduate, he moved to Boston.
Whoop, whoop! Whoop-whooping Boston. I was going to say.
Yeah. And he started the year in Boston University's basic studies program, which basically was established by the school to help students who struggled social or emotionally during high school, which is really cool.
I didn't even know that was a thing. Yeah.
So the new city and the supportive program were this big chance for Robert to start over and establish some new, more responsible habits and get his life back on track. For sure.
And that's a big chance. You get into Boston University and you get this kind of like, I don't want to say hand-holding, but for lack of a better term.
And you got to do the most with that. You got to do the most with that.
Unfortunately, he did not. He fell back on old habits and according to his friends, he used the school as an excuse to party and hang out oh what that's such bullshit and it's like why bother i'm sure that program was beneficial for so many other people yeah that's the thing who didn't get to use it because you took their spot yeah like and exactly but like that pisses me off yeah somebody who would have actually used it yeah like some maybe somebody who didn't get into it.
Or even there was people there that probably, like, yeah, exactly. So after just one semester at Boston University, he was kicked out of the program for academic reasons and just returned back to his parents in New York.
That must have been fun. Yeah, it seemed like he picked up right where he left off there.
His father was away on business trips a lot, his mom was still working nights at the hospital. So he spent a lot of his nights at the bars, at the clubs in Manhattan, just acting basically like he was still in high school with no responsibilities whatsoever.
Awesome. Yeah, fantastic.
Now, Jennifer, on the contrary, by the time she had reached her senior year at Baldwin, she started having difficulties with her parents according to friends jennifer had moved in with her father and her stepmother not only to attend baldwin like i was saying but also for the added discipline that she felt that environment would offer okay one journalist wrote though she was close to her mother she told friends that her mother was more of a friend than a parent which that can be difficult and that relationship might not have provided the structure that she was looking for but it seems like life with her father and her stepmother in manhattan also left a lot to be desired in a different way friends remembered that she constantly resented her stepmother and that often led to fights with her father or with her father and stepmother oh man yeah one of her close friends said she used to call me in tears and come sleep over at my house because of fights with her dad they were just about the usual things coming home late cleaning her room getting her priorities straight but she never really felt comfortable living there which is sad it's also i think a very common problem amongst teenagers i was gonna say it's also very teenager yeahsty teenager. Yeah.
And also I think like having divorced parents, like you leave one house because it's not super desirable and you think the other house is going to be this great place where nowhere's perfect. Yeah.
Nowhere's perfect. Exactly.
Yeah. But like Robert Chambers, Jennifer did also turn to substance use and partying as a kind of escape from the pressures that she felt at home.
It doesn't seem like she developed the same addiction problems that Robert was going through, but her desire to party oftentimes outweighed her responsibilities like school and work. Which again, very typical of a lot of teenagers.
Yeah, this is exactly who I was, like 100%. And obviously the fact that she's prioritizing partying over school, over her responsibilities at work and home, it's resulting in bad grades and probably some more tension at home.
Yeah. According to Daniel Kimball, the principal at Baldwin, Jennifer was a quote, good average student.
She probably wasn't expecting to get into Harvard or Yale, but she was studious and responsible enough to get accepted to some very reasonable schools or or excuse me, respectable schools. Now, for her friends who knew her best, the change in her personality started right around the summer of 1985.
At that time, she was working actually at a boutique in the Hampton. She wasn't actually working at Flutie's yet.
And she was spending more and more time with some new friends that she'd met in the club scene, which you can imagine probably not the best influences. her first boyfriend there said i remember when i met her she was little miss innocent i saw her change grow up real quick in the city yeah he said the unchanged the the change was unwelcome and pretty disappointing oh man he said i tried to do other things with her like other than go to the club yeah he said we went to the theater formals restaurants but she always had to go by dorian's that's where our friends were oh man yeah so remember these are like very very wealthy kids with literally no adult supervision whatsoever oh yeah they were living like adults yeah but they didn't have the emotional maturity that usually comes with age which is very like i'm, dangerous.
I'm not trying to be, like, silly here when I say it's very Gossip Girl-esque. Like, you know, like, the whole, like, kids living very adult lives, having very adult drama.
Yeah. But in, like, a kid's setting.
And it comes with adult problems and repercussions, you know? Yeah. Exactly.
A close friend said, we act like we were adults. Most of us have credit cards.
We all drink. We all fool around, have flings.
Like, truly very gossip girl. Yeah, straight up like Sex and the City style.
Yeah, but these are kids. But kids.
So that summer, while she was still seeing Brock, Jennifer, again, casually dated a few different guys, like I said, including Robert Chambers, who was also working on the Hamptons that summer. And their social circles kind of overlapped with each other's.
Nothing really came of the brief relationship with Robert Chambers, actually, but for Brock, it was the beginning of the end. That winter, he and Jennifer broke up for the first of what would be several short breakups before finally ending things for good a few months later.
And Jennifer wasn't the only one struggling to to find her place in 1985 after he got kicked out of boston university robert chambers life was spiraling out of control it was a very slow spiral at first i think when he left school but then things really started gearing up he managed to find work at like some low-paying jobs he actually even took a few college courses at hunter college but his drug use was overtaking everything it was becoming his biggest priority yeah he wasn't really hurting for money but that fall he fell in with a group of young guys from wealthy families who just um broke into people's houses around the city for fun oh cool yeah you know as as groups of young men do just you know just kids being boys being boys guys being dudes yeah guys being bros yeah that's casual yeah that's fine they stole jewelry other expensive items like that just for fun yeah an acquaintance of his of robert's the bling ring yeah i know honestly yeah it really does an acquaintance of his said we went out to dinner at america once and he pulled out a credit card that wasn't his and joking jokingly said should i use this tonight what the fuck no you douchebag what the fuck but this is so entitled like spoiled rich kid behavior it's very cliche yeah like this part of it like that's it's very like what you think spoiled rich kids in manhattan are gonna be you know? Not necessarily what they are, but like this is very what atypical, it's very typical of what you would think. Yeah, it's very stereotypical.
It's very like clueless, bling ring, gossip girl. Like it's got all of those vibes.
Even, um, remember the Sex and the City like prequel that they did? I don't think you watched it. Yeah.
It was a banger. I did not watch it.
I think it only got like one or two seasons. I loved it.
I'm a purist. I get it.
No sequel, no reboot. No, I get it.
The prequel was pretty good though, and it reminds me of this. But anyway, as the year went on, so did Robert's excessive drug use and now theft.
Before long, he moved on from stealing from strangers to just straight up stealing from people he knew, like his friends. On nights when people, when Robert had been at their homes, his friends and acquaintances would notice that money had gone missing.
Wow. Yeah.
Which is like, if he's willing to do it to people he doesn't know, of course he's going to start doing it. Like, you can't trust that kind of person.
But that's such a big escalation. It is.
Like, stealing in general is so fucked up and stealing from strangers is fucked up stealing from your friends is fucked up on a whole other level of course it is it's wild but at popular hangouts like dorian's red hand even the customers frequently complained to management that money and credit cards were going missing from their pocketbooks their coats and a lot of times people knew that it was robert but they just didn't want to confront him because you know he's this like wealthy kid he comes from a good wealthy family so there was rarely any consequences but everybody knew what he was doing yeah and he was just allowed to get away with it yeah now that spring he went to Palm Beach to visit some friends and while he was gone his mother was cleaning up his bedroom and she found evidence of his ongoing drug use and she called this is actually really smart on her behalf she called him and she said he needed to come home immediately because somebody was sick whoa but when he turned home it turned out they were having an intervention for him like he was the one who was sick and a few days later he did agree to go to a drug rehab facility he went to hazelden foundation in minnesota and he he spent the next month there detoxing and learning the skills that he would need to, you know, stay clean once he got back home. But I think that's so smart the way she did that.
Oh, yeah. Of course it is.
He made sure he got home. And she's not lying.
Yeah, someone's sick. Because she's saying someone's sick.
Yeah. You know? So he went to rehab.
He cleaned up. He spent a month there.
He came back to New York from Minnesota in late May of 1986 and enthousically announced that he had kicked his cocaine habit for good and he was ready to start fresh. Wow.
I mean, sounds good. Yeah.
It would have been exciting, but here we are talking about it. But here we are.
He's on morbid, so it's not good. He actually even found work as a painter.
He was a caretaker for his neighbor at this time. But a lot of people around him who were closer to him were questioning how he was actually doing.
A close friend said, in a way, he was too positive. Most people when they get out of rehab are realistic.
But Rob always wanted to think that he could handle anything. And it soon started to become obvious to those, again, close to him, around him more frequently, that he was still struggling.
And he started drinking again in no time and then smoking pot. And then it escalated.
Oh, man. Meanwhile, Jennifer had also started making major changes in her life.
In late spring, she spent some time visiting colleges in Boston. Boston? Boston, baby.
And she eventually applied and was accepted to Chamberlain Junior College, which is a school with Mount Ida. I feel like people talked about Mount Ida all the time around here.
Yeah. So many people go there.
Yeah. Everyone goes there.
Everybody. Mount Ida.
Mount Ida. When she got back to New York, that was when she found her part-time hostess job at Flutie's.
Oh, okay. And according to friends, the job interview at Flutie's actually didn't go as well as she hoped it would.
But like she had so many times before, her charm just worked for her and eventually she won them over. I love it.
Her friend Betsy remembered she had to wait three or four hours for an interview, which I'd leave at that point. So good for her.
Seriously. And when the guy saw her, he told her she wasn't right for the job.
So she grabbed him by the shoulders and told him she was great with people

and about all the jobs she had had selling and made him fall in love with her.

And she got the job.

Yeah.

Jennifer sounds like such a badass.

Like a hot ticket.

That's exactly what she sounds like.

You know?

Yeah.

And like imagine having that chutzpah at that age.

Like grabbing the man by his shoulders and being like, no, I got this, dude.

She sounds to me like a young Blanche Devereaux. Yes.
You know, like she's got that vibe to her where she's just like, fuck it, I can do it. Yeah, she's a straight shooter.
She's a sass master. I like it.
She is. So things were looking up for her at this point.
Her future was very bright. Everything was on the up and up, but things were not going as well for Robert.
All through the summer, he kept telling his friends and family that he was working on getting his life back on track. He was going to enroll in courses at Columbia, but by the end of August, he hadn't enrolled in any classes, hadn't found a permanent job.
He was also stealing from friends and acquaintances again. Everybody was like, oh, he's backsliding and this is not good and it was not on the evening of august 25th jennifer and some of her friends decided to go out to dorian's red hand for one last night out on the town she's going to be leaving soon she's going to be moving to boston starting her new life and as it turned out actually brock had been accepted to northeastern so.
So Jennifer hoped that they could reconnect and start seeing each other again.

Ah.

Yeah.

It was true that she had gone on a few dates with Robert Chambers, but insisted, quote,

her thing with Chambers was no big thing, just a crush.

Nothing at all like the serious relationship she had with Brock.

Aw.

She was really hopeful.

I really, I like Brock.

I do too.

Okay, good.

Yeah, I do too.

I was like, tell me I can like Brock. I only know very minimal things but what i do know i know i like yeah now that night robert chambers had made plans also to meet up with a girl that he'd been dating for a short time and they decided to go to dorian's red hand together again like i said very popular spot they had been there a few hours by the time jennifer and her friends arrived just just before midnight and everybody had been drinking.
Despite her stated desire to reconcile with Brock, Jennifer was still pretty excited when she saw Robert that night and she told friends apparently that she quote wanted to go home with him later. Remember they dated before casually.
She was excited about the future but she still wanted to live it up and have you know one last hurrah before city. Yeah.
I get it. Why not? According to Larissa Thompson, one of the girls that Jennifer had been out with that night, Jennifer, quote, immediately made a beeline for Robert's table when she saw him at Dorian's and seated herself at the table.
One of the customers at the bar said she was very flirtatious, definitely outgoing. Robert Chambers, on the other hand, was distracted, it seemed, and occasionally even disinterested, people said.
He chatted with Jennifer for a little bit, but at multiple points throughout the night, he would just get up and walk away, only to return a short time later, which to me says... Something.
Something. It says, um...
Yeah, it says it needs a break, maybe. Some stuff's going on lots of people go to new york bathrooms for this they do just as i mean they they yell about it on housewife seasons they do i think what are people doing in your bathroom yeah now when asked about his mood that night robert explained that he was depressed about a friend from rehab who had recently died who Who knows? Yeah.
Whether it was his emotional upset

or his interest in talking to Jennifer,

he spent most of the night

ignoring the girl he was on a date with.

Wow.

So finally, after an hour had passed

without him speaking to her,

she approached the table that he was sitting at

and threw a bag of condoms in his face

and told him he could, quote,

use these with someone else

because you're not going to get the chance

to use them with me and stormed out of the bar. Again.
Wow. Is this like, I'm like, what? That's a, that's a queen move right there.
That's wow. Wow.
If your date is ever ignoring you, do that. Yeah.
If I saw someone do that. Slow clap.
I would talk about it for the rest of my life. For the rest of my days.

That would be the first thing I brought up. Any new person I met, I'd be like, can I tell you this crazy thing that I saw?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Absolutely, I would.

Yeah.

Most people, forgettable. That girl, not forgettable.

Well, the date's theatrical exit from Dorian's was also a great opportunity for Jennifer because, you know, she wanted to hang out with Robert that night.

Yeah.

So now this girl's not in her way anymore.

Well, she wanted to hang out with Robert that night. Yeah.
So now this girl's not in her way anymore. Well, she left.
So she wasted no time settling in next to Robert at the table. But for all her directness and enthusiasm, for some reason, she wasn't comfortable propositioning Robert directly.
Like, I get that. You don't want to be like, you want to get out of here, man? Yeah.
And I mean, he's just had a bag, a literal bag of condoms thrown at him. Yeah.
In public. Yeah.
He might be. So that might have made it a little weird.
It probably did. Yeah.
Yeah. So instead, she had a friend ask him to meet her outside of the bar.
The friend later said, he just tilted his head like she's driving me crazy and said, I don't think so. I don't want to deal with it, which is rude it which is rude go tell her that yourself yeah now he might not have wanted to meet jennifer outside the bar but that definitely didn't mean that he was uninterested because when jennifer's friends left dorian's a little past 2 a.m they remembered seeing her still sitting at a table with robert and engaging in what appeared to be a very serious conversation so what the fuck yeah they're, they're clearly like carrying on.
Yeah. So a little before 4.30 a.m., several more friends saw Robert and Jennifer get up from the table and leave Dorian's, headed in the direction of Central Park.
A friend said, usually she'd come over and give me a big hug and tell me she'd call me tomorrow, but this time she didn't. I remember she looked sort of mellow, putting her jacket over her shoulder, pulling her hair and crossing the street like there was no problem.
so she didn't i remember she looked sort of mellow putting her jacket over her shoulder pulling her hair and crossing the street like there was no problem so she didn't seem like agitated or like upset anything like that she seemed fine with robert yeah but it was a little weird that she didn't say goodbye to anybody like it wasn't like her yeah so that's why it's pretty unclear why the two of them did go into the park that morning because they did go into central park friends of jennifer's insisted that she wasn't the type of person who would um have wanted to have sex outside because that's ultimately the story that gets told oh and several friends of hers were like no she wouldn't do that yeah that's not her vibe at all doesn't make sense and also remember she's like uh like when i was saying earlier that she didn't want to go to public school, she has a fear of danger and like dangerous situations. Yeah, she's not reckless.
Yeah, so she wouldn't have gone into that park if she didn't feel like she was safe with Robert Chamber. So she very clearly did.
But this wasn't the first time that Robert had brought a girl into the park for a romantic evening. In fact, a few weeks earlier, he brought another date there and friends said that the park held special meaning for him so it's possible he hoped bringing jennifer there would be a similarly romantic experience well it's like that doesn't line up with like how he was acting earlier no unless that was just like directly from the girl like throwing a bag of condoms at him yeah maybe maybe he was just like thrown off for a minute a minute.
Maybe. I don't know.
But he was off before that too. It all sounds weird.
The night itself seemed like nobody was really acting how they typically would have. Yeah.
But I feel like that happens when these kind of things happen. It is what it is.
Even though you don't know that something awful is going to happen, it can be in the air sometimes. Yeah, there's just like some kind of tension happening.

Yeah, exactly.

So Robert and Jennifer entered the park around 4.50 in the morning at an entrance near the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

What happened next is only known to Robert himself

and he has changed his story multiple times over the years.

Awesome.

So nobody really knows the exact truth.

But this, in my opinion, is not the truth. According to him, he was not interested in Jennifer romantically and initially actually declined to go to the park with her.
But Jennifer insisted, he said. So he finally relented and agreed to join her.
according to him she was clearly interested in him and he thought that she wanted to have sex

in the park but he declined her advances and said he was interested in other people

and he'd see her around but he said she freaked out she like got up and knelt in front of me and scratched my face what like that would have escalated so quickly and she knelt in front of he said she got it like she like got up knelt in front of me and scratched my face which when you see the scratch marks on his face later, because they are photographed, it wouldn't have been like, she scratched my face, like in a cute way or like, yeah, like they're deep scratch marks on his face. He said after that, after that happened, he got up to leave, but that Jennifer apologized and he agreed to stay and keep talking.
And she had apologized. And despite asking her to sit far away from him, he said, she came up behind him and started massaging his shoulders.
And he said, she said, I looked really cute and that I would look cuter tied up. Okay.
According to the statement that he gave police, he didn't think she was serious until she held his wrists together and using her underwear started to tie them together once his hands were bound chambers claimed that jennifer tried to take off his pants but she was hurting him in the process and he said she quote kind of laughed in a weird way like more like a cackle or something okay and then he said that his protests only made her more aggressive and she started scratching his chest and his face and was, quote, laughing and giggling and making weird laughing type sounds while digging her nails into me.

This is unbelievable.

I don't believe this.

I'm looking at the scratches on his face right now, too.

They look defensive.

They absolutely look defensive.

In my opinion.

In my opinion.

In my opinion.

In our opinion. So Robert claimed that his screams caught the attention of a nearby jogger who eventually came over to investigate, but the jogger left the area when Jennifer insisted everything was fine.

Okay.

Then he claimed he could not take the pain that Jennifer was inflicting on him anymore, so he reached up and grabbed her, putting his arm around her neck and pulling hard.

He told detectives it was just really quick. She flipped over and then landed and she was kind of twisted on the tree.
So you flipped her over into a tree? At that point, she wasn't moving and Robert thought that she was trying to frighten him, but when he shook her and got no response, he said he realized she was dead and walked across the park and found a place to sit on the wall where he could still see her body. From that position, he said he realized she was dead and walked across the park and found a place to sit

on the wall where he could still see her body from that position he said he eventually saw a cyclist enter the park come upon the body and then leave and return a short time later with paramedics once the ambulance arrived robert himself left the scene went home showered and went to bed okay three words in what world i yeah in what that is uh world that's a no for me that's a no for me that one of the most bizarre stories that is a very that is bizarre is the perfect way to describe that story. Bizarre.
Not one bit of that makes sense. No.
Whatsoever. No.
You're literally saying that you put your arm around her neck and like really quick though. You made sure to say really quick.
Really quick. Somehow flipped her into a tree.
Yeah. And then she just died in the tree really quick.
And you just knew that. That's my favorite part is I realized she was dead.
Yeah. Interesting.
Like that, I'm sorry. If I got into a little tussle with someone and they just flipped into a tree, I wouldn't automatically assume that they were dead.
Like that would be, I'd be like, wow, that was weird. Let me help you up.
And I wouldn't just be like, wow, I bet you're dead. And then also.
Like what? How did that, like he's just like, yeah, I just realized. You realized she was dead went and sat on a so you could watch nearby and watched somebody discover her dead body leave go get help you watched that help arrive and you watched her body be taken away in a body bag and in an ambulance and then you just went home and showered and went to sleep and at no point did you intervene and tell them like what happened here was an accident.
You just went to sleep?

Let me tell you.

Interesting that you showered.

That's a bonkers story.

It's crazy.

That's a bonkers story.

In my opinion, does not line up with the way that her body was found.

It's a very strange story.

Yeah.

Well, later a detective showed up at Robert Chambers' apartment to question him,

and then they took him to the station for further interrogation,

where he gave a videoed statement to police.

Wow.

Now, let's talk about the crime scene.

Thank you. up at Robert Chambers' apartment to question him, and then they took him to the station for further interrogation where he gave a videoed statement to police.
Wow. Now let's talk about the crime scene.
The crime scene was unfortunately a pretty familiar one to investigators. A young woman found dead in the park, an apparent victim of sexual assault.
Her body was slumped in front of a tree, her shirt was pushed up, and her bra was wrapped around her neck. What the fuck? At the the time they thought that she had been killed maybe somewhere else and dumped in the park since there were tire tracks leaving the scene and somebody spotted a car around the same time that the body was discovered but that would quickly be dismissed when she was identified now the crime scene didn't yield a lot of clues or evidence but there were obvious signs of a.
It appeared that she'd been physically assaulted and hit in the face. According to the medical examiner, the left eye was swollen, discolored, and just about closed.
On the bridge of the nose, there was a dark mark. Her mouth was caked in dirt and what appeared to be dried blood.
Yeah, those scratches are defensive. In my opinion.
In my opinion. Yep.
One of Jennifer's front teeth was also loose, and there was a dark red mark around her neck from where her killer had strangled her with her bra. Wow.
None of that aligns. That's not lining up.
None of that aligns with him swiftly flipping her over into a tree. And how awful.
Like that this poor girl's last moments were filled with that. Her front tooth was loose.
That's awful. That's a violent struggle.
A violent struggle. Yeah.
According to the pathologist, the bra had been twisted around her neck, but it was also still hooked in the back. So there was a possibility that her shirt and bra had been pushed up and maybe the strangulation was an accident.
But there was also, like that is what they thought on a cursory glitz. Yeah.
But there was petechial hemorrhaging in the eyes indicating that the blood flow to her brain was restricted, which would have been unlikely if it was just a matter of her bra getting wrapped around her neck. Yeah.
Your bras aren't that tight. We've said it before.
It's very difficult to strangle someone. It takes a lot of.
A lot of like pressure and time. Consistent pressure.
Consistent pressure and. Yeah.
Yeah. So the pathologist said in court later, I thought the deceased was strangled.
Like definitively. The murder and Robert's arrest though came as a shock to residents around New York, not only because of the brutal facts of the case but also because of the social status of the young people involved yeah jennifer's death shined a light on a social scene that few outside of it knew existed both the victim and her killer were not out of their teens but the lives that they lived reflected a world usually populated by adults like we were saying complete with problems like addiction and violence when asked for a comment about his daughter's death steven levin said i have lived in new york city for 19 years and i have hesitatingly come to the conclusion that is no longer a fit place to live it is a social experiment that failed wow it's really sad damn on october 28th robert chambers was arraigned on a charge of second murder, which is interesting.
And it was during his arraignment that his lawyer, Jack Lippman, revealed the beginnings of his strategy. In his statement to the court, Lippman explained that Jennifer had been pursuing Robert for several weeks, and quote, that night she was the aggressor.
according to Littman Jennifer's death was simply an accident that occurred when his client was trying to defend himself against sexual assault by jennifer levin wow yeah litman preemptively defended against accusations of rape by pointing out how popular robert chambers was with women wow he said he didn't have to chase girls they chased him oh yeah so, yeah. So that clears it up.
Yeah, attractive people aren't rapists ever. No, of course not, because everyone wants to have sex with him.
Yeah. Because he is conventionally, according to some people, attractive.
Yeah, totally. Yeah, that totally, that checks.
That's a perfect argument. That's not based on opinion at all.
Yeah, people don't have varying, like, what they find attractive. Definitely not.
But he said that being the case, there would have been no reason for his client to pursue Jennifer, much less sexually assault her. Wow.
Yeah. Yeah.
Wow. Yep.
The elite status of the defendant and the victim were completely unavoidable, though, from the moment Jennifer's body was discovered. And it was an element of the case that the press simply could not resist in article after article young people that made up jennifer and robert social groups groups were discussed just as distinctly different from teenagers their age they made this a zoo in a new york times article one reporter wrote many of them are under 21 and get past the bartender with skillfully applied makeup and expensive clothing that makes them look several years older and with elaborately faked identification.
It's like you're talking about women there. You're not talking about the entire social group, which involves males as well.
But cool. So that's cool.
One teenager who went to the city's hottest nightclubs and restaurants said, you walk in here, no one's going to challenge you.

It's an attitude.

So they were very much making this,

putting together this picture that these kids were like fast, you know?

That they put themselves in these positions.

Exactly.

This is very much a victim-blaming strategy.

Yes.

Of, well, what did you expect?

And it's not only coming from the defense, but like the press as well. But everybody.
Yeah. Yeah.
The emphasis on the expensive and out-of-control lives of these, you know, Manhattan's elite teenagers reinforced a growing class divide too across the city and confirmed what a lot of people outside of that social class believed, that there was one set of rules for rich people and another one for everyone else so immediately everybody's polarized of course and that became even more apparent within days of robert's arrest when he started getting an outpouring of support from wealthy friends and family and also even influential figures like archbishop theodore edgar mccarrick of new jersey who wrote a letter of support in favor for bail. No comment.

That was a mouthful.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There was also a noticeably gendered tone to the ways people talked about the victim

versus the suspect.

I'm shocked.

When discussing Jennifer, many reports seem to have taken a tip from Jack Littman.

And rather than focus on the fact that she was straight up murdered, they discussed her

quote, sexual aggressiveness.

Yeah, that's a cool thing to do when somebody is dead and can't defend themselves also how do you know yeah how do you know well you don't and she's dead so she can't defend herself and this is that's the strategy one instance where one person is saying this about her who's also the last person that saw her alive so like are we really gonna maybe you should question that a little bit yeah okay but robert chambers on the other hand was described in very sympathetic terms friends and acquaintances insisted that he was quote not the violent type and were shocked that he had quote found himself in such a situation oh i love the passive use of found himself i just found myself yeah he did not walk in there He just found himself in that situation. I just looked around and suddenly I was there.
What a nice way to say that. Yeah.
One headline read, friends call Robert a reluctant Romeo. Shy with girls.
I hate it here. Gross.
I hate it here. Yeah.
That is so yucky. Well, and also, which one is it? Is he you reluctant romeo or like your defense attorney was just saying that he doesn't have to chase girls they're all over him yeah and now he's a reluctant romeo yeah you can't have it both ways that that's very much like the um the brock turner effect where it's like um he you know he lost everything he could have been this kid could have been like an amazing athlete yeah and it like, I'm sorry, are we talking about, who are we talking about here? Yeah, who lost everything? What part, victim or aggressor are we talking about? Oh, that leads me.
It's very much talking about it. One, this happened to him.
He just found himself in these circumstances. He didn't do it, this happened to him.
And two, let's talk about- His losses. Him and his losses.
His future. And it's like, but what? It's like he took it away from himself in that case.
One friend from Dorian said, we have to fight for Robert's rights. There's nothing we can do for Jennifer now.
That's an instance of, I'm a head out. We think before we speak.
Yeah. We listen.
I'm a head out. We listen and we speak.
Yeah, I'm a head out. We listen and we judge.
Yeah, I listened and I am judging harshly. There's nothing you can do for Jennifer now.
I'd say there's actually a lot you can do for Jennifer now. Imagine if everybody thought that way.
Imagine if everybody thought that way. When somebody gets murdered, it's just like, well, nothing we can do for them now.
That's it. Oh, that's nice.
Oh, cool. cool yeah let's just let's just move on sure that was great for her family yeah let's blow by that that literal life that was stopped in its prime you can't be there for her family now no you gotta be there for oh no you have to be there for robert yeah interesting i don't think i get it so the picture of robert chambers as this gentle giant who would never act violently or hurt anybody was just one aspect of Jack Lipman's defense strategy.
Just one day after his arraignment, Lipman also told reporters that he was now weighing an insanity plea. Huh.
That's a completely different route, sir. That's interesting.
He said, it appears that the state of mind of Robert Chambers that led to this tragedy was completely out of character for him, and therefore, an insanity plea is possible. Huh.
Okay. I just feel like you're arguing two very different points at the same time.
Yeah, I would say that. And what the press didn't know was that this characterization of Robert as innocent was completely at odds with the statements that he had given himself to police.
Before giving his statement where he confessed to accidentally causing Jennifer's death, he actually denied having been there at all, which proves that he knew he was wrong. And he claimed that those scratches on his face came from his cat.
Oh. I have three cats.
I have three precious baby cats. First of all, they've never scratched my face.
Secondly, they don't cause that deep of scratches. Like I know cat scratches can be deep, but he has scratches all over his face.
Yeah. I mean, if you look at the scratches, I wasn't there, so I can't tell you if a cat made those or not, but I would shocked if a cat made those yeah same I can tell you that yeah yeah interesting well later he deviated from that story and said yeah it was Jennifer but it was like a it's just so he even later is like no it actually was her yeah like one night the first story original story like the the chronologically the first story I told.
Yeah. But that's like later.
Yeah. Okay.
He changed his story

a million times, so I said one of them. That's even wilder that like where he moved like from the cat to like actually know it was her.
Yeah. Like you were really going to try to lie about that? Oh, yeah.
Well, he was going to say he wasn't even there. then he was like actually i was and i watched the entire aftermath play out as well like damn those are two very different things yeah they they sure are that's a theme in this case yeah but a month later in late september robert chambers did plead not guilty to one charge of second degree murder and one charge of murder under circumstances uh evincing a depraved indifference to human life.
In his statement to the press, Manhattan District Attorney Robert, I think it's Morgenthau, told reporters, we believe that either one or both of these occurred and that the autopsy showed, quote, a substantial amount of pressure had been applied to Jennifer's neck, which justified the charges charges wow on october 1st 1986 robert chambers

was finally released from jail on 150 000 bond which is crazy yeah and that was on the condition that he report daily to monsignor thomas leonard a former teacher at the church of the incarceration and no incarnation is it like monsignor like Monsignor? Monsignor. Monsignor.
Monsignor, there it is. But it was during this time that the district attorney announced that Robert Chambers was also under investigation for several burglaries that had occurred around the city and that charges would also be added in the near future for those.
Or could be, at the very least. There were a lot of delays in bringing the case to court but finally in January of 1988 Robert Chambers finally went to trial for the murder of Jennifer Levin.
In the time between the discovery of the body and the trial a ton of information and misinformation had been spread through the media which unfortunately very much worked to the benefit of the defense. For sure.
Since he'd confessed to having played a role in Jennifer's death, though, it was obviously impossible for him to deny that he had killed her. Yeah.
So instead, Jack Lipman's strategy was to obscure various facts about the case in the courtroom and convince the jury that Jennifer's death was the result of his client defending himself against an assault on Jennifer's part. Huh.
Which is just bonkers. That's truly bonkers.
And just like really fucked up. Damn.
Yeah. Yeah.
In the courtroom, the jury witnessed the entire videotaped confession that Robert made to the police the day he was arrested. But the problem was, it was clear that the evidence discovered during the investigation

didn't support his claims entirely.

For instance,

the position of Jennifer's body found

when she was discovered,

the dirt coverage,

the extent of her injuries,

they were all inconsistent with Robert's claim

that he had wrapped his arm around her throat

in order to move her off of him.

Like, again,

consistent pressure had been applied to her neck. Oh, yeah.
It wasn't a quick move. No, it was definitely not of him.
Like, again, consistent pressure had been applied to her neck.

Oh, yeah.

It wasn't a quick move.

No, it was definitely not that quick, like, oops.

No.

In order to defend against the obvious inconsistencies, though,

Jack Littman told the jury the tape was the unvartish truth,

but that it contained a number of obvious silly lies

that one could expect from a scared teenager.

Just deducing his client to a scared teenager.

The prosecutor, Linda Fairstein, on the other hand,

explained that the facts made Robert Chambers' account of assault

almost entirely impossible.

She pointed out that if the death was an accident,

and like I said earlier, why didn't he just go for help?

Yeah, that's the thing.

Why didn't he just go for help?

Years later, when she was asked about the case, she returned to that point on the today show in 2016 she said he sat on the wall behind the metropolitan museum and watched as her body was found and as her body was taken away from the park in a body bag and he never went over to the police and said this is my friend this was an accident i know who she is and like they were for like they They had history together they very much knew each other they were friendly of course to just watch and know that whatever the circumstances were you caused that death and you're just watching he's a um he's a white man a rich well i shouldn't say rich but he is a he was wealthy he was and he's socially in a higher echelon white man yep you could have said you know i mean like you're you're you're not in a position where it's scary for you to yeah to say that an accident happened you know i mean where some other people it may be yeah like marginalized genuinely scary to say it because you're just not going to be believed immediately. It's like you are one of the only people, one of the only kinds of people that can say that was an accident and you will at the very least be considered to be believable.
You're so right. That's a really valid point.
Like the innocent until proven guilty, it's like that's really only the case for certain people. Yep.
And he happens to be one of them. And he happens to be part of that kind of people.
Yeah. You know? I agree.
So it's like the whole like, I'm like, so why didn't you? You know? Like you really like, that's weird. I don't know.
It's weird. And again, this isn't even like a stranger, which that would be weird enough.

This is somebody like you genuinely know and cared about, spent a lot of time with.

Many, yeah, many instances.

Dated, yeah.

Like, why wouldn't, I don't know.

It's just very strange to me.

It's a very removed position to be in.

It feels that way, yeah. well the trial dragged on for 13 weeks and during that 13 weeks very intimate details of jennifer's life and sexual experiences were put on display.
Which really sucks.

Which is ridiculous.

And that was obviously primarily by the defense in order to portray Robert

as the innocent victim in some terrible tragedy.

Yeah.

And by obscuring the facts of the case and painting a picture of Jennifer Levin

as sexually aggressive and assertive,

Lippman hoped that he could convince at least a few jurors,

because that's all you need,

that Jennifer's death truly was an accident, that she had attacked Robert, forced him to have rough sex, and he was just protecting himself. Ellen Levin, Jennifer's mother, said later, when it happened, how she was being portrayed, how it suddenly became her fault, he was blatantly playing the victim.
Yeah. I can't imagine having to stand by and that again that

it became her fault like that's wild it made it it's like she's on trial all of a sudden

in the end though the defense's strategy worked the jury deliberated for nine days before reporting

to the judge that they were hopelessly deadlocked there was only four jurors convinced of robert

chambers guilt and the rest were in favor of an acquittal. Wow.
Yeah. That's really shocking.
It is. Like, wow.
It is. Ellen Levin said, I can't imagine that there was someone on that jury that thought he was a clean-cut young man who would never do anything like this.
Damn. In their note to the judge, the foreman indicated that there was actually three jurors who, quote, could not go on because mental and emotional strain and another juror indicated that quote votes in the jury room had swayed violently back and forth so at least there was like they were very clearly considering there was some like passion behind you know yeah they were considering both sides yeah but ultimately came to a very interesting decision yeah so whatever the whatever the case, the deadlocked jury is usually always and was in this case a bad sign for the prosecution.
They weren't hopeful that a retrial would produce a different outcome. So in late March of 1988, they offered Robert a plea deal.
he would plead guilty to one charge of first degree manslaughter in an exchange for a sentence of 5 to 15 years in prison

wow

just like nothing

but he had no better options, so he accepted the deal. And before accepting the plea agreement, the judge asked Robert Chambers whether he, quote, intended to cause serious physical injury to Jennifer Levin on the morning of her death.
And in response, Chambers said, really. Looking back, I'd have to say yes, but not in my heart.
Not in my heart. Like, okay, well, that doesn't really help us here.
That doesn't make any sense to anybody.

But in reality.

It was revealed in a press conference later that day

that Robert Chambers' statement was a prerequisite of the agreement.

Of course.

A spokesperson for the Levin family said,

one of the big things was hearing him say that he had intent.

Still, the plea was a disappointment to the rest of the family

who not only lost a daughter,

but also had to watch as she was slandered during the trial. Her grandfather, Arnold Dominitz, I believe, said, I can sum up my feelings in eight words.
Robert Chambers has literally gotten away with murder. Wow.
Yeah. As far as the family was concerned, the inability to secure a murder conviction was the result of Jack Lipman's strategy.
It absolutely was. Her grandfather said Lippman predictably tried his case in the press in which he aimed to malign and character assassinate the victim, reaching the depth of degradation by terming a young girl's simple date book as a sex diary.
That's awful. I understand, again, that this is like a job.
I understand the whole thing. But that tactic, to me, is like dirty pool.
It is. That is just, I don't know.
I don't see the integrity in that as a strategy. I just don't.
If your case is strong, you shouldn't have to mal um somebody who's dead's dating history yeah i completely you know you shouldn't have to and like to do that i do this is just me personally i think it's yucky i do too um because again there's if you can win the case win the case there's a lot of routes to go down yeah and he himself clearly he had two routes that he could have gone down yeah

picked one i just think it's yucky and especially when somebody can't be there to defend themselves

exactly like i don't i don't know and when that person was murdered yeah no matter what that

person was murdered exactly that's the thing it's fucked up and it's just due to the family

it puts the family through a whole other layer of trauma and no one's private life like that

Thank you. And it's fucked up to the family.
It puts the family through a whole other layer of trauma.

No one's private life like that should be splashed around for their family to hear.

No.

When they've been murdered, they have had the ultimate injustice done to them, and now you're adding on to it?

Yeah, it's insult to injury.

I don't know. I don't know.
I don't get it. I understand it's a to injury.
Like, I don't know. Like, that just, like, having, I don't know.

I don't get it.

I think it's, I understand it's a tactic.

I understand that defense attorneys have to do things.

Yeah, of course.

And I understand it's a job and it's a valid job and all that shit.

Don't worry about it.

But that particular tactic just doesn't do it for me.

I don't get it.

I just think if you can win your case, win it some other way.

Agreed.

If it's a good case, you'll win it some other way. Agreed completely.
Without having to make like slut shame a dead girl. Yeah.
Well, in April, Robert Chambers went before the judge for sentencing and when asked whether he had anything to say, he told the judge, to Jennifer, nothing I can do or say will ever bring her back and I am sorry. The Levin family has gone through hell because of my actions and I am sorry.
For two years, I've not been able to say I'm sorry and I wish to have my feelings known. The judge sentenced Robert Chambers to 15 years in prison for manslaughter with a minimum of five years and another sentence of 15 years for those burglary charges with those sentences to run concurrently.
Damn. Yeah.
So the judge was like, I got you, friend. Yeah, he was like, okay.
Robert Chambers started his sentence at the Shawagung, I think is how you say it, correctional facility in Ulster County, New York, and it didn't take long, unfortunately, before his addiction issues returned. When he came up for parole in 1993 and 1994, the parole board flat out rejected his bid for parole, and they cited unsatisfactory behavior in prison, including his involvement with drugs.
Wow. Because people say all the time there's more on the inside than there even is on the outside.
Yeah, which is wild to think about. Yeah.
Two years later, after being transferred to Greenhaven Prison, Chambers was again denied parole due to, quote, the nature of his offense and poor disciplinary record. Oh.
So he was not doing well. Damn.
After repeatedly being denied parole, Robert Chambers gave an interview to the press where he described himself as a political pawn and a victim of a state administration that was determined to keep him in prison. Which is like, no, I think if you just like maybe tried good behavior, it could work out for you.
Yeah. It's like, I don't, I don't know about that.
But he wasn't about that life. No, not about that.
In 1997, he told the parole board, to be honest with you, I wasn't even going to come in today. I'm at a point where I'd rather just have you tell me, listen, you're going to max out in 2003.
Whoa. Like, why did you go? Whoa.
As it turned out, he was right. He was never granted parole was released in february 2003 after having served his entire full sentence i mean um in part i'm sure not not at all from that attitude that he came in oh because if i'm on the parole board and you say that shit i yeah i'm gonna be like sitting there cool that's basic consider that a request that i am now granting that's wild But his release was obviously unwelcome news to Ellen Levin.
She said, my concern is that from the minute he gets out of prison, he will be treated like a celebrity. In his own statement, Robert Chambers expressed his regret and again apologized to the Levin family.
He said, there's not been a day since Jennifer's death that I have not regretted my actions on that day. I know that the Levin family continues to suffer her loss, and I am deeply sorry for the grief that I have caused them.
Wow. Yeah.
I mean, I mean, nothing you can say can bring someone back. I was going to say, nothing you can say can bring someone back, and that is just a, that case is, like, what happened that night is so brutal.
Yeah.'s like i don't i don't understand how you reconcile that later i just don't understand i like i don't understand what happened that night and i don't think that's the thing i don't because i don't understand this there's too many stories and i don't believe any of them yeah i have an idea i have my idea, obviously, that I'm not going to share because we don't need to get into like opinions here. Yeah.
But who knows? Because, you know, people are walking around here. We don't need to insert our opinions.
Well, as it turned out, Robert's freedom was to be short-lived then. Oh, no.
People are walking around though. In 2005, just two years after his release from prison, he was sent back after pleading guilty to possession of heroin.
He was released in 2008, only to be arrested yet again, this time for purchasing 246 grams of cocaine from an undercover police officer. Yikes.
Yikes. Oof.
Oh, no. Lessons have not been learned.
You always wonder how that hits someone.

Yeah.

When they're like, hey, by the way, you're under arrest after selling you 246 grams of cocaine.

That's got to.

That's a bad day.

That's a lot of cocaine, dude.

That's a bad day.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah. Well, after initially intending to go to trial, which I'm like, what were you? what? But Robert and his lawyer, they all changed their minds.
And they accepted a plea deal from the prosecution where he pleaded guilty in exchange for a sentence of 19 years and four months in prison with five years probation to follow. And on July 25th, 2023, Robert Chambers was again released from prison after serving 15 years of his 19-year sentence.
And he continues to claim that Jennifer's death was accidental and the result of him trying to defend himself during quote-unquote rough sex. Wow.
Which I disagree with. That, I have my own thoughts about that, but.
Yeah. Okay.
Wow. That is.
Something. That's an unsettling one on a different level.
It is. Because, like, I, it kills me that, like, we will not know what happened.
Yeah, and it's really awful for her family. That's what kills me, is like for her family to not have any real idea of what happened.
Except that she was brutally murdered. Yeah, and they know the details.
They sat through the trial, and we always say, your mind fills in those blank spaces. Of course.
And it's probably worse than anything that could ever even occur. Absolutely.
That's what I feel so bad about. And she was so young.
Yeah, was so young yeah she was really just about to leave the city like this was her last night out on the town like that it's just really sad it's really sad that somebody who was working on their future was taken away by somebody who was very much not that's the thing i'm like are you like you're not clean on the work here that's the thing like uh you know i know it's not that simple like as far as addiction goes. No, I'm like, are you like, you're not doing the work here.
That's the thing.

Like, I know it's not that simple.

Like as far as addiction goes.

No, I'm not going to claim to know that.

Put the work in, you know?

But like.

Especially.

But shit.

All those years you have to yourself in prison to work on things.

Well, and like he did.

Like one thing you can say is like he was just, he's an entitled.

Yes. He was an entitled guy.
Absolutely. He was an entitled guy.
He was an entitled teenager. He was an entitled young adult.
Friends said that. Like, plenty of people said that.
And it's like, and whatever happened that night, something awful happened to her. And whether it was an accident or not, it was brutal as fuck.
And I just can't see. I mean, remember, like, one of her eyes was swollen near shut she had blood like on her nose was loose her tooth was loose she had dirt and blood cake to the side of her mouth her bra was pulled up around her neck like this doesn't like it doesn't have to explain to me more like how like i don't get it i don't understand it my brain is not is not putting this on to that side of the but at the end of the day it's on the book says manslaughter it's manslaughter wow which must just if I can't imagine somebody doing that to my family member and having to sit with that that's the thing like just and then to watch that person get out of prison time and time again.
Well, that's, that's the worst part. Like that's just watching someone be able to go live their life.
Yeah. And then also on like such a silly note, having him be named the preppy killer.
Well, that's the other thing. Come on.
It's like when you said that name, I was like, what? Yeah. Like you gotta be shitting me.
And weirdly, I didn't know this case. I didn't know it either, actually.
It was a Dave suggestion. Yeah, that was strange.
But I hate when they give those kind of nicknames, like the preppy killer. It's very tasteless.
It is. But.
Because it also, that's also a way of taking away some of the sting of the reality of it.

He's just a preppy guy.

He's just this preppy, high society guy.

Totally.

Just caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I hate that a lot.

I do too.

I hate that a lot.

I hate it.

And I feel really bad for Jennifer and really bad for those who care about her.

I know.

I agree.

I hope they feel like they got some kind of justice at some point. I hope so.
But it's a little upsetting. It is.
Yeah. Yeah, big time.
Damn. But yeah, that was quite an interesting case, to say the least.
Yeah. Very interesting and really sad.
Yeah, and we will be back next episode, I think, with Listener Tales, so it'll be a nice little Yes. palate cleanser nice little palette cleanser if you will oh and this is this is the end of the episode so hopefully you're still here um if you are seeing on Spotify we're just going to start opening episodes with this and possibly closing with this as well honestly if you are seeing a bonus episode designation on Spotify, we don't have bonus episodes.
We don't have anything behind a paywall, like a bonus episode or anything like that. That's a Spotify issue.
They did something like an update with their system or something like that. We have been begging to get that removed, but it's across the board, I guess, like an update that happened and they have yet to be able to remove it.

We don't have any bonus episodes behind a paywall, nothing like that. What you are seeing as quote unquote bonus episodes that look like they're locked.
I think it shows you like that it's locked or something like that. What those are is they're showing our Wondery Plus week early episodes as bonus episodes behind a paywall, which is not what they are.
It's a very misleading thing. It's very frustrating.
We understand why that would be like, what the fuck? Like, where are these bonus episodes and why are they behind a paywall? Just know that podcasts I listen to have the same thing going on. Yeah.
It's across the board. It's not just our podcast.
You got to scroll a little bit, find the available one, or listen on a different platform. Yeah, wherever you, you know, I think this is a Spotify issue only.
So if you go to other platforms, you're not going to, like I listen on Spotify too, so I'm not like shitting on spotify yeah but like um but if it bothers you to see that the fake bonus episode that doesn't exist like you can go somewhere else to listen to it go tell them because yeah let them know that i get rid of it yeah let them know that it's like really misleading because like we want it taken down as well because it's we have been getting a lot of feedback that yes you guys think that we're like putting bonus episodes behind a paywall and i promise you we're not we will never do that no we're never gonna put bonus episodes behind a paywall no like it's just not something we're gonna do where it like shows up in your feed as like oh you want to listen to this go pay money because it's not in our real feed like we're not gonna do do that that's not the vibe so I promise you we'll reiterate this at the end beginning of the next few episodes too just because I want everybody to know that like yeah it's not it's not a bonus episode behind a paywall it's just not promise so with all that being said we you keep listening. And we hope you keep it weird.

But it's so weird that you think that we do bonus episodes because we don't even do bonus episodes.

Those are not even locked by.

A bonus episode would be free like Tobias's.

Toby. I'm sorry.
Thank you. If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
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