Investigators scale down Levy probe

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

NEW YORK, AUG. 1. Authorities investigating the disappearance of the 24-year-old Federal intern, Ms. Chandra Levy, have said that they were scaling down the probe. The District of Colombia police have said that their intensive search of the wooded areas, parks and abandoned buildings has come to an end.

It is three months since Ms Levy's disappearance and for the last time, police recruits went through the wooded areas of the Naval Observatory that houses the Vice-President. ``This is the last such search until there are leads or clues indicating they should resume'', a police spokesman has said.

The district police and other investigators are simply frustrated and for good reasons. For the last 12 weeks they have left no stone unturned in the search for Ms Levy who was last seen on April 30 and who had last worked on her computer the following day. But it was not until May 7 when her parents reported her missing after she failed to show up in Modesto, California, that the search began.

Police and investigators including from the Federal Bureau of Investigation have interviewed scores of individuals and Mr. Gary Condit, the Democratic Congressman from California who belatedly acknowledged having had an affair with Ms Levy. The FBI also pressed into service a profiler seeking to get and give out information on what could have been the state of Ms. Levy's mind.

Despite interviewing him four times, authorities have said that Mr. Condit is not a suspect in the case. Ms Levy and the 53-year- old married Congressman are said to have met last fall and started their affair which ended after a while. With just keys in her pocket, Ms Levy is said to have walked out of her apartment. And no one has been able to say what happened or could have happened to her.

But on Tuesday, a worker at a hardware store came forward to say that he saw Ms Levy at least a day after the police said Ms Levy was last seen. According to this version, Ms Levy who came to the store, got duplicate keys made and paid with a credit or a debit card. However, no receipt has been found in the store. The authorities maintain that in their probe of Ms Levy's financial transactions, there had been no activity after April 30.

Mr. Condit, who has come under some fire from his colleagues in his party, had a minor shoving match with a photographer on Monday. Photographers have been swarming around Mr. Condit's apartment at Adams Morgan. But on Tuesday, the Congressman, who has shunned the media all this time, wanted to know if photographers were finished with taking his picture!

Meanwhile, the FBI has concluded that there was no truth to a Pentecostal minister's claim that his 18-year-old daughter had an affair with Mr. Condit. ``We've concluded that the allegations made... are unfounded'', an FBI spokesman said.

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