'The Preppy Killer: My Friend the Murderer': Where's Robert Emmet Chambers Jr now, 34 years after NY teen's death?
Content Warning: Violence
In August 1986, the body of 18-year-old Jennifer Levin was found by a cyclist in Central Park near Fifth Avenue and 83rd Street behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her corpse was half-naked, covered in dust and bite marks, with the clothing from her upper body pushed up around her neck, and her skirt around her waist. According to the autopsy, she had been strangled. Police had noted numerous cuts and bruises on her neck — both from being strangulated and from her own fingernails as she clawed at the killer's hands. Her underwear was found roughly 50 yards away.
The killer himself was standing close by, watching as the police officers surveyed the scene. The then-almost 20-year-old Robert Emmet Chambers Jr had been dating Levin at the time of her death and the police apprehended him for interrogation. According to a report by People, when the police noticed numerous scratches on his arms and face, he first blamed his cat, then admitted that he and Levin had separated after leaving the bar, saying Levin had gone to buy cigarettes. When the police informed him that she was not a smoker, he claimed she died during an aggressive sexual encounter in the park.
Chambers was charged with and tried for two counts of second-degree murder. The trial that followed was as victim-shaming as it could get, with Chambers' lawyer, Jack Litman, arguing that Levin was promiscuous, saying she had a sex diary and that her sexual history was admissible as evidence. However, public opinion was waning and when a video of Chambers twisting off the head of a Barbie doll, saying, "Oops, I think I killed her," emerged, the public was angered further.
Chambers continued to maintain that Levin's death was accidental and that he had accidentally asphyxiated her after she hurt his genitals during rough sex. Prosecutor Linda Fairstein remarked on the case, "In more than 8,000 cases of reported assaults in the last ten years, this is the first in which a male reported being sexually assaulted by a female," according to Gotham City Insider.
The prosecution had to allow Chambers to plead guilty for manslaughter, and he received a sentence of 15 years when the jury failed to reach a verdict after nine days of deliberation.
Where is Robert Emmet Chambers Jr now?
Initially, Chambers served time at the Auburn State Prison before being moved to the Clinton Correctional Facility in New York because of violations he committed while behind bars, including drug possession and assaulting a guard, according to reports. During a 2016 interview on 'Metro Focus', Susan Zirinsky, former senior executive producer of '48 Hours' said, "He was a bad boy. He was in solitary for several years."
Chambers was released in 2003 after serving the maximum time and in the same 'Metro Focus' interview, he said that Levin's death had been an accident, saying, "I never intended for anything to happen. I never even intended to go out that night let alone hurt somebody or kill somebody." He said he continued to think about Levin every day since she died, saying, "I was responsible for her death, there's no question about that. I don't believe I intended to kill her at all."
While Chambers hoped to get a full-time job after his release, it was not long before he found himself back in prison. The following year, in 2003, Chambers was arrested in Harlem on drug charges after police pulled over his car for driving on a suspended license, according to The New York Times, and he was sentenced to 100 days in prison. He was arrested for similar charges in 2005.
In 2007, Chambers was arrested again on charges of selling cocaine out of the apartment he shared with his girlfriend, Shawn Kovell, in Manhattan, according to The New York Times. He was sentenced in 2008 to another 19 years in prison, which he is serving at the Sullivan Correctional Facility in upstate New York, where he remains today, and the earliest possible date for his release is early 2024.
'The Preppy Killer: My Friend the Murderer' will air on Reelz, on Saturday, January 2, 2021, at 9/8c.