Gary Condit’s sex life goes to court in hearing on Chandra Levy’s murder | McClatchy Washington Bureau

Defense attorneys for the man convicted of killing Chandra Levy lit up former California Congressman Gary Condit and his personal life Thursday, with explicit allegations that the onetime lawmaker is a “main suspect” in Levy’s 2001 death.

In a court hearing, and a vivid legal filing that verged on the raunchy, defense attorneys made clear their intention to cast Condit as a likelier perpetrator than the man now facing a second trial for Levy’s murder, Salvadoran immigrant Ingmar Guandique.

“At the time of Chandra Levy’s disappearance, Mr. Condit had a powerful motive to either kill Levy and/or cover up the circumstances of her death, whether her death was intentional or accidental,” defense attorney Jonathan W. Anderson said in a 16-page filing Thursday.

Citing “DNA and serological evidence” for the declaration that “Mr. Condit was having an affair with Ms. Levy,” Anderson further noted past statements from three other women who said they, too, had been sexually involved with the married man.

Anderson said the women’s testimony about their relationships with Condit could show a link between “Mr Condit’s desire to engage in aggressive sex and tie a woman up, and the knots in what the government alleges were Ms. Levy’s tights found with her remains.”

After hearing government objections, D.C. Superior Court Judge Robert Morin granted the defense attorneys’ request to depose one of the women because of an undisclosed medical condition. Another one of the women might end up testifying at trial.

Levy disappeared May 1, 2001, shortly before she was to return to her family’s Modesto, California, home. Her remains were found in 2002 in Washington’s Rock Creek Park. Rumors and, ultimately, revelations about her relationship with Condit drew national attention.

Condit represented a San Joaquin Valley district in Congress from 1989 through 2002, and before that served in the state Assembly.

Prosecutors ruled out Condit as a suspect, and they summoned him to Guandique’s initial trial in November 2010 so the former lawmaker could testify that he had had nothing to do with Levy’s disappearance or death. The jury concluded that Guandique had killed the 24-year-old former Bureau of Prisons intern, and a judge sentenced him to 60 years in prison.

Bret Peace, an attorney and friend of the Condit family, blasted the defense strategy in a statement last week.

“Defense attorneys – paid by taxpayers – are once again flying around the country interviewing people who know nothing about Mr. Guandique or Ms. Levy,” Peace said. “How much money between law enforcement and the public defender’s office has been spent chasing a known dead-end? Are U.S. citizens receiving the same level of funding from the public defender or is this a special case?

“Nobody believes that Mr. Condit had anything to do with Ms. Levy’s tragic murder,” Peace continued. “At this point, had he been given the benefit of being charged, he would be the most renowned and deserving client of the Innocence Project. Instead, here we go again with an incredulous third party defense strategy that affords Mr. Condit none of the rights to defend himself that have been afforded to the accused.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Deborah Sines argued Thursday that “the discussions . . . about kinky sex and bondage” had no bearing on the case.

“This is very sensational (and) salacious. It gets the media on top of it,” Sines said, while adding that the incendiary allegations have “a very good chance of tainting the jury pool.”

Guandique’s Public Defenders Service attorneys for his second trial appear to be pursuing a “third-party culpability” defense, in which they raise a “reasonable possibility” that someone other than the defendant may be guilty.

As part of that defense, they proposed deposing Condit’s former driver and three women who alleged they’d had affairs with Condit.

In prior court filings, defense attorneys identified the women as Anne Marie Smith, a flight attendant who went public in 2001 with allegations that she’d had an affair with Condit, and Joleen McKay, a former Condit staffer who allegedly said she also had had an affair with him.

Defense attorneys likewise sought to depose Sue Borges Rossi, who was quoted in the National Enquirer in 2001 as saying she, too, had had an affair with Condit.

In their latest legal filing Thursday, Guandique’s attorneys included excerpts from an FBI agent’s 2001 interview with one of the women who reportedly said she “felt scared” with Condit and recounted a bout of “aggressive sex.” The legal filing identified this woman as “W-1,” who will now be deposed.

Another one of the women “told the FBI that Mr. Condit expressed a preference for an iron bed with posts for bondage purposes,” according to the filing. She was identified as “W-2,” and might testify at trial.

“The fact that Gary Condit engages in bondage is obviously relevant,” Anderson said in court Thursday.

The judge denied defense requests to depose Condit’s former driver as well as a third woman whose alleged affair with Condit would have occurred many years before Levy disappeared.