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| Shattered lives--Ellen Levin: The Preppy Murder victim's mom crusades for justice People Weekly; Chicago; Apr 3, 1995; Anonymous; Full Text: Copyright Time Incorporated Apr 3, 1995 On the morning of Aug. 26, 1986, the body of a young woman who had been strangled was found by a cyclist in Manhattan's Central Park, and within days the crime that would come to be known as the Preppy Murder was on its way to becoming one of the city's most sensational murder cases. Charged in the killing of 18-year-old student Jennifer Levin was handsome 6'4' Robert Chambers, 19, a college dropout who insisted that he had unintentionally strangled Levin during rough sex. But at times, as headlines screamed "Jennifer Raped Me" and "Jenny Killed in Wild Sex," it seemed that the dead girl herself, rather than Chambers, was on trial. "We buried her twice," says Levin's mother, Ellen, 51. "First she was murdered by this man. Then her reputation was dragged through the mud." In the courtroom, Chambers's defense attorney, Jack Litman, battled unsuccessfully for the right to introduce Jennifer's diary, which, he claimed, was filled with accounts of her promiscuity. "He told the court that Jennifer Levin lost her right to privacy the day she died," says Ellen. "That was the statement that changed my life." Six years ago, in response to the traumas of the murder and the ensuing trial, Levin, who was divorced from Jennifer's father, Steven, in 1973, left her job as an advertising executive to found Justice for All, a lobbying group that so far has been instrumental in passage of nine victims' rights bills in New York State. Chambers, who eventually pleaded guilty to a charge of first-degree manslaughter, is now seven years into a five-to-15-year sentence and has been turned down twice for parole--in part because Levin has been campaigning to keep him locked up. At his first parole hearing, she collected signatures from 50,000 people opposing his release. On May 21, Jennifer's birthday, Levin will again make her annual trip to a Long Island cemetery to plant spring flowers on her daughter's grave. Her efforts to help ease the suffering felt by crime victims and their families are, she says, "the legacy that Jennifer left me. Everyone's path to healing is different. This is not just my job. It's my life." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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