By John Corry on 2.26.02 @ 12:05AM
Dominick Dunne thought he knew.
New York -- Dominick Dunne has a theory about what may have
happened to Chandra Levy. He thinks it possible she was kidnapped
by Middle Easterners who wanted to do a favor for Gary Condit.
Remember now who Dunne is before you dismiss this as nonsense. He
is our best known chronicler of life among the rich and famous, and
of the crimes they sometimes commit, and so when he speaks you
should listen.
"I'm not an investigative reporter. But people talk to me, and
things just drop in my lap," Dunne is saying now. He is in his East
Side apartment, where he spends three days each week. The rest of
the time he is at his house in Connecticut. He is writing another
novel -- four of his previous novels have been made into television
mini-series -- and he is also preparing to be the host of a new
series on Court TV: "Dominick Dunne's Power, Privilege and
Justice." Every Friday night during the O.J. Simpson trial, Dunne
would be on the "CBS Evening News," and Dan Rather would ask him,
"How is it going to end?"
A while ago, Dunne says, he had a call from a man in Hamburg,
Germany, who said he was a racehorse trainer under contract to a
Middle Eastern sheik, and that he had information about Chandra
Levy. Dunne says the trainer -- or "horse whisperer," as he
identified himself, without revealing his name -- said that he and
a man who procured women for important individuals in the Middle
East and embassies in Washington had seen him on "Larry King Live."
Dunne had been speculating to King about the Levy disappearance,
but the procurer had said he had it "all wrong." Dunne says the
trainer told him the procurer had asserted that an apparently
drugged Levy had been put on a private plane by several Middle
Eastern men, and then flown out of the country.
Dunne says he got in touch with the private investigator who had
been hired by Levy's parents, and that the investigator asked him
to come to Washington. By then, Dunne says, he knew the trainer's
name. Dunne says he got on the Metroliner the next day, and that
the private investigator met him at Union Station and drove him to
the Watergate. Coincidentally, he recalls, it was the same day
anthrax spores were discovered in Tom Daschle's office.
Dunne says he met five men at the Watergate -- apparently they
did not identify themselves -- and that he told them what the
trainer had said. Then he returned to New York. One of the men he
had met called him afterwards, and said he had learned that the
trainer, and presumably the procurer, would be at Newmarket,
England, for the running of the Dubai Stakes.
Consequently, Dunne says, he flew to London the following
Saturday. He also got in touch with British intelligence, MI-6. It
arranged a pass for him, he says, that would get him into the
paddock area at Newmarket on the day of the Dubai Stakes. The hope
was that the procurer, who would recognize him from his television
appearances, would see him there, and speak to him. A nearby
operative from MI-6 would watch.
"I felt like a hooker trying to get picked up," Dunne recalls.
Nothing happened, however. If the procurer was there, he did not
make himself known. Meanwhile, Dunne says, he knew where the
trainer was staying, the Rutland Arms, and left six phone messages
for him. But the trainer did not reply until the next day.
"He called me at 5 A.M., and he was furious," Dunne says.
Although the trainer previously had given him a precise description
of the procurer -- 41 years old, upper middle class, wears Savile
Row suits, and so on -- he now denied, Dunne says, that he knew his
name or where he could be found. Dunne says he argued with him, but
to no avail. The trainer refused to be further involved.
Since then, Dunne says, he has told the FBI everything he knows
or suspects, and he is no longer involved in the investigation. At
the same time, he firmly believes that Condit has never been
forthcoming about what he knows. Certainly Dunne does not accuse
Condit, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, of having
ordered Chandra Levy's abduction, but he notes that Condit wanted
to end his relationship with her, and that apparently she wanted it
to continue. He wonders, therefore, if someone, perhaps someone the
congressmen had met through the Intelligence Committee, thought he
might be doing Condit a favor, or putting him in his debt, by
arranging the abduction.
But as Dunne says, he is no longer involved in the case, and
while he is entirely sympathetic to Susan and Robert Levy,
Chandra's parents, he must get on with his other work. Nonetheless
he has a pillow on the sofa in the living room of his apartment,
and it says on it, "Where is Chandra Levy?"
topics:
Television
