Plea Bargain Ends ‘Preppie Murder Trial’ : Youth, 21, Gets 5- to 15-Year Term as Jury Appears Seriously Split

NEW YORK —  On the ninth day of intense jury deliberations, a prep school graduate charged with strangling an 18-year-old girl in Central Park pleaded guilty Friday to a reduced charge of manslaughter.

Robert Chambers, a former altar boy, will serve a 5- to 15-year prison sentence. He could have faced 15 to 25 years in jail had the jury of four women and eight men found him guilty of murder. But as the deliberations continued, it became evident that the jury was seriously split.

A male juror, sources said, was apparently feeling the strain of the long deliberations, while a woman member of the jury was threatening to leave suddenly Friday night for the job in London she had postponed from the beginning of March.

Chambers, 21, sat silently, his eyes lowered, as his lawyer entered the guilty plea. “We now offer to plead guilty to manslaughter in the first degree on the top count of the indictment,” said Jack Litman on behalf of his client, who also pleaded guilty to a single burglary count in an unrelated incident.

Prosecutor Accepts Plea

“The pleas are acceptable to the people,” prosecutor Linda Fairstein replied.

But members of the victim’s family were clearly distraught by the plea bargain. “This is not justice,” said Arnold Domenitz, the dead girl’s grandfather. Labeled the “preppie murder trial” by the news media, the case captured national attention and shocked the city by focusing on privileged teen-age life--a world of illegal drinking in Upper East Side bars and clubs, casual sex, drugs, broken homes and, in the early morning of Aug. 26, 1986, passion, rage and death.

When the body of 18-year-old Jennifer Levin was found in a crab apple grove behind the Metropolitan Museum in Central Park, Chambers, her date who had attended some of the best private schools in the city, watched seemingly dazed from a nearby bench. He was later questioned by detectives. After an 11-hour interrogation, portions of which were videotaped, Chambers contended he had accidentally choked Levin when she painfully “molested” him and squeezed his testicles during rough sex that got out of control.

Although the husky, handsome youth called the killing accidental, detectives were skeptical about his story. Chambers was charged with second-degree murder for strangling Levin, who had been only days away from starting junior college in Boston.

Bar Frequented by Students

They had dated on and off during the summer, meeting with friends at Dorrian’s Red Hand, a bar frequented by students from exclusive and expensive neighborhood prep schools. Both were graduates of private schools, both came from broken homes.

Chambers was an officer of the Knickerbocker Greys, a socially prominent military drill team that meets in a Park Avenue armory decorated in part by Louis Comfort Tiffany. During summers, he had worked as an office boy for a law firm and had instructed youngsters from poor neighborhoods in photography.

There was another side. Chambers had attended a drug rehabilitation clinic in Minnesota and had flunked from several prep schools before finally graduating. He had shifted from college to college and talked about attempting to get into Columbia University just before Levin’s death.

The jury had been attempting to choose between two different versions of what happened in Central Park. There was agreement that Chambers and Levin had left Dorrian’s together well after midnight and had gone to the park together. Then, the versions differed dramatically.

Argument That ‘Escalated’

Asst. Dist. Atty. Fairstein charged that Levin was choked with her own white tank top by her 6-foot-4, 190-pound date during an argument that “escalated.” In her closing argument, the prosecutor labeled Levin’s death “plain and simple” murder. She charged that Chambers’ videotaped confession, which was shown to the jury, consisted of “more lies than people tell in a lifetime.”

“Jennifer Levin died an ugly, slow, painful death. There is no mystery to her death. Don’t make the same mistake Jennifer Levin did; don’t trust this defendant,” she urged the jurors.

Litman, Chambers’ lawyer, contended that what happened was “an unfortunate, unforeseen tragedy,” that his client was “in frenzy, reacting to incredible strain” when Levin was choked accidentally during rough sex.

“You’ve heard the truth,” he said of Chambers’ videotaped confession that he acted reflexively while under great pain and strain.

Doubts Motive

“Why would Robert Chambers want to kill Jennifer Levin?” the defense lawyer asked. “There is nothing significant enough in that relationship to cause a person to want to, to consciously desire to kill someone.”

In his charge to the jury, state Supreme Court Justice Howard E. Bell told the four women and eight men to deliberate calmly. He told them “do not, under any circumstance, indulge in speculation or guesswork, sympathy, vengeance or prejudice.”

Because of its sensational nature, because of the view it afforded into privileged teen-age life, the courtroom was packed throughout the three-month trial with reporters, free-lance writers and the public. A special holding area behind police barricades was set in the hallway for cameramen. On the day of summations to the jury, the line of spectators waiting to enter the courtroom was as long as the line outside Dorrian’s Red Hand during school vacations.