All language subtitles for 4ufgjdfbgkdfbgfk

-Robert Chambers,

accused of strangling
18-year-old Jennifer Levin.

-He is the nicest.

He's friendly.
He just wouldn't...

I just can't see him
doing anything like that.

-He's a very good-natured
young man.

What occurred here
is completely out of character.

-Everyone believed that
it was an accident.

-I put Jennifer's autopsy
photograph down in front of him,

and I said, "Does this look
like an accident?"

-We found out Robert Chambers
was really a sneak thief,

and apparently what
was driving this

was his addiction to cocaine.

-I am happy to be out of jail.

-He was out free walking
on the streets.

Unbelievable.

-I got a call from a detective.

He was not the choir boy
that Litman painted him to be.

-He killed her.

He...killed her.

Why?

♪♪

♪♪

-I grew up a block from Central
Park on the Upper East Side.

This was our backyard.

We were here all the time.

I knew this area so well.

We played ball here.

♪♪

Maybe one of my first kisses was
in this same area right here.

♪♪

This is where
Jennifer's body was.

Her head was right about here
right under the tree trunk here.

It's been a number of years

since I've been
to this actual location,

but it's always the same
emotions that come through you.

♪♪

I kind of say a silent prayer,
you know, for Jennifer.

It's maybe 32 years ago,
but let me tell you,

it's like it happened yesterday.

♪♪

-There was never any doubt
that Robert Chambers killed

Jennifer Levin during a sexual
encounter inside Central Park.

The question was whether
the killing

was deliberate or an accident.

-Now awaiting trial, Chambers
has been released on bond.

♪♪

-So Robert is out on bail.

Linda and I now have to
put our heads together.

There's a tremendous amount
of work to be done.

♪♪

So while we were looking into
the various crimes

that Robert may have committed,
Linda got a phone call.

♪♪

-A year ago, a detective had
been investigating a burglary.

It was a felony burglary
and larceny

because the amount stolen
was in excess of $70,000.

-It was a lot of money.

All kinds of stuff was stolen.

This was definitely a big deal.

-And Robert Chambers'
driver's license

was found on the fire escape.

♪♪

At that time, she had actually
called Robert Chambers in

to interview him.

He claimed he had
lost the license.

Somebody else
must have found it.

She admitted she was taken
by his looks,

by his background,
no prior arrests.

♪♪

There were, in fact,
latent prints,

fingerprints on
the medicine cabinet

in the bathroom
of that apartment.

We got Sheehan to have
the latent-print unit

compare the fingerprints.

Robert Chambers' fingerprints
were on that glass.

♪♪

It was a total gut punch.

♪♪

-He was involved not only in
the murder of Jennifer Levin,

but he was a burglar,

burglar with an IZOD shirt,
and he did...

There was a specific guy
that he worked with.

-We connected Robert Chambers
to David Fillyaw.

Robert was the white face,
the good-looking guy.

He knew someone in almost
every Park Avenue building

from kids
he had gone to school with,

and the doormen knew him,
recognized him.

He'd go up. He'd try doors.

David Fillyaw, because he was
African American,

didn't have that kind
of front-door access.

He was the guy waiting at
the bottom of the fire escape.

Robert would take the belongings
and throw them down.

Turns out Fillyaw was a monster,

was selling drugs
to Columbia students.

He raped this girl and then
went back to the room

stabbing her five times
in the chest

certainly trying to kill her

and missed her heart
by just millimeters.

And the fact that David Fillyaw
was running

with Robert Chambers,
I mean, it was nauseating.

It clicked.

Like, here is two kids
into drugs,

both with a single violent
attack on a young woman.

It was staggering to me
to make that connection.

♪♪

And so we began to investigate
open burglaries

that were similar in nature.

-Linda, at one point, I think,
had 32 provable crimes

leading up to the trial,

and that doesn't play well
in front of a jury.

-A couple weeks after Rob
had been released on bail,

one of my colleagues
indicted him for the burglary.

♪♪

-I was working for the "New York
Post," and all hell broke loose.

He wasn't only a killer.

He was a serial burglar.

♪♪

-Preppies don't
burglarize places.

Troubled people do.

-We knew that Jack Litman
was preparing

Robert Chambers to testify.

We would be able to use
the burglary

to cross-examine him
to expose his sociopathy,

his ability to lie,

so we thought it would make
a huge difference in this case.

♪♪

-It was a deep concern for us.

They were very serious
criminal charges.

One of them at least
that had fingerprints

and everything was
a very strong case.

-Litman was really concerned
about how the media

was dirtying his client

with references
to the burglaries,

and so Jack Litman

arranged an interview
from "New York Magazine."

♪♪

-I'd written about the kids that
were involved in Robert's scene,

so they knew me
and trusted me.

Most of my perspective
on the story

came from the kids themselves.

I spoke to Jack regularly
after I started the story.

Jack was very partisan.

He certainly was accessible.

Jack knew that he was drawing
from a jury pool of New Yorkers,

so he wanted to paint
a picture of Chambers

that was attractive as possible.

-I came to work, and Robert was
in the office with a blue blazer

and a white shirt
and, I think, a red tie,

and I said,
"Jack, what are you doing?"

"Well, I think this is good
for the case."

♪♪

-The comment everywhere

was that Robert looked
like a male model,

and the "New York Magazine"
article would imprint itself

on the minds of any New Yorkers

who wanted to believe
in Robert Chambers.

-Robert Chambers was a very,
very handsome kid,

movie-star handsome, beautifully
coiffed, well-dressed.

♪♪

You couldn't see him
as a cold-blooded killer.

-He was portrayed as this
white symbol of beauty,

power, intelligence and money.

That's what that meant,
that cover.

That's the message
that it sends out.

♪♪

So whoever was running "New York
Magazine" at the time,

probably some white male,

they elected to put that
on the cover,

and that's men
protecting each other.

♪♪

Well, guess what?

You still see this
being played out today.

♪♪

-I've never discussed
with Jack Litman,

but it was something
that I thought

should never have occurred.

This is not a game.
It's not a joke.

It's not a publicity stunt,
nothing like that.

-I was in an airport,
and I saw it on the newsstand,

and I completely freaked out.

♪♪

It's exactly the image Jack
Litman wanted everybody to see,

and it was all choreographed
by him,

all choreographed,
and I hate to say it.

I think he did
a really good job,

and I hated him as much
as I hated Chambers for it.

-Some cases, there is an evident

and sometimes
overwhelming public hostility

toward the individual accused,
and I think the defense attorney

must stand between
that public hostility

and the accused to deflect that.

This is not a beast
I'm representing.

He can, given the circumstances,
be someone that all of us know.

♪♪

-Jack Litman from the get-go
planted a seed in the media

that Robert Chambers
was a devout Irish Catholic,

that Jennifer Levin
was fast and loose.

Bobby obviously is a saint.

Jennifer is a sinner.

-Jack Litman went right back
into his routine

of blame the victim,
dirty the victim.

There was this whole thing
about the sex diary.

Wow, you know,
forget about the jury.

This guy is going to poison
all of New York against us.

[Horns honking]

♪♪

-In defending Robert Chambers
and then preparing for trial,

we spoke to all of his friends,

but one of
Jennifer Levin's friends said

that she kept a diary,

and the friend seemed to think
that there were a lot of things

about Robert Chambers
in the diary,

and if our client
is in the diary,

then we felt that,
in defending him,

we needed to see that, so we
sought to subpoena the diary.

♪♪

-Suddenly, Jack Litman declares
that he wants

to look at the sex diary

that Jennifer kept,
and we're like, "What?"

"Jennifer keeps a sex diary."

That was the headline.

-Jack Litman could play
the tabloid media.

He could play us
all like a violin.

Believe me.

He suddenly will come on with,
"Oh, I can't talk

to you about that.
You know I..."

And then suddenly drop something
like as if he made a mistake.

"Jennifer Levin, well, her,
she kept a sex diary."

♪♪

-It was an old-fashioned
date book,

the kind my mother kept.

It had days of the week.

It was so benign
that it was kept

in the kitchen of the house,

and Jack Litman began
to refer to it as a sex diary.

It was not a sex diary,

and I was not going to let
Jack get his hands on it.

It's one piece of property that
meant so much to the parents.

They had no privacy,
and their daughter had been

turned into the worst
human being on the planet.

♪♪

-We sought to enforce
our subpoena.

The estate of Jennifer Levin
sought to quash that subpoena,

and we had litigation.

♪♪

-This went on forever,
and I finally said to the judge,

"Why don't you review it
in chambers?

And if you agree with me
that there's no sex in it,

no sexual references
and that it is not a sex diary,

you will declare that
in a ruling."

-In January, Judge Howard Bell
ruled that Chambers' attorney

should not be allowed to use

Jennifer Levin's diary
in his defense.

-Unfortunately,
by dragging it out,

the words "sex diary"

became as well-known
to the public,

to the potential jurors
as rough sex.

-It was, like, choreographed.

Everything was made to denigrate
my daughter,

even made-up stories like that.

♪♪

-For months, out of court,
many New Yorkers have complained

that Chambers' defense
argued in press accounts

and pretrial statements
amounts to another crime,

an assault on the memory
of Jennifer Levin.

-Supporters of Levin criticized
Litman's portrayal of the victim

as a wild sexual animal.

-Just shows how much power
lawyers like Litman

who use the tactic

of making the victim
into the villain have,

and it's a real danger signal.

♪♪

-There were several
very outraged women,

forward-thinking women,
in the community.

One of them was named
Rose Jordan.

-We are afraid that if there's
a small sentence here

that there will be
men out there,

and they're out there,
we know they are,

who will then kill women
and say,

"Oh, God, she raped me.
I had to defend myself, okay?"

And we don't want
that to happen,

and we're going to fight
that all the way.

-She was so outraged

that she got Justice
for Jennifer pins made up

with Jennifer's name on it.

-The little button, I wasn't
allowed to wear it on TV,

but I would carry it in my bag

because I felt
it had been so unfair for her.

-Everybody started getting vocal
about it, very vocal about it.

-We disliked intensely
what he did to Jennifer Levin.

We feel he murdered her
a second time.

-How?
-By murdering her reputation.

-We had the Guardian Angels.

-Yeah, we did.

They were wonderful.

-Back then, the Guardian Angels
were a big presence.

New York City seemed lawless,

and a lot of people
were concerned

about whether the police
had enough resources

to fight crime in those days,
and so the Guardian Angels

were riding the subways
or walking the streets.

Now they got involved
with the Jennifer Levin case

because they felt that she was
being unfairly victimized.

-Murder, murder, murder,
murder, murder!

-For months before the trial,
they picketed outside,

marching, blaming-the-victim
signs in front of...

in the courthouse,
and that was very uplifting.

♪♪

-I do not accept that
the defense of blame the victim

is somehow illegitimate

and designed
to distract attention

and to take the focus away
from the crime.

It's part of the crime.

We were going on what happened
that evening.

♪♪

-A good criminal-defense lawyer
must probe what happened

at the time
of a particular event

because usually people
do not for no reason

or unprovokedly
assault somebody else.

There's usually a reason for it.

-She's having her way with me
without my consent

with my hands
behind my back hurting me,

and I just leaned up
and grabbed her like this

from up around the neck,
and I just yanked her.

-Before the trial started,
we had been hearing

this rough-sex defense

and this blame-the-victim
defense,

but when we saw
the crime pictures,

we realized the evidence
was a lot stronger

than what Robert Chambers
admitted to,

so it raised a lot of questions
like, what exactly happened?

-We had the right guy,
and we knew he caused her death,

but there was
no medical examiner we found

who could tell us exactly
how Jennifer Levin had died.

He murdered her.

He took the life out of her
with his bare hands.

We had to prove that.

♪♪

-I was preparing the case
for months.

Our job with the defense
was to corroborate

Robert Chambers' statement,
but it took time.

-So I reached up like this
and grabbed,

and I came down
like that on my hand.

She came over this way
and landed right there.

-We just went about proving
that what he said was accurate.

♪♪

Of course there was a struggle
between the two of them.

We didn't say that there wasn't,
but I spent many, many hours

looking over
and over and over again

at the homicide-scene
photographs.

Jennifer Levin had marks
on her neck,

but I didn't think that
there was so much damage,

and I thought
that the damage was consistent

with Robert Chambers'
post-arrest statement.

♪♪

-The marks on Jennifer's neck,

unquestionably I think
everybody agreed with this,

were repeated
applications of force.

We wanted to suggest something
to the jury as the murder weapon

that matched the physical
evidence that we had

and matched the marks
on Jennifer's body.

Early on, one of the most
significant pieces of evidence

was a denim jacket.

♪♪

-Linda and I had actually looked
at that jacket,

and we saw bloodstains on it.

-That jacket was visible in one
of the photographs at Dorrian's,

but interestingly enough,

Robert Chambers never
mentions it in his statement,

never mentioned what role
it might have played.

-I don't know.
I don't know if she had a bag.

I didn't notice.

I had a jacket, but I ended up
leaving that at Dorrian's.

-No.

-I don't remember.

-The jeans jacket was
lying there

next to the body
at the crime scene.

Come on.

You can't be that stupid.

-Jennifer Levin was only
bleeding from her mouth.

If in fact we could prove that
the blood was Jennifer Levin's,

we could prove that the jacket
had been put over her mouth

by Robert Chambers
to stop her from breathing.

-That faded denim jacket
shown here

over Jennifer Levin's shoulder

is crucial
to the prosecutor's case.

The prosecutor claims that
Robert Chambers used that jacket

to gag Levin and
to muffle her screams for help.

-The biggest challenge
became trying to prove

that the blood was Jennifer's.

The chief medical examiner
in New York called me and said,

"There's something you need to
consider exploring in this case.

It's DNA."

Remember, in the fall of 1986,

DNA had never been used in
a criminal case in this country.

We called Quantico, Virginia,
the FBI.

They said they were doing
some DNA.

They wanted the results
to be used in court

and for the stories
to be spread,

so they liked very much that
we had a very high-profile case.

We had Sheehan go to Quantico
with the pieces of evidence.

-I hand-delivered the jeans
jacket for an in-depth analysis.

-But to get a final DNA result,

they told me
it was going to be six months.

In the meantime, both sides were
searching for expert witnesses.

♪♪

-Who knows about choke holds?

Who knows about neck injuries?

Who knows about
ligature strangulations?

One of the forensic pathologists
who had done work in this area

was named Werner Spitz,
and he was from Detroit.

-Werner Spitz,
interestingly enough,

had been approached by Jack
a day or two before me,

but he actually refused
to work for the defense.

After examining
all the evidence, Dr. Spitz

believed that Robert had taken
the white cotton blouse

and thrust it up
in Jennifer's neck,

and then the denim jacket,
Spitz argued,

had been over her mouth,
and so Dr. Spitz was my expert,

and a doctor from L.A.
named Ronald Kornblum

who had written a lot
about police choke holds

ended up being
Jack Litman's expert.

-He could corroborate
the statement

that Robert Chambers gave
to the prosecutor

and to the detectives.

-I don't know.
It seemed like an instant.

It was only seconds.

I mean, I wasn't holding it
or anything like that.

-One of the things
that definitely struck me

was that crazy idea that you put
your arm around somebody's neck

for, like, 10, 20 seconds
and that they're dead.

It doesn't happen.

Here is Jennifer,
who is a young person

in very good physical condition.

That had to take some time.

♪♪

-I began to read and study
asphyxial deaths.

Every doctor agreed if he just
wanted to render her unconscious

and then he let go,
she would recover.

She might have been injured,
but she would have recovered.

He had to keep applying
pressure,

keep preventing her
from breathing

after she had become limp,

after she had become
unconscious.

He had to continue
to apply force to kill her.

That was intentional.

♪♪

This case was, like,
the first chance in my life

and career to use DNA.

We got the preliminary result
on the jacket

that indicated
what we had hoped it would,

that there was blood
from Jennifer

and saliva from Jennifer.

The denim jacket
is the murder weapon.

♪♪

-This would've been in 1987,
very, very early in DNA testing.

We moved to preclude that
from the trial.

-We had a 3-week hearing.

I expected the judge to be
completely taken

by this new technology,

this new science that would go
on to revolutionize the system.

Instead, Judge Bell stunned us
by saying,

despite all the scientific
evidence he heard,

DNA isn't reliable.
This will never fly.

So the jury would never hear
the role DNA played

in matching the blood
and saliva

to Jennifer Levin
and Robert Chambers.

[Horns honking]

-Every one of these trials,

you have to start out
with preliminary hearings,

which determine what can
and can't be used at a trial.

-The denim jacket had a major
significance in this case.

-We were shocked
when Judge Bell ruled

that we couldn't use
the DNA results as evidence.

Now the jury wouldn't know
that Chambers had put the jacket

over her mouth to suffocate her.

♪♪

I don't know why to this day.

All I do know is that whatever
we came up with

was not allowed into the court.

Were we frustrated?

Totally, totally frustrated.

♪♪

-Chambers' attorney,
Jack Litman,

has been practicing the art
of lawyerly delay since May.

He did it again this morning
suggesting more pretrial motions

he may make that
will have to be argued,

and the judge will have
to decide

all before the jury
can hear the case.

-In a criminal case, you make
motions to exclude evidence.

It was over the summer of 1987

when we had
those suppression hearings.

I think there was a movement
to introduce the burglaries

as some sort
of substantive evidence.

-We had a blow-up photo
of Jennifer from that night,

which showed her wearing
cubic-zirconium earrings.

She had the earrings on, like,
2 hours before she's, you know,

before she ever left Dorrian's.

When they found the body,
all that stuff is missing.

Like, where did the jewelry go?

Did it vanish?

-I wanted to argue

that Robert Chambers
had never left anything behind.

When he went into
someone's apartment,

he took the credit cards.

He took jewelry that was sitting
on top of a dresser.

I think he would've
taken the earrings,

hoping they were diamonds
that he could sell for drugs.

-I don't know the earrings,
not earrings.

I don't know if
she took them off.

I don't know where they were.

I do know that the crime scene
was not preserved

the way that it's supposed to,

so if they were laying
on the ground

and they weren't recovered,
I don't know.

The prosecution was trying
to prove that Robert Chambers

was actually robbing
Jennifer Levin,

and I think it was a real reach.

-We were not allowed
to introduce

that as evidence at the trial
because we had no proof

that he even remotely involved
in the theft of the jewelry

even though he had
the exclusive opportunity.

-We had to cover Jennifer's ears
with a piece of tape

so that the jury
could not see the earrings

that were not present
at the crime scene.

-It was above and beyond clear
there were

some really stupid decisions
made in my book.

[Indistinct conversations]

-The press started to nickname
the judge Ding-Dong Bell

because they were frustrated by,

well, the way that he presided
over that courtroom,

and that's why I did that story
on the five things

the jury would not know
about Robert Chambers.

-Chambers' videotaped statement

was the last of four different
versions he gave police,

that Chambers is a suspect in
at least a dozen burglaries,

that he had
a serious drug problem,

that he told an emergency
medical technician,

"I hit something very hard,"

when asked about
how he hurt his hand,

that Jennifer Levin was missing
around $70 in her wallet

and that the rhinestone earrings
she was seen wearing that night,

which are covered in
this picture, were also missing.

♪♪

-It was every day for,
like, two years.

This became the top headline.

-Hurtful, horrible things.

It was burying her
over and over again.

♪♪

My grandmother, God bless her,
called me to say,

"They're doing Jennifer's story
on this new show."

-Back in August of 1986
when Jennifer Levin's body

was discovered in Central Park
a violent death...

-I started watching it, and it
was a reenactment of that night,

and there were actors,
of course,

but I was fascinated with almost
me being there that evening.

You know, suddenly I was
in a different world.

And it got to the point

where he suggested
they go outside.

This is the show.

I ran to my terrace on the 29th
floor of my apartment

and started screaming,
"Don't go, Jen,"

and I just kind of lost contact
with reality.

♪♪

Next day, I started seeing
a psychiatrist, on medication.

That's the kind of hurt

all of this attention
brought to our family.

♪♪

-That he made a mistake
in those findings...

-It took quite a long time
before it went to trial.

-Blood...
-And I think everybody

couldn't wait to find out
what really happened.

-Everybody was talking about it.

Why do you go kill a woman,
a beautiful, young woman

who wants to have sex
with you in Central Park?

What's that about?

-Prosecutors do not have to
prove a motive

when they are trying
a murder case,

and yet it's part
of human nature.

It's the thing
everybody wants to know.

-The jury wants to know,
what was the motive,

money, jealousy?

Why did the person
kill the other person?

And the prosecution
in Robert Chambers

had to overcome the fact

that they could not
come up with a motive.

-We were working from nothing.

We did not have a clear motive,

and you want to give
the jury something.

-You know, so here we are.
What happened?

What happened that night?

-We had the videotape statement
of Robert Chambers.

-I just grabbed her neck
as hard as I could,

and she just flipped over me
and landed

right next to the tree,
and then she didn't move.

-He did admit to killing
Jennifer Levin,

but he admitted that
he killed her during this sex

that they were having,

and that was his story,
and that was our defense.

I don't believe that the
prosecution knew what happened,

so they had to come up
with plausible theories,

but the prosecution bears
the burden of proof

beyond a reasonable doubt.

-Mike and I, we were trying
to come up

with a theory of what happened.

We wanted to be able to suggest
to the jury

things that were based
on facts and evidence.

That's all we could work with.

♪♪

-So here we are.
What happened?

What happened that night?

-We knew they had gone
to the park together

to do something
they had done before,

which was to have sex,
so what went wrong?

♪♪

There was a pair
of white underwear.

They were found far away
from where the body was found

where I think the couple
originally sat down to do

whatever they were going to do
sexually and then part ways.

The place where they sat down
where she removed her underwear

is where something started.

♪♪

One of the things I suggested
was that she had started

to lecture him again
about doing drugs,

and they fought over that.

Another idea was that he tried
to perform sexually but couldn't

and that she had either made fun
of that, frustrated him.

He got angry.

-One theory is that she goes
to urinate

because she drank so much water.

That was her own private method
of staying sober.

♪♪

We know that Robert Chambers
was really a major sneak thief,

and apparently what was
driving this

was his addiction to cocaine.

Now she comes back,
and our theory is that

she now finds him
rifling through her purse,

and now all of the stories

that she had heard
came back to roost.

"Here I am in the park
with this guy

who I really care for,
and this guy is robbing me."

She realized that, you know,
this guy was really no good.

♪♪

She probably threatened
to go back to Dorrian's

and tell the entire crowd.

"What the hell is wrong
with you, Robert, you know?"

And I think this would've been
the last straw for him.

♪♪

She's got to be stopped.

His temper just exploded.

He was punching her in the face.

Left side of her face
took the brunt of the blows.

Her left eye
was completely swollen.

The fact that he broke
the fifth metacarpal,

which is a small bone
in his right hand,

it usually happens to a boxer

who doesn't tape his hand
properly

or a guy who doesn't know
what he's doing,

and he just throws a wild punch.

He gets on top of her.

He has her in a prone position.

She's defenseless.

Jennifer Levin is fighting
for her life.

You imagine the desperation,
gasping for breath,

and this guy who's twice
your size is on top of you,

you know,
he's in a wild rage.

That's why the strangulation
marks were so intense.

The material on the denim jacket
is extremely rough,

and it's going back and forth,
sliding back and forth,

and that's what's creating
the marks on the neck.

I mean, that's what happened.
He lost control.

♪♪

We believe the beginning
of the fight

between Jennifer and Robert
happened here,

and then it ended up
underneath that tree,

and that's where it culminated.

And when I spoke to crime scene,

they said that various items
from Jennifer's purse or wallet

had been strewn
or dropped along this area.

She was neatly laid out,
legs spread, skirt hiked up,

blouse hiked up.

To me, it looked like
somebody set that up.

♪♪

She was left in such a state
so that,

to the untrained observer,
the immediate response would be,

"Oh, my God.
Look at this poor girl.

She was victim of a rape,"

when in fact
there was no sex here at all.

♪♪

-One thing is clear --

He did not go to that park
with any murderous intent,

and he had no desire
to hurt her.

There was no preplanned
activity creating --

It was something that developed
during the course

of that evening,
which led to this tragedy.

♪♪

-We knew what happened.

We thought the facts,
the evidence,

the forensic evidence was
consistent with his statement.

We were under
tremendous pressure

but ready to go to trial.

-Jack Litman was
an excellent trial attorney.

You got to be
on the top of your game

if you're going to go in there
and do battle.

-Jury selection for the trial
of Robert Chambers,

the suspect in the murder
of 18-year-old Jennifer Levin,

was scheduled to begin today.

-In any trial, it's the choosing
of the jury that's so important,

what kind of a jury
and who they are.

Picking a jury is everything,
but there was more than a year

between Jennifer's body
being found

and the trial starting.

[Indistinct conversations,
camera shutters clicking]

-Jack Litman was
a fantastic manipulator.

If he could poison
the entire jury pool,

Linda and I
would have a major problem.

-The guy is a white wealthy boy,

and they're using him
as a scapegoat.

They're making an example
of him.

That's how I feel about it.

-So you don't think it has
anything to do with the crime

or the girl or...
-No.

Things like this happen
every day.

[Indistinct conversations]

-We knew everybody
had heard rough sex.

They read it in papers.
They'd seen it on TV.

There had been such a saturation
of media

and so much of it misleading.

-In discussions
with the lawyers, Judge Bell

decided to quiz
the prospective jurors

individually
in his robing room

with only two reporters present
during the proceedings.

-The judge, Judge Howard Bell,
was determined to see

that this was going to be
a fair trial,

so we had actual
individual interviews

of each prospective juror.

I was sitting at the same table
as Linda Fairstein,

as Jack Litman
and as Robert Chambers,

who was sitting next to me.

♪♪

-When people told us in that
jury pool of almost 500 people

you know they didn't know
about this case,

they didn't follow the news
that closely,

you knew they weren't
telling the truth.

You couldn't be in the city
before trial

and not have known
that this case happened.

-The very first prospective
juror was a young woman.

She came in.

Robert Chambers is sitting
at the table right next to me.

She was asked the question,

"Do you have any impressions
of Robert Chambers?"

And she said, "He's really much
better-looking in person."

Obviously, she was thanked,

and the next juror
was brought in.

It went on that way for months

to find a fair
and impartial jury.

[Indistinct conversations]

-It was honestly kind of scary.

I'd been living
in New York forever.

I was born and raised
in New York,

never really heard
about the actual crime

until I was called
for jury duty.

There's still people out there
who are upset with the verdict,

so I really don't want people
to see who I am.

And I was picked
as juror number four.

We were never called by name.

We were referred to by numbers.

Took another two months
to pick the rest of the jury.

There were some strange people
in there.

You know, one said
he's only there

because he wants
to write a book.

One wanted to get out
because he was leaving

to meet a boyfriend in London.

Everybody had their own agenda.

They did say the trial itself
would take two to three weeks,

and that would've
been perfect for me.

Unfortunately, it didn't take
two to three weeks.

[Indistinct conversations]

-Hey, hey, hey!

-The momentum, it was building.

It was building.

[Indistinct conversations]

And I would say this.

Before O.J. Simpson,
the Preppie Killer,

that was the trial
of the century.

-It's no doubt that this will be
a gut-wrenching,

emotional trial,
and at the center of it all,

two families
who have lost so much,

the Levins, who have lost
their beloved daughter,

and the Chambers family, who
have lost the son they once knew

and who will no doubt
never be the same again

after the notoriety
of this trial.

-This was probably one of
the most high-profile trials

in New York history.

-Hey, hey, hey!

-The press were like
swarms of bees.

They were all over the place.

They were on rooftops.
They were in the street.

It just exploded.

It was like a tsunami.

-In the coming weeks, the agony
for both families

will undoubtedly increase
as sordid details of the night

Jennifer Levin was killed
are released,

and all the while,
the two families will sit

and listen as their children's
private moments

are painstakingly revealed
to an eager audience.

-I wasn't even thinking
I could go to the trial

in the condition I was in,

and I went,
and I saw Dominick Dunne.

He went through a horrible trial
with the murderer

of his daughter,
and he looked at me,

and he said,
"Ellen, this is the last bit

of business you have to do
for your daughter.

You have to be there,"

and he was right.

♪♪