New York’s ‘Preppy Killer’ heading back to jail

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Robert Chambers, the “Preppy Killer”
who served 15 years behind bars for strangling a young woman in
Central Park, is going back to jail after pleading guilty on
Tuesday to possessing heroin.

Chambers, 38, admitted having heroin in his car on Nov. 23,
2004, and to driving with a suspended license.

Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Gerald Harris said he would
sentence Chambers on Aug. 29 to 90 days in jail and fine him
$250.

Chambers was released from jail in February 2003 after
serving his full 15 year sentence. He spent about one-third of
his time in solitary confinement and was rejected for parole on
five occasions after repeatedly disobeying prison rules.

In 1988, Chambers confessed to strangling 18-year-old
Jennifer Levin two years earlier during “rough sex” in Central
Park. After more than a week of jury deliberations, he pleaded
guilty to first degree manslaughter.

Known as the “Preppy Murder Case,” its lurid details of
freewheeling sex among the city’s privileged youth made tabloid
headlines for almost two years.

Although not from a wealthy family, Chambers was known as
the “Preppy Killer” because he hung around with a “preppy”
crowd of teenagers who went to expensive private preparatory
schools. The night of the killing, he and Levin had been
drinking at a bar on Manhattan’s posh Upper East Side that was
popular with the fast-moving teen-age crowd.

Separately, Levin’s family are trying to get Chambers to
begin making payments under a $25 million wrongful death
judgment against him. Chambers says he has no money.