Police testifty at Levy trial

The police officer who first responded to the discovery of a skull that turned out to be Chandra's Levy's in 2002 testified Thursday that he and other officers swiftly secured the area for investigators.

U.S. Park Police Lt. Dennis Bosak, who was a sergeant at the time, recounted his arrival at a spot near the Western Ridge Trail where a park visitor named Philip Palmer had reported finding a human skull.

Bosak, appearing as a witness in the trial of Ingmar Guandique, the man charged with killing Levy, testified that he turned the skull over with his baton to try to get a better look at it and realized the skull was indeed human.

Then, nearby, he saw a black garment, a sneaker and a sock, he said.

Other Park Police officers were summoned to the scene, he said. They speculated that the remains might be those of Levy and they knew they had to be careful, Bosak said.
"We didn't disturb anything," he testified. "We took very good care in preserving the crime scene."

Soon, detectives from the Park Police and the D.C. police were converging on the scene, which would extend several hundred feet from where the skull was found.

On the stand, Bosak was not asked about criticism, voiced by Palmer in his testimony on Wednesday, that police officers at the scene made light of the discovery of the skull.

-- Henri Cauvin