NEW YORK -- Hours before Jennifer Levin, 18, was strangled during a tryst in Central Park, she told the prep school graduate suspected of killing her that sex with him had been 'the best she ever had,' the victim's friend testified today.
Betsy Shenkin, a sophmore attending college in Boston, recounted at the second-degree murder trial of Robert Chambers what Levin told her hours before Chambers killed the young woman during rough sex in Central Park.
Shenkin said Levin told her she went up to Chambers, 19, in Dorrian's Red Hand Restaurant hours before the suspect and the victim left the bar together.
'I just want you to know the sex you and I had together was the best sex I ever had in my life,' Shenkin testified Levin said she told Chambers.
Chambers 'looked down at her and said, 'Jen, you shouldn't have said that,'' Shenkin testified in state Supreme Court in Manhattan.
Levin's body was found Aug. 26, 1986, behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Central Park.
Chambers, who attended exclusive prep schools in the New York area and has a history of drug use, has maintained he choked Levin, 18, accidentally during a rough sexual encounter. He said Levin tied his hands behind him with her panties and 'molested' him.
Shenkin also testified that she brought Levin and Chambers together one night in Dorrian's in June 1986 and that Levin appeared elated after talking to the young man.
In pretrial hearings last summer, a detective testified Shenkin said Levin winked as she left the bar, Dorrian's Red Hand, with Chambers.
On Wednesday, police detective Paul Chu admitted under questioning by defense attorney Jack Litman that investigators walked back and forth and even drove a squad car over the area near what they called a mysterious 'ground disturbance' near a tree by Levin's body.
Chu said the reason police did not originally make note of the area of ground disturbance was because they did not think it was connected to Levin's death.
During questioning Litman emphasized mistakes that made investigators look like what he called bumbling 'Keystone Kops.'
Throughout the trial, the prosecution has suggested that Chambers may have moved things around near Levin's body to back up his story that he accidentally choked her.
Litman also asked again on Wednesday to see Levin's diary, saying he wondered whether she had written down any 'immoral acts' by her boyfriend and two girlfriends. He said he also wanted to know whether her friends said anything about the accused murderer.
Litman withdrew his request after a heated exchange when the prosecutor insisted there was nothing like that in the black book.
State Supreme Court Justice Howard Bell previously has refused to allow the defense attorney to see the diary.
Dominick Dunne, a writer who became a victim's rights activist after his actress daughter was strangled in Los Angeles, was among visitors to the trial Wednesday, saying he wanted to lend support to the Levin family.
Dunne's 22-year-old daughter, Dominique, who starred in the movie 'Poltergeist,' was strangled by a former boyfriend 4 years ago.
