Washington Times staff writer Matthew Cella reports. Excerpt:
Metropolitan Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey defended yesterday the results of a polygraph test administered to a man in prison for attacking two women in the same park where former government intern Chandra Levy’s remains were found, but he said police would like to ask the man a few more questions.
Ingmar Guandique, serving a 10-year sentence in a federal prison in Kentucky, was convicted of attacking two female joggers in separate assaults near Broad Branch Road, which is where Miss Levy’s remains were found May 22. Both women fought back and escaped without serious injury.
Guandique was arrested July 1, 2001, the same day of the second attack.
D.C. police questioned Guandique, 21, about Miss Levy’s disappearance and administered a polygraph test after a fellow inmate said Guandique had confessed to the killings.
Chief Ramsey said Guandique passed his test, though Guandique failed a similar polygraph test.
The chief said he would like to re-interview Guandique now that Miss Levy’s remains have been discovered.
“Now that we found the body and you look at the MOs of the two attacks that didn’t result in death and hers looking for similarities, we need to go back and ask this guy this set of questions that are really specific now to what we know about what probably happened at that crime. But he’s not cooperating,” Chief Ramsey said.
The Washington Post reported in Sunday’s editions that police were concerned that the polygraph test may be unreliable because the FBI administered it through an interpreter. Chief Ramsey dismissed that concern, saying he was satisfied with the use of the FBI-qualified interpreter. He said the same interpreter was used during the polygraphs of Guandique and the other inmate.
Chief Ramsey speculated that the inmate who said Guandique had confessed may have provided secondhand information and failed the polygraph test when asked whether he had heard the confession directly.