Other park victim also had Congress ties

WASHINGTON -- A woman attacked in Rock Creek Park two weeks after intern Chandra Levy vanished also had ties to Congress.

Halle Shilling, who was assaulted close to the park area where Levy's remains were found, covered Congress as a reporter for States News Service. The late Levy, who had an affair with Rep. Gary Condit, D-Calif., turned up missing May 1, 2001.

On May 14, 2001, Shilling, 30, said she was "jumped" by a man brandishing a knife while jogging along Broad Branch Trail, where Levy's remains were found on
Wednesday. The two struggled, but she was able to escape by clawing her assailant.

Just two weeks earlier, Levy, 24, disappeared after looking up a map of Rock Creek Park. She logged off her computer at about 1 p.m. May 1. Her keys and a ring, but not her ID, were missing from her apartment.

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At the scene where her remains were discovered, investigators recovered a USC sweatshirt, leotards, a jogging bra, sneakers and strands of dark hair. Levy was scheduled to return to USC to attend her masters graduation ceremony just before she disappeared.

Police also found a Sony Walkman portable radio with Levy's remains. Shilling said she was wearing a Sony Walkman headset when she was attacked from behind. So was Christie Wiegand, 26, who was assaulted by a man with a knife in the same park on July 1.

Both women were attacked by Ingmar Guandeque, a 20-year-old Salvadoran, who in September 2001 pleaded guilty to two counts of assault and this February was sentenced to 10 years in prison (the maximum penalty for his crimes was 35 years).

Guandeque admitted in D.C. Superior Court that he pursued and grabbed the female joggers last year in a failed attempt to steal their Sony Walkmans. He never took any property from his victims, and the judge said he acted more like a predator, who enjoyed physical confrontation with his victims, than a thief.

Shilling, who has taken self-defense classes, describes herself as an athletic 5 feet 10 inches tall. Levy was a petite woman about 5 feet 3.

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Shilling said U.S. Park Police warned her after she was attacked to avoid wearing headphones while jogging, since they make it harder to hear possible attackers coming up from behind. They also told her there have been a half-dozen reports of a flasher in the area of the park where she was assaulted.

Roll Call, a Capitol Hill paper, reported yesterday that D.C. police interviewed Guandeque after Levy's disappearance. But they told the Washington Post he's not a prime suspect in her death.

Between the time Guandeque was arrested last July and his sentencing in February, no media linked Guandeque to the Levy case in any way, according to a Nexis search of media reports. In fact, up until yesterday, there was just one story on Guandeque -- a Metro brief in the Washington Post about his guilty plea.