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CNN Live Today

Interview With Mike Brooks

Aired May 24, 2002 - 11:20   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Investigators are combing through dirt and leaves in the thick brush where Chandra Levy's remains were found. They're looking for anything there that might help them determine how she died.

Joining us to talk about the painstaking process is former D.C. Police Detective Mike Brooks -- good to see you again.

MIKE BROOKS, FMR. D.C. POLICE DETECTIVE: Good to see you, Leon.

HARRIS: Nice to have you here with us.

BROOKS: Thanks.

HARRIS: All right. What's the first step in investigation like this? You've been through a few of these.

BROOKS: Well, this investigation is we're well beyond the first couple of steps now. They've now identified the body. We know that it's for sure the bones are of Chandra Levy.

Now is the painstaking process of finding out what the cause of death was and the method and how it happened. So right now they've got the D.C. medical examiner and the anthropologist from the Smithsonian looking at the bones trying to determine exactly how she died.

With not a lot of tissue on the bones, (UNINTELLIGIBLE), it's going to be a little bit difficult. But if she was stabbed, if she was shot, those kinds of things, they should be able to determine if the knife came in contact with any piece of the bone. They should be able to determine the difference between an edged weapon or an animal.

As they were talking earlier, some of the bones were spread about because the body may have been out there for quite some time. And there is a lot of wildlife up in Rock Creek Park.

HARRIS: Doesn't that make it a lot harder to determine if something was a knife or if it happened to be the tooth of some animal?

BROOKS: It does, but anthropologists, along with criminologists with the medical examiner's office, should be able to determine this. There are certain distinctive marks that an edged weapon would make, whereas a tooth of an animal would not make.

HARRIS: OK. Now you're familiar with the area.

BROOKS: Very familiar.

HARRIS: Does something about that area or, you know, the nature of the soil, the atmosphere there, does it make it, I guess, a lot tougher to figure out something and build a case like that backwards than it would be, say, in any other part of the country?

BROOKS: Well, this park is very desolate. And where she was found was a fairly remote area. Keep in mind that Rock Creek Park is about four or five times larger than Central Park in New York.

HARRIS: Right.

BROOKS: And there was talk that they may have missed the body initially. Because last summer there were a large number of police up there doing searches, grid searches of the area. But the area where they were concentrating at the time was around Klingle Mansion. Klingle Mansion was one of the sites that Chandra apparently had accessed on her computer looking up the Klingle Mansion for whatever reason it might be. To go there, meet someone there, that was not known. It still is not known.

So they were concentrating their effort in that part, and they were -- where the body was found was actually a little bit further north. More towards the Maryland line from there.

HARRIS: Would it even be possible to canvas that entire park? I know it's huge. Is there any way humanly possible that could have been done?

BROOKS: It would be very difficult, especially back in summertime the terrain is fairly tough. It's very difficult to do that. But what they're going to do now, they're going to take that area and, I think Bob Franken last night, they showed that they extended the police line down from where the press area was. And they're going to extend their search to make sure that they don't leave any stones, literally, unturned.

HARRIS: How long do you think it would take for this investigation to figure out exactly what happened?

BROOKS: Well right now they're talking about once a possible person, a suspect -- I don't know if they're calling him a suspect yet - because again, we don't have how she was killed yet -- who was involved -- this man was involved in two assaults in Rock Creek Park, apparently in the same area, right after Chandra's disappearance. The first assault was on May 14; the next one was a couple of months after that. And that was investigated a couple of weeks after that, and that was investigated by the U.S. Park Police. It has jurisdiction for that area. And he's now under arrest and in jail in North Carolina.

HARRIS: All right. We've got to wrap it up and got to move on. Sorry, we've got too much to talk about.

BROOKS: No problem, sure.

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