WASTED: The Preppie Murder

Hardback. On an August evening in 1986, 18yr old Jennifer Levin entered her favourite New York bar and began looking for 19yr old Robert Chambers, a friend she hoped would be there. A few hours later, she was found dead in New York's Central Park. Someone had raped her. The police speculated that the attacker had been an unconcerned, callous individual. A stranger, no doubt they concluded. Yet 18 hours later, Robert Chambers confessed to having caused her death. It had been an accident, he said. He and Jennifer had decided to have sex in the park but she'd suggested kinky acts, and then gotten extremely aggressive. She'd hurt him, and when she wouldn't stop and he couldn't take any more pain, he'd unthinkingly reached up, put his arm around her neck, and flipped her off him. In the process, she had somehow died. Robert Chambers was tall, dark, good-looking, a prep school graduate. Jennifer Levin, also a prep school graduate, was pretty, passionate, promising, on her way to college. Her death at Chambers' hands became known as "The Preppie Murder" and captured the horrified attention not just of New York, a city inured to crime, but of the nation as well. The author tells the story of these two privileged young people and the glittering social milieu that brought them together - a world of exclusive parties and clubs, where drugs, alcohol, and sex were pervasive, and parental authority virtually nonexistent. Hers was the first complete account. We learn previously unknown facts about the relationship between Levin and Chambers, and witness police and prosecutors trying to break through Chambers' "rough sex" defence, from the initial interrogation to the national spectacle of the trial. We discover the sad, savage downside of growing up in the fast track. Illus. With Epilogue and Afterword. 304pp. lge. 8vo. h/back. From the library of true-crime writer, Wilfred Gregg, with his personal b/plate. Nr F. in vg+ sl. faded dw.