Preppie Killer Put Up ‘Violent Struggle’
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The so-called Preppie Killer could face up to 150 years in prison on new drug charges, Manhattan prosecutors said yesterday.
Robert Chambers served 15 years in prison after confessing to strangling 18-year-old Jennifer Levin in Central Park in the 1980s.
As he was being arrested this week for dealing drugs out of an Upper East Side apartment, the Manhattan district attorney, Robert Morgenthau, yesterday said Chambers had “put up a violent struggle.” He broke one officer’s wrist after police used a battering ram to force their way into the apartment he shared with his girlfriend on East 57th Street, the district attorney said.
He said Chambers would face charges for resisting arrest in addition to a stack of eight felony counts for drug dealing.
“We weren’t surprised to see him get in trouble again,” Mr. Morgenthau said, noting Chambers’s record of bad behavior while in prison. He was also arrested for heroin possession after getting out.
“He had a very bad record,” Mr. Morgenthau said.
According to authorities, neighbors began complaining that Chambers was running a wholesale cocaine dealing operation out of his apartment in August. The drug dealing was “open and notorious,” and spilled out into the hallways of the apartment building, Mr. Morgenthau said.
Chambers, 41, shared the apartment with his longtime girlfriend, Shawn Kovell, 39, who was also arrested and charged with felonies for drug dealing.
Undercover officers bought about 8 ounces of cocaine from Chambers over the course of the three-month investigation, worth about $9,600. He is being held without bail after his arraignment yesterday, and will go to court again on Thursday.
