I found it pretty hard to credit this five part documentary on the high-profile murder of 18 year old Jennifer Levin in New York's Central Park in 1986 when I realised the significant parts that Linda Fairstein and Mike Sheehan, then respectively Assistant D.A. and Police Captain, played in both the original events and indeed their prominent parts in narrating the events here. Both, of course were later thoroughly excoriated in the other Central Park cause-celebre criminal trial of the five young black teenagers wrongly convicted of raping and assaulting a female jogger three years later, recently dramatised in the T.V. series "When They See Us". Either this programme was made before "When They See Us" aired or both had their own agenda in agreeing to participate, even if this time, they were both on the side of right.
The programme seemed to offer conclusive evidence, no matter how you look at it, from a taped video confession on down, that Miss Levin was murdered by the handsome Robert Chambers and yet at his much delayed trial, the jury couldn't reach a conclusive verdict and he eventually went to prison on the lesser charge and of course attendant sentence of manslaughter.
You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to work out what happened that fateful August night. The couple already knew each other, had a physical relationship and probably went to Central Park to engage in sex. Chambers however initially denied to the police even walking up the same street to the park as Miss Levin after they left a diner together and then told detectives that the scratch marks all over him were caused by his cat. Even after he admits later to causing her death, he attempted to deflect the blame back to the dead girl by claiming he accidentally killed her after she tried to rape him and engage him in rough sex. This from a guy twice the weight and much taller and stronger than his victim, who had bruises all over her body, especially around her neck, loose teeth probably caused by a punch to the face and who had been stripped of all her jewellery and money in her purse. He even sat impassively across from the murder scene after her body was discovered as the S.O.C.O. team went about their business.
However, Chambers' well-connected mother got him a hot-shot lawyer who promptly engaged in a despicable "shame the victim" defence, didn't demur at stooping to place highly visible newspaper and magazine articles supporting the perpetrator and even corralled support from the then Bishop of New York, himself later discredited and disgraced as a paedophile, into giving Chambers a character reference. All of this seemed to put enough doubt in the jury that they couldn't reach a clear verdict leaving Chambers's legal team to broker a reduced plea-bargain which could and should have seen him get out again in five years but thankfully his poor behaviour inside at least saw him serve his maximum term of fifteen years.
My other criticism of this programme, besides Fairstein and Sheehan's over-involvement was the way it dripped out key information an episode at a time. Take the first episode where it appears for all the world that Chambers and Jennifer didn't know each other before that fateful night, or that Chambers had a previous history of drug addiction and burglary. But I keep coming back to Fairstein and Sheehan, who we see at the very end reuniting in the park embracing as they share their memories, but who, and again I say this admitting they were on the correct side in this case, just didn't seem to do a good job at Chambers' trial against his switched-on legal team. When you see them both imagining Chambers' motive on the night or even worse, trying to connect him as a potential victim of the paedophilic priest, one's mind can't help but run on to the way they later set-up with invented and coerced confessions the later Central Park Five, only a few years later.
Although Miss Levin's family and friends fully participated in the programme (Chambers and his immediate family did not), I still feel it didn't serve them as well as it should have. Sort of like the American legal process back in 1986.
