Bennigan’s has gone bankrupt. That leaves just TGI Friday’s, Applebee’s, Chili’s, California Pizza Kitchen, Ruby Tuesday, Lone Star, Outback, Olive Garden, Uno Chicago Grill, the Cheesecake Factory and, of course, Hooters to fulfill our nation’s beer-serving, chain-restaurant needs:

CHICAGO (CBS) ― Customers showing up for lunch at Bennigan’s restaurants in Chicago and across the country found quite a surprise Tuesday morning, when all the corporate-owned locations had signs on display reading “closed for business.”

As CBS 2’s Joanie Lum reports, Bennigan’s Grill and Tavern closed all of its corporate-owned locations nationwide after filing for bankruptcy. Independent franchises remain open for business as usual.

***

Alphonso Prince, manager of the Bennigan’s at 1250 Torrence Ave. in Calumet City, said he was notified of the shutdown at 12:10 a.m. from his area director, who was crying on the telephone. He said there was no forewarning about the shutdown.

“I’m angry,” Prince said. “I’m hurt; I’m devastated.”

“No blast of e-mails, nothing to say, ‘Sorry, we just can’t do it anymore,’” Prince continued, “just a phone call from my area director who doesn’t know anything, because she just found out. She’d been with the company for 21 years.”

Thus Spake Babs.

Today’s episode: Part XIII — The Exciting Conclusion (Not):

The Gist — This wraps up the series, reiterating all of the information dug up until now on how the investigation in Chandra Levy’s 2001 murder went astray. By focusing on her lover, Congressman Gary Condit, the investigators missed a much more likely suspect,
Ingmar Guandique, who was convicted of attacking two women in the same park that Levy’s body was found in. Because of the bungling, it now appears that the case will remain officially unsolved.

The Story Lede — “In the six years since Chandra Levy was found in Rock Creek Park, her story continues to haunt many lives.” (Note to WaPo editors: Could you come up with something a little less bland?)

What I Didn’t Already Know About the Story — After he lost his Congressional seat following Levy’s disappearance, Condit went on to manage a pair of Baskins-Robbins ice cream parlors. Then he managed to screw that up too. Now he is a “consultant” i.e., unemployed.

The Big News From This Installment — The big revelation is that almost everyone involved in the investigation agrees that Condit didn’t do it and that Guandique probably did. But the bungling of the investigation means that most of the evidence needed to convict him was lost and absent a confession by Guandique it will remain unsolved. And he told the Post by letter that, no, he didn’t do it:

“Joe Green, the U.S. Park Police detective who interrogated Guandique after the Rock Creek Park attacks, remains troubled by the handling of the Chandra investigation. ‘I can’t let it go,’ he said. ‘It was a solvable case.’ Retired now and working as a victim and witness coordinator for the Park Police, Green thinks that Guandique is the key suspect. He agrees that investigators were too focused on Condit. By the time they started to seriously look at Guandique, he said, it was too late.

“Brad Garrett, the star FBI agent who was brought in to help D.C. police, thinks about the case often and has returned to the crime scene numerous times. Over time, he has become more interested in Guandique. To Garrett, the evidence points to a random attack by a stranger - someone like Guandique.

“‘You can’t take him out of the case; you can’t eliminate him,’ Garrett said.

The Ironic Twist — Since Guandique is an illegal immigrant, he’ll he sent back to his native country after he is let out of jail for the other crimes. That’s set for July 31, 2011. Once out of the country, it’ll be pretty much impossible to close the case.

The Tabloid-y Goodness — Condit is, as you might imagine, kind of bitter:

“’I know that Chandra and her family are the victims,’ Condit said. ‘And I get that. But I could not even imply [back then] that I was being victimized at the same time. I felt like my reputation was being raped. That I was being assaulted physically and I could not defend myself. It was the equivalent to me of a rape. I’ve never been physically raped, but I’ve been emotionally. And my reputation has been raped. And just like probably with a physical rape, you probably never recover from those emotions or those scars. And I don’t want to take anything away from Chandra and her family because I know they’re the real victims. They lost someone.‘

The Story So Far –Part I: The Search of Rock Creek Park.

Part II: Chandra’s Forbidden Romance.

Part III: The Congressman’s Harem.

Part IV: The Living Horror of the Levys.

Part V: The Congressman’s Unhappy Constituents.

Part VI: Something Wicked in the Park.

Part VII: The Congressman and the Scent of Scandal.

Part VIII: The Wrong Man and the Art of Denial.

Part IX: The Congressman and the Horror of Prime-Time TV.

Part X: A Jailhouse Bird Sings.

Part XI: The Secret of Rock Creek Park Unveiled.

Part XII: The Exciting Conclusion (Not).

Part XIII: The Non-Conclusion.

We need a Chomsky-Gravel Deathmatch. Two irrelevant men enter, one leaves! Still irrelevant!

– Commenter JW at Reason’s Hit & Run blog, reacting to Michael Moynihan’s discovery of this Youtube clip of Noam Chomsky.

Props also to Neu Mejican in the same thread:

He [Chomsky] is of almost unmatched importance in the development of linguistics and psychology…but that doesn’t mean his ideas are correct.

He’s like Freud that way. Proving him incorrect has advanced the field mightily.

Today’s episode: Part XII — The Exciting Conclusion (Not):

The Gist — This chapter focuses on how the investigators finally came to realize about a year after the crime that Salvadoran immigrant Ingmar Guandique many have been the one who killed Chandra Levy in 2001. Even so, investigators remained slow and klutzy making elementary mistakes. By this time though much of the evidence had been lost.

The Story Lede — “When Chandra Levy’s remains were found in May 2002 in Rock Creek Park, Halle Shilling felt a chill.”

What I Didn’t Already Know About the Story — That when I started this damn blog series that the Post would stretch this damn thing out for over two damn weeks with so damned little new information. I thought this was the final chapter, but no, there is at least one more.

The Big News From This Installment — The big revelation is that Guandique was fired from his job the day that Levy went to Rock Creek Park. Nevertheless when the investigators started asking around in his Hispanic neighborhood they were hampered by a slight problem:

“Many of Guandique’s family members and friends did not speak English, and the D.C. detectives assigned to the case, Ralph Durant and Lawrence Kennedy, did not speak Spanish. The language barrier slowed the interview process, bogging down the investigation.

Not until a new Spanish-speaking U.S. Assistant States Attorney was assigned did the investigation start to catch steam. By this time the press was getting ahead of the investigators:

“On Oct. 2, Washington Post reporters interviewed Guandique’s former landlady, Sheila Phillips Cruz. She recalled that Guandique had a fat lip and scratches on his throat in late April or early May 2001, around the time Chandra disappeared. Cruz said Guandique told her he got into a fight with his waifish girlfriend, but Portillo told the reporters that she never struck Guandique.

“Cruz said Guandique started drinking during that period.

“‘Ingmar just got really strange,’ she said. ‘Half the time he didn’t know where he was.’

***

“Cruz said the police had not interviewed her about Guandique. After learning that she was interviewed by The Post, police rushed to talk to her.

The Ironic Twist — The investigation had taken so long to find Guandique that evidence that could have been gotten easily early on was lost:

“Cruz also said Guandique left behind two bags of his belongings in a stairwell when he moved out of the apartment on Somerset Place in May 2001. She said they contained the T-shirts, baggy pants and baseball cap Guandique liked to wear. That summer, she had a maintenance man throw away the bags.

***

“[One associate of Guandique] told them he did indeed have some of Guandique’s belongings. They were back in Maryland with a friend whom police had interviewed previously. But by the time the detectives got to the friend, he told them he had thrown the belongings out - after they interviewed him the first time.

The Tabloid-y Goodness — Not much this time. The best I could comer up with was this slightly underworld-y sounding bit:

“The detectives learned from Flores that Guandique’s half-brother, Huber, had picked up Guandique’s belongings. Twelve days later, the detectives interviewed Huber, who told them he thought a man known as ‘Juan the Pig’ had the belongings.

The Story So Far –Part I: The Search of Rock Creek Park.

Part II: Chandra’s Forbidden Romance.

Part III: The Congressman’s Harem.

Part IV: The Living Horror of the Levys.

Part V: The Congressman’s Unhappy Constituents.

Part VI: Something Wicked in the Park.

Part VII: The Congressman and the Scent of Scandal.

Part VIII: The Wrong Man and the Art of Denial.

Part IX: The Congressman and the Horror of Prime-Time TV.

Part X: A Jailhouse Bird Sings.

Part XI: The Secret of Rock Creek Park Unveiled.

Part XII: The Exciting Conclusion (Not).

Today’s episode: Part XI — The Secret of Rock Creek Park Unveiled:

The Gist — This chapter focuses on how the body of Chandra Levy was finally discovered a mere 386 days after her disappearance in a park that the police had already searched once before and found nothing. The body was finally discovered not by police but totally by chance by another visitor to the park. It was completely decomposed — only bones and articles of clothing remained — but enough evidence exists to declare it a murder. The various law enforcement agencies involved responded by continuing to do a half-assed job with the investigation while trying to dodge or shift the blame.

The Story Lede — “Shortly before 9:30 a.m. on May 22, 2002, Philip Douglas Palmer, a 42-year-old furniture maker, walked his dog down a steep ravine off the Western Ridge Trail in Rock Creek Park. Palmer had been hiking trails in the park for 30 years, and he was looking for items to add to his offbeat collection of deer antlers and animal bones.”

What I Didn’t Already Know About the Story — Philip Palmer is better at finding and preserving a crime scene than DC’s finest:

“Beneath the brush, he saw a bleached-out object that he thought was a turtle shell. He swept away some leaves, uncovering a human skull. Palmer marked the spot by hanging a blue leash and a sweatshirt on nearby branches and left to call 911.

The Big News From This Installment — This episode’s revelation is that even after the crime scene was discovered, investigators managed to screw up the investigation not once, but twice more. Two subsequent trips to the scene after the initial post-discovery sweep managed to turn up evidence that had been missed before:

“The discoveries highlighted long-standing problems within the understaffed and under-budgeted Mobile Crime Unit. Training was inconsistent, and equipment was lacking. Some technicians used their own money to buy markers, cotton swabs and evidence bags. [Chief Deputy Terrance] Gainer, the department’s second in command, acknowledged that his police force was not ‘forensically oriented.‘

Makes you feel safer, doesn’t it?

Also the evidence that is discovered plus the location of the scene threw the suspicion back on Ingmar Guandique, who had previously been ruled out by investigators and prosecutors. Kim Rossmo, director of research for the Police Foundation in Washington, said, hmm, there seems to be a connection here:

”Rossmo noted that around the time of Chandra’s disappearance, the Salvadoran immigrant lived on the outskirts of the park and attacked two women with a knife on isolated trails that traversed steep inclines. Such serial attacks were rare in the park, and they had stopped after Guandique was arrested.

“To Rossmo, statistically, behaviorally and geographically, Guandique looked like he might be their man.

Well, thank goodness for experts …

The Ironic Twist — There was so little left of Chandra by this point that it was hard to discover much of anything from the crime scene. The investigators were not able to determine the precise cause of death, for example, though strangulation appears to be the leading theory.

In a particularly gruesome note, one problem was that Chandra’s remains were scattered around a rather wide area. At first police suspected Palmer had moved some bones when he found the scene. They later realized that the animals in the park had done it:

“‘It appears that department technicians did not pass over the bone during the original search,” the [DC police press] release said. ‘There appears to be a greater likelihood that the bone was reintroduced into the area by wildlife.’

The Tabloid-y Goodness — We learn what it was like for the Levy’s when they were confronted with the fact that their daughter was truly gone from them:

“In Modesto, Calif., that morning, Robert and Susan Levy taped an interview in their living room for ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show,’ which was doing another segment on Chandra’s disappearance. Afterward, Susan crawled into Chandra’s bed because it always made her feel close to her daughter.

“Later that morning, the phone rang. D.C. police told her they had found the remains of a woman in Rock Creek Park. It could be Chandra. In the hallway of her home, Levy fell to the floor, sobbing so hard she could barely catch her breath.

The Story So Far –Part I: The Search of Rock Creek Park.

Part II: Chandra’s Forbidden Romance.

Part III: The Congressman’s Harem.

Part IV: The Living Horror of the Levys.

Part V: The Congressman’s Unhappy Constituents.

Part VI: Something Wicked in the Park.

Part VII: The Congressman and the Scent of Scandal.

Part VIII: The Wrong Man and the Art of Denial.

Part IX: The Congressman and the Horror of Prime-Time TV.

Part X: A Jailhouse Bird Sings.

Part XI: The Secret of Rock Creek Park Unveiled.

Tomorrow’s Chapter — The Exciting Conclusion!

The WashingtonPost.com’s resident Catholic blogger makes a bold declaration in a web column today:

I am not against Catholics in office following the moral teachings of the Church.

I’m not even Catholic and I find that moronic. Did Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo get this column because Dan Brown and Richard Dawkins turned it down or something?

In his future column, Stevens-Arroyo will no doubt explore such deep questions as:

1. Does the Pope always have to be Catholic? Why not Unitarian?
2. South Park’s Hare Club for Men episode: Just how close to the truth?
3. Why Latin? Why not Esperanto?
4. The Gospel According to St. Christopher Hitchens.

Today’s episode: Part X — A Jailhouse Bird Sings:

The Gist — This chapter focuses on how the investigation into Chandra Levy’s disappearance finally became aware of Ingmar Guandique, a man who had attacked at least two other women in Rock Creek Park at the time of Levy’s disappearance. A jailhouse snitch tells the authorities that Guandique confessed to the crime but the story is discounted because of some other, rather fanciful, details the snitch includes. That and an inconclusive polygraph test serve to exclude him as a suspect, as far as investors are concerned. When Guandique is sentenced for the attacks on the two women, the judge and prosecutors discount the possibility that he did it all.

The Story Lede — “On Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the four-month-old Chandra Levy story quickly dropped off the front pages of newspapers around the world.”

What I Didn’t Already Know About the Story — There is apparently nobody in the Federal Bureau of Investigation who can habla Espanol:

“[T]here was a problem with the polygraph exams in the Chandra case: Neither the informant nor Guandique spoke much English, and the FBI polygraph examiners were not bilingual. A translator was used for both exams, a variable that can compromise test results, according to polygraph experts. Polygraph equipment measures minute changes in breathing, sweating, blood pressure and other bodily functions. If the polygraph examiner and the translator are not in sync, the test results can be skewed.

“‘If I had my druthers, I would have wanted to get a Spanish-speaking polygraph examiner,’ Jack Barrett, D.C. chief of detectives, later recalled. ‘It’s so much cleaner.’ But he would have had to wait for months because of different priorities within the FBI.

The Big News From This Installment — A lot. After a few tedious entries that gave little new details and just rehashed the record, the Post provides a gold mine of nuggets this time. The snitch not only says that Guandique confessed to it, but that Condit paid him to do it. Sleazy as he may be, its awfully hard to believe that Condit would go that far. That plus the apparently botched polygraph test — the FBI agent who administered the test decided to mark it as “pass” without noting it was a judgment call based on inconclusive results — resulted in him being completely ruled out. You can almost hear the investigators saying: “The informant said what? Aw, the Guandique lead’s gotta be bullshit.”

The Ironic Twist — In September of 2001, Guandique was interrogated in front of a D.C. Park Police officer who had earlier interrogated him in July. Guandique contracted his earlier responses, but the officer completely forgot about the earlier interview.

“On Sept. 21, Guandique was removed from his jail cell and brought to the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington for questioning by prosecutors and D.C. detectives. He was accompanied by a public defender.Guandique was shown a picture of Chandra. He said the only place he had ever seen her was on television.

“That contradicted what a former Park Police detective later told The Washington Post. Joe Green, who interrogated Guandique on July 2, said that at that time he showed Chandra’s picture to Guandique and the Salvadoran said he had seen her in the park.

“Green was present at the meeting in the U.S. attorney’s office. To this day, Green does not remember that meeting or whether he passed on to D.C. police or prosecutors the information he said he got from Guandique. ‘I should have said something,’ Green would later comment.

The Tabloid-y Goodness — We get a glimpse into the mind of one sick dude:

“On Feb. 8, four days after his FBI polygraph, Guandique was escorted into Room 321 of the D.C. Superior Courthouse to be sentenced after pleading guilty to the attacks on Halle Shilling and Christy Wiegand. A court-ordered report noted that Guandique had a wide range of behavioral, alcohol and drug problems.

“‘When I’m about to commit an offense, I tell myself to go ahead and do it, but afterwards, I feel bad about it,’ Guandique said through a translator in the report. ‘I feel good when I see someone alone and carrying something of value on their person because it makes it easy for me to take it from them. Then it crosses my mind, that after doing it so many times, I will eventually get caught. Sometimes, I cannot control myself when I see someone alone in a secluded area with something of value.’”

The Story So Far –Part I: The Search of Rock Creek Park.

Part II: Chandra’s Forbidden Romance.

Part III: The Congressman’s Harem.

Part IV: The Living Horror of the Levys.

Part V: The Congressman’s Unhappy Constituents.

Part VI: Something Wicked in the Park.

Part VII: The Congressman and the Scent of Scandal.

Part VIII: The Wrong Man and the Art of Denial.

Part IX: The Congressman and the Horror of Prime-Time TV.

Part X: A Jailhouse Bird Sings.

Tomorrow’s Chapter — A Body in the Park.

Steven Spielberg always said [to me], “To play the dumb blonde, you have to be really smart. Except in your case.”

– Actress Teri Garr.

Today’s episode: Part IX — The Congressman and the Horror of Prime-Time TV:

The Gist — This chapter focuses on how the investigation into Chandra Levy’s disappearance ground on and by mid-July became a full-blown media frenzy thanks to the incompetence of Congressman Gary Condit’s damage control efforts and the police’s ineptitude. Condit consents to a fourth interview, this time with an FBI expert, who comes away convinced that Condit is not involved in Chandra’s disappearance after all. Meanwhile an interview with ABC’s Connie Chung goes disastrously for Condit. His hometown paper, the Modesto Bee, tells the California Democrat he should resign his seat for impeding the investigation: “His self-absorption has been a lapse not only of judgment, but of human decency.” A CNN-Gallup poll found that 63% of Americans were following the case closely.

The Story Lede — “The Chandra Levy case spun out of control in mid-July 2001 with a series of sensational tabloid stories, with such headlines as ‘The Congressman, the Missing Intern & the Sexy Stewardess: FBI Probes His Secret Double Life.‘”

What I Didn’t Already Know About the Story — Condit’s PR brilliance knows no end. Rather than submit to a police polygraph, Condit paid for a private polygraph session. He passed with flying colors and sent the results over to the police. They didn’t buy it:

“Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey dismissed the test as a farce with ‘no investigative value.’ FBI experts agreed. ‘He may have tried to sell it to us, but we’re not buying it,’ Ramsey said.”

The Big News From This Installment — A dog walker who was flashed in Rock Creek Park, the same place where Chandra was apparently headed the day she disappeared, was stunned the police did not investigate the possibility that her flasher might also be involved in Levy’s disappearance. Instead, another clue linking the case to a series of assaults on women in Rock Creek Park was missed:

“On July 24, when D.C. detectives contacted the Park Police for additional details about [the attack on dog walker Karen] Mosley, they said, they learned for the first time about an attack in the park. Ingmar Guandique, the Salvadoran, was being held for assaulting Christy Wiegand on July 1.

“Detectives later noted that police called Mosley the day they received the tip, July 20, but Mosley said no one from the D.C. police contacted her that summer.

“‘That didn’t happen,’ she later recalled. ‘I would have remembered that.’”

“As Chandra’s disappearance turned into a round-the-clock news story in mid-July, Mosley grew frustrated by the intense coverage of Condit.

‘It was making me crazy,’ she recalled. ‘The entire focus was on this guy. I kept saying to my friends, ‘They’re not focusing on this guy in the woods.’”

The Ironic Twist — Once again, Condit’s efforts at spin control only made matters worse for him:

“During the ABC interview, he declined to answer questions about whether he had an affair with Chandra. He said that he was not a perfect man and that he made mistakes. ‘But out of respect for my family, out of a specific request by the Levy family, it is best that I not get into the details of the relationship,’ he said repeatedly.

“Condit’s performance was uniformly criticized as evasive. Robert and Susan Levy were appalled - they said they had made no ’specific request’ that Condit be discreet about their daughter. Political party leaders and major newspapers called for him to step down.

“‘I knew within a couple weeks my career was gone,’ he recalled in The Post interview.

The Tabloid-y Goodness — Condit discovers that when you’re a sleaze, people find it easy to believe sleazy stories about you:

“On July 12, 2001, The Washington Post recounted a tale from a Pentecostal minister in Rep. Gary Condit’s home town of Ceres, Calif., who had worked as a handyman for the Levys. He said his teenage daughter once dated the congressman, but she was afraid to talk to the FBI and had gone into hiding.

“A week after the account became front-page news, the minister recanted his story to the FBI. ‘It really hurt me,’ Condit said in a recent interview. ‘It hurt me personally; it hurt me professionally; it accused me of committing a crime, of having sex with a minor. It put me in such a dark state, I didn’t think I was going to get out.’”

The Story So Far –Part I: The Search of Rock Creek Park.

Part II: Chandra’s Forbidden Romance.

Part III: The Congressman’s Harem.

Part IV: The Living Horror of the Levys.

Part V: The Congressman’s Unhappy Constituents.

Part VI: Something Wicked in the Park.

Part VII: The Congressman and the Scent of Scandal.

Part VIII: The Wrong Man and the Art of Denial.

Part IX: The Congressman and the Horror of Prime-Time TV.

Tomorrow’s Chapter — The Jailhouse Informant’s Tale.