A New York Times Notable Book: Acclaimed true-crime journalist Linda
Wolfe delivers a riveting, comprehensive account of the Preppie Murder,
a crime that shocked a city and a nation.
It was called the Preppie Murder--a killer and a victim who were
attractive, smart, privileged teenagers. On an August night in 1986
Jennifer Levin left a Manhattan bar with Robert Chambers. The next
morning, her strangled, battered body was found in Central Park.
Linda Wolfe, hailed by critic John Leonard as "one of our best
reporters," goes beyond the headlines and media hype to re-create a
story of privilege and excess, sex and partying--of a teenager whose
immigrant mother was determined to make a better life for her son, a
petty thief and drug user who'd been expelled from the best schools.
It's all here, from the initial police investigation, during which
Chambers claimed Levin died accidentally during rough sex, to the media
frenzy of the courtroom, where Chambers took an eleventh-hour plea.
Wolfe also delivers heartbreaking portraits of Levin's grief-stricken
father, Chambers's in-denial mother, and the women who dated the accused
Preppie Killer while he was out on bail.
A finalist for the 1990 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime, Wasted also
powerfully depicts the freewheeling 1980s society that spawned a
generation steeped in violence and the fatal impulses that drove Robert
Chambers to kill.
