On August 18, a renowned New York City pub owner passed away, bringing to light the establishment’s troubled past and a shocking murder that had the whole city on edge in 1986.
Jack Dorrian oversaw the famous bar, Dorrian’s Red Hand, for many years after his father, an Irish immigrant, launched it in 1960.
For many years, the Upper East Side neighborhood’s regular customers and a group of prep kids with private school educations treated the bar like a second home.
It’s where “everyone (whose anyone) knows your name,” as one author put it.
Spence, Dalton, Dwight, and Buckley were among the close-knit group of college coeds who gathered here in the early morning hours of August 26, 1986, after returning from their luxurious summers abroad. They shared stories from their time at New York’s most prestigious private schools while table-hopping, drinking, laughing, and telling jokes.
But by the end of the evening, a shocking murder that shocked the country would claim the life of one individual.
Just a few weeks had passed since Jennifer Levin, 18, left for college when a biker found her bruise-covered corpse in Central Park the next morning. She looked to have been strangled to death since she was found lying near a tree with her bra and top pulled up.
As soon as they arrived, police launched a citywide search for any potential suspects in the crime, including closing all the bridges and tunnels in Manhattan.
The baby-faced culprit was standing close at the time, observing the inquiry take place without their knowledge.
Later, 19-year-old Robert Chambers would admit to killing Levin but would maintain that it was an accident that occurred because she wanted hard sex. He was known as “The Preppy Killer” because of his height, charisma, boy next door good looks, and swoop of shaggy hair.
Levin, a recent Baldwin School graduate from the Upper West Side, was chosen the class’s “best-looking” student and was well-known for her outgoing, lively nature.
She had just relocated to Manhattan from a Long Island hamlet to live with her father and stepmother in their SoHo apartment, and she had no trouble adjusting to the exclusive club scene of New York’s glittering upper class.
When Levin was slain, she had just a few days left before starting her freshman semester at a small college in Boston.
While Robert Chambers did not originate from a very wealthy family himself, he was still a local boy who spent his whole life close to riches and power.
His mother, who was of Irish descent, put in a lot of overtime as a private nurse to wealthy families to pay for his tuition at prominent private institutions, which was also covered by scholarships based on academic achievement. Robert Chambers Sr., his alcoholic father, who had previously worked for MCA Records, finally got his mother’s divorce.
The two teenagers were encircled by one other in a seductive web of affluence, elitism, casual sex, drugs, and booze, but they didn’t really meet until the summer of 1986.
Chambers attended top schools throughout his whole life. He was an officer in the Knickerbocker Greys, a uniformed cadet club that featured the sons and daughters of New York’s most prominent families, an altar boy at his local church, and a member of the Children of the American Revolution.
Monsignor James Wilders described him to New York Magazine as modest and quiet, but nevertheless diligent and “quite devoted, extremely honest in his responsibilities.”
He was given a scholarship at Choate in the fall of 1980 because of his academic success. But Chambers found it difficult to transition from his cosy, small-group setting to the bigger, more impersonal boarding school. After his first year, he was expelled because of his failing grades.
Back in Manhattan, where he hung out with a drug-using group of rich students who partied at Studio 54, his personal and intellectual lives started to fall apart. He developed addictions to marijuana, cocaine, LSD, and alcohol.
Drug usage was promoted by the party scene, and the club culture taught lessons in exploiting celebrity and family names (two things that Chambers did not have).
His financial situation suddenly become dramatically different. He had no choice but to be successful, yet his wealthy classmates seemed to follow other norms.
Chambers was unable to purchase his way out of problems with the law or admittance to an Ivy League university.
He was expelled from many different schools, each time falling in status. His problems became worse, and he became more cut off from the glitterati club kids.
One former student said, “For the first time, he felt he had been banished from the group.” During such chats, he used to exclaim, “Ah, preppies, the heck with them. F— the whole situation.
As he attempted to reconcile differences between his pariah reputation among his friends and his diligent mother’s desire to push him into a rarefied environment, his self-esteem plummeted.
One buddy said, “He didn’t like the kids in the scenario, but I believe he was envious of them.” He aspired to be as wealthy as they were so that he could prove it to them in 20 years. He desired position and status in society.
To sustain his heroin habit, Chambers started robbing the homes of his wealthy pals, which further alienated him from the group.
Nevertheless, he was able to complete high school in 1985, and because to his strong exam results, he was admitted to Boston University. However, old habits are hard to break, and he was expelled after only one semester.
Back in New York, he had trouble. Chambers thought of Dorrian’s as a second home since his mother worked late and his father was gone.
Jack Dorrian told the New York Times in 1986, “I could tell you all the times youngsters sit down and speak to me and tell me what they receive and what they don’t get at home.” When they could afford to buy themselves steak dinners, my kids would choose to return home and learn how to prepare Chinese cuisine in a wok.
However, Chambers, then 19 years old, was claimed to be making changes in his life by the summer of 1986.
In May of that year, he had started a treatment programme and was looking after an elderly neighbour. He mentioned to his pals that he planned to enrol at Columbia that autumn.
In June 1986, Levin and Chambers first met there. The two seemed to click right together, according to friends. Suddenly, “something snapped between them.”
Throughout the summer, they sometimes got together. Evidently, Levin raved to her pals about how it was “the finest sex” she had ever had.
Partygoers recall Levin storming into the bar, embracing and kissing people she hadn’t seen over the summer or that she wouldn’t see once she departed for college because she was “psyched about heading to Boston next week,” as one person described it.
One young guy who had never met her before described her to New York Magazine as “quite flirty and very extroverted.” She flashed her eyes, which revealed this. When we first met, she kissed me even though she didn’t know who I was.
Chambers reportedly in a terrible mood the night of the murder. He ignored the party going on around him as he sat at the bar drinking by himself.
His 16-year-old girlfriend, Alex Kapp, and he had gotten into a fight earlier that evening about his taking cash out of her wallet the night before. He was mortified when she approached him at Dorrian’s and flung a bunch of condoms in his face, causing a scene.
She recalls addressing him at the moment, “You just lied to me, you took from me, screw you.” (Kapp went on to play the lead in the comedy “The New Adventures of Old Christine”).
Following the altercation, Levin started teasing Chambers in the bar. After spending the whole night conversing, the two departed around 4:30 in the morning. Everything seemed typical.
Her companion Betsy observed, “I remember she seemed kind of mellow—putting her jacket over her left shoulder, tugging her hair, and crossing the street like there was no issue.”
Around 4:50 in the morning, the pair made their way to Central Park and entered at 86th Street. After the Metropolitan Museum, they made their way to a grassy location, where Levin perished horribly.
Chambers provided the sole description of what transpired in a filmed statement to police the next day.
When Chambers reportedly responded that Levin wasn’t interested in paying her a visit at school the next year, Levin reportedly lost his cool and started beating and scratching her. She left to use the restroom nearby and returned in a playful and cordial attitude.
Chambers said that Jennifer had requested “hard sex” from him before playingfully tying his hands with her underwear and titillating his genitalia.
Things became too harsh at one point, according to Chambers, who was nearly a foot taller than his victim at 6’5″ and weighed over 100 pounds more than the kid. She “squeezed his testicles” when he requested Levin to stop, which made him retaliate angrily.
He said that after being able to free himself from the ties, he tossed Jennifer off of him, killing her as she hit the ground.
Around 5 am, a jogger noticed the pair together and believed they were making out, according to the witness. Twenty minutes later, as he was passing by once again, he questioned, “Are you all right?” after hearing someone scream out in agony. Someone said that everything was OK in response. He made light of the incident afterwards with another jogger who had also seen it.
Chambers said that at initially, he was unaware that Levin was dead and attempted to awaken her from what he believed to be a drunken slumber. He watched as soon as police arrived on the scene.
Friends promptly reported to police that they had spotted the girl talking to Chambers outside the pub and that they had also seen them leaving together at the conclusion of the night.
The same day, when police went to his residence, they found that he had scratches all over his face that matched those on Levin’s neck from when she had struggled to pull off her killer’s hands.
He originally put the marks on his cat to blame, but he eventually agreed to go to the station with the police so they could interview him more about Jennifer’s death.
The first time Robert spoke to authorities, he said that he had seen Jennifer at the conclusion of the night outside the pub, but that the two had quickly split ways.
When authorities informed him that witnesses had observed the two leaving together, his tale started to shift. He then admitted to the murder and said that he and Jennifer had gone to Central Park that evening.
Before being taken to prison, Chambers was booked but not permitted to meet his parents.
He eventually caught sight of his father and said, “That f***ing b****, why didn’t she leave me alone?”
To assist guarantee Chambers’ $150,000 bail, Jack Dorrian, the proprietor of Dorrian’s Red Hand, put up his townhouse as security. For Chambers, who had known Dorrian’s boys since they were little children, he was like a second father.
His bail plea was supported by a letter sent by Archbishop Theodore Edgar McCarrick. (McCarrick was excommunicated in 2019 for sexual offences against adults and children.)
His image was prominently shown in the media leading up to his trial, and his whole list of accusations was published.
Chambers earned the moniker “the Preppy Killer.”
At trial, Robert was accused of two counts of second-degree murder. The prosecution was not permitted to introduce the evidence they had found connecting Robert to more than 30 robberies.
After being expelled from Boston University after only one semester there, it found out that he had been stealing for some time to support his cocaine addiction.
In the meanwhile, the defence painted Jennifer as a promiscuous young woman, despite the fact that there was little evidence to back this up other than the fact that she was a well-liked student.
However, the jury was unable to reach a verdict for nine days, so Robert and his counsel decided to plead guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter and burglary.
He was given a jail term ranging from five to fifteen years, and he eventually spent the whole term as well as additional time for his offences behind bars.
In February 2003, Chambers was let out of Auburn Prison amid a media frenzy.
In 2007, he was detained once again for conducting a cocaine business with his girlfriend out of their flat in New York City. As a result of the altercation, a police officer’s thumb was fractured, thus he was additionally charged with one count of resisting arrest.
Doesn’t surprise me, according to former assistant district attorney Linda Fairstein, who tried Chambers for killing Levin. I’ve always thought that his drug and alcohol abuse issues will lead to more difficulty. He had the chance to detox, enrol in college classes, and get his life in order while he was incarcerated, but it is obvious that he has no interest in doing any of it. He hasn’t improved in the past 20 years.
Chambers, who will be freed from jail in 2026, continues to believe that Levin’s death was the result of an accident gone bad.