'Preppie Killer' to use drug addiction defense

BY MARIA ALVAREZ | Special to Newsday

March 12, 2008

Robert Chambers will use a psychiatric "poly-substance abuse" defense, his lawyer said in court yesterday, claiming Chambers' lifelong drug addiction to heroin, cocaine and prescription drugs led to the drug dealing enterprise he operated out of a Manhattan apartment last year.

At a pre-trial hearing before Judge Edward McLaughlin in Manhattan Criminal Court, defense attorney Valerie Van Leer-Greenberg said when Chambers -- the convicted, so-called "Preppy Killer" -- was arrested in October, he was put on methadone to wean him off heroin addiction.

"He did not act knowingly," Van Leer-Greenberg said in court, of the drug operation.

But prosecutor Daniel Bayles asked that Chambers sign a release allowing prosecutors to examine medical records on his drug addiction to rebut the psychiatric defense.

Chambers' lawyer consented and agreed to turn over results of exams given to Chambers by doctors before the next court appearance in April.

Chambers, 41, and his live-in girlfriend Shawn Kovell, 39, have pleaded not guilty to selling drugs to undercover police. Kovell is in a Bronx drug rehabilitation center.

Chambers served 15 years in state prision for the strangulation murder of Jennifer Levin, 18, during a tryst in Central Park in 1986.

Chambers and Kovell were living in her mother's East 57th Street apartment in Manhattan. Police conducted a three-month surveillance there and Chambers allegedly sold about a half-pound of cocaine -- worth about $20,000 -- on seven occasions to undercover police.

If convicted on the 14 counts of possessing and selling drugs, Chambers faces life in prison.