It had been a great evening as several girlfriends working in Washington, D.C. enjoyed a night on the town. On January 9, 1999, the group of young women watched the film A Civil Action before dining at a nearby restaurant, Lauriol Plaza.

One of the women, twenty-eight-year-old Joyce Chiang, did not have a car, so her friend Kathy offered to give her a ride home. En route, Joyce asked Kathy to stop at a Starbucks. Despite the cold weather, Joyce told Kathy she would walk the remaining four blocks from the coffee shop to her apartment. Kathy tried to persuade Joyce to let her drive her home, insisting it was no problem. Not wanting to put her friend out any more, Joyce assured Kathy she would be fine. Kathy relented and went on her way as Joyce entered the coffee shop. Twenty-five years later, Kathy is still wishing she had been more assertive.

A chilling crime was about to occur on that chilly evening in the nation’s capital. Someone sinister struck shortly after Joyce Chiang exited the Starbucks.

 

Joyce Chiang

While attending Georgetown Law School, Joyce Chiang worked as an intern for Howard Berman, who, from 1983-2003, was the representative of California’s 28th Congressional District which encompassed parts of central Los Angeles. Berman later hired her as an immigration advisor.

Congressional Intern

After graduating Georgetown Law School in 1995, Joyce became a lawyer for the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).

She lived with her brother Roger in the Dupont Circle area of Washington, D.C., a popular residential neighborhood noted for its nightlife.

INS Lawyer

Joyce never arrived at her apartment after Kathy dropped her at the Starbucks.

Three days later, graffiti was found on a wall near the coffeehouse reading “Good Day J.C. may I never miss the thrill of being near you.” Joyce’s friends and family believe the message was left by her abductor but it was never determined who wrote the graffiti.

Cryptic Graffiti

After seeing television news reports of Joyce’s disappearance three days later, a couple realized they had found her billfold three days earlier while walking along a riverbank in Anacostia Park, approximately five miles southeast of the Starbucks. They had given the billfold, which contained Joyce’s government credit card, to the Park Police. This time, the couple contacted the Washington, D.C. police.

The FBI assumed jurisdiction in the investigation into Joyce’s disappearance because she was a federal employee. Along the banks of the Anacostia River, a search and rescue team found her apartment keys, video store rental and grocery cards, as well as her gloves and the jacket she was wearing on the evening of her disappearance. Investigators were unable to determine what had caused a tear running down the back of the jacket.

Belongings Found

In April, three months later, a canoeist paddling approximately eight miles downstream from where Joyce’s personal items had been found saw a body along the shore. DNA tests confirmed it was the missing lawyer. Due to the pronounced decomposition of her body, a cause of death could not be ascertained and was listed as undetermined.

The case stalled for two years until a similar and much more high-profiled disappearance occurred in the nation’s capital.

Body Found

On May 1, 2001, twenty-four-year-old Chandra Levy, an intern with the Federal Bureau of Prisons, was reported missing. Her disappearance leaped to front page national news after it was rumored that she and California Congressman Gary Condit, thirty years her senior, were having an affair.

                                          Chandra Levy      Gary Condit

In June 2002, just over a year after Chandra vanished, a hiker’s dog in Washington, D.C.’s Rock Creek Park found a human skull not far from the commonly used paths. When police arrived on the scene, they found additional bones, a jogger’s bra, and a cassette player in the foliage.

Dental records confirmed the remains were those of Chandra Levy. Her death was ruled a homicide, but an autopsy was unable to determine the cause.

Remains Found

Chandra Levy’s disappearance and murder brought renewed interest in the death of Joyce Chiang because of several similarities in the women’s cases:
• Joyce and Chandra had both served as interns in Washington, D.C.
• Both women had the same types of friends involved in the political arena
• They lived within a few blocks from one another
• Both frequented the Starbucks coffee shop
• Both were petite brunettes

Despite the numerous similarities, police were unable to find any evidence that the women knew each other or that they had any common friends.

Striking Similarities

In March 2009, nearly seven years after Chandra Levy’s remains were found, Ingmar Guandique, an illegal immigrant and Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang member from El Salvador, was charged with her murder. Guandique had been convicted of assaulting two other women in Rock Creek Park, the area where Chandra’s body was found. Those assaults occurred in March and April 2001, only three-to-four weeks after Chandra’s disappearance.

Jail informant Armando Morales told police Guandique had confessed to killing Chandra Levy. Investigators found he had not gone to work on the day she vanished, and evidence recovered with Chandra’s remains suggested she was attacked in a virtually identical way to Guandique’s assault victims. In addition, investigators found a photograph of Chandra among his belongings.

Police believe Guandique attacked and tied up Chandra in the remote area of the park where he assaulted her and left her to die of dehydration and exposure. In November 2010, he was convicted of her murder, and he was sentenced to sixty years in prison in February 2011.

In 2015, however, Guandique’s conviction was overturned after a woman provided an audiotape on which Morales is heard saying he lied about the confession.

Ingmar Guandique

In July 2016, prosecutors announced they would not re-try Guandique for Chandra Levy’s murder. He was turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and has since been deported to his native El Salvador.

Authorities say there is nothing connecting Ingmar Guandique to the death of Joyce Chiang.

Deported

Because of his covert affair with Chandra Levy, Congressman Gary Condit was the media’s focus in her disappearance and subsequent murder. He was, however, never formally a suspect, having been quickly cleared of involvement by police as he was in meetings throughout May 1, 2001, the day Chandra vanished.

Condit lost his bid for re-election in the 2002 Democratic primary largely because of the negative publicity resulting for the scandal.  Despite being formally cleared of involvement in Chanda’s murder, the overturning of Ingmar Guandique’s conviction has brought renewed suspicion on the former Congressman. Investigators say no new evidence has surfaced suggesting his involvement and that he is still not considered him a suspect.

The Former Congressman Is Cleared  

Of Killing The Intern

Joyce Chiang’s death has now officially been ruled a murder and authorities believe they know the culprits. No charges, however, have been brought because prosecutors believe the evidence is insufficient to gain convictions.

In January 2011, police stated they believe three men, Steve Allen, Neil Joaquin, and an unidentified man, abducted Joyce while she was walking home from the Starbucks coffee shop and took her to the banks of the Anacostia River with the intention of robbing her. Once there, investigators believe, Joyce tried to flee, only to slip on the ice and fall into the river, where she succumbed to the frigid temperature.
Allen is serving a life sentence in federal prison for an unrelated crime, while Joaquin was deported to Guyana in 2006.  If charges were to be brought, it is unlikely Joaquin would be returned to the United States if he is still in Guyana because the two countries do not have an extradition treaty. I could not find a picture of either man.

Authorities have also officially determined there is no connection between the murders of Joyce Chiang and Chandra Levy, nor to that of another Washington, D.C. woman.

The Murders Are Not Related

On August 1,1998, five months before Joyce Chiang’s murder, twenty-eight-year-old Christine Mirzayan, a Fellow in the second year of the Policy Fellowship Program with the Center of Education in Washington, D.C., was raped and murdered while walking home from a barbecue in the Georgetown neighborhood. Police say she was killed by a blow to her head from a seventy-pound rock.

Christine’s murder was, for a time, believed related to Joyce and Chandra’s cases but has now been found to be a separate crime.

Christine Mirzayan

DNA testing connected Christine Mirzayan’s rape and murder to eight other rapes committed in the Georgetown area from 1991 to 1998.

The perpetrator was dubbed the “Potomac River Rapist.”

Composites Of The Potomac River Rapist

In November 2019, sixty-year-old Giles Warrick of Conway, South Carolina, was arrested and charged in connection with the rapes and murder committed in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C. Parabon Nabalos, a Reston, Virginia, company providing DNA phenotyping services for law enforcement, used DNA from the crime scenes to create a family tree for the perpetrator. The profile led to five possible suspects and detective work led to Warrick’s arrest. He was working as a landscaper and painter in Maryland at the time of the rapes and murder.

Warrick was charged with ten rapes and one murder, that of Christine Mirzayan.

Giles Warrick

In September 2021, Giles Warrick pled not guilty to the murder of Christine Mirzayan. His trial was scheduled to begin on November 29, 2022.  On November 19, Warrick committed suicide in his jail cell. During a morning check, he was found hanging from a tied-up bed sheet.

Authorities believe Warrick committed more rapes and possibly more murders. Joyce Chiang and Chandra Levy, however, are not believed to be among his victims.

Warrick Takes His Own Life

Joyce Chiang’s brother, John, served as California State Treasurer from 2014 until January 7, 2019.

In 2016, he announced his campaign for Governor of California in the 2018 election, but he did not receive enough votes in the Democratic primary to qualify for the runoff.

John Chiang

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/152406970/joyce-chiang#

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/6439561/chandra-ann-levy#

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/171843311/christine-m-mirzayan#

SOURCES:

• America’s Most Wanted
• Fox News
• Los Angeles Times
• NBC News
• New York Times
• Unsolved Mysteries
• Washington Post