The Robert Chambers Preppie Murder Case was a lurid mix of sex, crime, kink and class that not only inspired the first tabloid television news re-enactment and a TV movie, but launched the tabloid television genre. We were working New York City local news the summer of 1986 when Jennifer Levin's battered body was found in Central Park; after sociopathic striver Chambers was charged in the killing, were there when legendary newswriter Bob Campbell couldn't get away with the line: "His mother thought she was raising the next John F. Kennedy, but he turned out to be Teddy." A version of the line wound up in the book Tabloid Baby.
Over at A Current Affair, Rafael Abramovitz (who, like Steve Dunleavy, played himself in that TV movie) procured a videotape that showed Chambers doing a Joey Ramone imitation at a party with four Upper East Side girls in their pajamas, twisting the head off a doll and saying, "Oops, I think I killed it." (In the TV movie, for some reason they changed the line to "I think I killed her.") Shades of Phil Spector. And today, 20 years later, as Chambers and one of the little witches from the videotape face many years in prison on cocaine charges, shades of OJ.(The last time we saw Chambers was during the ill-fated revival of A Current Affair two years ago, when producer Jerry Wagshal made his bones and a fascinating tabloid news segment by following Chambers through New York City streets and peppering him with questions after a court appearance on a minor drug charges.)
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"His mother thought she was raising the next John F. Kennedy, but he turned out to be Teddy."