New York’s ‘Preppie Killer’ rearrested

NEW YORK – The so-called “Preppie Killer,” who served 15 years in prison for strangling a woman in Central Park during what he said was rough sex, was in jail Tuesday after police said he repeatedly sold undercover officers cocaine out of his apartment.

Robert Chambers, 41, put up a fight during the raid late Monday, police said. One officer suffered a broken thumb and another had a strained ligament in his hand, authorities reported.

District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said Chambers is facing 14 counts of drug possession and sale. Morgenthau said he likely will be charged with resisting arrest and assault.

On Tuesday a judge ordered Chambers held without bail until Thursday after Chambers said he did not have a lawyer and could not afford to hire one.

Chambers was released from prison on Valentine’s Day 2003 after serving 15 years for the 1986 strangling of 18-year-old Jennifer Levin, a graduate of the exclusive Baldwin School, during a tryst in Central Park. The slaying was splashed across the headlines as the story of a handsome, privileged, prep school youth gone bad.

Tall, lean and unshaven at Tuesday’s hearing, Chambers wore a black T-shirt with black sweatpants and dirty white sneakers with no laces and no socks. With his hands cuffed behind him, he looked alert and calm, and answered the judge’s questions in a clear voice.