I'd like to know who was the idiot who recommended the Levys hire Monica's Mom's lawyer. What a disservice this did to finding the killer. If the Levys (and I don't blame them -- it surely was a horrible time for them) had hired a PI instead, he (and even amateurs) would have realized that parts of the park were not searched. Instead, many thought that the reason the parents hired a lawyer was because they knew Chandra had taken off and would need one.
Why did the Levys hire a lawyer and not a PI? That is a good question which someone started to answer on another thread. He or she said that they probably were seeking to gain influence in DC. That explanation started me on a train of thought. I think the Levys, like their daughter, had unshaken faith in the corrupted ways of DC (without seeing them as being corrupted of course.) You buy yourself influence, you sleep your way to the top, that's how things work, you go along if you want to get along. Most non-FReeper people in this country have learned to accept corruption of our institutions as normal, haven't they?
An influential lawyer is an insider in the swamp, playing by its rules and (maybe) getting things done. A PI is an outsider who doesn't play the insiders' game and hiring a PI would require a healthy dose of cynicism about how things work in DC or in any big American city for that matter. People with a healthy dose of cynicism would not consider sending their daughters to be interns in the swamp in the first place, I think.