Robert Chambers said he doesn’t know why he’s been arrested. Well, here’s why.
These photographs show the Preppy Killer and his girlfriend selling mounds of cocaine to undercover officers, prosecutors said yesterday.
Prosecutors entered the images – taken from undercover surveillance video – into evidence yesterday as the couple appeared in court to argue for bail.
Just the day before, Chambers told The Post from jail that he didn’t know what he was being charged with.
Court papers quote him asking investigators, “What have I been charged with? Just one sale, or sales?”
He learned yesterday that he faces 14 counts of drug possession and sale, as well as resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer. He could go to prison for life.
Prosecutors also revealed that Chambers may face additional charges stemming from what sources described as the theft of Social Security numbers and other identifying information he wanted to use to procure bogus credit cards.
“Robert Chambers had expressed his involvement with financial-related crimes,” said Assistant District Attorney Daniel Bayles. “We are looking into whether there will be additional charges.”
Sources said investigators were poring over “numerous papers and documents” seized from the couple’s apartment.
Describing him as very knowledgeable about identity theft, the sources said Chambers was caught on tape saying he “has the data and wants to convert it.”
It was not clear if he had been successful.
The images entered into evidence detail the level of degradation Chambers and gal pal Shawn Kovell had sunk to as they turned their East 57th Street apartment into a trash-filled and graffiti-splattered hovel.
In the pictures, the once-handsome child of Upper East Side privilege appears disheveled and strung out in a ratty tank top as he handles a plastic bag of coke. A wasted-away Kovell looks dazed and stares off into the distance – her name spray-painted on the wall below a shelf holding piles of dirty rags.
Underscoring their sorry state, both appeared in court wearing the same clothes they had on when they were arrested Monday night, and both claimed they had no money for a lawyer.
Neither family nor friends came to support them.
Kovell’s court-appointed lawyer, Frank Rothman, said there was little chance his client would be able to raise $50,000 bail figure set by Justice Charles Solomon.
Chambers, 41, had his bail hearing postponed until Monday. Kovell, 39, faces a single count of criminal sale of drugs and faces up to 10 years.
Rothman made efforts to paint his client as a drug-addicted victim who had been inadvertently sucked into Chambers’ nefarious orbit.
“Whether it’s love or whether it’s co-dependency, I don’t know,” he said. “Her only support group was Robert – if you can call it that – and now they are separated.”
In 1986, Chambers infamously killed Jennifer Levin, 18, in a violent Central Park sex romp.