Preppy Killer Robert Chambers and his strung-out girlfriend turned their tony East 57th Street building into a high-traffic drug market as they peddled vast quantities of cocaine from their filthy, one-bedroom crack den on the 17th floor, authorities charged yesterday.
The large number of unsavory drug addicts and dealers traipsing through the halls of Chambers’ building resulted in numerous complaints from neighbors and led to an undercover police sting that ended with the couple’s arrest Monday night, officials said.
“It was, as they say, open and notorious,” said Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau.
In addition to the unsavory visitors, an overwhelming stench from the apartment filled the hallway, which was littered with plastic bags that had once contained drugs, law-enforcement officials said.
“It was the type of apartment you’d expect a crackhead to be living in,” said one official who asked not to be identified.
“He lived like a pig.”
And, like a lot of crackheads, a desperate Chambers, 41, didn’t go without a fight. Police were forced to use a battering ram to break down the apartment door and then scuffled with the 6-foot-5 convicted killer, they said. Three officers suffered broken bones, one a hand, another a thumb, and the third – a captain – his toe.
“Chambers put up a violent struggle,” Morgenthau said,
Police said they discovered a dozen crack pipes and five bags of cocaine in the raid.
The once-privileged child of the Upper East Side appeared gaunt and strung out yesterday, wearing grubby sneakers without laces, a black T-shirt and sweatpants in Manhattan Supreme Court to face 14 counts of drug possession and sale, for which he could face life in prison.
He was additionally charged with resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer.
His longtime girlfriend, Shawn Kovell, 39, was charged only with criminal sale of a controlled substance, although authorities said she was intimately involved in the operation.
Both were held without bail until tomorrow after telling the judge they did not have lawyers and could not afford to hire any.
While they primarily trafficked in cocaine from the high-rise near the corner of Sutton Place, the couple also dealt crack and marijuana in smaller quantities, officials said.
Chambers generally acted as a middleman for friends, moving tens of thousands of dollars of blow through his apartment over a few months, police sources said. He collected about 30 percent profit, with most of it allegedly going up his and Kovell’s noses.
The walls came crashing down on Chambers and Kovell after undercovers – spurred by neighbors’ complaints – bought large amounts of cocaine at the apartment, officials said. In all, the cops purchased nearly $10,000 worth of drugs during seven different sales.
Two of the sales were for more than two ounces of cocaine, a felony punishable by up to 30 years in prison each.
During the undercover buys – which were recorded with hidden cameras – Chambers was described as exhibiting a “split personality.” In some cases, he acted “spooked and paranoid” during the transaction, saying little and acting very businesslike.
Other times, he rambled on, speaking nonsensically. Once, Chambers bragged about the quality of the crack he had on sale.
“In fact, I cooked it myself. I cooked it twice,” he boasted, according to a source.
Kovell was present during some of the buys, but at other times stayed in another room where Chambers said she was “dope sick,” the source said.
Neighbors said Kovell – who grew up in the building and inherited the apartment when her mother died – had wasted away to a shell of her former self.
“She used to be good looking. She used to have some weight on her, but not now,” said Lenny Newbill, who runs a shoe-repair store on the building’s ground floor.
A neighbor, who would not give her name said, “You could tell she had a problem. You could hear her crying and yelling. I just want them to go away.” Chambers did not leave the apartment frequently, but when he did. he appeared “sluggish, half asleep . . . and drifting off,” said neighbor Barbara Roth.
“It was absolutely horrible,” she said.
With the frequent presence of sleazy customers in the building, neighbors filed numerous complaints with police and 311, leading to the sting. The building’s management had also made moves to have the couple thrown out, and eviction notices had been placed on their door several times, neighbors said.
Now that they have been arrested, neighbors said good riddance.
“What can you possibly say about him except put him away for good,” said one woman.
Chambers achieved infamy as the Preppy Killer on Aug. 26, 1986, when he strangled 18-year-old Jennifer Levin in Central Park after they met at the Upper East Side hangout Dorrian’s Red Hand.
When he was first arrested, the sociopath denied killing Levin – claiming scratches on his face had come from his cat. Eventually, he admitted he had strangled her, but claimed that it happened accidentally during what he called “rough sex.”
He finally pleaded guilty to manslaughter while the jury deliberated, and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. While in jail, he was so poorly behaved, he served the full term, plus an additional two years for smuggling and selling drugs.
In the interim, he was ordered to pay the Levin family $25 million in a wrongful-death suit. He never did.
When he was released in February 2003, he initially moved to Georgia, where he lived with Kovell and her relatives.
The pair knew each other dating back to Levin’s death. Kovell appeared lingerie-clad in an infamous video made while Chambers awaited trial, in which he popped the head off a doll and jokingly said, “Oops, I think I killed her.”
By 2004, the pair moved into the apartment off Sutton Place after her mother died.
Interviewed by The Post not long after he moved in, Chambers said he was clean and trying to get on with his life.
“I don’t drink. I drink coffee and I smoke cigarettes – and that’s the next thing that’s going to go,” he said. “I got things to do. I don’t have time to get high. I owe $25 million [to the Levin family]. I don’t have the money to get high.”
At the time, he said he hadn’t paid the Levins because he wasn’t working. He later told officials he had a job engraving trophies in New Jersey.
But later that year, he was busted in Harlem driving with a suspended license, and officers found residue of drugs in his 1999 Saab.
He pleaded guilty the following year to misdemeanor heroin possession and served 100 days.
Morgenthau said no one was surprised that Chambers had fallen afoul of the law again.
“He was charged with dealing drugs in prison, so we weren’t surprised to see him again,” he said.
Additional reporting by Jennifer Fermino and Murray Weiss