Some really good questions, Peach. Can tell you were following closely back then.
Glad you got to take a look at some of what I wrote, there's a lot more, hope you have other questiions to think about.
First, a clarification. The computer hard drive wasn't wiped clean. It was obliterated, that is, damaged such that neither the laptop nor even removing the hard drive and placing it in a read device could access it. However, a lab did read data off of it. This is done with more powerful equipment for scanning the hard drive for data.
So we ended up knowing what was on the computer despite the attempt to destroy it. Obviously a blatant destruction would have lost all data but this was an attempt that was not noticeable, i.e., not a sledgehammer attack. It was a more careful slamming or something that didn't break the laptop case.
I wrote On Her Computer to describe what happened and let the reader decide if it was her. After all, there was nothing that identified the user. The closest thing to a personal activity was forwarding a fare email to her parents concerning flights for them, but forwarded without comment. It would take someone that was familiar with Chandra to do that.
Of course, the Condit's were separately occupied at that time, and that is a lot of effort for no known benefit. The only thing that makes sense is to make it look like Chandra was not abducted in the wee hours and that wasn't her scream. Also it was focused searching on the Condit's and included a high level activity search on Rock Creek Park through the Washington Post, not with any detail, but yet her remains were found there. So if anything if not Chanda it would have been a setup of Condit for her death, although that would be a pretty extreme conspiracy theory.
The key to this is that Condit was never supposed to be tied to Chandra. That was the point of all the secrecy. And she honored that for the most part, one slip to her aunt gave it away, but she said you didn't hear that and her aunt pretended she hadn't. I'm sure Condit didn't know she was telling family and friends back in California she was dating a Congressman though, although she denied to her parents it was Condit.
Condit didn't find out until Chandra asked him about Rev. Thomas and his daughter, an inconsolable father telling her mother to warn Chandra about Condit. Whatever the reason, when Chandra asked Condit all phone records ceased as of that day, she was told to leave her paid interneship job the next week, Condit's wife flew in, and Chandra disappeared.
Even then, he didn't expect the police to link him, so when they came to question him about Chandra while they were getting a search warrant for her computer, they find her computer obliterated the next day, And a handwritten note on the counter about a cerebral hemorrage and cardiac arrest on her counter. In what handwriting? No details given. This was never mentioned by police. The Public Defenders raised it at Guandique's trial.
Why would there be a note like that on her counter? Remember that Condit's first story to police was that Chandra was obsessed with him and distraught at his refusal to take her calls, and the police thought she was suicidal. They didn't even look for her. They were waiting for her body to be found. Someone also told them and it got out discretely to some reporters that Chandra was a "frequent jogger" in Rock Creek Park. The anonymous early reporting on that (no bylines) cited "friends' that said Chandra was a frequent jogger in Rock Creek Park. Yet her actual friends Sven and Jennifer said it wasn't even a concept she entertained. I believe the only source of that could be Condit. He was a "friend" he told police.
There are no known normal browsing habits of Chandra, her parents probably would be only possible source of that. It looks like right down her bookmark list with heavy searching on Condit and his children, including Lexis Nexis Congressional schedule which of course is an expensive paid service. She would have used her government password for access although no longer an intern, or of course password could have been saved and user just clicked through, so again your call. But once in the usage was of determining Condit's schedule.
Most likely it was Chandra, and whoever obliterated her computer after Condit was linked to her that evening with police visit, didn't necessarily know exactly what was on it, just that they didn't want police to see what activity was on it.
And of course they would need a key to her apartment, which was not found with her remains.
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