Hearing closes with Danielle's parents' emotional testimony
Posted on 03/15/2002 6:59:05 AM PST by FresnoDA
Hearing closes with Danielle's parents' emotional testimony
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 Westerfield to stand trial By Alex Roth March 15, 2002 David Westerfield was ordered yesterday to stand trial in the slaying of Danielle van Dam, after her parents spent an emotional day on the witness stand retracing their steps before and after their daughter disappeared. "I have reasonable cause to believe that Mr. Westerfield is guilty" of kidnapping and murdering the 7-year-old girl, Superior Court Judge H. Ronald Domnitz ruled. In her testimony, Brenda van Dam told of having four alcoholic drinks that night at the bar, playing pool, dancing, and again smoking marijuana outside in her truck before heading home when the bar stopped serving drinks for the night a few minutes before 2 a.m.
Brenda van Dam admitted under cross-examination by Westerfield's attorney, Steven Feldman, that she told investigators her friends were "toasted," referring to their inebriated state.
'An empty bed'In frequently tearful testimony, she told of the panic she felt after waking up the next morning, going downstairs to make breakfast and then going back upstairs to wake her daughter and finding her gone from her pink-and-purple bedroom. Danielle's bedroom door was open, she said, and she was asked what she saw inside. "An empty bed." She became frantic, she said, searching every room, looking under beds, calling her name. Her husband, Damon van Dam, began searching for Danielle outside. "I went outside and looked in the Jacuzzi and places you never want to look," she said, "and then I called 911." A uniformed police officer arrived and asked her, Damon and their two boys to leave the house until investigators arrived, Brenda van Dam testified. "Before I knew it, it was total chaos," she said. "There were lots of people on the street looking for Danielle. One of our neighbors made missing-child posters. "We weren't allowed back in by the Police Department because they were searching for evidence."
Says barely knew WesterfieldBrenda van Dam said she barely knew Westerfield, and as of a week before Danielle's disappearance the night of Feb. 1 did not know his name and had only limited contact with him as a neighbor. She said although Westerfield bought her and her friends drinks at Dad's Feb. 1, she denied dancing with him and said she didn't notice when he later left the bar. Van Dam said the first time she ever spoke with him was a year earlier when she and her daughter went door-to-door in the neighborhood, selling Girl Scout cookies. Westerfield, a self-employed engineer, lived two houses away from the van Dams in Sabre Springs, a San Diego neighborhood adjacent to Poway.
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Prosecutors could announce as soon as March 28 – the next scheduled court hearing in the case – whether they intend to seek the death penalty against Westerfield, a 50-year-old twice-divorced engineer who lived two homes from the van Dams.
The judge's decision followed three days of evidence presented by the prosecution that included testimony linking Danielle's DNA to Westerfield's motor home and his jacket. They also presented evidence that Westerfield lied to police and possessed pornographic images depicting rape fantasies and under-age females engaged in sex acts.
The hearing also provided a glimpse of what could be Westerfield's defense – that the crimes were carried out by someone else, someone with intimate knowledge of the van Dam household.
Although the first two days of the preliminary hearing were largely technical, yesterday was riveting.
Crying at times, and at other times bristling at questions about their lifestyle, the parents testified about their activities on the night of Feb. 1 and about the hours after they discovered their daughter missing from her pink-and-purple bedroom the next morning.
Damon van Dam recalled the last time his daughter went to sleep in the house: She brushed her teeth, read to her 5-year-old brother, got into bed and received a good-night kiss from her father. The next morning, he said, she was gone.
The mother, a part-time bookseller, wept when she talked about the hearts and flowers on her daughter's bedroom door, and about the sparkle-covered shirt she'd bought Danielle for an upcoming father-daughter dance.
The father, a software engineer, blanched when asked how many children he had.
"Three," he responded, then softly corrected himself: "Two."
Through the day, the lawyers undertook the delicate process of probing what the parents were doing on the night before Danielle was discovered missing.
Brenda van Dam admitted smoking marijuana, drinking and dancing with friends and strangers at a local bar – a bar where she knew Westerfield, their neighbor, also planned to show up.
She and several friends returned to the van Dam house, where one of her friends was briefly kissed by Damon van Dam while they were on his bed upstairs.
Much of the parents' testimony focused on the little things they said seemed slightly amiss with their home security that night: Alarm lights flashed, a sliding-glass door was discovered open, an outdoor gate was found unlatched and their dog was whimpering.
Prosecutors say Westerfield kidnapped Danielle the night of Feb. 1 or the next morning to sexually assault her. Her nude, decomposed body was found Feb. 27 in a rural area east of El Cajon.
In an unusual move at a preliminary hearing, Westerfield's lead attorney, Steven Feldman, attempted to call witnesses and launch a defense against the charges to contradict the van Dams' testimony.
The attempt fizzled after Domnitz rejected some of Feldman's arguments and worked out a compromise to put several witnesses' statements into the record.
Feldman spent much of the hearing trying to question the van Dams about what he labeled their "swinging lifestyle" and the types of people that lifestyle might have attracted.
Feldman asked both parents about whether they had made statements about having recently become "swingers" – couples who swap partners. The parents didn't directly answer the questions, usually because the judge decided most of the questions weren't relevant.
The defense attorney also asked whether Danielle had a habit of playing in the neighborhood unsupervised, or whether she'd ever sneaked out of the house.
Domnitz has issued a gag order prohibiting lawyers, police or witnesses from commenting, but several defense experts who have been following the case say Feldman probably will try to argue that Danielle might have sneaked into Westerfield's motor home, which could explain how her blood and fingerprints got inside.
Both the van Dams testified that Westerfield was almost a complete stranger whose name they had only learned recently, even though he'd been their neighbor since they moved into their home three years ago.
Damon van Dam, 36, said he had a few, brief neighborly chats with Westerfield. Brenda van Dam, 39, recalled waving to Westerfield a few times, as she did with other neighbors.
The first time she talked to him, she said, was when she and Danielle sold him Girl Scout cookies a year or so earlier.
She couldn't recall any subsequent contacts with Westerfield until Friday, Jan. 25, when she went with two friends to Dad's Cafe, a restaurant and bar in Poway. Westerfield was there, chatted briefly with the three women and bought them drinks, she said.
She saw him again a few days later when she and Danielle again went to his house to sell Girl Scout cookies, she said. Her younger son, Dylan, 5, was also along.
Westerfield showed her his remodeled kitchen and filled out a form to buy cookies. As the children explored his backyard pool area, he mentioned that he'd be back at Dad's that Friday and wanted to meet her two girlfriends, she testified.
"He asked me to tell my friends I had a rich neighbor to introduce them to," she said.
He also made reference to hosting "adult" parties, she said, adding she wasn't sure what that meant.
That Friday, Feb. 1 – the night before Danielle was discovered missing – Brenda van Dam and her two friends went back to Dad's after smoking marijuana in the garage with Damon, she testified. He stayed home playing video games with the children.
At the bar the women ran into Westerfield. This time he was with two friends, she said.
Again, Westerfield bought the women drinks, she said. She denied dancing with him. Westerfield's lawyers later identified witnesses who they say will testify they saw Westerfield and Brenda van Dam dance together.
Brenda van Dam said during her stay at Dad's she and her friends smoked more marijuana in her truck before returning home at closing time. She said she brought along her two girlfriends and two male friends that they had met up with at the bar.
By this time she'd consumed three cranberry-and-vodka drinks and a shot of tequila and a non-alcoholic energy drink, she said.
Entering the house she noticed a blinking red light on the security alarm system indicating a door or window was ajar in the house. She later noticed that a garage door to the outside of the house was open. The group had opened the door earlier that night to let the marijuana smoke out, she said.
The garage has another door leading to the inside of the house, according to testimony. That door locks from inside the garage because they didn't want their children wandering into the garage when they were smoking marijuana, the parents testified.
Meanwhile, Damon van Dam was up in his bedroom. After his wife, the two girlfriends and the two men came into the house, one of his wife's friends – identified as Barbara – went upstairs and Damon van Dam kissed her and rubbed her back on the bed, he testified.
The two went downstairs after about five minutes and joined the other four for pizza. The visitors left about 2:30 a.m., and the couple went to bed, Damon testified.
Neither parent checked on the children until the next morning, they said. Damon had put the children to bed about 10 p.m.
Later, Damon woke up to go to the bathroom and noticed a flashing red light on the alarm system. He said he went downstairs and discovered the sliding glass door open. He closed it.
When prosecutor Jeff Dusek asked him why he didn't check on the children at that point, Damon van Dam said, "I didn't believe I had any reason to. I assumed in my state of drowsiness that one of the other people in the house had left the door open."
The next morning, Brenda van Dam found her daughter's door open and "an empty bed," she testified.
What followed was "total chaos," the mother recalled. Both parents frantically searched under the beds, on the side of the house, in the Jacuzzi. The father ran around the block. And one of the van Dams noticed a side gate on the house had been unlatched.
By mid-morning the entire neighborhood was involved in hunting for Danielle – a search that evolved into one of the biggest volunteer efforts in the history of San Diego County.
AND ... just having smoked a marijuana cigarette. Awesome!!!
Yes, we've talked about that before. Anyone know if it's easy to buy? I've never bought it. =:->
Welcome Home! Yes some of us have noticed...
You will also run across people that admit to being "swingers" on FR they will tell you how they love their wives..you are also free to ignore them.. ( they are libertarians..not conservatives)
Politics does make strange bedfellows ..
It is just at times like this we start to worry about the company we keep:>(
I don't think this has been established (in fact, I think she was alive when abducted).
She left a palm print in the motor home. You don't leave that kind of print when dead.
I thought you might have forgotten about these, so I pulled them back up for you.
H mm, was it dark and scary or overwhelming and sentimental?
Was she abused and neglected or did the poor little child seem to be happy, smart, above average in her language skills?
Did she seem ''well adjusted'' according to peers and their parents?
Anxiety, worries grip missing girl's parents http://video.uniontrib.com/news/metro/danielle/20020207-9999_1n7girl.html February 7, 2002
***The nonprofit Millennium Children's Fund has offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to Danielle's safe return. The child-advocacy group is based in Beverly Hills. Douglas Pierce, who works with the fund, spent an hour in the house with the family yesterday.
"I visited Danielle's room and it was very emotional, very overwhelming," Pierce said. "There were all her favorite things waiting for her." The room is painted in Danielle's favorite colors, pink with purple trim. Alongside Danielle's bed was her favorite toy, a giant green frog that she hugged at night. A Barbie doll sat near a collection of stuffed toys. A journal was open to the last entry, penned last week about good will, Pierce said.
http://video.uniontrib.com/news/metro/danielle/20020228-9999_1n28girl.html
Danielle often wrote her parents letters. The last night she was seen alive, she hugged and kissed her father as he tucked her into bed.
Her parents reported her missing Feb. 2 after her mother went to wake her and she wasn't in her canopy bed.
Her friends' parents described her as strong-headed but obedient. She loved to go to sleepovers with her friends, and parents didn't mind inviting her over, said Paula Call, whose daughter Sara was a friend of Danielle's.
"It's a joy to have her come to your home," Call said in an interview soon after Danielle disappeared. "She's really a well-rounded little girl."
http://video.uniontrib.com/news/metro/danielle/20020217-9999_1mi17vandam.html
"She enjoys being a little girl," said family friend Paula Call.
Danielle's friends and her classmates at Creekside Elementary School describe her as a sweet, quiet girl who laughs a lot.
Danielle is an obedient, well-mannered child who asks her mother's permission to cross the street or get a snack from the refrigerator. She likes to color and play with dolls, and she recently started taking piano lessons. She's enrolled in a ballet class and loves reading and writing.
The night before her disappearance, she was reading and writing while her father and brothers played video games. Later in the evening, just before she went to bed, she was teaching her 5-year-old brother, Dylan, to read.
Nearly every day she jotted down her thoughts in a journal she kept at home.Danielle sometimes explored complex topics for a 7-year-old, like how she could change the world, Call said. Brenda, a stay-at-home mother, was the "cookie mom" for Danielle's Brownie troop and volunteers regularly in her children's classrooms. "She loved for me to be there," Brenda van Dam said. The mother and daughter are very close, said Call, the family friend. Brenda van Dam, who has referred to Danielle as her "best friend," often took her daughter with her to appointments at a beauty salon, and Danielle would sit in a massaging chair while her mother got manicures. Last year, she took Danielle to get her nails painted and her hair styled for a father-daughter dance at her elementary school. Yesterday, her mother hung ribbons at a park near their home to keep Danielle in people's minds.
I think I recall early on the parents were on the TV saying things like "If you see this Danielle - come home." Does anyone else recall that? Why would they say that if they thought she had truly been kidnapped - like she would just see that and be able to come home?
How is it known when the palm print happened? There could have been monkey business involving multiple people, prior to the murder.
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