The guilty verdict was likely based on the young girl's blood and hair found in Westerfield's RV. The child porn they found didn't help him much, either.
Westerfield-van Dam case
“The guilty verdict was likely based on the young girl’s blood and hair found in Westerfield’s RV. The child porn they found didn’t help him much, either.”
Blood and hair:
Short answer:
Evidence must be proved valid and can’t have an innocent explanation. The evidence you mention fails those tests.
Short explanation:
There was just one small drop of blood, which was not photographed or measured, and just three hairs, only one of which was nuclear DNA matched to her. The RV was often parked (and unlocked) in the streets very close to her house. She was often in the streets in very close proximity to it (walking to school, to the park, to her friend, even just playing) and could have briefly snuck into it. And of course she had innocently been in his house just a couple of days prior - Locard transfer.
Child porn:
Short answer:
There wasn’t any.
Short explanation:
If there had been any child porn, he’d have been charged under a child porn statute: he wasn’t. Several members of law enforcement said it wasn’t child porn, but this testimony wasn’t allowed. Photos of a teenage girl sunbathing in her bikini were shown in court in an attempt to prove he was sexually attracted to a 7-year-old.
Comment:
The media was very superficial in their coverage of the Westerfield-van Dam case, they didn’t ask pertinent questions which would have cast serious doubt on the prosecution case. For example, they - like the police - ignored foreign blood on the bed she was abducted from, and ignored foreign hair found under her body. That’s inexcusable. Brian Laundrie certainly appears guilty from the reports I’ve seen, but I hope the media at least try to be fair to him.