Posted on 01/08/2003 9:24:19 AM PST by TomB
In a videotaped interrogation with San Diego police detectives four days after Danielle van Dam was kidnapped, an exhausted David Westerfield says "my life is over," seemingly coming close to an admission that he murdered his 7-year-old neighbor.
"As far as I'm concerned my life is over, the life that I had, the life that I was living is over," Westerfield says in the interrogation conducted the evening of Feb. 5, 2002. Danielle was last seen the night of Feb. 1.
"But you can't blame anyone but yourself, Dave," answers one of the police detectives.
"And I have no problem with that," Westerfield replies.
In the tapes released Tuesday, Westerfield admits "unusual" sexual encounters with his wife, denies anything improper about his alleged use of binoculars to watch neighbors and says the child pornography found on his computer was simply something he downloaded along with a lot of other pornographic images and that he had no sexual interest in children.
Superior Court Judge William Mudd agreed Monday to unseal the videotape along with hundreds of pages of transcripts, documents and recordings in the Westerfield case, as well as transcripts of police interrogations and court hearings conducted in secret.
Some of the material – audiotape and videotape of Westerfield being interrogated during the early stages of the investigation – was released Tuesday afternoon.
The remainder of the material, which ranges from transcripts of closed-door court hearings to motions regarding potential evidence, will be released Monday, Mudd ruled.
The ruling Monday came three days after Mudd sentenced the former design engineer to death for kidnapping and murdering 7-year-old Danielle van Dam, his neighbor in Sabre Springs.
Monday's court hearing came in response to a request by The San Diego Union-Tribune, which has been seeking access to the information for months. The San Diego-based 4th District Court of Appeal has ruled that Mudd must release the information.
The San Diego chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists made a donation to the legal costs.
Westerfield, who attended Monday's hearing, is scheduled to be moved within days to death row at San Quentin State Prison outside San Francisco.
During earlier court appearances, Westerfield was always dressed in civilian attire, but he appeared in court Monday in a green jail jumpsuit. He sat in a holding area so he couldn't be filmed by a television camera.
Many times my thoughts have been the same. "Tis a vexation of the spirit".
That would be another reason to preclude it.
I can't say that given this evidence, one could say DW didn't do some wierd things. But are they proof he killed Danielle? My opinion is no. The large amount of porn actually explains why the inclusion of child and or rape porn. If his collection was limited to just the child/rape stuff, I would say that was more convincing as proof of motive.
"Insinuating?" Why would I waste my time doing that? I say exactly what I think.
This is a fill in the blanks case. Say, "baseball bat" and the daytime tv watching females and femi-males will take it from there, providing the most perverse and nonsensical conclusions imaginable.
Have some half-wit teen come in and say, "teeth rubbing" and the "see myself as a victim" nature of females will empathize with the nitwit and provide the sickest, most perverted analysis possible to explain it.
They will also mock anyone who disagrees, seeing it as an attack on their "right" not to take responsibility for anything.
This is why, for example, during the late 60's a women could protest the Vietnam War by spitting on our troops and calling them "baby killers" and the next day participate in a protest of the denial by the government of her "right" to kill her own baby.
Not hate, at least me. It is distrust. It is the reality of seeing everyone in any political office from the President on down to the Town Council (See Kansas City Mo and KS, town councils using Credit cards for personal purchases, graft, payoffs,etc) lying, cheating, and stealing from the public. It is from hearing over and over again that our society has gotten to the point where stomping on everyone else is the way to get ahead. X42 set the prime example. It is watching police poorly paid, and at fear for their life, convinced to turn their head, convinced to shoot first or die, surrounded by protection, yet in fear for their life every working moment of their lives. It is having a justice system where deals are made, where judges have prostitutes doing them sexual favors in between court sessions where they hypocritically fine men and jail them for paying a prostitute.
Why do I so mistrust the dealings in this case? Mainly because of MONEY. Once MONEY/POWER has been brought into the picture, all expectations of justice go out the door. The popularity of this case brought money, to websites, to TV stations, To Magazines, Newspapers, to all the people employeed by them. It brought money to PR firms, lawyers.
It was the central factor in a re-election bid by a certain Politician. His retention of power, he thought, was based on success in this case.
Once you have all this involved, all sanity seems to go out of the equation. The enthusiasm of certain players gets exagerrated by the constant companion, the news camera. People are willing to say anything to be part of the circus.
I think we are (God, I hope) in the final frays of being able to seperate more of the chaff from the wheat. Once the dust settles, may this be over for all of us.
You have a point. First one is that the porn was out there on the internet. What does that say about our country, or it's citizens as a whole?
Now the question about whether freepers get off on it is in a scale to our society. Get off on, I doubt. Curious? probably.
.........Still not proof of murder.
Too bad the links are posted so people can read for themselves.
Temper, Temper. You should stick to repeating the words of Dusek, like a good parrot. Either that or post what I "lied" about.
And maybe they figured out the woman wasn't expecting "it" by her reaction that was filmed as well. Duh!
The point the pros. were making was that she didn't "know" about the flashlight, not that she wasn't expecting it. That she didn't know is ludicrous.
Absolutely no claim that Danielle was taped was made.
I never said there was, my point is that if they were going to state that DW taped other people and therefore could have spied on the Van Dams, it would seem reasonable that he would have taped the Van Dams' property.
Also, if he had homemade porno movies and he is in to having sex with children, he just might have had some tapes of kids. He didn't.
"Get off on" is a term I wouldn't use in this case or hopefully any other topic of discussion. It is a perverse term that is often used by women in anger to describe a sexual activity.
Anger, sex and a woman scorned are as dangerous as TNT.
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