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.
There's an explanation for this...
Except for Danielle's....he apparently got all of hers and left the rest.
And the hairs found in his home from the laundry...those couldn't be transfered from downstairs to upstairs?
Blood, hair and fingerprints overlooked and I contend the child did not lose wads of hair in his house during the cookie selling that then got tramped and transferred all over his house ending up in the laundry, etc.
We will never know how much he did successfully destroy/get rid of.
On your side the question would be why was there that one little spot period? I would agree if the circumstances surrounding the discovery of this spot on the carpet were not so suspicious.
If you just took the vehicle out of winter storage, it would make sense to flush the waste system, 2 or 3 times.
I don't see how his statements about Danielle conflict.
The porn stuff he was talking about, and is now, he may be covering up for. Remember, at this point in the case, he was still subject to being arrested for the child porn, no matter whether he was dropped as a suspect in Danielle's murder.
Do you know if this comforter was used in the MH?
The point that no matter how smart you are, you can leave behind evidence, is also a good one.
He could have tracked the spot into the MH, washed his hands and left a hair in the sink, and got some on the jacket.
The jacket, I believe, was already at the dry cleaners before the weekend Danielle disappeared. That is, according to the receipt. The spot on the carpet and the fingerprint were not found in the first search of the vehicle, and weren't found until after the vehicle was taken into custody and parked in the police lot. Maybe they were there before, maybe not.
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