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.
Each day I start out by forgiving and forgetting the past (or doing my best to do so.)
Keep up the good work and see ya tomorrow!~!!!!
LOL..I don't think anyone in this neighborhood knew how to do laundry...the VD's washed rugs with towels.
That shows how naive he is, to me. At his age, to not know that the police have no responsibility for worrying about your rights, seems really weird. Especially for an 'intelligent person'.
Police state that they found some ZIPDISKS with child porn. DW tells them he doesn't have any ZIPDISKS nor a ZIPDISK drive.
It is possible the police downloaded from the disks DW had to their own computer ZIPDISKS. There would be no reason for them to do so.
I remember the search warrants talking about ZIPDISKS.
What is the done deal here?
Now they are tricking him again into staying and talking. "if you go talk to an attorney, he will tell you not to talk to the police." NO KIDDING !
Now they are trying to con him into nonspecifically admitting guilt.
Basically I heard the cops lie to DW to keep him talking. Of course, he could have walked out (and should have), but they kept stringing him on. And he fell for it.
DW, instead of not telling them anything (which is what a guilty person usually does), talks, and talks, and talks, does not confess, and doesn't tell (or maybe know) where the body is.
If he premeditatively cleaned the MH, dumped the body, lied about his travels, why did he admit to the PORN? Why did he take the police with him in the MH, why discuss anything? It just doesn't make sense.
Another point I have is that if the police were in the MH with DW for a 500 mile trip, that would be acceptable as proof of CONTAMINATION of EVIDENCE SITE.
He seemed to be lying about the PORN. He shouldn't have lied. He shouldn't have said anything.
Was there something specific you can prove he lied about?
He had no zip drive...they are being referred to as zip discs..altho the one detective on the tape said maybe they weren't zip discs..then the other detective said that is what he was told..(which would have been by the computer experts that were at his house)
Also the detectives on this tape and in one of the motions....were saying the zips and CD's that were HIDDEN behind stuff in his bookcase...yet the affidavits for warrants say..In plain view...so which is it?
Time to read Mark Lawson's testimony again.
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