I was thinking the same thing. That was in Calif., correct? And the parents were partying or something?
They were partying at the house (hidden in the garage).
Then the mother went out with her friends.
The dad was a ‘heavy sleeper’, and the story was that David Westerfield (who was also at the same bar as the ‘mother’) came driving home drunk, stopped, walked into the Van Dam house, past the dog, past the other child (a boy) , killed the girl, took her out to his motor home, then drove her all over California, raping and killing her multiple times. Absolutely no trace of him ever being in their house was ever discovered. Matter of fact, police could not find ANY fingerprints in her room. NONE.
The ‘dad’ offered to help police look for her. He formed his own group later, and ‘found’ some evidence in a place police had already searched.
There was blood on the sidewalk at the Van Dam home, on on the side of the garage, but police (friends of the Van Dams) said it must have been from the dog (but never tested it).
The parents were smoking pot and snorting cocaine, going to sex orgies, and had a porn operation running out of their garage, but the neighbor had some anime porn on his computer, so he is currently serving life for a murder that there was absolutely no proof of.
Two of the detectives who ran the case had also been ‘reprimanded’ for giving false testimony to obtain convictions for their ‘boss’, the prosecutor, who was running for re-election at the time.