Posted on 02/09/2002 6:53:27 AM PST by crypt2k
Suspect's travels included Imperial Valley, Silver Strand
Police continued yesterday to investigate the alibi of David Westerfield and tried to make sense of the kidnapping suspect's wanderings from desert to beach to desert again after the disappearance of his 7-year-old neighbor Danielle van Dam.
Westerfield, an avid camper who has come under intense police scrutiny, drove his motor home to Silver Strand State Beach near Coronado on the afternoon of Feb. 2, apparently after leaving the dunes in the Imperial Valley desert, where the vehicle had been stuck in the sand, officials said yesterday.
Silver Strand park rangers said Westerfield mistakenly paid for four nights instead of the two he intended to stay. He left after a ranger knocked on his door and gave him a refund.
Danielle has been missing from her Sabre Springs home for eight days. She was last seen when her father put her to bed about 10:30 p.m. Feb. 1. Westerfield, who has not been arrested and who friends say is incapable of doing harm, told police he left in his motor home the next morning for the desert and the beach.
Silver Strand rangers said Westerfield arrived at the $12-a-night oceanfront campground Feb. 2. A ranger knocked on his motor-home door to refund the overpayment between 3 and 3:30 p.m., and Westerfield drove off about 20 minutes later.
Westerfield appeared to be alone in the motor home, though rangers did not go inside the vehicle and did not see or hear a child. He did not seem nervous, said Chief Ranger John Quirk.
"There was nothing suspicious about it," Quirk said. "He sounded grateful they'd given him the money back."
Westerfield told police he decided to leave after paying for two nights because "he didn't know anybody down there. He decided to go to the desert where his friends were," an investigator said.
It is not clear to what desert he returned.
Police said they find it curious that earlier that same day, Westerfield, a frequent desert camper, became stuck in the sand in an area most campers know to avoid. Some campers told police they watched as Westerfield continued down a sandy stretch and remarked that he was sure to get stuck.
"He knows the desert real well. What's he doing out there?" an investigator said.
Investigators have been in the Imperial Valley for the past several days. They returned yesterday by helicopter because shifting dunes from a sandstorm Sunday could have covered up clues, and detectives wanted to take an aerial look in a search for possible grave sites or other evidence, one detective said.
"The wind can blow for 15 minutes and you won't see a thing," said Dan Conklin, a towing service owner who pulled Westerfield's motor home from the dunes south of Glamis on Feb. 2.
Yesterday morning, Conklin led members of the news media south from Glamis down a dirt road a mile and a half south of state Route 78, where he said Westerfield's motor home was stuck. There, he hiked up a dune and pointed east to a half-square-mile plot where investigators concentrated their search Thursday.
Conklin said that before noon Feb. 2, Westerfield hiked to an encampment of off-road enthusiasts and told a man he was stuck. That man went to Conklin's business and directed him to Westerfield.
Westerfield was alone and without an all-terrain vehicle or dune buggy when Conklin found him trying to dig out his motor home, which had sunk into the sand up to its frame.
Conklin said he was immediately suspicious, and that he saw a long line of footprints that stretched from the motor home off into the distance. He said Westerfield told him he had been stuck since morning.
Police first showed an interest in Westerfield on Monday when he returned from his weekend trip. Detectives initially said they talked to him because he was the only person in the neighborhood they had not contacted over the weekend.
His house was one of the first of more than 200 Sabre Springs homes that officers searched with the aid of police dogs. Police later returned with a search warrant.
During that Tuesday search, investigators seized Westerfield's motor home and a sport-utility vehicle. They took 13 containers of property from his house and had him retrace his weekend in the desert.
At one point, police dispatched a plumber to the Westerfield house to assist in their search. It was not known what task the plumber performed.
Police are still awaiting results of DNA tests. Undercover detectives also continue to track Westerfield's every move.
As they did Thursday, undercover detectives yesterday followed Westerfield as he drove from his home to the offices of his attorney, Steven Feldman, in San Diego's Golden Hill neighborhood.
Meanwhile, Danielle's parents, Brenda and Damon van Dam, continued to make appearances on several television news broadcasts, where they again pleaded for their daughter's safe return.
The Laura Recovery Center for Missing Children, a Texas group that is joining the effort to find Danielle, launched its first searches yesterday.
From a command post at the Doubletree Golf Resort in Rancho Peñasquitos, the organization sent several groups looking for the girl, said Bob Walcutt, the center's executive director. Searches were conducted by air over the Anza-Borrego Desert, on the ground in east Poway and in an area southeast of Beeler Canyon Road and Pomerado Road, and by car along Scripps Poway Parkway, Walcutt said.
Nearly 150 people turned out last night at Danielle's school, Creekside Elementary, to coordinate efforts for a more extensive volunteer search effort today.
The ten-year-old, home from school with the flu, listened through the door as a man said his car had broken down and he needed help. Jeanine, dressed in a nightgown picturing one of Snow White's dwarfs, with the words "I'm Sleepy," told him she was all alone and couldn't let him in. The man kicked in the front door, carried Jeanine to an upstairs bedroom, wrapped her in a sheet, and taped a towel around her eyes. Her body was discovered forty-eight hours later, less than two miles from the house. An autopsy revealed that she had been sodomized and that her skull had been crushed by a blunt instrument.
The Nicarico murder is every parent's worst nightmare, one that Thomas and Patricia Nicarico have lived with for the past sixteen years. It's the kind of case that leads 75 percent of Americans to support the death penalty. For nearly as many years Rolando Cruz has lived with another kind of nightmare. On February 22, 1985, Cruz was convicted of murder, rape, deviant sexual assault, kidnapping, and burglary in the Jeanine Nicarico murder trial. Despite the fact that the police found no physical evidence linking him to the victim, a judge sentenced Cruz to die by lethal injection.
Because of a prosecutorial error, the Illinois Supreme Court ordered a second trial for Cruz, and in February of 1990 he was again found guilty and sentenced to death. That verdict was overturned in 1994.
Then, on November 3, 1995, as a third trial got under way, one of the police officers who had provided critical evidence against Cruz acknowledged that he had lied under oath. The judge ordered a directed verdict of not guilty, and Rolando Cruz, having spent nearly twelve years in jail, was a free man. The policeman's revelation alone didn't prove that Cruz was not guilty, but by then the state's case was a shambles. DNA evidence had all but eliminated Cruz as a suspect in the rape, and implicated another man, Brian Dugan, who, astonishingly, had claimed ten years earlier that he raped and killed Jeanine Nicarico.
Dugan had also confessed to five other vicious crimes, including the rape and murder of a seven-year-old girl. Those confessions were credible enough for prosecutors in nearby Kane and LaSalle Counties, who used them to win Dugan's conviction and two consecutive life terms without parole.
But the state attorney for DuPage County, James Ryan, now the Illinois attorney general, was convinced that Dugan was lying, and Illinois prosecutors fought for another decade to keep Dugan's testimony out of court while they tried Cruz twice more. They continued with their case despite the resignation of one of their own detectives, who was so certain of the state's error that he had offered to testify for the defense in Cruz's first trial.
And they pressed on even after an assistant attorney general, too, resigned, protesting that the state was attempting to execute an innocent man. To date the Nicarico murder remains officially unsolved.
"The Worst Kind of Mistake" HY prosecutors were so zealous in their pursuit of Cruz has been a matter of considerable speculation. Clearly, there was enormous public and political pressure on the state attorney's office to solve the highly publicized Nicarico case; it is quite possible that the police and prosecutors became convinced of Cruz's guilt before they had accumulated the facts to prove it, and then stuck with their hunch even as the holes in their case multiplied.
Short of unimpeachable exculpatory evidence, prosecutors are loath to back away from an indictment, much less a conviction.
No doubt Cruz shares responsibility for his lengthy ordeal, because he foolishly sought to sell the police a fabricated story about the murder in exchange for a $10,000 reward, thereby injecting himself into a situation he might otherwise have avoided.
If law-enforcement officials had any doubt about Cruz's guilt, it presumably evaporated with the jury's guilty verdict in the defendant's first trial. When that verdict was set aside, prosecutors probably satisfied themselves that the court's decision turned on nothing more than a technicality. By the time Cruz's third trial rolled around, even the exculpatory DNA evidence was insufficient to shake the prosecution's belief in the rightness of its cause.
Even today the leading prosecutors and police officers in the Cruz case insist that he was involved in the crime. If Rolando Cruz were the only person ever mistakenly condemned to death in the United States, one could find any number of ways to explain his case away. But since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty, in 1976, more than eighty death-row inmates have been freed from prison, their convictions overturned by evidence of innocence. That may not sound like many, given the huge U.S. prison population, but it is more than one percent of the 6,000 men and women who were sentenced to death in that same period, and equal to almost 15 percent of those actually executed -- not good odds for the defendants, given the stakes. The reasons for these miscarriages of justice range from simple police and prosecutorial error to the most outrageous misconduct, such as the framing of innocent people, and everything in between: perjured testimony, erroneous eyewitness testimony, false confessions (including the confessions of innocent defendants), racial bias, incompetent defense counsel, and overzealous police officers and prosecutors who may or may not genuinely believe they have the perpetrator of a heinous crime.
Your thinking is so muddled and contradictory that it is beyond rational argument.
As for the "pedantic tone", I used to teach at the college level- it is fairly obvious that YOU were not one of my students...
It seems to me that the parents are more unusual characters than this Westerfield is...does he in fact have ANY previous record of legal trouble, or of any inordinate interest in children? Had he ever been in their home, versus how many other questionables HAD been in their home?
These parents seem to be protecting someone or something, maybe just themselves, but there is something they are trying to keep from coming out...
John Maloney: Innocent Man An Injustice Anywhere Is A Threat To Justice Everywhere
John Maloney was convicted of First Degree Intentional Homicide, Arson, and Mutilation of a corpse. This "crime" was committed against Sandy Maloney.
The media indicated many times that this is a "made for TV movie". They are absolutely right. All the events that took place could be made into a movie, except this movie wouldn't be about the former GBPD Detective that killed his wife
This movie would be about the former GBPD Detective that lost everything: his wife, his kids, his life, his job, everything that was important to him. John Maloney had everything taken away from him by greedy prosecutors, a hateful mother-in-law, the media, and his former girlfriend that was scared for her life.
Tracy Hellenbrand was scared that it was either her or John Maloney that was going to be arrested for this "crime", and, obviously, it wasn't going to be her.
The MIP has overwhelming proof that there was no homicide, and no arson. John Maloney was convicted by overzealous prosecutors that only wanted a conviction and not the truth.
It is hard to find true justice in this great country of ours, or at least is Green Bay, Wisconsin.
I have taken it upon myself to put up a web site on the internet to gain awareness about this atrocity. I hope that somewhere, someone that could make a difference will see this and help us do something about this true injustice.
Our justice system is purely political. We have the best government that money can buy, if you don't have money, it is impossible to get proper defense, and a fair trial. We live under a government of men and morning newspapers.
It has gone from innocent until proven guilty, to guilty until proven innocent.
The media plays a huge part in trials. Every juror goes into a trial swayed one way or the other in all cases because of what is reported in the media.
As a victim from the death of my Mother, and the wrongful conviction of my Father, my brothers and I request that this case be reopened and reinvestigated.
I am asking the Green Bay Police Department, Department of Criminal Investigation (DCI), Winnebago Prosecutor Joe Paulus, and Outagamie Prosecutor Vince Biskupic to reopen and reinvestigate this case.
S/A Eric Szatkowski said to my aunt Gin Maloney after my Dad had been arrested for this murder “DCI does not ‘set people up’ or ‘frame’ people, If John weren't guilty, he wouldn't have been arrested." Well S/A Szatkowski, I am afraid that you are wrong, very wrong.
Absolutely right "professor"! I graduated from a respected, accredited university.
April 16, 1998 Man Convicted of Abusing Woman He Met Via Internet
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Related Articles Jury Begins Its Deliberations in the Internet Torture Case (April 14) Doctors Rebut an Accuser on Torture (April 4) Man Charged With Raping Date He Met From E-Mail (Feb. 24, 1997) Sex-Assault Suspect Enjoyed the Macabre and the Mythical (Dec. 16, 1996) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By JOHN SULLIVAN
EW YORK -- Oliver Jovanovic was convicted Wednesday of kidnapping and assaulting a young woman he met on the Internet. After the verdict was read, the Columbia University graduate student wept quietly in the Manhattan courtroom.
After a three-week trial, the jury found that Jovanovic had imprisoned the young woman and assaulted her over two days in November 1996. Jurors rejected the defense's claim that the encounter between Jovanovic and the young woman was consensual.
Jovanovic, 31, who is scheduled to be sentenced May 6, faces a minimum penalty of 15 years to life in prison and a maximum of 25 years to life.
The case drew public attention because Jovanovic, a doctoral student in microbiology at Columbia, met his accuser in an Internet chat room. The young woman, at the time a 20-year-old Barnard College student, testified that Jovanovic attracted her interest during an extended e-mail correspondence, and convinced her to accompany him on a date.
But the young woman, whose name is being withheld because of the nature of the crime, said that after bringing her to his Washington Heights apartment, Jovanovic tied her to a futon frame and tortured her for more than 20 hours.
The young woman, whose testimony lasted several days, said Jovanovic threatened to kill her, bit her until she bled, burned her with wax and beat her with a stick.
Prosecutors declined to make any comment after Wednesday's verdict.
Defense lawyers had claimed that the young woman made up a story about what was a consensual sexual encounter. But the prosecutor in the case, Gail Heatherly, countered that the young woman had given a consistent account of the attack, had suffered physically and emotionally, and had no motive to lie. In Ms. Heatherly's closing statement, she characterized Jovanovic as "deceptive, deceitful and dishonest."
"She doesn't know Oliver's last name," Ms. Heatherly told the jury. "She doesn't know where he lives. She met him one night, and now she has made it her life's goal to ruin his life?"
At a press conference after the verdict, Jovanovic's lawyers and his family expressed their dismay and said they would appeal.
"I am totally devastated," said Jovanovic's mother, Sabina. "Once I fall apart, I will not be able to collect myself. Oliver, we know is innocent."
Defense lawyers said that prosecutors had offered to strike a plea bargain before the verdict, but Jovanovic declined. Fred Sosinsky, one of his lawyers, declined to describe the terms of the proposed agreement, but said the proposed sentence was "shockingly, surprisingly low."
"The numbers that were proposed were reflective of their view of the case," Sosinsky said.
Jovanovic's lawyers argued Wednesday that the trial judge, state Supreme Court Justice William Wetzel incorrectly restricted the evidence that defense lawyers could present. They said that Wetzel's decisions had prevented them from making a case that would have established Jovanovic's innocence.
"A travesty of justice has occurred," Jack Litman, Jovanovic's lead lawyer, said at the news conference following the trial. "An innocent man faces life imprisonment because this American jury has heard only half the evidence."
At the heart of the defense's complaint is the judge's interpretation of New York's rape-shield law. The law, which is intended to protect rape victims, prevents the defense from presenting evidence of the accuser's past sexual history except under narrowly defined circumstances.
A bitter argument raged throughout the trial regarding evidence that the judge excluded under the law. Because Wetzel sealed the records of the argument, that argument was carried out in secret. But defense lawyers Wednesday described some of the issues they intended to use to appeal the verdict.
Without being specific, the defense lawyers said that in an e-mail correspondence with Jovanovic, the young woman wrote messages that would have led the jury to give credence to the defense argument that what occurred was not an assault.
Wetzel did not allow the messages to be used as evidence, the defense lawyers said, finding that they were excluded by the shield law.
The defense lawyers said that the judge's ruling also prevented the jury from hearing important evidence about Jovanovic's state of mind before the incident, as well as the young woman's. They said the information could have been used to impeach the young woman's credibility on the witness stand.
The lawyers said that courts in other states have held that speech between a criminal defendant and an accuser is not sexual conduct, and therefore should be allowed as evidence. They said that the judge should have allowed the e-mail as evidence under that reasoning.
Sosinsky said the importance of the e-mail was not in what it shows about the previous behavior of the young woman, but in establishing what the two people intended when they met for the date.
"Whether it is true or not is irrelevant," he said. "It is certainly relevant to the defendant's state of mind."
http://www.ags.uci.edu/~dehill/witchhunt/ccla/pages/wade.htm
http://www.vix.com/men/falsereport/studies/san-diego-grandjury.html
The report of the suspected neighbor visiting his lawyer seems like an effort to paint him as guilty, when it is a normal thing to do. Remember the age old argument between the right to a Fair Trial and right of a Free Press, which is more important and how do you balance the two? Sam Shepherd and F. Lee Bailey come to mind along with Richard Jewell. I hope the child is found safe and sound and if not the person or persons responsible are brought to justice, but not rushed there.
As for those of you that think police don't fabricate evidence, I am personally aquainted with a case where that was apparently done. There was no crime and no victim but the case went forward anyway. It is hard to refute tampering when a detective's own sworn statement contradicts his own police report. Same case another officer's report quoted the supposed victim as saying one thing but the "victim" and a witness denied it. This case started because of a supposed witness (under psych care & habitual liar) and instead of finding facts, it seems the police made the "facts" fit the supposed situation. A few minutes investigation to check out the background of the supposed witness would have probably have ended the investigation & case right there. I wonder how many innocent people are in jail from similar overzealousness...fortunately in this case the jury examined the real facts and the person was found innocent... Oh yes Internal Affairs apparently did nothing with the complaint against the police. This case made me open my eyes and see that people can get railroaded, justice be damned......(no I was not the subject of the case)
I thought myself what I would do in this case should the Police request to search my house sans warrant. If it was my neighbor that I knew had lost a child I would probably allow one officer and one dog into my house to search areas large enough for a person to be, and I and my attorney would have to escort them through the house. If that wasn't good enough they would have to try and get a warrant. As far as lawyering up, that's what a person does based on their previous experience and education, not whether they are guilty or innocent. I'm sure if you were suspected of a crime, the first words out of your wife's mouth would be to tell you to ask for a lawyer and not say anything, if she didn't I would disappointedly surprised at her. After you consulted an attorney, he might let you make a statement or take a polygraph, but that decision might be better left to him....While I would like to help the police and my neighbors, seeing what I have seen precludes that.
As for Federal Special Agent's ask you wife if she has ever heard of "Superman" he supposedly got a warrant after saying he saw marijuana in a house, there was marijuana in the house, but wrapped in tin foil..impossible to see the "green leafy substance" that was inside the tin foil without x ray vison....hence "Superman"...LOL.....the judge was reportedly not amused...
You're an idiot??
Children are often climbing up things, under things, behind things; if a child did this while trying to escape from a bad person, the above scenario could happen and because you were so helpful with access to your home and statements, everything will be used against you.
If the police had questioned me as to my whereabouts at a particular time and place I would decline to answer, as that would indicate suspicion of wrongdoing. If I suspected I was under suspicion, I would request an attorney and remain silent. Requesting an attorney cuts off their questioning right then and there, Mirandized or not. If one was married, it would be wise to immediately advise their spouse and children to remain silent, it is amazing how statements can be "misunderstood" at a later time. Who is a favorite target of Investigators, the young and nieve, and wording of questions can sometimes elicit the desired answers that are not exactly correct! I also would not worry about anything I told the police as I wouldn't give them the time of day unless I was the one reporting a crime. I think you should reread what I posted as my cooperation would be limited. I will give you another hint, when the police ask you to come out of your house and talk to them, it is probably to arrest you, in your house, with a few exceptions including hot pursuit, they will need an arrest warrant..if they don't come in to get you, why make it easy on them...they probably won't go to the trouble to get a warrant if its a shaky or minor charge being used just to drag you in and question you...in the meantime you can scrounge bail money if they come back LOL.....
I hear the word "Single" used all the time now to describe any person at all who is not married at the moment, or even does not have a significant other at the moment, regardless of past history. I don't know how to word things I guess.
You would definitely be a suspect. And you'd need a lawyer. I would talk with my lawyer present. I would want to prove my innocence. Talk till I'm blue in the face. Homicide investigators (I'm married to one) like people who talk. They size you up by what you say and how you say it. They look at your body language. They can usually tell, many times by gut feeling, when someone is innocent. When their gut and evidence tell them you're innocent, they move on.
Crime scenes tell stories. ME's can tell within a few hours when a person died. You could have been at work when the death occurred. You could have been out of town. You could have been at the local store. The evidence of the crime scene and your recollection of facts about your movements will likely be exculpatory.
I don't see how NOT letting the police into your home to search it would improve your situation if there was indeed a dead body in your home. What are you going to do, move it? Leave it there? Then what? The truth is your friend. At worst, they have to PROVE you did something you didn't. I know that innocent people are sometimes convicted. But it's rare.
The situation in San Diego is not hypothetical. The police questioned over 200 folks, took a police dog into 200 homes. The cooperation of the local neighbors allowed the police to eliminate them as suspects with the exception of one guy. A guy whose actions are bizarre at best, whose house was filled with kiddie porn, and to whose house the police dog followed the young girl's scent. But the police didn't know that when they got the call about the missing girl. They had to quickly go through a process of elimination in which the cooperation of the local citizens is essential. Is the suspect unlucky, or did the evidence point toward the likely perp?
YMMV. You're free to exercise your rights, although in the hypothetical situation you raise, I don't see how this would improve your situation. You'd still have a dead body in your house. Your home would become a crime scene. There would be a warrant to search your premises. And because you refused to talk, to explain where you where at the time of death, police would wonder why. Their experience would tell them that you are behaving just like the other guilty creeps they've put behind bars.
You just can't judge how much a person loved someone by how they react at a death. I once went to a funeral where people were fainting and "falling out" and screaming. I later learned that one of the ladies that hit the deck had only met the deceased ONE TIME. Outward display of grief means NOTHING.
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