By Jeff Dillon
SIGNONSANDIEGO
June 6, 2002
SAN DIEGO The lead defense attorney for David Westerfield grilled the mother of Danielle van Dam Thursday about her sexual behavior, marijuana use and parenting in advance of her daughter's kidnapping and murder.
Brenda van Dam testified that she had previously had sex with the two women she accompanied on "girls' nights out" to Dad's Cafe and Steak House on Jan. 25 and Feb. 1 the same two women her husband had said he'd also had sex with on previous occasions.
Defense attorney Steven Feldman pressed van Dam on why she had earlier told prosecutor Jeff Dusek she and her husband had never hosted "sex parties" but admitted they had sex with Denise and Andy Kemal at the van Dam house during an Oct. 31, 2001 Halloween party.
While Brenda became tearful during testimony surrounding Danielle, she appeared irritated when Feldman's questions turned repeatedly toward her sex life, as evidenced by this testy exchange:
Feldman: "Isn't it true that on Halloween evening in the year 2000, you engaged in sex with Denise and Andy and ...Damon?"
Brenda: "Yes."
Feldman: "So when you told Mr. Dusek that you had never had a sex party at your house, had you forgotten that?"
Brenda: "I don't consider that to be a sex party. "
Feldman: "Was October 2001 the first time you had sex with Denise?"
Brenda: "You need to repeat that question, you have the dates wrong."
Feldman: "OK, I'm sorry. What date was it that was the first time you had sex with Denise?"
Brenda: "I have never."
Feldman: "Have you had sex with Barbara Easton before?"
Brenda: "No."
Feldman: "Isn't it true you told (a detective) that you had in fact engaged in consensual sexual behavior with Denise?"
Brenda: (Pause) "Yes."
Feldman: "And you weren't lying ... were you?"
Brenda: "No."
Feldman: "When was it that you had consensual sexual relations with Denise?"
Brenda: "It was October of 2000."
Feldman hopped back and forth among topics during three hours of cross-examining van Dam, gradually walking her through the events of Friday, Feb. 1, the day before Danielle was discovered missing.
"I'm sorry, I'm switching again," Feldman warned her at one point. "But you'll be happy to know I'm winding down."
Brenda van Dam testified:
After the first of three cranberry and vodka drinks, van Dam went outside with the two women to smoke more of the joint they'd started earlier in the evening. They were accompanied by Rich Brady and Keith Stone, two male friends they had encountered at the bar.
"Had the marijuana you smoked earlier worn off or did you want to get higher?" Feldman asked.
"I guess it had worn off," van Dam said.
Van Dam, the trio's designated driver, also had a shot of tequila.
Brenda van Dam broke down in tears several times during questioning that covered topics such as the length of Danielle's hair, her handful of encounters with the suspect and her discovery of Danielle's disappearance from her bedroom on Feb. 1.
"I have an emergency. My daughter's not in her bed this morning. She's only 7," Brenda van Dam is heard telling the dispatcher in an audiotape of her 911 call to police.
The dispatcher asks for more details, then assures van Dam: "Think positive thoughts and everything will be OK."
Cross-examined by Feldman, van Dam acknowledged that Danielle occasionally walked to other locations in the neighborhood and that Westerfield had parked his motorhome on the street for such long periods of time that she and others considered it an eyesore.
Danielle's hair and fingerprints were found in the motorhome after her disappearance, Dusek said in his opening statement on Tuesday. Feldman has argued that Danielle could have gotten into the motorhome on other occasions.
The outburst came before Feldman was scheduled to resume his cross-examination of Brenda van Dam, mother of murder victim Danielle van Dam.
One of the alternate jurors raised her hand and told the judge, "I'm kind of shaken up after what happened outside." Superior Court Judge William Mudd told the jury that it was done deliberately, but that it should have no reflection on the attorneys for either side or the trial.
"Take a deep breath, sit back and relax," Mudd said before allowing the trial to resume.
The heckler, an unidentified woman, was escorted from the building by authorities.
During the afternoon break a group of jurors was overheard in the hallway discussing the incident. One of them said "it scared me."
Dr. Brian Blackbourne testified that he estimated Danielle had been dead for at least 10 days and potentially up to six weeks before her body was found.
"Just looking at the body, it was clear to me that she had been there for a considerable period of time," Blackbourne said, based on the degree of mummification and putrefaction of the body found off Dehesa Road on Feb. 27. Danielle disappeared Feb. 1.
But Feldman questioned Blackbourne's minimum 10-day estimate because the medical examiner had not checked weather reports to find out whether warm weather could have accelerated the decomposition process.
"To say that she was dead on the 17th of February, you would have to speculate, wouldn't you?" Feldman asked.
"Well, I have evidence on the body, so that's not really speculation," Blackbourne replied.
Feldman suggested more evidence would show Danielle hadn't been dead as long as Blackbourne had estimated, proving his client's innocence by showing that she had been killed and her body dumped in Dehesa while Westerfield was under surveillance by police.
Blackbourne was testifying on the third day of the murder trial of David Westerfield, the 50-year-old neighbor accused of kidnapping and killing Danielle.
He said he ruled that the manner of her death was a homicide as opposed to a suicide or natural causes based on the position of her body, how far it was away from her home and the fact that searchers had been looking for her for three weeks.
Under cross-examination by Feldman, Blackbourne said that he couldn't find any signs of traumatic injuries.
Blackbourne also testified Thursday that decomposition prevented him from determining whether or not Danielle had been sexually assaulted before her death.
But he said both Friday nights were busy and he couldn't keep track of all the patrons, how sober they were or when they left.
Brown did refute a police report quoting him as saying he had seen van Dam and her female friends "partying hard" and flirting with men in the bar.
"That's not exactly what I said," Brown testified. "The way I saw it was Brenda and her girlfriends were out there having a good time as girlfriends do. I think of partying hard as having beer shot after beer shot after beer shot. They were there to have a good time."
Cross-examined by defense attorney Robert Boyce, Brown admitted he couldn't say whether the women had been "partying hard" after they moved from the bar area to the dance floor.
Brown testified that Westerfield was something of a regular visitor to the bar and sat in the same seat next to another regular customer named Gary Harvey. Brown said Westerfield always ordered a 16-ounce glass of Baccardi Rum and Coke, rarely mingled with the crowd and was a people watcher.
Following is the line of questioning by Dusek about Westerfield:
Dusek: "What's the basis for that opinion or that assessment?"
Brown: "Well, maybe if there's a conversation between Gary and him and they stopped or hesitated, they would turn around and watch the people in the bar and maybe not talk for a while and observe what's going on. That's what I would consider a people watcher, so I would say he's a people watcher."
Dusek: "Did you ever see him play pool?"
Brown: "No."
Dusek: "Did you ever see him dance?"
Brown: "No."
Dusek: "What would he do?"
Brown: "He would just hang out with Gary, that's all I can say."
Brenda van Dam said nothing else was taken the night Danielle was abducted.I'm at a loss here. How am I supposed to use this article as an opportunity to bash the Bush administration for not being conservative enough?
I have always wondered why neither Brenda nor Damon showed any anger about the man that LE was sure did it, practically from the beginning.
By the same token, I found it equally weird that now she is suddenly shooting darts across the room at the man.
It appears that the prosecution told Damon to lose the facial hair and Brenda to act like a "normal" mom.
1. The whole neighborhood knew these people were swingers and Brenda was bi.
2. Yes, I have a large collection of nude pictures of adult woman. I'm a single, heterosexual male. Any pictures of kids in there came from downloading collections from others. I'm not into kids.
3. Brenda did me once or twice in the RV just for fun, that's why the VD dna is in there.
4. I was interested in Barbara, but not that interested, I don't have to beg.
5. I know my driving the RV all over that weekend looked weird, but it's really not, I was "campground hopping" looking for some of the hot women, I'd found there before. I was going places where there are lots of people. I didn't know anyone was looking for me.
6. I didn't kill Danielle, or dump her body and I don't know who did.
Do all the Freepers on these threads have alibis for that time frame?
Q. Is it true that your husband viewed pictures of 20 year olds?
objection, irrelevant
sustained
sidebar
jury admonished to not count that question
questions are not evidence
So, porn on the vD computers too? Why is that not relevant?
In January, 2001, David Faulkner's position at the Museum changed to research associate.
David Faulkner was initially hired by the Museum in October 1975 to manage the Entomology Department following the retirement of lepidopterist Fred Thorne. Previous experience included a year of volunteer work in 1974 in the department following 2 years of association with the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History under entomologist Nelson Baker. Interests include the insect fauna of the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, especially Baja California. Special emphasis is given to the systematics of the nerve-winged insects (Neuroptera), biogeography of Lepidoptera of the southern Nearctic region, and Forensic Entomology.
A M.Sc. degree in Zoology was received from California State University, Long Beach, with a thesis revising the neuropteran genus Lomamyia. Current research is involved in animal decomposition by invertebrates that can be applied to Forensic Entomology.
David has lectured on various entomological topics in Mexico, South Africa, and throughout the United States. Workshops on Forensic Entomology collecting techniques are presented at homicide investigators training classes for the California Department of Justice and various law enforcement agencies. About 30 popular and scientific articles have been published on a variety of entomological topics.
Brown, John W., H.G. Real, and D.K. Faulkner, 1992. Butterflies of Baja California, Lepidoptera Research Foundation, 129 pp., 8 plates.
Faulkner, David K. and D.J. Sterner, 1997. From hair to infirmary: Health concerns in an invertebrate exhibit, Sonoran Arthropods Studies Institute, v.5:123-127.