Posted: 11:46 a.m. PDT June 20, 2002
Updated: 1:30 p.m. PDT June 20, 2002
SAN DIEGO -- A criminalist said that he lifted two long, blond hairs from inside boxer shorts seized from the laundry room of Westerfield, who faces murder and kidnapping of Danielle van Dam.
Sean Soriano also said stains with a blood-like appearance were found on a green and blue jacket Westerfield had dry cleaned two days after Danielle turned up missing
He said the jacket -- along with a pair of pants and a T-shirt -- were delivered to him at the San Diego Police Crime Lab.
"My role was to examine the items for the presence of blood," Soriano told Deputy District Attorney George Clarke. "I noted stains on the jacket."
Three stains tested positive for the presumptive presence of blood, the criminalist testified. They were on the front right middle, the front right shoulder and the neck portion of the jacket, he said.
The portions of the jacket where the stains were found were then cut out, packaged and sent to a lab for further DNA testing, Soriano said (pictured, right).
He testified that he also found blood stains on a blanket and a bean-bag chair from the victim's room.
Under cross-examination by defense attorney Steven Feldman, Soriano said that he didn't find any semen on bedding seized from Westerfield's residence or motor home.
Forensic biologist Annette Lynn Peer testified she saw three red stains that later tested positive for blood on a bedspread, a curtain and the floor of the 50-year-old Westerfield's motor home.
During Wednesday's testimony, police specialist Jeffrey Graham testified that he is "absolutely certain" that latent fingerprints lifted from David Westerfield's motor home were from Danielle.
Graham (pictured, left) said the prints were taken from the lower right corner of a cabinet in the back bedroom of the motor home, about 11 inches from the bed.
Graham, a latent print examiner for the San Diego Police Department for nearly six years, said he determined the prints were from a left ring finger and knuckle area of a middle finger.
He said that he compared the fingerprints with those taken from the 7-year-old's body.
"These two prints of this hand print were made by Danielle van Dam?" Deputy District Attorney Jeff Dusek asked.
"Yes," Graham responded.
"How certain are you?" Dusek inquired.
"Absolutely certain," the examiner said.
Graham also described how Danielle's hands had to be removed from her nude, desiccated body and rehydrated to make fingerprints that could be used for comparison.
He said he worked with the various prints he was given all the way up to May 10, nearly two months after Westerfield's preliminary hearing.
Graham said he examined 125 usable prints found in the van Dam home. None matched the people shown to be with Danielle's mother the night before the second-grader was discovered missing. None matched Westerfield, either, Graham said.
Graham told defense attorney Steven Feldman a usable palm print of a right hand was found on the hand rail at the top of the stairs of the home, but he was unable to make an identification. He even compared the print to police officers who had been in the house.
Graham also testified he could not find a fingerprint matching Westerfield in the motor home
If Barb Easton's testimony confirms that the VD's were too stoned and too engrossed in their "alleged orgy" to provide the most basic levels of personal protection to their child, then that to is ghastly....