BREAKING: BRENDA VAN DAM DANCED WITH WESTERFIELD: (Modern Day Westside Story?)7-9-02 Trial Watch

(07-08-2002) - Three defense witnesses testified Monday that Brenda van Dam and David Westerfield, the man accused of murdering 7-year-old Danielle van Dam, danced together the night before the girl was discovered missing.

"Mr. Westerfield and Mrs. van Dam were dancing," said Patricia LePage, describing the scene at Dad's Cafe and Steakhouse the night of Feb. 1.

Since the prosecution introduced hair and fibers found at the defendant's house and motorhome, the defense has tried to show the evidence could have been transferred in some other way, such as dancing.

The 50-year-old defendant would face the death penalty if convicted of kidnapping and killing Danielle van Dam, who lived two houses away in Sabre Springs. He is also charged with misdemeanor possession of child pornography.

In testimony near the beginning of the trial, Brenda van Dam told the court she did not dance with Westerfield.

But LePage said van Dam rubbed her hips and chest against Westerfield during several dances together, recalling the movie "Dirty Dancing." That was just part of what LePage described as "frisky" behavior exhibited by van Dam that night.

LePage said she was in a smoking lounge at Dad's with her daughter, Cherokee Youngs, when van Dam came in and struck up a conversation with the younger woman.

"Well, she did ask my daughter if she liked girls," LePage said when asked to describe the conversation. Van Dam, she said, asked Youngs if she wanted to come to her house for a party later that night.

Youngs testified about the encounter last week.

Duane Blake, a fisherman who said he goes to Dad's a couple times a week, said he caught a glimpse of the defendant dancing with van Dam.

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Blake confirmed an interview with the District Attorney's Office, in which he described their dancing as, "huggy, huggy." He testified he even thought Westerfield might be trying to pick up on van Dam.

Earlier Monday, another woman testified she saw Westerfield dance with Danielle's mother.

Glennie Nasland, who began her testimony last week, said she was on the dance floor and saw the pair turn toward each other while dancing with other people.

Nasland, who described herself as a friend of Westerfield, said she watched them for 20 seconds before they turned away again.

In other testimony Monday, Dave Laspisa said that going to the desert to look for friends, and without bringing an all-terrain vehicle, was not an unusual activity for Westerfield.

The witness, a self-employed Poway man, said he's known the defendant for 15 years and has camped with him near the Imperial County community of Glamis for 10 years.

The witness was one of several people who testified as the defense began to move away from what happened at a Poway night spot the night before Danielle was discovered missing Feb. 2 to Westerfield's weekend wanderings.

Westerfield's attorney, Steven Feldman asked Laspisa to explain why someone would avoid Interstate 8 while taking a motorhome to the desert. Laspisa said high winds and black ice were common on that route, which traverses altitudes over 4,000 feet.

Heather Mack, a security guard at Coronado Cays, testified that she saw Westerfield drive his motorhome into the exclusive neighborhood in the afternoon or evening hours of Feb. 3.

Mack said Westerfield smiled and waved at her as he drove past her security kiosk, but she never saw him again.

The witness told Dusek that she originally told a police officer that she "vaguely remembered" seeing the defendant's recreational vehicle.

Glen Seebruch, an engineering manager at Nokia, testified earlier that Westerfield called him the morning of Feb. 1 and told him he planned to go to the desert that weekend.

Feldman, told Judge William Mudd that his case may be completed by the end of the week.

Insect expert David Faulkner is expected to testify about how long the victim's body may have been in the East County before volunteer searchers found it on Feb. 27.

Feldman has said Westerfield would have had no opportunity to dispose of the body because he was under constant police surveillance from Feb. 4 until his arrest Feb. 22.

Miz...you asked me about this a few weeks back..I just found it...remember, the STAR report/story on the VD's??? Interesting....HHHMMMM!!!

The Other Van Dam Story (STAR TABLOID REFERENCE!!)
(Graphic added for effect!! FDA/Disclaimer)

—Thomas K. Arnold

Talk show host Rick Roberts made headlines with his KFMB-AM radio show about Damon and Brenda van Dam’s allegedly swinging lifestyle. But he wasn’t the only radio personality—or media outlet—to cast a critical eye on the backstory of the Danielle van Dam kidnapping case.

John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou, whose John and Ken Show airs weekdays from 3 to 7 p.m. on Los Angeles station KFI-AM, devoted three shows to the case, even traveling to San Diego to broadcast from the van Dams’ Sabre Springs neighborhood. The week before that, they were the first to cast aspersions on the van Dams, a full day before the Roberts broadcast.

The Millennium Children’s Fund had just announced a $10,000 reward for information leading to the safe return of Danielle. Fund administrator Douglas Pierce had visited with the van Dams, and the next day he called a press conference in Los Angeles at which he voiced suspicions about the couple’s behavior. For an hour, Pierce blasted the van Dams for their apparent lack of emotion and general rudeness to him.

“I don’t know how much was true and how much was hysterical, but that’s what made it fascinating. We tried to unravel it on the air,” Kobylt says. “In retrospect, I think he did peg their personalities very well—the lack of emotion, the detachment, the obsession with the media message—and perhaps he got the vibe that they live a different life than most people.”

As soon as Pierce finished on-air, John and Ken introduced their next guests: an angry Damon and Brenda van Dam, who lambasted Pierce as a nut case. “We had scheduled them in advance, but when they heard Doug was on the show, they canceled, only to change their minds right before show time,” Kobylt says.

After the interview, John and Ken picked apart the conversation and spoke critically about the van Dams’ lack of emotion and their defensiveness about questions pertaining to their own behavior and actions the last night Danielle was seen. The next day, the swinger story broke in The San Diego Union-Tribune—furthered that evening on San Diego radio by Rick Roberts.

“It’s a very dramatic story,” says Kobylt. “Everybody got obsessed with it pretty quickly... We have a pretty fair audience in San Diego—we’ve even made it into the top 10 on occasion—and we started getting calls from people who live in the neighborhood and know the van Dams. As a result, it might as well have been in L.A. I tend to look at the whole [Southern California] area as the same, anyway.”

(By press deadline, the van Dams could not be reached for comment by San Diego Magazine.)

While the van Dam case has been duly covered by most of the mainstream media, the Star tabloid stoked the flames of controversy with a front-page banner that screamed, “The new JonBenet—what Danielle’s mom and dad are hiding.” Inside was a two-page story headlined, “Tragedy of little Danielle—and the dark sex secrets her parents are trying to keep hidden.”

Quoting the proverbial unnamed sources “close to the probe,” the Star reported that later-arrested suspect David Westerfield “was aware of the van Dams’ sexual activities and had approached Brenda about hosting a sex-swap party in his house.” The Star said Brenda had admitted to police “that the couple belonged to a swingers’ club called Club CB” and that sources say she “flirted outrageously and danced with Westerfield” the Friday night Danielle disappeared. “He [Westerfield] knew that Brenda and her friends were sexually involved, and he wanted to be part of the action, but for whatever reason, he was not invited by Brenda to accompany her and her four friends back to her home that night for more partying and sex,” the Star says it was told by a source.

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