Posted on 07/24/2002 10:44:59 PM PDT by FresnoDA
Westerfield's son takes stand against him |
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David Westerfield's only son took the stand against his father Wednesday and denied that graphic child pornography found in the family home belonged to him. Lawyers for Westerfield, who is facing the death penalty for what prosecutors say was the sexually motivated murder of his 7-year-old neighbor, Danielle van Dam, had previously suggested that computer images of young girls being raped were the property of his son. But David Neal Westerfield, a college freshman testifying on the day before his 19th birthday, said the only pornography he accessed were pictures of "big-breasted women" and Japanese animations. His father, he said, had his own stash of pornography, which included computer disks containing the child rape scenes. "I found some [pornography] on his computer and I found some on disks in his office," said the younger Westerfield, known as Neal. The images on those disks, which detectives found in Westerfield's home office, were so disturbing that they drove some jurors to tears when they were displayed in court last month. After several days of dry forensic witnesses, Neal Westerfield's testimony offered a moment of high drama in the nearly two-month old trial. Before he was called, the defense formally rested its nine-day case without Westerfield taking the stand, and prosecutors immediately began their rebuttal. The jury is expected to begin deliberating next week.
Westerfield, a 50-year-old engineer, looked stricken as his son took the stand, and his body began to shake in an even more pronounced manner than it has at other points during the trial. Neal Westerfield did not look in his father's direction during the testimony. "I assume you don't want to be here," prosecutor Jeff Dusek asked him at the start of his testimony. "Correct," he said. [Judge William Mudd ordered that Neal Westerfield's face not be shown on television nor photographed during his testimony to protect his privacy.] Both Neal and his older sister, Lisa, Westerfield's children with the second of his former wives, have offered support for their father in brief comments to the local media, but on the stand, Neal Westerfield's testimony mostly seemed to hurt his father. He said he stumbled across the child pornography while looking for a video game on his father's bookshelf. He said he looked at some but not all of the images. A defense computer expert previously testified that logs of computer use in the house indicated Neal Westerfield was responsible for much of the pornography. In addition to the son's denial Wednesday, prosecutors also recalled their own expert, James Watkins, who said he found a computerized card file apparently kept by Westerfield that included 200 pornographic Web sites with names like tooyoung2.com and youngvirgins.nu. In addition to disavowing possession of the child pornography, Neal Westerfield also told jurors that his father deviated from his normal routine the weekend Danielle went missing last February. The younger Westerfield split his time between his mother's house and his father's, alternating every two weeks. He often camped with his father and knew his habits well. Westerfield told police that he went on a long, meandering odyssey alone in his recreational vehicle the weekend Danielle vanished. Neal Westerfield said it was unusual for his father to go to the desert outpost of Glamis without dune buggies and other "sand toys." He also said his father normally parked his RV close to the town of Glamis and had never been as far out in the desert as he was sighted the day after Danielle's disappearance. Prosecutors allege he took Danielle with him in the RV and later dumped her body along a roadside. Neal Westerfield also suggested his father lied to police about the normal route he took to Glamis. In an interview before his arrest, Westerfield said he took the curving back roads to the desert, but his son told officers they always took a straight highway he believed was Interstate 8. Westerfield told officers Interstate 8 was too dangerous for his RV. Danielle's fingerprints, hair and blood were discovered inside the RV, and the defense has suggested she left the evidence behind while playing in the motor home before she vanished. But Neal Westerfield said he never remembered Danielle anywhere near the house. "Never saw her near the motor home?" Dusek asked. "No," Neal Westerfield replied. Although the younger Westerfield said nothing about his current relationship with his father, he hinted at anger toward the defense lawyers. He referred to Westerfield's lead lawyer, Steven Feldman, only by his last name and said that during trial preparation the lawyer tried to convince him they had proof he had visited more porn sites than he was admitting to. He also said the lawyer asked him to find the password for one of those sites, but, after talking to his mother, Neal Westerfield declined. Feldman chose not to cross-examine his client's son at all. Since the trial began, some callers to San Diego radio shows have suggested Neal Westerfield might be Danielle's killer. On the stand, he painstakingly accounted for his whereabouts the night of Danielle's abduction. He said he spent the entire night at the house of a friend who was hosting a video game party. The friend, Lynn Lang, and his mother, Jannette Lenamond, took the stand after him and echoed his account. Earlier in the day, the defense closed out its case by displaying still frames of news coverage of the case. The pictures showed police officers and crime scene technicians standing in several areas outside Westerfield's house after he had become a suspect. Many of the law enforcement agents are wearing identical orange shirts. Among the trace evidence prosecutors say links Westerfield to the crime are bright orange fibers. One fiber was caught in Danielle's necklace and other similar fibers were found in Westerfield's house and RV. Prosecutors never identified the source of the fibers. Defense lawyer Feldman never directly asserted that the fibers were from the police uniforms, but prosecutor Dusek appeared to anticipate such an argument. "Were you asked to see if these fibers were the same as the ones we're concerned with here?" he asked the forensic artist, James Gripp, who made the still frames for display. "No," Gripp answered. Also Wednesday, a radio reporter was called from her seat in the press box to testify about a strange encounter she had with a defense witness. River Stillwood said she bumped into Patricia LePage, a bar patron who testified that Danielle's mother and Westerfield were "dirty dancing" the night of the abduction, in a courthouse bathroom prior to LePage's testimony. LePage, who walks with a cane, told jurors she did not take her normal painkillers before testifying, but Stillwood said LePage complained about her back pain and then "she said she needed to take some more medication." |
The Jackals Are Back - FDA
THE BITCH IS BACK-ELTON JOHN PARODY!!!
Poor DW, he must be the unluckiest innocent man alive, a VIOLENT CHILD GANG RAPE VIDEO COLLECTOR who just "happened" to have Danielle's fingerprints, blood DNA, hair and fibers show up in his home and RV after she was abducted and murdered.
SO many coincidences. Just like with poor OJ.
SWEET HOME ALABAMA-Lynard Skynard
(Guitar Solo)
Damn Unlucky!
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