 |
|
|
|||||||
Posted on 05/01/2002 4:03:29 PM PDT by FresnoDA
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
—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.)
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.
I thought the pornography charges were dropped because they couldn't prove it...Obviously I stand corrected and you are right, Kim. (boy, is my face red).......
sw
How convenient. No proof anyone called the Recovery Center and gave that tip at all.
I'd like to see the source..and that's not saying I don't believe you..but you know how all of us are... we like sources just to be safe to repeat them to others.
I'll go find them.
So far, Susan Winterstien, who was running the Danielle Recovery Center, is the one that called police and told them Searchers had found a body in the Dehesa Rd area.
She held a job at University of SD, too, as I recall. Office of the Vice President for University Advancement Associate Vice President for Marketingand Communications ........Sara Fraunces http://coursecat.sdsu.edu/0001/AAO.pdf
I haven't found this reference, to WHO alerted the SEARCH CENTER to go back and search the DEHESA RD area.
I know I read it because I remember it seemed unusual that they got 2 phone calls with the same tip.
But, until I find proof, it has to be considered a rumor.
If I find it, you two will be the first I reply to to let you know. Thanks..gman
Therefore they doubt the boy was ever there.
Here's his general answer.. This discusses the many thousand they found, with less than 100 of questionable..and everyone refers to it as those that must be under 18.
Q HOW MANY IMAGES WERE YOU ABLE TO RETRIEVE?
9 A FROM AN OVERALL, THERE WERE THOUSANDS OF
10 PICTURES. BUT FROM A QUESTIONABLE STANDPOINT, WE
11 RETRIEVED APPROXIMATELY, I WOULD SAY, LESS THAN A
12 HUNDRED.
This is good to check out too.
Here's a question, I'm supposed to be doing some band stuff right now, the yearbook and some stuff for the orchestra. I have 2 separate folders for each group, in each folder there are sub-folders for each event, and more folders in each folder by who gave me the pictures and sometimes even more sub-sub-sub folders because of the way the digital pictures are numbered. Then I have separate duplicate folders by event and grade for the pictures I'm actually going to use. It is exceedingly organized and 90% of the people in the pictures are under the age of 18, what does that make me? That sounds rather like a TAAS test math question. All of my pictures are EXCEEDINGLY ORGANIZED.
Footnote: The digital pics of the other Danielle, when you aim a digital camera and are trying not to cut off the head or feet, generally the lower abdomen will be the center of the picture where the auto focus focuses. Just extra info.
These porn images are scanned photos taken from movies and magazines that are advertized in men's magazines.
They have been available for 10 or 20 years as magazines or films or movies.
Some internet site has these files on the website that they scanned and placed in graphic files.
You download them and they are put in folders by TYPE.
Even if the website doesn't put them into folders by type (it should, most things on websites are grouped into folders when there are that many images), there are other explanations for their being organized into folders named as per the testimony.
(1) the adolescent did it. Downloaded the files, then copied/zipped them to the zipdisk
(2)The adolescent got the zipdisk as a copy from someone else that had downloaded it.
#2 is the most likely, as these files were on a ZIPDISK. This indicates they were compressed. They have to be uncompressed to be viewed.
64,000 plus files is a lot of images files.
Another explanation is that there are websites where you can choose to download a library of images and you will get porn you did not ask for. And another is there are some websites you can log on to and there is a provision to have them download everything they get to you. Again, you don't know what you will get. These last explanations are not the likely versions of what happened as you would have to copy/zip the images files to the zipdisk.
The police are trying to establish a link in the minds of the jury, and the public, that because Westerfield was a neat freak, that is proof the 100 or so images on the ZIPDISK were for his prurient pleasures, because he was compelled (because of being a neat freak) into putting them into folders, and giving the folders names that applied to the type of images to be found in them.
BOY, IS THAT ONE LONG REACH!, but the public swallowed it whole.
Testimony in the PH disputes the mr-clean-ocd-anal-retentive-neat-freak story. I wondered what constituted that. Did David have a maid come in? Was it because he was, at least most of the time the only one living there and gone alot, so nothing got messed up? The bleach stories were fabrications. The closest it comes to the bleach is the pool chemicals. JMO
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.