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Posted on 05/01/2002 4:03:29 PM PDT by FresnoDA
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—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.
There is just something so defensive and whiny about both of the van Dams. When most suffering mothers endure a child abduction or tragic death they very rarely focus on themselves, talking about how "emotionally drained" they are. And, why wait until night time to pray for Danielle? It seems that the van Dams are deficient in their parental roles. They both sound like they are reading from a script. I do think that the supposed abduction of the little black boy is looking more and more like the van Dam situation. The stepfather is a suspect and Damon ought to be suspected.
Westerfield's lawyers are pressing for speedy trial even though such serious cases usually require several months of legal preparation.
"I've never heard of a death penalty case in this or any other community going in 60 days,'' Superior Court Judge William Mudd said
AND IN THE FUTURE SOMEWHERE ....... as it turned out, everyone in the community (the Van Dams, the police, the judge, the press, the registered sex offenders) were all members of various swingers clubs in the California area, and David Westerfield was the only person in the entire community that wasn't.
This needs to be added to the FACTS section.
Your input from earlier this week gave another dimension to consider.
sw
It's sounding like this guy got tired of watching the little tyke and just decided to get rid of him. This was my suspicion the first second I heard of the case, but I was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt. Then the Van Dams joined in and I almost expect them to find Jhani's body on Dehesa Road in about 2 more weeks.
These people were way beyond just wife-swapping. But according to Kimmie, DW was much worse because he looked at Porno.
The vd's acted it out.
"The trail is going to be BRUTAL on the van Dams"...quote from John Walsh. How bad was it? shudder, shudder.
sw
Nice car, perhaps a little too much for a kids first car. There is one just like it tooling around Sacto.
Is the retired policewoman a 'swinger'? According to an earlier article on swinging, the swingset is comprised in large of by POLICEMAN and NURSES. Thus giving credence to the connections (Damon's brother or something, a policeman).
Sara Muller Fraunces is currently Vice President of Marketing and Communications for San Diego State U. Previously, she was Senior Vice President of theStoorza, Ziegaus, and Metzger PR agency.From Jameson.....
| 6 . "sharkie" Posted by John_Boy on May-02-02 at 12:35 PM (EST) |
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I don't "know" about the bad business between her and Brenda....I just recall asking here once before and having someone tell me....I have no idea what RR says or is saying.... |
San Diego Daily Transcript/April 18, 2000
"QUALCOMM Antes Up $25 Million for Local Education "
By Jennifer Davies, San Diego Daily Transcript
Answering President Clinton's call to help bridge the great digital divide, Qualcomm is delivering a hefty $25 million in donations to local educational institutions.
Starting in 2001, the bequests will go to the University of California, San Diego, San Diego State University, California State University of San Marcos and the Foundation for the Improvement of Mathematics and Science Education.
Qualcomm's bequest was set against President Clinton's two-day trip highlighting his crusade to prepare low-income families for the Internet. On his first stop in East Palo Alto, Clinton announced the donation of computer services and training worth $100 million from big-name technology companies, including Novell and America Online Inc. But Qualcomm is not the only San Diego company donating resources to the program. Gateway Inc. has pledged to pay for technology training for 75,000 teachers across the country.
Dr. Irwin Jacobs, Qualcomm's CEO, joined Clinton at the press conference in Silicon Valley to discuss his company's plans to help close the gap between the technology haves and have-nots. Jacobs said in his statement that the money would be used to provide resources for the development and training of math and science teachers as well as solidifying the ties between all of San Diego's schools, from its universities to its kindergartens.
"At Qualcomm, we have long recognized that the digital divide is a business issue that needs to be addressed to allow the high-technology industry continued access to a highly skilled work force," Jacobs said in his statement. "Today we are acknowledging that the digital divide is also clearly a social and economic issue."
UCSD will receive the largest portion of Qualcomm's largesse, garnering $15 million over five years for its proposed research institute. The donation will serve as a matching donation for the Telecommunications and Information Research Institute at UCSD, which is currently competing to become one of three California Institutes of Science and Innovation. Gov. Gray Davis has proposed the establishment of three such institutes, with a state budget of $75 million as initial capital funding for the institutes and plans to provide $100 million to each institute over a period of four years. But the state funds must be matched from private and federal sources on a 2-to-1 ratio.
"We here at UCSD are extremely grateful to Qualcomm for this investment; it's really a leadership investment and we will be seeking other investments from those in the community," said Denine Hagen, a spokesperson for UCSD.
SDSU will receive $6 million over the next three years, with the money being divided between the Entrepreneurial Management Center, which will get 50 percent of the funds, the Center for Research and Mathematics and Science Education, and the College of Education.
Sara Muller Fraunces, the vice president of marketing and communications for SDSU, said Qualcomm's bequest will help the institution continue its commitment to allowing its students to participate in the entrepreneurial zeitgeist of the region.
"Qualcomm's investment in San Diego today is a measure of the convergence between the public and private," Fraunces said. "Neither can advance in the long-term without the other."
Qualcomm will also provide $3 million over a three-year period to the Foundation for the, Improvement of Mathematics and Science Education, a new nonprofit aimed at increasing student achievement in science and math. A portion of Qualcomm's investment will go to helping the San Diego Unified School District regain National Science Foundation funding.
CSUSM will receive $1 million over the next two years to bolster its fledgling College of Business Administration.
IR/PS, along with the Jacobs School of Engineering, have been identified as recipients of Qualcomm's UCSD donation.
"Fund-raisers are being held in Danielle's name throughout the county, including a radio station-sponsored concert at Mission Valley Center yesterday that brought in more than $5,000.
It's unclear how the money will be spent. But last night, Danielle's parents, Damon and Brenda van Dam, said through a spokeswoman that all donations will go toward the search for their daughter. Any money left over will go to a charity, said the spokeswoman, Sara Muller Fraunces.
"We don't want one cent out of this," Damon van Dam said through Fraunces. Bill Libby, a friend of the van Dams who helped set up an account at Wells Fargo Bank, said the donations probably will be spent on posters, banners and ribbons – anything that will remind people to look for Danielle. More than $6,900 has been raised, but none of the money has been spent.
In initial conversations, Libby said the money also could be used to pay a public relations specialist the family hired to help land interviews with national television networks.
He said he paid Fraunces, who owns the marketing-consulting firm OutSmart, a $500 retainer fee out of his own checkbook. Fraunces said she returned the retainer check and will work free.
"I will not be accepting any money from the fund – period," Fraunces said last night. "I'm going to be paying for things out of my own pocket."
Yesterday, the family also retained Lynn Rubenson, a senior vice president for Fleishman-Hillard San Diego, to work with Fraunces. It wasn't clear yesterday who would pay Rubenson's fees; she did not return calls. "
Forgot, Bill Garcia
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