Updated: 7:09 p.m. PDT June 5, 2002
Damon van Dam also testified that he had engaged in past extramarital intercourse with the same two women who went out with his wife the night before his 7-year-old turned up missing Feb. 2.
"Since realizing the magnitude of the situation, I have opened my private life up, and given every detail possible to try to get my daughter back ... and now to get justice for her," the father said.
His testimony -- tearful at times -- came in the second day of the murder and kidnapping trial of David A. Westerfield, a 50-year-old self-employed design engineer accused of killing the Sabre Springs second-grader.
Westerfield lived two doors down from the van Dam family.
Nearly from the start, rumors of extramarital sex involving the parents of the child have swirled -- fueling speculation about whether that could have led to her disappearance.
Van Dam, 36, said Barbara Easton and Denise Kemel went with his wife on a "girl's night out" to Dad's Cafe in nearby Poway the night of Feb. 1, because Easton was scheduled to be transferred out of town.
"In fact, (the women) were your intimate friends, isn't that true?" defense attorney Steven Feldman asked.
After a pause, van Dam quietly answered, "Um, yes."
"There had been other occasions prior to the first of February that you were intimate with Barbara Easton?" Feldman asked.
The attorney suggested it had happened twice, which van Dam denied.
"How many times?" Feldman asked.
"Once."
"Where was that?"
"Barbara's house."
The questioning began to annoy the Qualcomm software engineer when he was asked to testify again about some kissing and rubbing with Easton that took place in his bedroom, while his wife was out of view, after the three women got back from Dad's Cafe.
"And Barbara was a person with whom you'd been intimate with previously?" Feldman pressed.
"Yes," van Dam said in a drawn-out manner.
Shortly thereafter, Feldman brought up Kemel.
"With regard to Denise, had you had intimate relations?"
"If you mean sex, yes," van Dam said. He told Feldman he had sex with her in front of his wife and Kemel's husband.
The father also testified he initially didn't tell authorities he had taken "a puff or two" from a marijuana cigarette the women were smoking the evening before Danielle turned up missing.
"I didn't think it mattered," he said, "and I didn't want to get in trouble (for that)."
But van Dam said that after the officers told him they were only interested in finding his daughter, he began to be truthful with them.
"When they told me it was absolutely critical to know what happened that night, I told them everything that happened that night," van Dam said.
Feldman verbally hammered at van Dam regarding his initial lack of candor, asking him about specific statements made to specific police officers in the hours after his daughter was reported missing.
Van Dam was able to recall general questions and answers, but few specifics.
Feldman was able to get van Dam to say he did not take notice whether any lights were illuminated on his home security system, meaning a window or door was open, before the women returned.
When he woke up about two hours later, he said he did see such a light. He testified he found a sliding glass door open, and also checked a door in the garage.
Much of the early testimony was designed to orient jurors to the layout of the van Dam house, using a floor plan and photographs.
Van Dam described the upstairs hallway that led to bedrooms, and also told the jury of six men and six women what was in Danielle's room.
One of the issues in the case is whether artwork posted on the doors of the bedrooms would help someone know which room was hers.
He added that each of the children's rooms had night lights, but Danielle's was burned out, so he opened the drapes to allow street light into the room.
When he was shown a photograph of his daughter's door, van Dam began to cry as he described why a dog gate had been placed there.
"I asked that the room not be cleaned," he finally managed.
Van Dam said he and Brenda "got very nervous very quickly" when they discovered Danielle missing the morning of Feb. 2. He searched outside and noticed their side gate, which is difficult to open, ajar.
Nervous when he took the witness stand, van Dam misstated which grade his oldest son was in.
Dr. Norman "Skip" Sperber, a forensic dentist, testified that four of Danielle's teeth were missing when he examined her mouth, but that he later found one.
Sperber told Deputy District Attorney Jeff Dusek teeth commonly fall out during decomposition, but that none was found under the body after it was discovered Feb. 27 near a tree in Dehesa.
In pretrial motions, the prosecution said the loss of teeth showed Danielle could have been suffocated.
Co-defense counsel Robert Boyce got Sperber to concede that any finding on the missing teeth other than decomposition was basically "pure speculation."
Late in the day, San Diego County Medical Examiner Brian Blackbourne testified that Danielle van Dam's body was so decomposed when it was found that it was impossible to establish a cause of death.
Westerfield, charged with murder, kidnapping, possession of child pornography and the special circumstance of murder during a kidnapping, could get the death penalty if convicted.