 She regained her composure and began to testify about visiting defendant David Westerfield's home with Danielle and one of her brothers to sell Girl Scout cookies, and about Westerfield buying her and friends a drink at a bar early on the morning of her daughter's disappearance. She said she smoke marijuana before leaving home. She came to the stand after a medical examiner, Dr. Brian Blackbourne, testified that he could only estimate the time of death as 10 days to six weeks prior to the autopsy. Blackbourne also said he concluded the girl's death was a homicide from the position of the body, its location far from her home and because searchers had been looking for her for three weeks. Under questioning by the defense, Blackbourne said there was no evidence the girl was strangled and there was no evidence of sexual assault. On Wednesday, the girl's father acknowledged smoking marijuana the night his daughter disappeared and of having sex with women other than his wife, but he said that behavior was irrelevant to the 7-year-old's kidnapping and killing. Damon van Dam testified that while he did not immediately reveal to police his marijuana smoking or the fact he had sex with other women, he has since been completely open about his personal life. "Realizing the magnitude of the situation, I have opened up my private life and given every possible detail in order to get my daughter back and now to get justice for her," he said. Westerfield, who is charged with kidnapping, murder and possession of child pornography, could be sentenced to death if convicted. The 50-year-old engineer, who lived two doors from the van Dams, came under suspicion early in the investigation because he was at the same bar as Danielle's mother and two of her girlfriends the night Danielle disappeared. He also took off on a long, meandering trip in his motor home the next day. Investigators said they found Danielle's blood, fingerprints, and hair in the motor home and have other forensic evidence that links Westerfield to her disappearance. That disappearance sparked an intense search that ended with the Feb. 27 discovery of her nude body along a rural road east of San Diego. Defense lawyer Steven Feldman has sought to discredit the van Dams by suggesting they were not honest with investigators and that their "risque" behavior opened their home to other potential suspects. Damon van Dam, 36, acknowledged he kissed and "snuggled" in bed with Barbara Easton when she returned from the bar with Van Dam's wife, Brenda, and another woman the night of Danielle's disappearance. He also admitted that he once had sex with Easton in his bedroom while Brenda and Easton's husband were in the room and that he has had sex with the other woman who was in his home the night Danielle disappeared. He also said he and his wife smoked marijuana with the two women earlier in the evening but didn't tell police right away. "I didn't think it mattered and I didn't want to get in trouble," van Dam said in response to a question from prosecutor Jeff Dusek. The night of Danielle's disappearance, van Dam recalled he woke up sometime after 3 a.m. to find a sliding glass door open downstairs. He said he closed it without giving it much thought and returned to bed. Danielle was discovered missing later that morning. Van Dam said he only had a few casual interactions with Westerfield over the nearly four years they were neighbors. Photos of Danielle's corpse were displayed in the courtroom, showing her face, blackened and disfigured by decomposition. A friend of the van Dam family who was in court bowed her head, apparently to avoid seeing the photos; another friend wiped away tears. Copyright © 2002 KABC-TV and the Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. |
