Posted on 06/06/2002 10:15:36 PM PDT by FresnoDA
Westerfield, 50, is accused of abducting and killing 7-year-old Danielle van Dam and could face the death penalty if convicted. The child's mother reported her missing the morning of Feb. 2.
Brenda van Dam told prosecutor Jeff Dusek she disclosed to officers everything about her "open marriage" once they made it clear that it was important.
The mother said she didn't discuss her decision not to disclose information with her husband.
"I would have told (the police) anything they needed to get Danielle back," the mother said.
Brenda van Dam said nothing else was taken the night Danielle was abducted."I wish they'd taken everything else but her," the mother said tearfully.
Earlier in the day, Brenda van Dam testified there were never any sex parties at her Sabre Springs home.
She later said that during a Halloween party last October, she and her husband had sex with a friend and her husband in the van Dam home.
Westerfield, a self-employed engineer, is accused of kidnapping the second- grader, killing her and dumping the body near rural Dehesa Road, where it was found more than three weeks after she disappeared.
Brenda van Dam broke down a minute into her testimony, when asked to name her children and give their ages, then later while testifying about a father-daughter dance Danielle was scheduled to attend with her father a week after she vanished.
Dusek asked the mother about the first of two "girls nights out" at Dad's Cafe in Poway with two girlfriends. Dusek asked if any men were invited to the Jan. 25 get-together at Dad's Cafe. Van dam said no.
"Was there a sex party at your house when you got home?" Dusek asked, hoping to pre-empt an anticipated defense attack on the mother during cross-examination.
"There's never been a sex party at my house," she responded matter-of-factly.
She also described previous contacts with the defendant -- she had said he bought her a drink at Dad's -- including a visit to his house with Danielle and her younger brother to sell Girl Scout cookies.
While the children were playing in his back yard, she said the twice-divorced Westerfield told her he was interested in her friend, Barbara Easton, who had caught his eye at Dad's.
On the second outing to Dad's, Easton walked right up to Westerfield and began talking to him, van Dam told the court.
Brenda denied dancing with the defendant on either occasion.
Earlier in the day, Medical Examiner Brian Blackbourne was asked about the cause and time of Danielle's death.
The girl's body was so decomposed when found by a volunteer searcher that it was impossible to establish a cause of death, Blackbourne had said Wednesday.
Thursday, he estimated her time of death at anywhere from 10 days to six weeks before the body was found Feb. 27.
Blackbourne also said it was possible that air temperature could be a variable in judging when she died. That led defense attorney Steven Feldman to suggest that especially hot days in late February could have accelerated the decomposition process.
In his opening statement Tuesday, Feldman told the jury that Westerfield could not possibly have dumped Danielle's body after Feb. 6, because he was under constant scrutiny by the police and the media.
"Is it your professional opinion (Danielle) could have been alive Feb. 6?" Feldman asked.
"Based on my observations? Yes," Blackbourne said.
"Feb. 7?"
"Yes."
"Feb. 17?" Feldman pressed.
"Possibly, yes," Blackbourne answered.
"Depending on the weather conditions, Feb. 22nd?" Feldman asked.
"That's pushing it for what I can accept," Blackbourne said.
He also testified he checked Danielle's body for signs of sexual assault but found none, primarily because of tissue damage from decomposition and animal activity.
Wednesday, the child's father admitted he lied to police about use of marijuana in the garage of his house the night of Feb. 1 -- hours before his daughter turned up missing.
He also told the court that on prior occasions he engaged in sex with both of Brenda's female friends.
A bartender at Dad's Cafe in Poway characterized Westerfield as a "people watcher," but termed a police report on the behavior of Brenda van Dam and two friends inaccurate.
Sean Brown said he was at work as a bar manager on the two nights that have come up in testimony in the case: Jan. 25 and Feb. 1.
It was Feb. 2 that the Sabre Springs 7-year-old was discovered missing.
Westerfield would talk to a regular customer, "hang out" and watch people as they drank and danced, Brown said. The bartender said he never saw the defendant dance or play pool.
Brown said Westerfield would drink 16-ounce rum-and-cokes.
"I believe David had a few drinks," Brown said of Feb. 1. "He was feeling good. He'd taken the edge off. I don't believe he was drunk."
He said the same about Brenda van Dam.
"I don't think she was drunk," Brown testified. "She was in good spirits but was in control of herself. She wasn't slurring."
Under cross-examination by co-defense counsel Robert Boyce, Brown said a police report containing his statements on the behavior of Brenda and her two friends was inaccurate.
Brown testified he warned prosecutor Jeff Dusek about the discrepancy during the lunch hour -- hours before he testified.
The statement from police indicated the women were "flirtatious toward males" and "partying hard."
Brown testified that the women were having fun as girlfriends do. He said he never saw them act inappropriately.
Brown was dismissed as a witness as the court day ended.
Could you direct me to the website of the TV or radio station that had that interview with them? I'd like to listen to it again but can't find it. :-(
It might be worth a try to look at SanDiegoChannel.com where they have numerous short video clips that are identified and dated on a menu. Maybe it is on one of those.
"It's a heartbreaking case, I think every parent's worst nightmare -- your little seven-year-old daughter taken out of your home in the middle of the night," AMW host JOHN WALSH told ET.
"So far we're all at a dead end. A neighbor was a suspect. Police haven't completely eliminated him as a suspect, but they're not holding him right now. And the heartbreaking thing is the not knowing -- it's almost been a week."
Danielle was last seen on Friday night by her father, DAMON VAN DAM. He had put her to bed at approximately 10 p.m. in her bedroom on the second floor of their suburban family home. She was discovered missing Saturday morning when her mother, BRENDA, went to wake her and found her gone. Police are treating Danielle's disappearance as a kidnapping.
"In other cases like the JonBenet Ramsey case," says Walsh, "the parents didn't cooperate with police and didn't go in for polygraphs. That always creates innuendo and speculation. Danielle's parents have gone through hell. They've cooperated with the police from the beginning. They both passed polygraph tests. They're not suspects."
Brenda van Dam said she does not believe her daughter could have run away. And since the family is not wealthy, she does not think that anyone would have taken her daughter for ransom. Walsh believes the police need to look in the van Dams' own backyard.
"Right in [the van Dams'] wonderful middle-class neighborhood, where everybody thinks they're so safe, there are 13 registered sex offenders. The cops've got a lot of work to do -- they've got to check out every one of these sex offenders."
Danielle is described as four-feet tall, weighing 58 pounds with blue eyes and dark blonde hair. She may be wearing blue pajamas with small flowers.
Kinda hard to believe with all the lies they have been caught in since.
Visible in the dark??
Would you send that info to the pro fornication /adultery commentatior on Court TV ..She mad a BIG deal out of that pic.......with ohhhhhhhsssss and ahhhhhhhhhsssss how discusting it was
My take on it, is that Feldman is going to try and prove that Danielle's BODY was deposited after Westerfield was under 24 hour surveillance {right after he got back from his camping trip} and could not have dumped her body where it was found...IF the "Bug expert, Dr. Faulkner" can pinpoint precisely how long the body was in the desert OR that it was kept else-where before it was actually found.
Steven Feldman says he can and will prove this.
sw
I'm sorry, I don't have official transcripts for the trial yet, but often you can find "running transcripts" (someone is typing in what they're hearing) here. Hope this helps?
Except, perhaps, a pair of undies stuffed in the dresser drawer, as described by the PH transcripts. From these, they gathered some of her dna from "yellowish stains".
I bring this up primarily because of your questions about them not dusting the zip disks for fingerprints. Maybe, at that point, they didn't want to know. Maybe the zip disks were "presents" from the nice neighbors from a couple doors down, and the PD wouldn't want to share the fingerprint evidence with Feldman at that point. It could, after all, blow a few holes in their case, which depended heavily on "all that" child porn.
Do you recall who was on the stand? I can try to look it up. I was watching Court TV too. (They're just maddening sometimes, aren't they!)
D. VAN DAM: Yes, I totally understand. And we've done everything we can. We opened up our home to the police. We asked them to come in. It was frustrating at the beginning for them to start the investigation, however, because of course this started off as a missing person -- she walked away.
Isn't this an odd thing to say, when you're claiming the child was kidnapped?
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