Van Dams' sex life on display
Tearful mother glares at defendant; tape of call to 911 played
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By Alex Roth
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
June 7, 2002
Danielle van Dam's mother wept about her daughter's death, glared at the man charged with killing the girl and fielded questions about her unconventional sex life during a day of emotional testimony yesterday.
Still referring to her 7-year-old daughter in the present tense, Brenda van Dam sobbed when she talked about the horror of discovering the girl's bedroom empty the morning of Feb. 2.
"Ma'am, I have an emergency," the clearly distressed mother told a 911 operator that day, according to a tape played during the third day of the David Westerfield murder trial.
"My daughter's not in her bed this morning. She's only 7. ... Oh, my God."
When she wasn't crying, van Dam spent much of her time on the witness stand glowering at Westerfield, her one-time neighbor, who is on trial on charges of abducting and killing the child. Prosecutors say the 50-year-old, twice-divorced design engineer is a pedophile.
She described Westerfield as a neighborhood acquaintance whose name she didn't even know until less than a week before her daughter's disappearance, when they went to his house selling Girl Scout cookies.
Van Dam, a stay-at-home mom whose husband, Damon, is a software engineer, also talked about her activities on the night before her daughter was discovered missing. She admitted smoking marijuana with two friends in the garage of her house before the three women went out to Dad's Cafe & Steakhouse, where they drank, danced and played pool until closing time.
Her demeanor shifted dramatically under questioning by Westerfield's attorney, Steven Feldman, who asked her a series of questions about her sex life.
Westerfield's attorneys have argued that the van Dams were irresponsible parents and that their daughter could have been killed by any number of people the couple attracted into their lives.
A day after he grilled Damon van Dam about the couple's sexual and marijuana habits, Feldman did the same with Brenda van Dam, asking whether she had sex with her friends Barbara Easton and Denise Kemal and their husbands.
She acknowledged that she had. She later admitted that she and her husband had sex with Kemal and Kemal's husband, Andy, during a Halloween party in October 2000.
Much of van Dam's testimony was identical to her statements at a preliminary hearing in March. Once again, she gave a detailed account of her activities on the night of Feb. 1, including her encounter with Westerfield at the Poway bar and her discovery upon returning home that an alarm light was flashing in the house.
She gave the following version of her previous encounters with Westerfield and the events of Feb. 1:
Westerfield was a neighbor she sometimes waved to in the street. A year ago she and Danielle went to his house and sold him Girl Scout cookies. She had virtually no contact with him again until Jan. 25, when she ran into him at Dad's. She was with Easton and Kemal, her two girlfriends.
The trio had smoked marijuana that night before heading to the bar, where they happened to spot Westerfield, who bought them a round of drinks. They had little more contact with him before leaving that night.
The following Tuesday, van Dam, her daughter and 5-year-old son went to Westerfield's house selling Girl Scout cookies again. He invited them in, and she asked to see his remodeled kitchen.
While her son and daughter went to his back yard to look at the pool, Westerfield told her his name and asked whether she would be willing to introduce him to her female friends.
"He said to tell Barbara that I had a rich neighbor that I could introduce him to," she testified.
She said she might be going to Dad's that Friday night but would need to get a baby sitter because her husband was planning a snowboarding trip with the couple's older son.
Westerfield informed her that he sometimes hosted "adult" parties. He gave her his business cards; she gave him her home phone number. She left with her children, who she insisted didn't wander anywhere else in the house.
Prosecutors say Danielle's hair was found in a lint ball in the trash of Westerfield's garage.
By Friday night van Dam's husband had canceled the snowboarding trip and planned to stay home with the couple's three children while she went out with her girlfriends.
Easton and Kemal arrived at the house in the early evening, and the three women smoked marijuana in the garage. The door from the house into the garage locks from the outside so the children can't come in while the parents are smoking.
While they smoked, one of the women opened another door in the garage that leads to an outside yard. Van Dam said yesterday that she couldn't remember if anyone remembered to shut that door.
At 8:30 p.m. the three women headed off to Dad's, where they once again ran into Westerfield, who again bought them drinks.
The three women later ran into two male friends, Rich and Keith. The five played pool and danced all night, leaving the bar at one point to smoke more marijuana in van Dam's sport-utility vehicle. By closing time she had consumed four alcoholic beverages – three vodkas with cranberry juice and a shot of tequila.
Although two of Westerfield's friends played pool with them at the bar, Westerfield didn't join in. She doesn't remember seeing him leave the bar that night.
The three women headed back to the van Dams' house with Rich and Keith, with Keith interested in "hooking up" with Barbara. The five entered the house about 2 a.m., and Brenda van Dam noticed a flashing alarm light. She later discovered that the garage door leading to the yard was open.
Her friend Barbara went upstairs at one point and snuggled with Damon van Dam, who had been lying in bed. Eventually they joined the others downstairs to eat reheated pizza and cookies.
Brenda van Dam also went upstairs at one point. She said her three children's bedroom doors were open and that she closed them so the children wouldn't be awakened by the voices downstairs. Her husband testified Wednesday that he had left the doors open a crack earlier that night when tucking the children into bed.
About 2:30 a.m. the guests left and the couple went to bed. In testimony, Damon van Dam said he awoke an hour or so later, saw a flashing alarm light and discovered a sliding glass door open downstairs. He said he closed it and went back to sleep.
The next morning, Danielle never came down for breakfast. Her mother went upstairs and discovered that the door to Danielle's room was open and the bed was empty.
Within minutes the parents were frantic, and Brenda van Dam called 911.
On cross-examination, Feldman suggested that the three women were dancing so provocatively at the bar that night and the previous week that strange men began gravitating toward them.
Van Dam admitted telling her friends on the night of Jan. 25: "You guys, you're probably making everybody in this place excited. . . . You probably realize that every man in this bar is probably paying attention to you."
A Dad's bartender testified he had seen Westerfield in the bar a few times. He said Westerfield was a "people watcher."
Yesterday's proceedings were marred by a woman who screamed an obscenity at Westerfield from outside the courtroom while the jury was filing back in after the lunch break.
Deputies escorted the 40-year-old San Diego woman downstairs, checked her record and released her with a warning. The woman, who was at the courthouse for an unrelated hearing, was told that if she returned to the area of the Westerfield trial, she would be arrested.
Testimony in the case is scheduled to resume Monday. The trial will not be held on Fridays.