Grieving mother recalls day she found her daughter missing |
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SAN DIEGO — Grief-stricken but defiant, Danielle van Dam’s mother stared down her daughter’s accused killer Thursday as she tearfully recounted the 7-year-old’s shocking abduction. "I started looking around the house and looking in the beds and in the closet," said Brenda van Dam, her voice becoming soft and high-pitched as she described the morning last February when she found her only daughter’s bed empty. "But we couldn’t find her."
Even with tears streaming down her flushed cheeks, the 39-year-old housewife repeatedly turned toward the defense table and glared icily at David Westerfield, the neighbor accused of murdering Danielle. Westerfield, 50, an engineer who lived two doors from the van Dams, locked eyes with Brenda van Dam several times, but mostly turned away from her withering gaze. He is accused of snatching the second-grader from her canopy bed in the middle of the night, raping and murdering her. He faces the death penalty if convicted. Van Dam testified on the third day of the trial and the day after her husband, Damon, spent a grueling afternoon on the witness stand. The defense has urged jurors to focus on the van Dam’s lifestyle — the couple engaged in swinging or partner-swapping — and their marijuana use. Like her husband, Brenda van Dam admitted on the stand that she smoked pot the night her daughter disappeared and on previous occasions had group sex with some visitors to the family home that night. And like her husband, she said she openly discussed her private life in hopes of helping the case. "I would have told them anything they asked to get Danielle back, said van Dam. "None of this matters." The emotional core of her testimony came when prosecutor Jeff Dusek played the 911 call she made after discovering her daughter missing on Feb. 2. "My daughter is not in her bed this morning. She’s only seven," van Dam told the operator. As the operator took down her information, van Dam begins to sound more and more concerned. "I don’t know where she could be." After dispatching police officers, the operator told a tearful van Dam, "think positive thoughts and everything will be okay." A female alternate juror, a mother of young children, began crying as she followed along with a transcript of the call. Brenda van Dam clutched a tissue and stared icily at Westerfield.
Van Dam recounted several encounters with Westerfield, a twice-divorce father of two college students, before her daughter’s killing. She said she chatted with him Jan. 25 at Dad’s Café, a neighborhood bar where she and two female friends were dancing. Several days later, she and Danielle sold him Girl Scout cookies. The defense has suggested that the cookie selling trip might explain why Danielle’s hair, blood and fingerprints were later found on Westerfield’s property. But Brenda van Dam cast doubt on that theory, saying Danielle and her younger brother, Dylen, only left her sight for three minutes and only to go into Westerfield’s backyard to look at his pool. She said the last time she encountered Westerfield was the night of her daughter’s disappearance when she ran into him at a bar where she was drinking cranberry and vodka cocktails with two girlfriends. "He said, ‘Ladies don’t buy their own drinks and threw some money on the bar,’" van Dam said. She said she and her two friends ordered cocktails, but largely ignored Westerfield who was soon joined by two male friends. "I felt guilty. I said, ‘I’m sorry. I hope we’re not being rude, but I came here to be with my friends,’" she said. Van Dam said she was not sure if Westerfield was still at the bar when she and her friends left close to 2 a.m. She said she discovered a door in the garage open when she returned home. She closed it and after briefly entertaining friends from the bar, went to bed without checking on her children. On cross-examination, she acknowledged that on one occasion in October 2000 she and her husband had sex with another couple and a woman. Those women were with her at the bar the night Danielle vanished. "And with regards to those women, both you and your husband have engaged in sex with them and their male partners," asked Feldman. "Yes," said Brenda van Dam. While most of the van Dams’ testimony was consistent, they contradicted each other on what may become a crucial point in the trial. Damon van Dam said that when they turned in for the night at 2:30 a.m., he locked the family Weimaraner, Layla, in his eldest son’s room. But Brenda van Dam said she was certain the 60-pound dog was roaming the house because she heard her noisily looking for a place to sleep. Westerfield’s defense has charged that the assailant had to be someone familiar to the dog. Judge William Mudd ordered the family and their supporters not to wear button pins showing Danielle’s picture in court, but Brenda van Dam wore two braided purple and pink cloth bracelets on her right wrist. Purple and pink were Danielle’s favorite colors. She looked drawn and nervous as she took the stand and broke down as soon as Dusek asked her how many children she has. "Three," she said in a quivering voice, before naming Derek, Dylen and Danielle. She noted that Dylen was celebrating his sixth birthday as she testified. She dissolved into tears in the afternoon after glancing at a court exhibit of photos of Danielle’s room. Judge Mudd called an early break in testimony and prosecutor Dusek gave her a bear hug. She rushed out into the courthouse hallway where her husband embraced her. "I missed you," she told him. Also Thursday morning, medical examiner Brian Blackbourne testified that he could not determine how Danielle was killed, nor whether she was sexually assaulted. Judging by the amount of decomposition, he said that Danielle had been dead anywhere from 10 days to six weeks by the time her badly-decomposed body was discovered along a roadside. She was found on Feb. 27, less than four weeks after her disappearance. Defense lawyer Feldman seized on the wide window for her time of death, repeatedly pointing out that Westerfield was under surveillance from Feb. 4 until his arrest and therefore could not have dumped her body. "Is it your professional opinion that Danielle van Dam could have been alive on Feb. 6, 2002?" Feldman asked. "Yes," Blackbourne said. "On Feb. 7," the lawyer pressed. "Yes," the medical examiner said. "On Feb. 17," Feldman asked. "Possibly," said Blackbourne. |
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Brenda van Dam
