SIGNONSANDIEGO
June 13, 2002
Prosecutors continued today to try to establish where accused kidnap and murder suspect David Westerfield's drove his motor home on the weekend 7-year-old Danielle van Dam disappeared.
Jurors heard a Verizon Wireless records custodian testify about when and where Westerfield's cell phone made contact with cellular telephone relay towers that weekend and heard campers testify to having seen Westerfield's motor home at the Silver Strand State Beach campground on Saturday, Feb. 2, the day Danielle was reported missing.
"It was all closed up," said Teresa Hastings, an El Cajon resident who was camping that weekend. "The drapes were all closed, the awning wasn't up. It was like there was nobody there."
Thursday was the seventh day of testimony in San Diego Superior Court. Westerfield, 50, is accused of the kidnapping and murder of Danielle.
One phone made no calls. Over the weekend, the other was used to make several calls and retrieve voicemail intermittently, while calls made to the phone were diverted to voicemail.
Sheets said company records also showed which cell phone towers the phone calls were relayed through, though he testified that the records didn't show how far away the phone was from the towers when the calls were made.
A cell phone will usually try to connect to the nearest tower, but if that tower is busy, it will try to contact the next nearest tower and can be bounced several towers away, Sheets said.
"So you can't tell us where the user actually was," lead defense attorney Steven Feldman asked Sheets during cross-examination.
"No," Sheets replied.
But he later testified that it's more likely for a call to be routed through the nearest tower on weekends because there is less overall cell phone usage on weekends than on weekdays.
Angela Elkus said the family dog, a "fairly young" gray Weimaraner, took little notice of her, though it was her first visit to the van Dam house.
"When I came in he was just standing there," she said. "He looked rather scared, shy, confused."
One of the nagging questions about the Danielle's disappearance is how anyone could have made his way into the home – which was occupied by the girl's parents, brothers, and dog – without the dog barking or creating some sort of noise.
The van Dam's have testified the dog was raised around others that had been "debarked."
Dear Alex Roth:
If David Westerfield using "we" a few times instead of "I" in his taped interview is suspicious and significant enough for a headlined story ("Defendant Said "We" in Telling of Trip to Desert, Tape Reveals" http://www.uniontribune.com/news/metro/danielle/20020613-9999_1n13tape.html), what about Brenda Van Dam, in her testimony of June 6th, wishing "they" had taken anything other than Danielle?
From a few paragraphs into a June 6 article on the channel 10 site (my emphasis):
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.
http://www.thesandiegochannel.com/sand/news/stories/news-150094320020606-210615.html
They'd? Shouldn't she have said "he'd?" After all, this was nearly four months since Westerfield had been fingered as the sole perpetrator, and she had all that time for that fact to be burned into her consciousness. Perhaps she knows there was more than one person involved in Danielle's abduction and death.
Of course, it might not mean anything, just as Westerfield's "we" might not mean anything. But shouldn't fairness dictate you point out such inconsistencies on both sides of this trial?
Regards,
(signed)
Note: the channel 10 article was posted on FR at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/696054/posts
I think prosecution monitoring FR.