Prosecution continues to trace Westerfield's travels-(More Cases of Motorhome Envy???)
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.
On roam
Verizon Wireless records custodian Greg Sheets brought copies of records for phone calls made by Westerfield's two cellular telephones from Feb. 1 through Feb. 6.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.
Docile dog
A woman who brought food to the van Dam residence on Feb. 3, the day after Danielle was reported missing, testified that the family dog appeared docile. 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."