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Danielle’s Death
Child abductions do not, for the most part, occur at random.

By Rabbi Daniel Lapin, president of Toward Tradition, a Seattle-based national pro-family coalition of Jews and Christians.
March 12, 2002 8:50 a.m.

little girl is dead, left under a clump of oak trees in the backcountry east of San Diego. Many have seen her murder as a warning, applicable equally to all mothers and fathers, that child abduction occurs by random chance.

On March 1, a day after the body of Danielle Van Dam was identified, the San Diego Union-Tribune published a heart-rending account of parents and school counselors trying to explain to children how it could happen that seven-year-old Danielle was kidnapped and killed. "Mommy," a boy was quoted as saying, "I don't want anyone to steal me." Counselors advised parents "to listen to their children's fears and acknowledge them."

The unstated assumption of much of the press coverage of the tragedy has been just this: Children are afraid, counselors and parents are stumbling to find something comforting to say, for what happened to Danielle could as easily happen to any of our children. Since the grim discovery was made, the nation has absorbed the message that Danielle's death was an event without explanation or reason.

Or was it?

On the morning of February 2, Danielle was found to be missing from her bed. The man who has been arrested for her murder is 50-year-old David Westerfield. Reportedly a child-porn enthusiast, he is a neighbor of Danielle's parents, Damon and Brenda van Dam. That night, says the accused kidnapper, he and Mrs. Van Dam had been dancing at a local bar. Mrs. Van Dam denies dancing with Westerfield, but she does admit being out till 2 A.M. without her husband. Nor do the Van Dams deny the stories reported in Newsweek, stories that say they are active "swingers" with a taste for wife swapping. The Van Dams say their lifestyle has "nothing to do" with Danielle's abduction.

Let us be clear. This horrible death can be blamed only on the man who kidnapped Danielle. But if the Van Dams are indeed "swingers," if Mrs. Van Dam was carousing without her husband until rather late, then these parents — who deserve our sympathy no matter what their follies and vices may be — will have something in common with the parents of many other abducted children, beyond the bare fact that they have lost a child. For these terrible events do not, for the most part, occur at random.

The National Institute for Missing and Exploited Children supplies the figures. In 1997, 24 percent of abducted children were abducted by strangers. About half, 49 percent, were kidnapped by family members, typically a divorced parent. Another 27 percent were kidnapped by an acquaintance. In other words, 73 percent of abducted children suffered that fate due in part to lifestyle choices their parents made: the choice to divorce, or to befriend sleazy characters. When the media, by ignoring these data, give the impression that child kidnapping could happen to any family, the wholesome no less than the unwholesome, we are once again being grievously misled.

This same notion — that a certain kind of misfortune, in choosing victims, makes no distinction between wholesome and unwholesome — animated the AIDS scare of the late 1980s. Back then, the media and AIDS activists asserted that the disease was about to erupt among the population of heterosexuals who are not abusers of intravenous drugs. It never did. AIDS, it's now acknowledged, is a killer with a marked preference for people who engage in particular activities: anal sex and needle sharing.

It does occasionally happen that an unknown drifter will invade the life of an upstanding family and steal and murder their child. That is what happened to 12-year-old Polly Klaas, abducted from a slumber party in Petaluma, California, in 1993. It is what happened in 1981 to six-year-old Adam Walsh, whose father, TV host John Walsh of America's Most Wanted, initiated a campaign to place photos of missing children on milk cartons and junk mail. That well-intended campaign has supported the misconception that children go missing by chance. The brief biographical sketch of the missing child never indicates the family dysfunction that likely contributed to making the abduction possible.

Random kidnapping is not what happened to Danielle van Dam, and the fact is worth considering. For our actions have consequences — often unintended, often for future generations, often tragic — and parents would do well to remember this.

Poor mom. Looks like she gets her news from the nightly broadcasts and thus believes Alan is guilty, too. (He was always such a good boy...how could something like this happen?)

Posted this morning on yesterday's thread is my evaluation of the prosecution's "star witness," Dog Handler Volunteer and Amateur Part-time Search & Rescue Sleuth Frazee:

Re: Cadaver dogs. here's what I gleaned from Frazee's cross-exam yesterday:

Cielo showed no interest in MH, according to police report. Frazee originally told a police officer that Cielo showed no interest in MH.

"You were telling the truth then, weren't you?"
"To the best of my ability."

When was the first time you told anybody that Cielo had "alerted"?
"I don't recall."

"You told the police that your dog DID NOT alert, didn't you?"
"I don't recall."

Handler bias: handler directs dog to make an alert. Taking dog to wherever HE (handler) thinks what the dog should be looking for may be found. Dogs can feel handler's emotions and will sometimes "perform" to please handler. Search dog should not have been on leash and should search on his own for cadaver scent. Cielo was on leash and directed to sniff in specific areas, several times.

Frazee admits to guiding Cielo to find something because MH was in impound lot and DW was suspect. He led Cielo to the MH to search rather than letting the dog look and search on his own.

LE was standing all around, watching, as dogs searched. Told LE dogs did not make any hits. Police report states dogs did not make any hits. The first time he told anyone Cielo made an alert on the motorhome was WEEKS later. (Says his lieutenant was watching and she had to have observed the "alert," thus he did not feel it necessary to notify LE himself. Again, LE told dogs did NOT hit on anything, which was what they put in official report.)

Only person he told was dog's breeder in New Mexico ("I thought she would be proud."), weeks later, in an email. Email has not been provided.

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Question: Did he testify that since taking the course on search & rescue this was his first "successful" hit?

Professionals undergo 960 hours of training...he underwent a single course. I wonder why they've pinned this case on an amateur volunteer's very first "cadaver alert," which he did not portray to observing law enforcement personnel at the time?

You'd think if his dog made a bonafide hit that he would be excited and telling everybody around that Cielo had made an alert in the storage compartment, not keep it a secret. He had taken a course, the dog had undergone some training for just this purpose. I find it hard to believe he would pass off his very first success as no big deal.

I admit, when he was under direct examination Frazee's testimony sounded damning. I hopped down from the fence and thought, "That's it. There can be no other explanation for a trained professional cadaver dog finding the scent of a cadaver unless a body had been in that motorhome's storage area." Then the cross-examination began, and Frazee's story began to unravel. And I'm back on the fence once more.