Posted on 09/17/2002 5:28:16 AM PDT by Bug
Plea deal 'minutes away' when body found
By J. Harry Jones
STAFF WRITER
September 17, 2002
Minutes before Danielle van Dam's remains were found Feb. 27, David Westerfield's lawyers were brokering a deal with prosecutors:
He would tell police where he dumped the 7-year-old girl's body; they would not seek the death penalty.
Law enforcement sources told The San Diego Union-Tribune yesterday defense lawyers Steven Feldman and Robert Boyce were negotiating for a life sentence for the 50-year-old design engineer, a neighbor of the van Dams in Sabre Springs.
The deal they were discussing would have allowed Westerfield to plead guilty to murder and be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, said the officials, who spoke on condition they not be identified.
Prosecutors were seriously considering the bargain when Danielle's body was discovered off Dehesa Road that afternoon, nearly four weeks after she disappeared from her bedroom.
"The deal was just minutes away," one of the sources said.
It was aborted, but details were confirmed yesterday soon after a San Diego Superior Court jury recommended the death penalty for Westerfield.
The officials outlined this chronology:
Feldman and Boyce were at the downtown San Diego jail discussing the final arrangements with Westerfield when volunteer searchers found Danielle's remains beneath trees along Dehesa Road east of El Cajon.
When the lawyers left to meet with prosecutors, they noticed members of the news media gathering in the street and asked what was happening.
After being told a body had been found, they went directly to the nearby Hall of Justice and met with prosecutors. The defense lawyers were handed a copy of a Thomas Guide map of the Dehesa area on which a circle had been drawn indicating the location of the body.
Feldman and Boyce took the map back to Westerfield and later telephoned to say they no longer "had anything to discuss regarding a plea bargain."
Neither Feldman nor Boyce could be reached for comment last night.
Danielle was reported missing from her home the morning of Feb. 2, and Westerfield, who lived two doors away, quickly became the primary suspect. He was watched closely by police for weeks as authorities and volunteers searched from the Sabre Springs neighborhood to the Imperial County desert.
After DNA results linked Westerfield to the crime, he was arrested Feb. 22 and charged with kidnapping and burglary.
Three days later, even though Danielle's body had not been found, District Attorney Paul Pfingst announced murder and kidnapping charges would be filed that could carry the death penalty.
Many law enforcement officials feared Danielle's body might never be found. Then, on Feb. 27, volunteer searchers combing the Dehesa area, far from where police had focused, found Danielle's badly decomposed remains.
At that point, the official sources said yesterday, any opportunity Westerfield and his lawyers had to win a plea bargain evaporated.
Copyright 2002 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
Oh I agree with you that many of Westerfield's defenders were more obsessed with the parents sexual and drug activities than they were in the facts of the case. I wouldn't be suprised if a few of these nuts believe that Westerfield was the avenging angel of God and brutalized and murdered that couples little girl to smite them for their sins.
These people just want to cling to anything or deny anything to hold onto their narrow world view. Bad things happen to bad people, and bad people do bad things. In their minds eye, the VD's were bad people, and they did bad things.. therefor the bad thing.. the death of their daughter was somehow their fault... not the sick sadistic animal who committed the crime, but the parents fault. Westerfield doesn't look evil.. so he can't have done it. They stare evil right in the face and refuse to accept what they see.
No one is going to put the VD's up as parents of the year, but it is ludicrous to claim their actions caused their daughters demise. Westerfield did that, and mercifully he will never have the opportunity to do it again. May God have mercy on his soul, because he will get and deserves no quarter on earth.
"She also thought that the Van Dam's lifestyle "opened doors". "
I wonder how much it was discussed behind closed doors.
What planet are you from? This is not the law in ANY state... the question before the jury was, did DW kidnap, rape, murder that poor girl. And without question he did, even if the jury believe he had accomplices... which no evidence circumstancial or otherwise was presented at all, that does not defacto negate DW's or any other defendants culpability for their actions.
Even if DW had someone else help him kidnap, rape and kill her, he still committed the acts.. an accomplice does not negate ones actions, and just because only 1 man was charged, does not mean that he should be innocent if his partners aren't... That's ludicrous. By that circular, convoluted non-logic Timothy McVeigh could not have been found guilty had Terry Nichols not been charged..
Sorry, no technicality here, your claim is not valid in any state of the Union, or in any territory under her protection.
It's been rumored by the other side that more and more stuff would be coming out about the van dams..disgusting pornographic, sexual exploit and druggy kind of stuff. They want the parents to hurt even more..even knowing all of this new crappola about "dave".
Of course they want to destroy the VD's... They are the Christian equivalent of the Taliban... live immorally and we will do everything to destroy you. They do not represent morality or god in their actions, they are just Zealots with a cause... a cause they feel is just and deserved. Had they been born in Afghanistan they would have been the ones executing women for showing their ankles.
I suggest wholey these individuals do know know Christ, nor morality. And certainly represent neither in their continued zealot attacks and actions upon the VDs.
None. Zip. They are nullities until and unless they can confront their own gross failings toward their child. They should not be treated unkindly or shunned. But neither should they be fawned over and allowed to wallow self-indulgently in the maudlin tears of others either. Heedless self-indulgence was and is their core problem. Why encourage it?
Their selfish, self-indulgent, heedless, sordid lifestyle was destroying the little girl psychically, emotionally, and spiritually before Westerfield kidpapped, abused, and murdered her. Only hedonist atomists (and there are many who infest FR) would deny that. Only hedonist atomists believe each person's behavior choices are hermetically sealed off from the rest of civilization, that they can be as "nasty as they wanna be," and still live in a secure, clean, and pleasant society. They are deluded. Society is secure and pleasant only to the extent that there is a majority of decent and self-disciplined people who work hard to keep it that way. The filth dwellers freeload off the efforts of the moral and self-disciplined.
I ache for Danielle when I think of the many times she must have been lying in her bed, acutely aware of what mom and dad and various strangers were doing just scant feet away. It sickens me that her parents would be so surpassingly callous and heedless.
I would have sympathy for Danielle's parents at this late date only if they genuinely and personally felt overwhelming remorse and shame for their lifestyle and how it undoubtedly impacted their daughter. They must face and accept the consequences of their own acts--otherwise they are simply freeloading off the sympathy of people who want to give them a pass.
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