Danielle Nicole van Dam

[Lady Enelya]

Danielle Nicole van Dam
1994-2002


A 'little girl lost' is found dead, killed by a neighbor

After weeks of searching, 7-year-old Danielle van Dam was found murdered.

(Court TV)— The last time Damon van Dam saw his 7-year-old daughter, Danielle, she was falling asleep in her four-poster bed with a toothy grin on her face and Mickey Mouse earrings dangling from her ears.

As her father planted a goodnight kiss on her forehead that Friday, few places seemed safer than Danielle's lilac and pink bedroom in her family's upscale home in suburban San Diego.

The next morning, however, the bubbly blond second-grader was gone, apparently snatched from her upstairs room by some unseen assailant. By the time Danielle's body was found three weeks later and her neighbor charged with murder, the whole country seemed to have redefined its notion of safety.

Prosecutors say Danielle was stolen from her room, sexually assaulted and suffocated by David Alan Westerfield, a 50-year-old engineer who lived just two doors away. Investigators found Danielle's blood on Westerfield's clothes and child pornography, including images of a young girl being raped, on his home computers. The prosecution will seek the death penalty at his June trial.

Westerfield maintains his innocence. His lawyers have cast suspicion on the van Dams. Both parents admit using marijuana the night of their daughter's disappearance, and Westerfield's legal team has suggested they practiced "swinging," or wife-swapping, and regularly came in contact with unsavory characters who might have done harm to their daughter.

The Crime

Danielle disappeared from her home in the Sabre Springs area during the night of Feb.
1. Her homemaker mother, Brenda, had planned a night out with some girlfriends while Damon van Dam agreed to stay home with Danielle and her two brothers. When Brenda van Dam's friends arrived at the family home, the adults drank beer and at one point, ducked into the garage to share a joint. Then Brenda and her friends set out for a local bar.

Damon van Dam told police he put his children to bed at about 10:00 p.m., leaving each of their doors a crack open. He then fell asleep. When his wife returned from the bar at 2 a.m. with two female friends and two other men, she found the garage door ajar. She closed it and then woke up her husband, who greeted and talked with their guests for another hour.

The couple told police they never looked in on their daughter before turning in for the night. Damon van Dam woke once to check on the family dog. He found a sliding door ajar, closed it, and returned to bed.

The next morning, the family gathered in the kitchen for breakfast, but Danielle, who liked to sleep late, wasn't there. When her mother went to rouse her at 9 a.m., she found an empty bed.

Scores of officers responded to the van Dams' 911 call. Some interviewed neighbors, others searched the area and crime scene analysts began collecting evidence in the house. A massive investigation that included the search of 200 homes and some 900 tips from the public followed.

On Feb. 27, a team of volunteers discovered Danielle's naked body near a cluster of oak trees in a trash-strewn lot 20 feet from a busy street. The medical examiner concluded the body was too decomposed to determine how she died or whether she was raped.

Chief Suspect: The Prosecution's Case

Five days before Danielle's body was discovered, police arrested Westerfield on suspicion of kidnapping. He had been under scrutiny since the morning Danielle was reported missing. Then, his house was the only empty one in the van Dam's neighborhood.

Damon van Dam told police he barely knew Westerfield, a self-employed man twice divorced. But Brenda van Dam had encountered her neighbor on several occasions. Once she and her children knocked on his door to sell Girl Scout Cookies.

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They chatted while the kids raced around his house. At the preliminary hearing, Brenda van Dam described a conversation tinged with sexuality.

He invited her to a bar, Dad's, where he had once seen her before and told her to bring female friends.

"He said to tell them I had a rich neighbor to introduce them to," she said. He also took her phone number, saying he sometimes threw "adult parties" and would invite her and Damon.

She said she found the term "adult parties" so strange that she called her husband when she got home to relate the encounter.

Brenda van Dam also told police she had seen Westerfield at Dad's bar the night her daughter went missing. He bought drinks for her and her friends and she played pool and danced with some of his friends.

When Westerfield returned to his home the Monday after the abduction, police were waiting for him. Detectives approached him as he stepped onto his front porch. Westerfield immediately struck them as nervous.

Despite the cold February morning, "Mr. Westerfield was sweating profusely under both armpits to the point the sweat rings were protruding out from his armpits several inches," sheriff's officer Johnny Keene recalled at the preliminary hearing in March.

Keene said the alibi Westerfield gave did not make sense. He told police he took his recreational vehicle first to the desert, then the beach, then headed home only to turn toward the mountains and then back to the desert. In all, he ticked off 13 different destinations, Keene said.

Detectives also noticed small cuts on his hands and considered Westerfield's eager attitude alarming.

"In my opinion, he was overly cooperative," Keene said.

Detectives got search warrants and scoured his home and RV. In his home computer files, they found 64,000 pornographic pictures, including "less than
100" images of young girls in sexual acts. One file contained a cartoon in which a terrified girl begged a man not to rape her.

In his RV, crime scene investigators found blood, hair and a fingerprint matching Danielle's. Her blood was also found on a jacket Westerfield had taken to be dry cleaned.

Prosecutors say they will ask jurors to conclude that Westerfield was fixated on sex with young girls. They will contend he raped and suffocated Danielle even though pathologists cannot say for sure how she died. Some of her front teeth were missing, indicating that she was smothered, prosecutors say. The fact she was found naked suggests a sexual assault, they say.

The Wrong Man: The Defense Case

Westerfield maintains he had nothing to do with his young neighbor's disappearance. At the preliminary hearing, his public defender said he would wait until the trial to challenge the prosecution's blood and fingerprint evidence.

Defense lawyer Steven Feldman has indicated he will attack the way officers carried out the investigation and the van Dam's lifestyle.

Cross-examining the van Dams during the preliminary hearing, Feldman repeatedly pressed them on their drug and alcohol consumption the night of the abduction. Brenda van Dam, who also used marijuana in the parking lot of the bar, admitted she got high that night and had on about 30 previous occasions. She also said she had three cranberry and vodka cocktails and a shot of tequila. She insisted, however, that she was clearheaded.

Westerfield's lawyers also allege that the van Dams were amused by Westerfield's reference to "adult parties" because they were swingers themselves. At the preliminary hearing, a judge precluded his defense from asking many questions about their sex life, but Brenda van Dam did acknowledge that one of her female friends tried to grope her breasts at the bar. And Damon van Dam admitted having a relationship with the same woman and kissing and massaging her that night in his bed.

The sexual discussion frustrated Superior Court Judge William Mudd, who will preside over the case. He recently expressed dismay over news coverage of the swinger lifestyle, saying, "The media in this community cannot exercise restraint, in my humble opinion."

In court papers, Westerfield's lawyers also charge that he was improperly interrogated for more than nine hours by detectives who ignored his repeated requests to call a lawyer, take a shower, eat, and sleep.

"During the nine hours Mr. Westerfield was questioned, the taped portions reveal he requested or inquired about a lawyer five times, asked to stop the interview or leave four times, expressed concern he had no one on his side six times, inquired about his rights four ties, requested to make a telephone call five times, asked for a clean shirt or a shower twice, asked for a drink and stated he was being abused," the defense charged.

Westerfield's lawyers want any statements he made to police thrown out.

During the preliminary hearing, Feldman also charged that blood spots were found inside the van Dams house and suggested that Damon van Dam had tampered with evidence by vacuuming the house the day his daughter went missing.

But detectives said they knew nothing about either allegation and van Dam denied cleaning the house that day.

Updated Aug. 21, 2002, 8:02 p.m. ET

Westerfield convicted, will face death

David Westerfield listens as his conviction is announced Wednesday.

By Harriet Ryan Court TV

SAN DIEGO — A jury Wednesday convicted David Westerfield of the kidnapping and murder of his 7-year-old neighbor, Danielle van Dam.

"Oh my God," whispered the victim's mother, Brenda, as a clerk read the verdict to a packed courtroom at 2:15 p.m. ET. The panel of six women and six men had deliberated 40 hours over 10 days prompting speculation they were deadlocked over Westerfield's guilt.

As he did for most of the trial, the 50-year-old engineer shook slightly, stared straight ahead and showed no emotion. The same jury that convicted him of murder, kidnapping and child pornography possession will reconvene Aug. 28 to decide whether to sentence him to death or life in prison without parole.

Westerfield's sister, sitting with her husband in the second row of the gallery, wept behind dark sunglasses. As each juror was polled, she shook her head back and forth in apparent disbelief.

Outside the courthouse, whoops of joy rose up from crowds gathered to watch the proceedings on television monitors. Danielle's disappearance last February, among the first of a string of missing child stories to garner national attention, captivated the city, and Westerfield's trial attracted blanket media coverage in southern California.

The jurors never looked directly at Westerfield as the verdict was announced. One young male juror dabbed at a single tear on his cheek. A female panelist wept into a tissue.

Brenda van Dam, dressed in a suit of lavender, her daughter's favorite color, buried her face in her husband Damon's neck and cried softly. After the last juror was polled, the couple locked in a long embrace.

Over the course of the two-month trial, prosecutors presented a mountain of physical evidence, including fingerprints, blood, hair and fibers, that seemed to link Westerfield to Danielle's abduction and murder.

The second-grader was snatched from her canopy bed the night of Feb. 1. A massive search failed to locate her for nearly a month until volunteers happened across her body in a trash-strewn lot some 25 miles from her home.

Police initially focused on Westerfield, a twice-divorced father of two college students, because his alibi for the weekend she vanished seemed convoluted. He told officers he took a meandering 560-mile solo roadtrip in his recreational vehicle.

Investigators later found strands of Danielle's long blond hair in Westerfield's bed, RV and laundry. There were drops of her blood on the floor of his RV and a stain of it on his jacket. Her palm and fingerprint was discovered above the RV's bed, and distinctive orange and blue fibers from the death scene were also found on Westerfield's property.

Police discovered a stash of violent child pornography on Westerfield's computer, which prosecutors presented in court as a motive for the crime.

San Diego Police Chief David Bejarano credited the quality and thoroughness of the investigation with the conviction.

"Based on the evidence, the person responsible will not be able to harm another child," Bejarano told reporters outside the courthouse Wednesday, noting that the case was one of the biggest in the department's history. Because of a gag order, the lawyers and family members did not comment.

Assailed by a crush of microphones and cameras on his way to lunch, San Diego District Attorney Paul Pfingst said only that he was proud of the prosecution.

"The lawyers did an excellent job, but their job is not done," said Pfingst, referring to the penalty phase.

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Scores of people gathered around the media area outside the courthouse when the verdict was announced.

"I was very surprised that it took them so long, but I wasn’t surprised by the verdict," said observer Ed Bowe, who was in town from Michigan for the National Scrabble Championship. Asked why he was convinced of Westerfield's guilt, Bowe replied simply, "Blood."

A block away, San Diegan Anna Mau said she was surprised and grateful for the verdict, which she said showed some resolution to the spate of recent child abductions.

"We have kids in our neighborhood and we all watch them now. If anyone comes around, we're all watching," said Mau.

Revisiting the forensic evidence

During the trial, Westerfield's defense blamed prosecution "spin," contamination by police and even the van Dam family for the allegations against him.

The defense suggested that the van Dams' unconventional lifestyle could have let a killer into their lives. Danielle's parents testified that they smoked marijuana with friends the night of the abduction and had on previous occasions engaged in group sex with other couples.

But with their verdict, jurors apparently agreed with prosecutors who said the "sex, drugs and rock-and-roll" were irrelevant to the crime.

The jury also apparently put little stock in the insect evidence the defense believed was its strongest hope for acquittal. A forensic entomologist originally retained by the prosecution concluded that the age of maggots plucked from Danielle's badly decomposed remains indicated she was dumped after Westerfield came under close police surveillance.

With the findings of that expert and two other entomologists, the defense suggested that someone else killed Danielle. For the final days of the trial, the courtroom became a course in forensic entomology with the prosecution using its own experts to argue that the field was woefully inexact.

During its deliberations, the jury asked to review some of the testimony concerning Danielle's time of death, but also the child pornography evidence taken from Westerfield's home and his audiotaped statement to police.

In his closing argument, prosecutor Jeff Dusek said he could sense the jury was struggling to reconcile the brutality of the crime with the outwardly normal appearance of its perpetrator.

"If he is the guy, that destroys all of our senses of protection. How can I protect mine if there are are not any outward signs?" Dusek said. "But he did it. He did it."