[0:08]Every town has a dark side.
[0:18]If you've ever driven on Interstate 8 in El Cajon, California, then chances are you've crossed over the Danielle Nicole Van Dam Memorial overpass. This bridge is located in the location where Danielle's body was found back on February 27, 2002. 25 days after her parents discovered she was missing. The seven-year-old was taken from inside her own home, and the details of this case are terrifying on many different levels.
[0:58]I'm Andrew Fitzgerald, welcoming you guys to another episode of Every Town. But today, we learn about this story of child abduction and murder in the small community of Saber Springs, which sits just outside of San Diego, California. So, let's head on over there now and get right into it.
[1:33]In everyone's life, the tides can turn quickly, whether it's for one's advantage or downfall. In 2002, Damon and Brenda Van Dam and their three children were neighbors with David Westerfield in the upscale Saber Springs neighborhood in sunny California. The Van Dams lived in a four-bedroom stucco house and a couple doors down was the two-story home, turned office, of 49-year-old David. A self-employed design engineer, who held several patents for medical devices.
[2:17]But in reality, these neighbors barely knew one another, that is until Brenda and Danielle went to David's house on January 30th, 2002, to see if he'd be interested in some tasty Girl Scout cookies. He cordially invited them in, and during their conversation, David mentioned seeing Brenda and her friends at a local watering hole called Dad's Bar the previous weekend. Brenda went on to mention that it was one of her favorite spots and that she and her pals would be spending another girl's night out over there just a couple days later on Friday, February 1st for a going away party. But she could only go if a babysitter would be available to look after Danielle, since her husband, together with her two sons, 10-year-old Derek and six-year-old Dylan, would be on an out-of-town trip.
[3:20]From the outside, the Van Dams were a picture-perfect family. They achieved happiness and success as they fulfilled the American dream. Damon worked as an engineer for Qualcomm, which is a San Diego based multi-national corporation that creates intellectual property, semiconductors, software, as well as services related to wireless technology. His stable job enabled Brenda to be a stay-at-home mom and spend most of her time taking care of their three children, Derek, Danielle and Dylan. The only girl in the brood, Danielle was born on September 22nd, 1994, in Plano, Texas, but lived most of her life in the San Diego area.
[4:30]She loved coloring, playing with dolls, writing and drawing in her journal she'd been keeping. And inside, she would write profound thoughts about how she could change the world someday.
[4:44]She also took up piano lessons, and her parents would describe their only girl as strong-headed but obedient. Her classmates and friends liked her for being a sweet, quiet girl who laughed a lot. Paula Coll, the mother of Danielle's good friend Sarah said, "It's a joy to have her come to your home.She's really a well-rounded little girl."
[5:22]February 1st, 2002 came, and for Brenda that Friday night was her me time with her two gal pals.
[5:34]She headed over to Dad's Bar and, sure enough, she saw her neighbor David there, remembering that she had mentioned she'd be there. Although witnesses said they saw Brenda dancing with David, she denies this and clarified she just spoke to him in passing. Over at the Van Dam home that evening, Danielle and her two brothers were left in the care of their dad Damon.
[6:06]The family's only daughter was writing in her diary on the kitchen table, her dad and brothers in the living room were playing video games nearby.
[6:18]At 10:30 p.m. Damon put his daughter to sleep in her all-white canopy bed, inside her lilac and pink bedroom. His two boys also went to sleep in their bedroom, and Damon retired for the day.
[6:37]Back at the bar, David left around midnight, while Brenda and her friends stayed out for a couple more drinks before heading home.
[6:49]Damon woke up when Brenda came in, together with her two female friends and a couple of male friends as well. And that's when Brenda noticed a light on the home security alarm system flashing. It signaled that the side door to the garage was open, and they closed it, thinking nothing of it. The Van Dam couple, together with their four guests, spent half an hour chatting, eating leftover pizza, drinking, and smoking some weed. When the guests had finally left, Damon and Brenda went to bed without checking on their two sons and daughter, thinking they were fast asleep.
[7:34]Shortly before dawn, Damon got up to check on the family dog, a cute Weimaraner named Layla. He noticed that an alarm light was flashing again, found the sliding glass door leading to the backyard slightly ajar. He assumed one of his guests had opened it earlier, so he closed it and then returned to bed, and once again, didn't bother to see how his kids were doing. After all, in a safe neighborhood, what is there really to worry about?
[8:21]The morning of February 2nd started out normally, with Damon, Brenda and their two sons eating breakfast downstairs. Brenda then went to Danielle's bedroom upstairs to wake her up to join them.
[8:37]But to her horror, her young daughter wasn't there.
[8:47]Danielle had never left the house without informing her parents, so they immediately called the police at 9:39 a.m.
[8:58]Authorities rushed over and combed Danielle's bedroom for any signs of a struggle or evidence of an assault, but they found nothing.
[9:09]As police and the media began to descend on the home, the reality that their daughter was actually missing set in. Damon and Brenda made tearful appeals for her return.
[9:24]Danielle became the subject of a massive search effort with the assistance of the Laura Recovery Center, a non-profit organization that aims to prevent kidnappings and to help recover victims of abductions.
[9:40]An initial sweep of the neighborhood and nearby canyons didn't locate Danielle, and so the situation quickly escalated from a case of a missing juvenile to a suspected kidnapping.
[9:55]When police searched roughly 200 houses in the Saber Springs area, the only empty residence belonged to that of David Westerfield. Neighbors told police that David had headed out in his luxury motorhome earlier on the morning of the girl's disappearance. Thus, his name surfaced to the top of the list as a possible suspect.
[10:34]A few days later on February 4th, detectives Mo Parga and Johnny Keen were able to interview David at his home. The suspect seemed fairly normal. He was a divorced father to a daughter and a son who were both in college, and he didn't have any criminal record. But what grabbed the detective's attention was David's rambling explanation of his weekend adventure on February 2nd. On that Saturday morning, he said he fetched his motorhome from another part of town, and stocked it with supplies.
[11:13]He then left his house at around 9:50 a.m., just 11 minutes after Brenda reported to 911 the disappearance of Danielle.
[11:24]As to the details of his weekend adventure, David said that he drove around the desert and Silver Strand State Beach. The statement was then confirmed by witnesses, cell phone and credit card records, and gas receipts.
[11:42]But it was the way he told his story, going on and on into the details, telling detectives that he originally planned to go to the desert, but he didn't have his wallet with him. So then he drove to the beach campground for a two-night stay, which he had paid in advance. But the cold weather prompted him to head home and get his wallet, after which, he went back to the desert.
[12:12]On February 3rd, a Sunday morning, David got stuck in the sand about a quarter mile off the road and needed help from a tow truck to get released. Although David gave the detectives details of his weekend getaways, every stop. He didn't mention the detail of Monday morning. On his way back home, he made a pit stop at the dry cleaners, and dropped off two comforters with matching pillowcases and his jacket. When he got home to Saber Springs that morning, David washed his Toyota 4Runner inside and out, which didn't escape the detective's keen eyes. They were thinking it was possible that David used this car to transport Danielle to his motorhome in another part of town. So, he was then placed on a 24-hour surveillance, and the following day, February 5th, David's motorhome, SUV and other properties were impounded for testing.
[13:19]Two days later, a search warrant was issued for his belongings, such as his jacket that David had dropped off the dry cleaners. And sensing that something was brewing, David hired a lawyer, Steve Feldman, that very same day.
[13:47]It can perhaps be said that the breakthrough in Danielle's case was the retrieval of David's jacket because on it, police found two small stains of blood, which matched Danielle's DNA. He must have really liked that jacket because rather than throwing it out or burning it, he opted to do a very stupid thing in attempting to have it cleaned.
[14:38]The girl's blood was also found on the carpet of David's motorhome, giving credence to the investigators' hunch that David was the man they wanted. After that, child pornography was found on David's computer, then finally on February 22nd, 2002, authorities arrested David as the prime suspect in the girl's mysterious vanishing.
[15:07]But still, there was no sign of the girl at all, and it was agony for her family to go through. Brenda couldn't stop thinking about what David might have done to her daughter, and said, "All I could see sometimes was him raping her, and he's hurting her.It would just pop in my head." Nevertheless, as the search stretched into its fourth week, Brenda managed to keep her hopes up that her girl was still alive. Damon, on the other hand, had uncertainties.
[15:47]As he drove around the desert, using GPS to map where the volunteers should search, in his heart he knew it didn't look good. He said, "During that time out there in the desert, it kind of really hit me what we were really looking for."
[16:19]The moment of truth came on February 27th, 25 days after Danielle's disappearance.
[16:29]A search organized by the Laura Recovery Center and composed of private volunteers found a small, badly decomposed body in a stand of trees off a two-lane highway in Dehesa, a city southwest of San Diego. And Danielle was identified through the Mickey Mouse earring she had worn. But it was difficult for the authorities to determine how she died or whether she had been sexually assaulted due to the severe decomposition of her remains. The Van Dam couple said they weren't sure they wanted to know what really happened to their only daughter, but they hoped that whatever it was, happened quickly. Brenda said, "I realized he was with her for two days.I just hoped it happened within a couple hours, but I really don't believe that in my heart.I believe that she suffered."
[17:29]It was later revealed that, minutes before Danielle's remains were discovered, David's lawyers wanted to negotiate a plea bargain deal in which David would take the police to the site where the seven-year-old girl's body was dumped. In exchange, David would be sentenced to life without parole instead of the possibility of facing the death penalty, but unfortunately for him, he never got that chance.
[17:59]Westerfield's trial began on June 4th, 2002. However, his lawyers, during a pre-trial motion, moved to exclude their clients' statements to the police. They cited that David was unfairly interrogated for more than nine hours by detectives, who ignored his repeated request to call a lawyer, take a shower, eat, and sleep. As a result, the two officers against whom the defense directed their complaint, did not testify.
[18:29]But the forensic evidence the prosecutors presented during the trial was truly incriminating. Aside from Danielle's blood stains, found on David's jacket, and on the carpet of his motorhome, also presented in court were Danielle's fingerprints in the motorhome. Hairs from the Van Dam family dog on David's bed comforter, hairs consistent with Danielle's on the sheet of his bed, and matching acrylic fibers found on Danielle's body and in David's home.
[19:05]One of Brenda's friends testified that she left the garage door at the Van Dams open on the night of February 1st, 2002 by mistake before heading to the bar. The prosecution's theorized that before Brenda and her friends returned home, David had entered the house through that door and hid somewhere until the friends of the Van Dams went home. Then when Damon and Brenda went to sleep, that's when David took Danielle from her bedroom, and they exited through the back door.
[19:45]The defense team suggested that the police just wanted a swift resolution in the case and focused only on David, while they declined to consider other possible culprits. As for the child pornography files hidden in David's computer, his lawyers claimed they were downloaded by his 18-year-old son, Neil, but the young man denied doing it.
[20:17]The defense team strategy also focused on the lifestyle of Damon and Brenda, arguing that they were in an open marriage, were swingers, and regularly smoked marijuana in their garage.
[21:05]Brenda added, "That angers me because I would never put my children in harm's way.I think the whole lifestyle thing has been blown way out of proportion."
[21:19]The trial ran on for two months and concluded on August 8th. The jury found David Westerfield guilty of first-degree murder, kidnapping, and possession of child pornography on August 21st. And the penalty phase of David's trial began on August 28th. And there, a damning testimony was given by his 19-year-old niece.
[21:46]She recounted that when she was seven years old, she and her parents spent a night at David's home. She stayed in the bedroom of David's daughter and was awakened in the middle of the night when her uncle was rubbing her feet. She bit his finger as hard as she could and went downstairs to tell her mother. When the mom asked David about the incident, he said that he just checked on the two girls and comforted his niece.
[22:17]The penalty phase concluded on September 16th with a recommendation from the jury that David deserved to die. And on January 3rd, 2003, Judge William Mudd formally sentenced David to death. Presently, the 66-year-old kidnapper killer is incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison, located north of San Francisco. In February of 2019, the Supreme Court of California affirmed David's conviction and death sentence. However, it isn't known when or if Mr. Westerfield will face execution due to the continuing 2006 moratorium on executions in California. And the July 2014 ruling on the unconstitutionality of the death penalty in the state as well.
[23:23]The Van Dams believed that the death sentence was an appropriate penalty. But the more important thing for Damon and Brendan is just that David never gets to hurt another child. As they added, they have no intention to witness his execution when the day comes. The friends and neighbors of the Van Dam family believe that Damon and Brenda are good and responsible parents. But they still couldn't help thinking of the what-ifs. Damon said, "If only I had, you know, checked those doors.If only I had, you know, checked the kids again." There are things you overlook. We wrestle with that sometimes, Brenda more than I. I think I've written it off that the bad guy did it. The Van Dams decided to remain in their Saber Springs home. They have put Danielle's ashes in an urn next to her grandfather's ashes, to keep her close to the family. Danielle was a very special, beautiful, loving little girl," Damon said. We miss her desperately, but find comfort in knowing that she is now safe again and at peace.
[24:47]So that's going to do it for this week's episode of Every Town. Please tune in next week for another episode filled with scary, strange and mysterious stories. Because who knows? Maybe your town will be next.
