Going West: True Crime - Danielle Van Dam // 47

Episode Date: December 4, 2019

In early 2002, a 7-year-old girl is taken from her bedroom in the middle of the night. Her parents don't realize until the following day, but when they do, they phone police. The search begins in thei...r neighborhood and detectives narrow in on the man who lives 2 doors down. This is the murder of Danielle Van Dam. ___________ Get 20% off your Microdose order AND free shipping by using promo code "goingwest20" at checkout! The CHD, THC, and CBG benefits will help relieve body pain, anxiety, anger, addiction, and insomnia. Try it today! https://www.lumicbd.com/shop-home#!/Microdose/p/147261371/category=36915054 ___________ Case Sources: https://www.horvitzlevy.com/230F70/assets/files/Documents/peoplevwesterfield.PDF https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/angelsresort/danielle-van-dam-t864.html http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=200320040ACR73 https://murderpedia.org/male.W/w/westerfield-david-photos.htm https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/4587116/people-v-westerfield/ Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 What is going on True Crime fans, I'm your host Heath, and I'm your other host Daphne, and you're listening to Going West. As always, we like to start the episodes with some awesome reviews we get from Apple podcasts so this week thank you so much to Silk from Idaho and Sierra from Louisville Kentucky. In a big thanks to Molly from Franklin Massachusetts and Cassie from Texas. Thanks Allison from Salem Massachusetts, totally want to live there and Jacqueline from New Mexico. And then a big thanks to Breadman, that is Breadman from Chicago, and Alyssa from Salt Lake City, Utah.
Starting point is 00:00:48 Thanks Nicole from Connecticut and Lindsay from Westminster, Colorado. And a big thanks to Terry from Minnesota and Kate from Utah. Lots of really nice reviews this week. Thank you guys and thanks to Evan from North Carolina and Darren and Rose from Kentucky. And then last but not least, we have Jess from the UK and Dale, also from the UK. Thank you guys. Also, we want to give big shout outs to our new patrons.
Starting point is 00:01:12 We just released a bonus episode on the Wonderland murders. And that happened in 1981. So that's a new bonus episode that's on patreon.com such going west podcast. If you guys want more episodes, make sure to go support us on patreon.com such going west podcast if you guys want more episodes make sure to go support us on there So thank you so much to Kristen, Gary, Ethan, Holly, Laura, Michelle, Lisa, Carrie, Kathy and LGBT Chess Thanks guys. All right guys. This is episode 47 of going west. so let's get into it. It began a morning of February 2, 2002 and Brenda and Damon Van Dam woke up and realized their seven-year-old daughter Danielle was gone.
Starting point is 00:02:15 Before that day, whenever people thought of Saber Highlands, they thought of an upscale quiet, safe family neighborhood. And then Danielle disappeared, and Sabre Highlands was turned upside down. It was a kidnapping that shook Sandi Agans to the court. I can't believe that it's happened this close to home. In 2002, 7-year-old Danielle Van Damne vanished from the bedroom of her Sabre Springs home. She was found murdered weeks later. Danielle Van Dam was born on September 22nd, 1994 in Plano, Texas to parents Brenda and Damon Van Dam.
Starting point is 00:03:13 Her parents always thought that she'd grow up to be a teacher because she really liked to play dress up as one and she would try to teach a fake class to her brother's Dylan and Derek. Danielle also loved writing in her journals as well as doing ballet and gymnastics and she was also a Girl Scout. Her father, Damon, worked as a software engineer and the family eventually moved to San Diego, California. More specifically, they moved to Saber Springs, which is a beautiful suburban neighborhood that has a lot of really great schools and a very low crime rate. In 2002, Danielle was seven years old and in second grade at Creekside Elementary School,
Starting point is 00:03:49 which was located in her neighborhood of Sabre Spring, San Diego. On Friday, February 1, 2002, the family ate takeout pizza for dinner and then Daniel's father, Damon, put his children to sleep in their beds. Daniel's mom Brenda went out to a bar and stay-house with some of her friends, but before they left the house, Brenda and her friends smoked weed in the garage, and one of them had opened the garage side door to let the smoke out. The restaurant they went to was called Dad's, and it was located in Poway, which is a city in San Diego County, just about two and a half miles from the
Starting point is 00:04:24 Van Dam's home. It was a popular place to go dancing, and that's exactly what Brenda and her friends did, as they drink vodka cranberries that night. After around 2am, they all went back to Brenda's house, and as soon as they got there, they realized that the security alarm monitor inside the house was flashing red, meaning that there was a door or window open in the house. So it doesn't seem like there was any sound going off, it was just like a blinking little red light.
Starting point is 00:04:52 They also noticed that the side door and their garage was open, but no one was really concerned because they figured they had accidentally left it open earlier when they were smoking weed. Especially since her husband Damon was home, she just kind of figured that everything was okay. So Brenda closed the side door and went back inside to join her friends
Starting point is 00:05:09 and husband Damon, who had been sleeping until they got home, and they went in the kitchen and had some post-bar food. The friends stayed for around 30 minutes before going home, and that's when Brenda and Damon went to bed themselves. Right, but about an hour after they fell asleep, which was around 3.30 a.m., Damon woke up and noticed that the security monitor in their bedroom was flashing red. So he went downstairs to check everything out and he saw that the door to the backyard was left open and this was like a sliding glass door.
Starting point is 00:05:41 Like Brenda, he didn't think anything of it and just closed the door, and then he went back to sleep without checking on Danielle and the boys. So I'm not sure if Damon and Brenda had talked earlier when she had noticed the alarm flashing and the open garage side door, because I assume if they talked about it, seeing the alarm flashing himself and seeing another door open would probably be weird, but I think it's kind of weird anyway, so it's a bit shocking that he didn't think it could mean someone had been in the house, especially since everyone was already asleep. Yeah, definitely, but let's think about it from this perspective. So, Brenda goes out drinking with her friends, and it's easy to believe that the monitor was on for
Starting point is 00:06:22 the side garage door, because like we said, said she was drinking she probably thought that her or her friends had left it open. Now let's cut to the other door where Damon goes downstairs and notices that that sliding door is open. Now if he's waking up at 3.30 in the morning that kind of says to me that maybe he's just really out of it and really tired and like kind of just not thinking about it. I get that and I think I understand Brenda's stream of consciousness more regarding the alarm because they had probably actually left that door open by accident, but I don't know. I think if I saw the alarm flashing and the back door was open in the middle of the night while everyone was
Starting point is 00:07:02 asleep, I'd be like, that's kind of creepy. Yeah, definitely. You'd have to consider that kind of strange, but at the same time, you have three kids, three younger kids in your house. Who knows? Maybe they went downstairs, accidentally opened the door and left it open. But they're all so young, like they're all under the age of 10, so I feel like that's even more worrisome thinking that your kid could have opened the door and maybe gone outside. Sure, sure, don't get me wrong. I definitely think that the situation is strange but I could see how it could possibly happen and at 3.30 in the morning you could think, well I'm really really tired. I'm just gonna close this door and go back to bed. Well that's
Starting point is 00:07:38 probably what I thought because he didn't think anything was wrong at all. So the next morning, Damon and Brenda woke up, and it being Saturday, went downstairs to make the family breakfast. Both Derek and Dylan had come downstairs, but Danielle didn't, so Brenda went up to wake her up. When she got into Danielle's room, Danielle was gone. They looked around the house and couldn't find her anywhere, and then they thought back to the night before.
Starting point is 00:08:05 The flashing security alarms, not checking on the kids before they went to bed, they started to fear for the worse, that someone had come into their home and taken their seven-year-old daughter. At 9.39 a.m., they called the police to report her missing. And they lived in a really safe neighborhood, so I'm sure they never thought that this was going to happen, so going back to our conversation before about the alarm, you know, they probably didn't go there just because they lived in such a nice place. So police were looking for a 4-foot tall, 58-pound blue-eyed blonde girl who had been wearing light blue pajamas to bed that night.
Starting point is 00:08:42 Hundreds of volunteers from the area got together and searched the neighborhood while police began their interviewing process. They started off by getting reports from everyone in the Van Dam house to get the story straight. Then they moved on to the neighbors to see if they knew or saw anything the night before. That's when they noticed that one of the Van Dam's neighbors wasn't home. But one detective in particular, Mo Parga, wanted to make sure they could talk to him. Mo Parga was brought into the investigation when the police realized that this was
Starting point is 00:09:12 more than likely a case of kidnapping. And that's why Mo came in because she had worked with kidnapping cases before. So when Mo got to David Westerfield's house, who lived in a very nice two story house just two doors down from the Van Damms. No one came to the door.
Starting point is 00:09:28 She decided to ask the other neighbors about him in case they knew where he was. And they said that he left on abrupt trips all the time, and they even called him Desert Dave because of his love for camping in the desert by himself. David Westerfield was a 49-year-old man who had two college-aged kids and he lived alone in San Diego. He worked from home as an engineer so his schedule was pretty flexible, hence all the random trips. He also kept in a maculat house.
Starting point is 00:09:56 His lawn was trimmed perfectly, everything was clean and tidy. While Moe was studying the outside of his house and she couldn't go in yet, she noticed something a little bit odd. There was a garden hose laying across the lawn. She thought this was strange because someone who cares about their garden as much as David seemed to, wouldn't want to leave the hose unraveled on the grass because it would turn the grass yellow. Just from this mere sighting alone, Moe was confident that David was involved in whatever
Starting point is 00:10:24 happened to Danielle. She thought that maybe he had been in such a rush to leave his house that he didn't raffle the hose back up. And at this point, she knew nothing about David, only his first name. The other officers thought it was a pretty crazy assumption, and they didn't feel the same urgency to talk to him as Moe did. But the other neighbors also mentioned something else. That early that morning, they saw David leaving his house in a motorhome. This made Mo even
Starting point is 00:10:51 more suspicious because that would mean that he left the area the same morning that Daniel disappeared. This information made the other officers a little more interested in interviewing David. So Mo and her partner, Johnny Keane. Super cool name, really dope name. Staked out in their unmarked car for the next two days, just waiting for David to return home. At 3 a.m. on Monday, they decided to call it quits and head home themselves, but just
Starting point is 00:11:18 five hours later, at 8.45 a.m., David returned. Other detectives on the case got back to the house right away after being informed of his arrival, and then they called Mo and Johnny to come down so they could be present for the interview. So at 9am, they pulled up to his house, and David was in the driveway. It was a cold winter morning in San Diego, but while David was answering most questions, he was sweating. But Mo didn't want him to get too suspicious that he was being watched because she wanted
Starting point is 00:11:49 to keep him under her thumb. So she assured him that everyone in the neighborhood was being questioned and that they were checking everyone's homes. So David let Mo and Johnny inside to complete their search. They headed upstairs and Mo decides to check in his bathroom. She noticed that the window happened to look out towards the Van Dam house and that there is an impression in the window screen. She then put her face in the impression and was able to see the area where Danielle would often play, meaning that David would potentially press his face against that window in order to watch Daniel from afar. Since they didn't have a search warrant, it was up to David what they could see and when they
Starting point is 00:12:31 would leave, so Mo was making sure to be super nice and unsuspecting. She even complimented the things in his house and engaged in playful conversation to make sure that he didn't get upset about anything. She continued to look around the house and noticed that his comforter was missing from his bed, so it was just the sheets that were on, and this was a little bit weird to her too. Then, she saw a cutout photo on his counter that looked to have been from a catalog. It was a photo of a child's pink and white bed with a canopy. To mow, it looked a lot like Dan Yll's bed, and even aside from that fact,
Starting point is 00:13:05 it didn't make sense why a single man with young adult children would be looking for little girl furniture. When Moe and Johnny were done looking in the house, they went into the garage where David's Toyota 4 runner was. It was perfectly clean, inside, and out, as if it had just been washed. During their initial conversation, David stated that earlier Saturday morning at 6.30 a.m., he decided that he wanted to go to the desert, so he got into his Toyota 4 runner to go to his storage unit and get his motor home. Once he retrieved it, he returned to his house where he stalked the motor home full of food and water. He told police that he didn't end up leaving until about 9.50am.
Starting point is 00:13:47 But while he was on his way to the desert, he realized that he forgot his wallet, so he had to camp somewhere closer. And he chose a state park called Silver Strand near Coronado, California, which is right next to San Diego, and Silver Strand is actually a beach campground. So not exactly what he was looking for, because like we said, he usually liked to camp in the desert for some reason, so he wasn't too happy that he had to go the beach. But a park ranger had seen him and spoken with David at Silver Strand, so it had been confirmed that David was there.
Starting point is 00:14:20 But as that Saturday went on, David decided to go back home to get his wallet. When he got to his street, he saw a bunch of news vans and police cars. One of his neighbors told him that Danielle Van Damme had disappeared, and David told them that he was going to go check his house and pool for her. David stated that he didn't leave his wallet at home after all. It was actually in his Toyota 4 runner at his storage unit. So once he got his money because he had to go back to the storage unit, he filled up his gas tank and drove his motor
Starting point is 00:14:50 home to a different spot that was about 160 miles away. He ended up going to Glamis, which is a sand dune and got his motor home stuck. The following morning, someone had to tow his motor home out of the sand. He then drove to Superstition Mountain and then to Barrego Springs. While at Barrego Springs, he got his motorhomes stuck in the sand yet again. Then he went back to Silver Strand Beach campground where he stayed for the night. At 4am, the next morning, which was Monday, he left to return his motorhome to the storage place and then return home. Then the police arrived. the next morning, which was Monday, he left to return his motor home to the storage place and then return home.
Starting point is 00:15:27 Then the police arrived. On January 25, 2002, so a week before Danielle went missing, Brenda had once again been at the bar dads with her friends Denise and Barbara. While they were there, Brenda saw David Westerfield having a drink. They weren't very familiar with each other, but she knew that he was her neighbor. So she and her friends went over and talked to him. And they were probably around the same age. I don't know how old her parents were, but they were probably in their early 40s and he
Starting point is 00:15:56 was in his late 40s. So yeah, pretty close to the same age. David then bought them drinks, and they talked together for a little while. A few days later, on Tuesday, Brenda took Danielle around the neighborhood to go door-to-door and sell Girl Scout cookies. Her younger brother, Dylan, who was five at the time, went along with them. One of the houses they stopped at was David, and he invited them inside so he could fill out the cookie form to buy some boxes.
Starting point is 00:16:23 While Dylan and Danielle played around the house, David told Brenda that he was interested in her friend Barbara since he had met her a few nights prior at Dad's Bar. This next part is very important because Brenda tells David that she was thinking about going to Dad's with Barbara again that coming Friday night and and she gave him some details regarding child care. She said that her husband Damon was planning on being away that coming weekend, so she was going to find a babysitter to watch the kids. That coming Friday, which was the night Danielle disappeared, David went to Dad's bar with a couple of his friends where he ran into Brenda, Barbara, and their other friends. Brenda told Barbara that David was interested in getting to know her, so Barbara went over
Starting point is 00:17:09 to him and introduced herself. They all hung out together and played pool, but Brenda didn't talk to David much and he wasn't playing pool. He was just watching. At 11 p.m., Brenda and her friends went to her car to smoke more weed. When they got back into the bar, David was still there, but he left around 12.30am. So knowing that David had been out pretty late drinking, it's odd to think that he got up five to six hours later to randomly decide to go camping.
Starting point is 00:17:39 Yeah, I definitely think that it's somewhat strange to be out drinking until 12.30am. And I mean, who knows how much he actually was drinking. Maybe he only had a beer or two, but to wake up five to six hours later and just decide on a whim to go camping in the desert seems strange to me, but apparently he does this all the time. Right. And then also I wanted to clear up. So Brenda did tell David that Damon was likely planning to go out of town, but he ended up not going out of town because of the weather.
Starting point is 00:18:09 So that's why he was watching the kids that night when Brenda went out dancing with her friends at dads. So David did tell detectives all of this information as well, and the reason that it came up was because when Mo and Johnny were searching his house that Monday, they had a dog with them to try and track Danielle's scent. The dog went to the garage twice, indicating that it may have tracked Danielle's scent there, so that's when David told them that Danielle had been in his house when she came by selling Girl Scout cookies. When Mo went to the garage with the dog, she smelled bleach.
Starting point is 00:18:42 Throughout the rest of the search, they were a little weirded out by how cooperative he was. He made a point to show them specific things that they may have missed and he shared a lot of information. Mo and Johnny asked David where he kept his motor home because they were interested in searching it. So they all went to high valley and the detectives conducted a basic search. They noticed that his bedding in the motorhome was also missing just like the bedding and his own bedroom at home was. Since they couldn't conduct a full-proper search or get DNA samples, they left after peaking around since they didn't notice anything too weird.
Starting point is 00:19:18 Detectives decided to speak with the owner of the storage facility whose name was Keith Sherman, who stated that on the morning of Saturday, February 2, 2002, he saw David come by to get his motor home and thought it was odd that David wasn't with his son as he usually was when he went camping. He also thought that it was odd that David didn't hitch his Toyota 4 runner to the motor home, but that he left the Toyota behind all together and drove the motor home separate. He usually didn't do that.
Starting point is 00:19:48 So what he means by that is basically, he didn't bring the car on the back of the motor home, meaning he would only have the motor home to drive and not a normal car if he needed it, right? Essentially, yeah, that's correct. And I know that he usually did bring his Toyota to a fur runner or some different sand toys, what he called them, where he could kind of go around in the sand dunes and drive around have fun, kind of thing, and he didn't bring any of those, and he almost always did. Yeah, like an Odyssey or a sand rail or something similar to that.
Starting point is 00:20:17 I mean, I grew up in Oregon, so the coast was, the coast for me was about 40 minutes away, and people would always hitch their sand toys to the back of their motor homes or whatever. Right, and that made it more fun, because especially if he's alone, it gave him something to do, but he didn't bring any of those things with him this trip. Yeah, and that's why the guy at this storage facility thought it was odd because David would typically do that. He would bring his toys with him. On Monday morning, around 7 a.m, so before going back to his house where
Starting point is 00:20:46 he met police, David arrived at Twin Peaks Cleaner in Poway, California, which was his usual dry cleaner, so all the employees knew him. It was a very chilly morning and David was only wearing a thin t-shirt and shorts and no shoes or socks. David brought in two comforters, more bedding, and a jacket to be dry cleaned. The woman working at the dry cleaners was immediately put off because he wouldn't look her in the eye and wasn't being his usual friendly self. In the fact that he was barely wearing any clothes confused her, when David was talking to police and recounting the weekend, he didn't mention being at the dry cleaners that morning at all. Later that day, at 140 p.m., David went back to the dry cleaners with
Starting point is 00:21:32 more clothes, which was a pair of pants, a t-shirt, and a sweater. Once again, he wasn't being friendly or talkative. He was just being very standoff-ish and anti-social. Later on, police brought a cadaver dog to David's motor home to see if they would pick up Danielle sent in there. The dog alerted to one of the storage cabinets in the motor home, and when they opened it, the dog hadn't even stronger reaction to the shovel and lawn chair that were placed inside. According to the handler, the dog reacted the way it would have if Danielle had been inside that motor home.
Starting point is 00:22:05 So this was obviously a big sign to investigators. The search for Danielle continued and police were still very suspicious of David. So much so that they collected his motor home and SUV for testing. It took a few weeks to go through everything and get results back, but on February 22nd, about three weeks after Danielle disappeared, David Westerfield was arrested for the kidnapping of Danielle Van Dam after DNA test results had shown two small blood stains on his clothes and inside his motorhome. So before we took a little break there, we had found out that David Westerfield was arrested
Starting point is 00:23:10 for the kidnapping of Danielle Van Dam. But now forensic evidence showed that on the jacket that David had turned into the dry cleaners had a little bit of Danielle's blood on it. Her blood was also found on the carpet in David's motorhome. Other DNA was Danielle's handprint and fingerprints on the cabinet above the motorhome's bed. Hairs that were consistent with Danielle's DNA profile were discovered inside the motorhome's bathroom, as well as the bedding in his home bedroom. While searching David's house, they found files on his computer containing child pornography.
Starting point is 00:23:45 In the files, they also found anime illustrations of young girls being abducted, bound, and raped. The whole neighborhood was still very much looking for Danielle, even after David had been arrested because he was still maintaining his innocence. But on February 27th, so five days after David was arrested, one of the members of the search party whose name was Karsten Heimberger found the badly decomposed body of a young girl. She was nude and laying in the dirt in a desert-like area of San Diego.
Starting point is 00:24:18 The police were informed and the body was taken in for testing. Based on dental records, the body was confirmed to be that of Danielle Vandam. The medical examiner determined that animals had gotten to her body so bad that many of her remains were missing and her skin was mummified. Her death was concluded to be a homicide,
Starting point is 00:24:39 but he wasn't sure how she died because of the state her body was in when they found it. But he ruled out blunt-forced trauma, strangulation, gunshot and stabbing. Although strangulation was off the table, he mentioned that it's possible she was suffocated. But that wouldn't explain the blood found. He also couldn't tell whether or not she had been sexually assaulted because her genital organs were missing. The medical examiner stated that Danielle had been dead at least 10 days prior to being found,
Starting point is 00:25:08 but her death could have occurred the night she disappeared as well. So it's really interesting that he ruled out so many causes of death, because those are, I mean, obviously really popular ways to be murdered, if you will. Very common ways. Right, and so, blunt force trauma, strangulation, gunshot, and stabbing. So if there was her blood found, I'm just trying to think of how else she would have been killed. Yeah, I don't really understand how she could have died
Starting point is 00:25:34 and like all of those common things were not involved. Because it just, it doesn't make sense to me. If there's blood, I mean, I guess she could have been poisoned, but at the same time, where would the blood have come from? Unless the wounds to her body were not what killed her, and maybe that's why they're ruling it that way? Well, that's a good point, because maybe she was hurt or injured by him before she was killed, so maybe the blood came from an injury and not from death. Yeah, exactly. That could be the case. So let's go back for a second and talk about David. In 1994, so eight years before Daniel's murder, David's niece had a strange encounter with
Starting point is 00:26:14 her uncle David. When she was around six years old, she was having a sleep over at her house with her sister and cousin while her parents were having a party downstairs. During the night, she woke up to find David's fingers in her mouth rubbing her teeth. She didn't say anything, she just pretended that she was asleep and adjusted. She then watched as he went over to her sister, his other niece, but she couldn't see what he was doing. Then David came back to her and put his fingers back into her mouth and she bit him. Props to her for doing that, especially because she was so confused and so young. So later that night, the girl went downstairs to talk to her mom about what had happened.
Starting point is 00:26:55 She told her mom that he was doing weird things to her and that it upset her. But that's all she said because she was scared. So her mom ended up asking David about what happened, but nothing ever came of it. But this incident was brought up in court for Danielle's murder and kidnapping because David's niece actually testified against him. At this time, she was a teenager, so she probably had a better idea of what her uncle was doing, especially knowing now that he had probably murdered and potentially raped a seven-year-old girl. David stated that he had heard a commotion upstairs that night, so he went to check on the girls and that was it.
Starting point is 00:27:31 So he didn't admit to doing anything to his nieces. Of course he didn't, because he's a piece of shit. Right. On June 4, 2002, David Westorfield went to court for the murder of Danielle Van Damme, and he, of course, pleaded not guilty. The defense heavily relied on the lifestyle of Danielle's parents. A lot came out that they had an open marriage and that they always had different people at the house. And since there had been people over the night of Danielle's disappearance, David's lawyers tried to suggest that it was
Starting point is 00:28:05 likely one of them. They also tried to say that the child porn wasn't downloaded by David, but it was more likely done by his 18-year-old son. But his son also testified in court stating that that was not him, and he wasn't even living at the house anyway. During Danielle's autopsy, it was determined that bugs hadn't colonized on her body until a couple weeks after she disappeared. Because of this fact, the defense wanted to prove that Danielle wasn't murdered until the middle of February, while David was under the police's close watch.
Starting point is 00:28:39 So there would be no way that he could have committed the murder and dumped her body without police seeing it. And they even had a few entomologists testify regarding the bugs. Also, there wasn't any of David's DNA found in the Van Dam house, so the defense pointed this out, saying if he had been in that house, there would be evidence of it. Which we know isn't exactly true because sneaking into a house and abducting someone doesn't always leave trace evidence. Exactly. He could have been wearing gloves and maybe switched to shoes. I mean, who knows?
Starting point is 00:29:12 Exactly, which is why the more important evidence to focus on is the fact that Danielle's DNA and blood was found in his home and his motor home. Right. I think it's always strange in these type of cases when the defenses trying to point to things that are pretty much irrelevant when there's literal DNA evidence that Daniel was murdered by David Westerfield. And that's why these trials are so silly sometimes because sometimes it's really obvious that the defendant is guilty and the defense just has to grasp at straws. So that's pretty obviously happening in this case as well. The trial went on for about two months and ended on August 8th, 2002. Two weeks later,
Starting point is 00:29:52 on August 21st, the jury was done deliberating, and they found David Westerfield guilty of first degree murder, kidnapping, and possession of child pornography. Within a month of this decision, the jury gave him a verdict of death. And by the following year, a judge sentenced David Westerfield to death for his crimes. David is currently 67 years old and incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison in Northern California. David appealed his sentencing and that's currently pending. Danielle's parents sued David and were rewarded over $400,000 in an insurance settlement, and they also made sure that he will never be able to profit from his crimes. In 2003, a man named James Selby, who has multiple sex-related crimes on his record, sent the San Diego police a letter confessing
Starting point is 00:30:46 to murdering Danielle Van Dam. But they believe that he was lying in order to gain attention. James Selby also claimed to have murdered John Bene Ramsey, and he ended up committing suicide in 2004. So we'd obviously need a lot more evidence and information to even begin to take James Selby's confession apart or have opinions on it. But I just feel like there's no way David didn't murder Danielle because of the blood found. Also, so many people have confessed to John Bene Ramsey's murder.
Starting point is 00:31:15 I feel like that was probably for attention, so this probably was too, in my opinion. Yeah, I feel the exact same way. So many people have confessed to that murder, the murder of John Binet Ramsey. And I just feel like this is kind of, it happens a lot. It would be different if there had only been fingerprints found in David's house since we knew that Danielle had been in there
Starting point is 00:31:36 when she was selling cookies, just days prior. But there's no chance that blood and tons of other DNA evidence would be found in his motor home where she hadn't gone in the day that she was over there with her mom. And then the child porn thing, I mean, he just has to be guilty. And I wish that he would confess so that her family could have some closure.
Starting point is 00:31:55 Yeah, it's really sad that he never confessed to this crime and never confessed how he murdered Daniel, but we know that he did. Our hearts really go out to Daniel's family and her friends. You know, it's such a tragic loss to lose a child that young. I mean, to lose a child at all is tragic, but you know, she was seven years old and she had so much life left, so it just really, it crushes us inside to hear about this.
Starting point is 00:32:29 Thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you so much everyone for listening, and next week we'll have an all new case for you guys to dive into. Check out our Instagram at Going West Podcast and go check out Heath on Twitter at GoingWestPod. And get this guys, if you are tired of our ads and our episodes, you can now go over to Stitcher Premium and you can get your episodes ad-free. Yeah, and if you want even more episodes, check out our Patreon. Patreon.com slash GoingWestPodcast, we just released a brand new bonus episode on the Wonderland
Starting point is 00:33:05 murders of 1981. So go check that out and the other seven bonus episodes that are up there. And one more cool and exciting thing coming up for you guys, we are finally releasing some merch, so we will have that up and probably in the next week, so make sure you go and check that out over on our website, goingwestpodcast.com. So for everybody out there in the world, don't be a stranger. 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh
Starting point is 00:33:52 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc
Starting point is 00:34:08 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc
Starting point is 00:34:24 1 tbc 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh
Starting point is 00:34:40 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh Thank you. you

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.