Posted on 02/09/2002 6:53:27 AM PST by crypt2k
Suspect's travels included Imperial Valley, Silver Strand
Police continued yesterday to investigate the alibi of David Westerfield and tried to make sense of the kidnapping suspect's wanderings from desert to beach to desert again after the disappearance of his 7-year-old neighbor Danielle van Dam.
Westerfield, an avid camper who has come under intense police scrutiny, drove his motor home to Silver Strand State Beach near Coronado on the afternoon of Feb. 2, apparently after leaving the dunes in the Imperial Valley desert, where the vehicle had been stuck in the sand, officials said yesterday.
Silver Strand park rangers said Westerfield mistakenly paid for four nights instead of the two he intended to stay. He left after a ranger knocked on his door and gave him a refund.
Danielle has been missing from her Sabre Springs home for eight days. She was last seen when her father put her to bed about 10:30 p.m. Feb. 1. Westerfield, who has not been arrested and who friends say is incapable of doing harm, told police he left in his motor home the next morning for the desert and the beach.
Silver Strand rangers said Westerfield arrived at the $12-a-night oceanfront campground Feb. 2. A ranger knocked on his motor-home door to refund the overpayment between 3 and 3:30 p.m., and Westerfield drove off about 20 minutes later.
Westerfield appeared to be alone in the motor home, though rangers did not go inside the vehicle and did not see or hear a child. He did not seem nervous, said Chief Ranger John Quirk.
"There was nothing suspicious about it," Quirk said. "He sounded grateful they'd given him the money back."
Westerfield told police he decided to leave after paying for two nights because "he didn't know anybody down there. He decided to go to the desert where his friends were," an investigator said.
It is not clear to what desert he returned.
Police said they find it curious that earlier that same day, Westerfield, a frequent desert camper, became stuck in the sand in an area most campers know to avoid. Some campers told police they watched as Westerfield continued down a sandy stretch and remarked that he was sure to get stuck.
"He knows the desert real well. What's he doing out there?" an investigator said.
Investigators have been in the Imperial Valley for the past several days. They returned yesterday by helicopter because shifting dunes from a sandstorm Sunday could have covered up clues, and detectives wanted to take an aerial look in a search for possible grave sites or other evidence, one detective said.
"The wind can blow for 15 minutes and you won't see a thing," said Dan Conklin, a towing service owner who pulled Westerfield's motor home from the dunes south of Glamis on Feb. 2.
Yesterday morning, Conklin led members of the news media south from Glamis down a dirt road a mile and a half south of state Route 78, where he said Westerfield's motor home was stuck. There, he hiked up a dune and pointed east to a half-square-mile plot where investigators concentrated their search Thursday.
Conklin said that before noon Feb. 2, Westerfield hiked to an encampment of off-road enthusiasts and told a man he was stuck. That man went to Conklin's business and directed him to Westerfield.
Westerfield was alone and without an all-terrain vehicle or dune buggy when Conklin found him trying to dig out his motor home, which had sunk into the sand up to its frame.
Conklin said he was immediately suspicious, and that he saw a long line of footprints that stretched from the motor home off into the distance. He said Westerfield told him he had been stuck since morning.
Police first showed an interest in Westerfield on Monday when he returned from his weekend trip. Detectives initially said they talked to him because he was the only person in the neighborhood they had not contacted over the weekend.
His house was one of the first of more than 200 Sabre Springs homes that officers searched with the aid of police dogs. Police later returned with a search warrant.
During that Tuesday search, investigators seized Westerfield's motor home and a sport-utility vehicle. They took 13 containers of property from his house and had him retrace his weekend in the desert.
At one point, police dispatched a plumber to the Westerfield house to assist in their search. It was not known what task the plumber performed.
Police are still awaiting results of DNA tests. Undercover detectives also continue to track Westerfield's every move.
As they did Thursday, undercover detectives yesterday followed Westerfield as he drove from his home to the offices of his attorney, Steven Feldman, in San Diego's Golden Hill neighborhood.
Meanwhile, Danielle's parents, Brenda and Damon van Dam, continued to make appearances on several television news broadcasts, where they again pleaded for their daughter's safe return.
The Laura Recovery Center for Missing Children, a Texas group that is joining the effort to find Danielle, launched its first searches yesterday.
From a command post at the Doubletree Golf Resort in Rancho Peñasquitos, the organization sent several groups looking for the girl, said Bob Walcutt, the center's executive director. Searches were conducted by air over the Anza-Borrego Desert, on the ground in east Poway and in an area southeast of Beeler Canyon Road and Pomerado Road, and by car along Scripps Poway Parkway, Walcutt said.
Nearly 150 people turned out last night at Danielle's school, Creekside Elementary, to coordinate efforts for a more extensive volunteer search effort today.
Your cousin's friend has no clue when he is saying.
Just because we are all naked and groping in the garage doesn't mean we can't hear a kidnapper sneaking into our home.
"Nothing would get in between me checking on my children."
A wild orgy couldn't keep me from it.
I'm sorry I don't remember all the details but she was later found innocent and set free.
Since the Australian people are mostly descendants of the "stiff upper lip" British and the Irish who keep to themselves, I found it strange that they would think the lack of a public display of emotion automatically cried "guilty".
If the alarm went off regulary when it shouldn't have I would have had that darn thing checked out. What good does it do if it constantly gives false alarms?
If this is true, there's a lot more going on in that house than these parents are saying. This is a classic line from a child that's being sexually abused.
I found the above, there's a book "A Cry in the Night".
Here's a little bit from it
Initially, Lindy and Michael attempted to defend themselves against the rumours and accusations, but quickly learned that few journalists could be trusted to record their interviews with accuracy. Every media appearance they made seemed to fuel the rumours even more, especially when they spoke openly about their faith and their beliefs as Seventh Day Adventists. Lindy was considered to be strange, too hard, too unmotherly. Why didn’t she cry?
We tend to project our own emotional reactions onto others. The more emotional of us study the behavior of the more constrained individuals and find them lacking. On the other hand, constrained people might feel those who display overpowering emotions are putting on a show. Who knows how either of them would react in a tragic situation?
Yet, even among constrained people, we can usually detect physical cues or verbal nuances that reveal that they are striving to maintain control over their feelings. When those subtle cues are missing, even innocent people seem guilty of something, we just are not sure what. The truth is, some people successfully conceal their feelings because they have a strong will or strong pride. Others conceal their feelings because they don't have strong feelings to hide.
As in the Ramsey case, we may never know what truly happened to this little girl, but many of us didn't feel comfortable about the Ramseys because their words didn't match up to their nonverbal behaviors. I still believe there are parents who go through the motions of caring, convince themselves that they do care, and yet lack that certain "something" that we expect to pick up on when we hear them talk about their kids. I don't see the cues I'm looking for on the faces of these parents. They may be innocent, but they make me uncomfortable.
On the way you see pictures of this little girl everywhere, on cars, intersection signs, light posts. You get close to the house and there are pink and purple ribbons everywhere. I drove down the street and came upon huge vans, trucks and antennas. There is a big group of media surrounding the house. On the corner of the street is a playground with a big banner reading, “We miss you Danielle, hurry home”. It hit me, there is a little human being who is gone and this is real. Don’t get me wrong, it is not that I didn’t know the reality of it before, it’s just that when you look at the house that she lived in and see the families and children that she knew playing in the street, you just get a real dose of reality.
The bottom line is this. I have been one that has gotten sucked onto the media hype about who did it, what’s the deal with the idiot parents, and what about this scumbag neighbor? The real story is that a little girl was taken from her home and she is probably dead. I don’t know if her parents did it, I don’t know if the perv down the street did it, I don’t know if a stranger did it. All that I know is that SOMEONE DID IT! and a precious child is gone. What breaks my heart the most is the terror that she must have experienced. I know a little bit about that because my home was invaded by a horrible man in the middle of the night and he did unspeakable things. Fortunately, I lived. Unfortunately, Danielle probably did not.
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