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.
Yes, but even Clinton can cry if the situation warrants tears.
I'm not going to pursue whether or not the Ramseys were involved in the death of their child because I don't know. Their behavior made me feel uncomfortable for reasons that are not clear to me. Sort've like the feeling you get when you decide not to sit next to someone and you're not sure why. Incompatible vibes, I guess. I feel the same discomfort about Danielle's parents. This does not mean they are guilty.
Only that you don't know anymore then anybody else but have already convicted everybody involved. I hope that was sarcasm.
You might turn out to be right, but you simply don't have enough information to say anything now.
When my daughter was diagnosed with pneumonia (she was very ill, I thought with just a cold and cough; I was clueless, I had never seen pneumonia or experienced it myself), I guess I didn't display enough emotion to the doctor, who called me a few hours later at home, expressing how seriously ill my daughter was, if she didn't improve in the next couple days, to call and bring her back in. This is a doctor who knows me, knows I take good care of my children, and who's never had to treat my children will any other serious illness (before or since). Lack of emotional display does not mean lack of genuine concern. But others may perceive that to be the case.
Pierce is attempting to propel himself into some type of major role here. That quote, if true, can be attributed to a multitude of non-abuse related situations. For example, Danielle may have been punished for not doing her homework and, being a child, got a little dramatic in her personal diary. Notice Pierce does not reveal what the cause of Danielle's distress was.
There can be big money in salaries and perks while running a non-profit agency that garners large amounts donations. Getting your name and the name of your organization in the public eye helps alot. Pierce clearly oversteps his bounds when calling for outside protection for the renaining children. That is not his call to make and he is impeding the investigation by the San Diego PD.
You are so completely off-base on this that I despair of being able to explain the concept of Constitutionally-protected privacy and property rights to you.
And, if you think that happily cooperating with anything and everything that the police want at all times is going to make them look more "favorably" upon you, you are dead wrong. In point of fact, many guilty people eagerly cooperate with requests for warrantless searches. Hard to believe, but true.
All I can say is that exercising your rights (that is, the right to keep silent, the right to be represented by counsel, and the right to refuse searches without a warrant) does NOT indicate guilt. It demonstrates that you are not an utter fool!
All I can say is that exercising your rights (that is, the right to keep silent, the right to be represented by counsel, and the right to refuse searches without a warrant) does NOT indicate guilt. It demonstrates that you are not an utter fool!
Well said and very true. Our Founding Fathers had a reason to secure each American citizen's protections....abuse of power, for one, innocent until proven guilty, for another; our Fifth Amendment for the right not to say something that can be [twisted around and taken out of context] used against you for yet another.
I heard Pierce on KFI, disregard the note, here is what is troubling. There is no outside access to that girl's bedroom. She lives on the second floor, there is no balcony, ladder, trees, in fact it is highly lit with no natural cover.
Whoever took her out of that house, most likely knew the layout of the house. They had to go from downstairs, to her room, abduct her without waking the parents, or the family dog, and bring her back down stairs, through an exposed area with heavy lighting without being detected.
This does not sound like a stranger case. It may not be the parents, but somebody they know.
The story on KFMB was not just that they had an orgy at the house that night, but that the mother went clubbing, had sex with some strange man in the parking lot of the club, went back home with friends, then locked themselves into the garage and had a sex orgy while smoking pot.
The report of KFMB also stated that Westerfield basically confessed to the cops, stating in essence, I can take you to her, but I need a lawyer first. The theory being that her remains are his bargaining chip for life instead of lethal injection, once her body is found he is toast.
They also reported that he volunteered to host a sex orgy in his house for this swinging group. The mom knows him better than she is claiming.
Having said all this, my guess is that Westerfield had sex with the mom and her friends, maybe with the husband too for that matter, he abducted the girl, assaulted and killed her, the parents "know" he did it, aren't technically involved, but realize how bad they would look if they told the whole unvarnished truth.
Think of the cases of people wrongly porosecuted and even convicted, and how many of them "cooperated fully", giving up their rights to do so- only to find themselves in prison!
I am very far from a "cop-basher", but I also know that the aim of investigators is to CLOSE CASES- and that means finding someone to prosecute. I do not think that there are many cases of intemntional wrongful prosecution, but we have seen on this thread just how easy it can be to convince oneself of anothers guilt, even with the flimsiest of evidence.
I'm no cop-basher either. But we've all seen what happens when someone is given unlimited power. Who was is that said: "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely"? Look at Stalin, Mao, and Hitler. There are many others one can cite. Our Founding Fathers were well-read; they remembered the horrors and atrocities committed in tyrannical nations. Without our protections, we could have easily become another Roman or Nazi empire.
We still may. Rights which are given up by the people are rarely regained, except by very painful means. It would be better to hold onto the rights we have, than to fight for them again.
By the way, it was Lord Acton who was credited with the "Power corrupts..." aphorism- but I think he was echoing a Roman (Cicero?)
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