UNLESS he agrees to inform on and testify against any child porn producers and molestors he knows,and/or agrees to plead guilty to murder charges for any other children he has snatched in the past and shows where their bodies are. I could see letting him have life without parole if he is joined there by his fellow monsters. We as a society need to get these people off the streets any way we can.
The prosecution can possibly turn the tables on Westerfield by tracing his connections with the child porn network. Was he a loner, with no contact with others of his ilk, save downloaded files, or did he have direct contacts and working relationships with those who were aware of his interests and activities?
There are three worlds at play here: the world of Christian morality, fidelity and family, the world of the swinger and the world of the sexual predator. There is overlap and conflict between these worlds. The sexual predator concieves of other humans as objects of pleasure for the self, and in the end, can take pleasure in murder.
I can see how the sexual predator can see the world of swinging as a group of mainly naive sexual experimenters to be exploited. From the viewpoint of the Christian, the swingers have opened the gates that allow the predators to enter the outskirts of morality. Caught in the middle, the van Dams in effect have sacrificed a child to the logical extension of their comprimised belief system.