Wow....the mining project has just hit pay-dirt....PING...) ) )
Danielle’s Death
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On March 1, a day after the body of Danielle Van Dam was identified, the San Diego Union-Tribune published a heart-rending account of parents and school counselors trying to explain to children how it could happen that seven-year-old Danielle was kidnapped and killed. "Mommy," a boy was quoted as saying, "I don't want anyone to steal me." Counselors advised parents "to listen to their children's fears and acknowledge them." The unstated assumption of much of the press coverage of the tragedy has been just this: Children are afraid, counselors and parents are stumbling to find something comforting to say, for what happened to Danielle could as easily happen to any of our children. Since the grim discovery was made, the nation has absorbed the message that Danielle's death was an event without explanation or reason. Or was it? On the morning of February 2, Danielle was found to be missing from her bed. The man who has been arrested for her murder is 50-year-old David Westerfield. Reportedly a child-porn enthusiast, he is a neighbor of Danielle's parents, Damon and Brenda van Dam. That night, says the accused kidnapper, he and Mrs. Van Dam had been dancing at a local bar. Mrs. Van Dam denies dancing with Westerfield, but she does admit being out till 2 A.M. without her husband. Nor do the Van Dams deny the stories reported in Newsweek, stories that say they are active "swingers" with a taste for wife swapping. The Van Dams say their lifestyle has "nothing to do" with Danielle's abduction. Let us be clear. This horrible death can be blamed only on the man who kidnapped Danielle. But if the Van Dams are indeed "swingers," if Mrs. Van Dam was carousing without her husband until rather late, then these parents — who deserve our sympathy no matter what their follies and vices may be — will have something in common with the parents of many other abducted children, beyond the bare fact that they have lost a child. For these terrible events do not, for the most part, occur at random. (AMEN RABBI!!) The National Institute for Missing and Exploited Children supplies the figures. In 1997, 24 percent of abducted children were abducted by strangers. About half, 49 percent, were kidnapped by family members, typically a divorced parent. Another 27 percent were kidnapped by an acquaintance. This same notion — that a certain kind of misfortune, in choosing victims, makes no distinction between wholesome and unwholesome — animated the AIDS scare of the late 1980s. Back then, the media and AIDS activists asserted that the disease was about to erupt among the population of heterosexuals who are not abusers of intravenous drugs. It never did. AIDS, it's now acknowledged, is a killer with a marked preference for people who engage in particular activities: anal sex and needle sharing. It does occasionally happen that an unknown drifter will invade the life of an upstanding family and steal and murder their child. That is what happened to 12-year-old Polly Klaas, abducted from a slumber party in Petaluma, California, in 1993. It is what happened in 1981 to six-year-old Adam Walsh, whose father, TV host John Walsh of America's Most Wanted, initiated a campaign to place photos of missing children on milk cartons and junk mail. That well-intended campaign has supported the misconception that children go missing by chance. The brief biographical sketch of the missing child never indicates the family dysfunction that likely contributed to making the abduction possible. Random kidnapping is not what happened to Danielle van Dam, and the fact is worth considering. For our actions have consequences — often unintended, often for future generations, often tragic — and parents would do well to remember this. (Long...uninterrupted...applause...FDA) |
little girl is dead, left under a clump of oak trees in the backcountry east of San Diego. Many have seen her murder as a warning, applicable equally to all mothers and fathers, that child abduction occurs by random chance.
Los Angeles, Alta California - 2/12/2002 - (ACN) - North San Diego county is a rapidly growing area in southern California that is inhabited by mostly white upper middle class folks. Most of the residents here have fled from the now largely minority populated cities of Los Angeles and San Diego. The region is a mix of brand new residential developments and dwindling agricultural fields. The many bedroom communities that have arisen in this corridor between Los Angeles and San Diego pride themselves in being family oriented and an excellent and healthy place to raise children. Recently, however, three major incidents have shattered the false image that was being projected by whites in the area. 
The first incident occurred in the community of Rancho Sante Fe (Map location 1) on March 26, 1997 when 39 bodies of young men an women were found dead in various rooms of a $1.6 million dollar home. The bodies of 18 men and 21 women where dressed similarly and all were lying in a prone position, hands at their side as if asleep. Autopsies of the bodies later revealed that all had committed suicide and that 8 of the men were castrated. The castrations had occurred years before and had already healed. Subsequent investigations by police authorities of the bizarre case revealed that the 39 young men and women were members of a group called Heaven's Gate that was led by a homosexual who called himself "Do". "Do" apparently had convinced the 39 young men and women that a spaceship hiding behind the Hale-Bopp comet would take them to heaven and that they must free themselves from their temporary vessels (bodies) in order to be lifted away as the comet approached earth. They prepared for the trip to heaven, on an alien UFO, by first purifying their bodies. The castrations were performed on those who had deviant sexual desires in order to free them of sin. 
The third case is currently in the news. It involves the disappearance of 7 year old Danielle van Dam from her Stable Springs home (Map location 3). Stable Springs is another of the new white communities in north San Diego county. This incident has been compared to the Jo Bennet case except that no body has yet been found. It appears that the girl was abducted on February 1, 2002 from her upstairs bedroom while her so called "soccer mom", Brenda van Dam, was out dancing till 2:30 in the morning in a bar in the adjacent community of Poway (Map location 4). The father, Damon van Dam, who was at home, does not know what happened. The prime suspect is a neighbor who lives two houses down. According to the suspect, David Westerfield, he danced with the "soccer mom" at about 10:00 P.M. and then left the bar. The "soccer mom", Brenda van Dam, said that she went out with two single female friends to celebrate the going away of one of them. She said that all three met two other friends and that the five came back to her home for some "pizza" at around 2:30 AM. The following morning, Danielle was gone. No trace of her has been found. There have since been media reports citing law enforcement sources that the Van Dams took part in a "swingers" lifestyle and were engaged in an after-hours sex party with a group of people Mrs. Van Dam brought home from the bar. No one has been arrested. The reader can draw his or her own conclusions concerning the case.