David Westerfield

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by Sarah Whitmer2 views·Updated May 3, 2022
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  1. Hi, so I'm doing the David Westerfield case. And um this is kind of how it went down.
  2. So the beginning.
  3. What sparked it all was Daniel Van Dem went missing on the night of February one
  4. In 2002.
  5. And David Westerfield packed up his motor home and took
  6. a trip out to the desert the following day.
  7. When he arrived back a few days later,
  8. the detectives questioned him on his behaviors,
  9. uh, question him and his behaviors were suspicious and overly helpful.
  10. So they started an investigation into his activities during early February 2002.
  11. So
  12. later in the month, they found Daniel's body, according to Newsweek.
  13. Heisenberg and a dozen other volunteers had spent the
  14. better part of last Wednesday combing through a trash strewn
  15. lot off of a two lane road southeast of the Van Dam home when he spotted a small,
  16. badly decomposed body lying next to a clutch of oak trees,
  17. he says it's sort of stunned me to see it.
  18. It looked like someone had carried it over there and
  19. placed it down rather than throwing it from a car.
  20. So the timeline of the events on February two
  21. is when Daniel was discovered missing on February seven,
  22. they had search warrants for Westerfield's dry cleaning.
  23. Um on February 22, Westerfield is arrested February 20
  24. 7th Daniel's body is found, March 28.
  25. Westerfield pleads not guilty on all charges and I believe his
  26. um
  27. Courts dates started like June four,
  28. So August 21, they found him guilty on all charges and then September 16,
  29. the jury recommended the death penalty
  30. And then that was formally sentenced by Judge Mud January three of 2003.
  31. So the evidence collected, there's quite a bit, I'm only going to go over a bit.
  32. Uh So they had blood, hair fibers, the body of Daniella daniella,
  33. electric filing, electronic files containing child pornography.
  34. They also had insect evidence
  35. or Entomology. They had
  36. David Westerfield's dry cleaning items and then they also found fingerprints.
  37. So with the blood they had a jacket sent to
  38. the dry cleaners that had Daniel has blood on it.
  39. And in Westerfield's motor home,
  40. Danielle's blood was found on the carpet.
  41. And they found this out by Annette Pier,
  42. which was a san Diego Police department forensic
  43. biologist who tested for the presence of blood.
  44. So she found that the
  45. Westerfield's jacket was positive for blood as well as the carpet in the motor home,
  46. but it wasn't found out about
  47. It being Daniela's blood until Mitchell Holland
  48. performed 13 marker DNA profiles on both the
  49. carpet blood stain and the jacket.
  50. And he found that all 13 markers were a match.
  51. And so both Pierre and Holland testified that
  52. they expected frequency from the marker profiles range from
  53. one in 662,
  54. quadrillion chance.
  55. So the other thing was Daniela's body. So on February 27 again.
  56. Uh Carsten Heisenberg was a volunteer in the search party for Daniel. Um and
  57. discovered the body on the side of the Hesse road.
  58. The body was later identified by dental records to be
  59. Daniela fandom and the san Diego County medical examiner.
  60. Dr brian black born observed Daniel's body was in a state of marked
  61. decomposition.
  62. Her body had been extensively fed upon by animals,
  63. so much so that much of her body tissue was missing.
  64. Her left foot was missing as was her general area. Her skin was mummified.
  65. Danielle was wearing no clothes and memoir in the immediate area.
  66. So
  67. with this, they couldn't
  68. test if she was sexually assaulted just because
  69. her genital area was so extensively missing.
  70. So what they did uh and what was heavily used in the courtroom was Entomology.
  71. So they had
  72. Many forensic entomologists on the case from both the defense and the prosecution.
  73. So David Faulkner,
  74. he was the first one to testify by the defense and he
  75. said that insect activity occurred 10-12 days prior to the discovery,
  76. Which would place the timeframe around February 16 to the 18th with him
  77. Neal Haskell used Faulkner's insect material and said that the
  78. first insect activity would be around February 14 to the 21st
  79. And then William Rodriguez,
  80. he was the first of the prosecution side and he was a
  81. forensic anthropologist and he said that Daniel had died earlier than February six
  82. Madison leadoff was the second to be on the prosecution side.
  83. The forensic entomologist said
  84. Earlier, insect activity would be February 12,
  85. but she could not say if Danielle was alive between February one and February 12.
  86. So continuing on because I couldn't fit all of them in robert hall.
  87. He was part of the defense as well but he came in after the prosecution as a rebuttal
  88. And he reviewed all the same information as the others
  89. and concluded that insect activity started between February 12 and
  90. 2/23. So there was a lot of discrepancies.
  91. But all the entomologists used one some or all of the following.
  92. So they collected insects from Daniel's body.
  93. They collected insects from the crime scene
  94. and they all used known temperature and
  95. weather conditions in the month of february.
  96. So robert hall, the anthropologist, the forensic
  97. anthropologists observed mummification to daniel's body which
  98. can alter insect activity and that weather,
  99. sunlight and insects can vary time of death estimation.
  100. So if she was mummified before um
  101. animals were feasting on her carcass then that could explain the discrepancies,
  102. discrepancies with the first contact of insects
  103. for the first insect activity.
  104. So the other
  105. uh evidence was fingerprints and analysis.
  106. The fingerprints were found on the cabinet above the motorhomes bed
  107. and they had Jeffrey Graham Jr who is a latent fingerprint
  108. examiner at the san Diego Police department test the fingerprints on
  109. the cabinet and compare them to Danielle and bring their fingerprints
  110. and they found that they contained
  111. four associated fingerprints two of which contained
  112. sufficient ridge detail to match two of Danielle's fingers on her left hand.
  113. And so um they did do testing on hairs and fibers, but they were
  114. um
  115. just kind of generalized and so also as we learned in class,
  116. hair and fibers aren't really the best to use for this.
  117. And also they were skimming his computer and they found child pornography on it.
  118. So the current developments in this case,
  119. Danielle van Damme Memorial Overpass is close to where they found her body.
  120. And
  121. Current
  122. up to date article said that in 2019 the
  123. California Supreme Court denied David Westerfield Automatic Appeal.
  124. Currently the death penalty has been suspended in California at the age of 69.
  125. It seems unlikely Westerfield will
  126. ever be put to death.
  127. So he's been appealing his death penalty ever since 2003.
  128. And this current one I believe was um
  129. to appeal on the basis that the search warrants were illegally produced.
  130. Yet he signed a consent form for them.
  131. So here are my citations
  132. and
  133. thank you