Jury to Get Case in Girl’s Killing

On the same day President Bush said the kidnapping and murder of 7-year-old Danielle van Dam is part of a “wave of horrible violence” against the nation’s children, the prosecutor and defense attorney began closing arguments here Tuesday in the case of her accused killer.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeff Dusek told jurors that David Westerfield, 50, a self-employed design engineer, killed Danielle to satisfy “primal needs” for sex with young girls and then tried to “hide, destroy, conceal [and] wash the evidence.”

But defense lawyer Steven Feldman accused Dusek of distorting comments made by Westerfield to police and mischaracterizing the scientific evidence that appears to contradict the prosecutor’s theory about when Danielle was killed.

And he repeated his assertion that her parents’ lifestyle--which included smoking marijuana and “swapping” partners with other couples--endangered Danielle by bringing disreputable people into the family home.

Dusek took nearly four hours to summarize his case to the six men and six women on the jury. Feldman had 90 minutes to begin his closing argument and will continue Wednesday, when the high-profile case is expected to go to the jury. If convicted, Westerfield faces a possible death penalty.

Danielle’s disappearance Feb. 2 from her parents’ home in the upscale Sabre Springs neighborhood was the first in a string of criminal acts against children in recent months that have riveted and horrified parents nationwide.

On Tuesday, Bush announced a Sept. 24 conference at George Washington University organized by the White House to find ways to stem “a wave of horrible violence [against children] from twisted criminals in our own communities.”

Bush mentioned two cases: Danielle van Dam and Samantha Runnion, 5, who was kidnapped from outside her Orange County home and murdered.

Referring to those cases and others, Bush said, “During weeks and months we have prayed and worried with parents as their children have been kidnapped [and], in some cases, murdered. The kidnapping or murder of a child is every parent’s worst nightmare.”

Several factors conspired to make Danielle’s case particularly gut-wrenching.

First, the body was not found for nearly a month, during which her parents, Brenda and Damon van Dam, made repeated appeals on television for her kidnapper to release her. And within days of the disappearance police concluded that their only suspect was Westerfield, who lives two doors away and had no history of violence or improper overtures to children.

On the night Danielle disappeared, Brenda was at a local bar for several hours of dancing, drinking and marijuana smoking. “I’m not casting aspersions,” Feldman told jurors Tuesday. “This is the lifestyle they chose to live, so be it. But when you do this, there are risks.”

Dusek, however, told jurors that the parents’ lifestyle was irrelevant to the case: “All of the drugs, all of the alcohol, all of the sex, that has nothing to do with it.”

Dusek reminded jurors that criminalists and other experts testified that Danielle’s blood, hair and fingerprints were found in Westerfield’s home and his recreational vehicle. Feldman’s major defense is that Westerfield could not be the killer because the girl’s body was dumped days after Westerfield was put under 24-hour surveillance by the police and media.

To bolster that contention, Feldman presented two entomologists who testified that the number and size of insects found on the corpse suggested that it had been dumped there at least several days after Feb. 5, when the surveillance began.

The prosecution presented two insect experts who disputed the defense experts’ conclusions.