Criminal
Jun. 20, 2002
Forensic Specialist Describes Evidence Found on Slain Girl
SAN DIEGO - A police forensic specialist testified Tuesday that she collected evidence from the body of slain second-grader Danielle van Dam, including a plastic necklace that the 7-year-old was wearing in a nationally circulated missing person poster.
Dorie Savage held up the necklace, enclosed in a plastic evidence bag, for the jury to see in the dramatic highlight of the day's testimony. Savage gave a methodical account of collecting scores of specimens and photos after Danielle's parents found that she was missing early Feb. 2 as well as when her body was discovered.
Savage took special steps to keep separate the evidence found with Danielle's body, storing it with the medical examiner.
"We had so much evidence from this case that I didn't want to risk any cross-contamination," Savage testified.
Among the evidence gathered from Danielle's body was hair, Savage said.
"Some was tangled in her hand," she said.
Another hair, short and dark, was found on Danielle's side, near the armpit.
Other evidence Savage gathered from Danielle's body may prove important in the prosecution's case against David A. Westerfield, 50, who is charged with kidnapping and murdering the girl, who lived two doors from him in the northern San Diego community of Sabre Springs.
Savage said during questioning by Deputy Public Defender George W. Clarke that she gathered evidence from Danielle's neck. She did not say what she found or describe its significance.
Earlier in the trial, Clarke's fellow prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney Jeff B. Dusek, asked a question that suggested strong evidence against Westerfield came from that area of Danielle's body.
Dusek asked the question June 11, during testimony by Detective Maura Parga, from the San Diego Police Department, who during the early phases of the investigation had been in both the van Dam and Westerfield houses.
During cross-examination, defense attorney Steven E. Feldman asked whether Parga had worn the same shoes into both houses, suggesting that she may have tracked material from the van Dam house into Westerfield's home, where investigators later could have found it.
On redirect examination, Dusek sarcastically posed a series of questions to Parga. Did she or anybody else walk on Westerfield's motor home bed, put their feet in Westerfield's motor home sink, or shake their shoes over Danielle's neck after her body was found Feb. 27? Dusek inquired.
Parga responded no to each query.
Dusek said in his opening statement June 4 that he has hair, fiber and blood evidence linking Westerfield to the crime.
That evidence, including DNA comparisons, is expected to be explained during the coming days after other forensic specialists tell what they gathered.
The trial is in its third week. Lawyers originally estimated it would last 12 weeks.
Savage told how she collected numerous fingerprints and bags of other evidence from the van Dam house, first when the disappearance of Danielle was being handled as a missing person case and later when homicide detectives took charge. The first day she was there, Feb. 2, she arrived in the afternoon and left more than 13 hours later in the early morning of Feb. 3.
The fingerprints she collected came from walls near a garage door that was found open during the night Danielle disappeared and outside Danielle's bedroom. Others came from banisters on a stairway leading to the second floor of the van Dam house, where bedrooms for Danielle, her two brothers and parents were located.
Savage testified that she saw a reddish-brown stain on a beanbag chair in Danielle's bedroom. The chair was impounded for testing. She also collected what appeared to be blood from the stairwell and the threshold of the garage.
Outside the van Dam home, near the garage door Danielle's father found open during the night the girl disappeared, Savage found "a little hair" on the top of a gate that gives access to the sidewalk. She also found what were apparently drag marks near the garage door but, she said, only detectives who examined the marks would know the significance of them.
Westerfield was the only van Dam neighbor whom police couldn't locate during the first hours after Danielle's parents reported her missing. Police found him at home Feb. 4, and he told them a strange tale of driving in his 35-foot motor home to the beach, to the desert and back to the beach. Police soon put him under surveillance 24 hours a day and arrested him Feb. 22. Volunteer searchers found Danielle's nude body Feb. 27, left among debris beside a road east of El Cajon.
Westerfield, who is being held without bail, faces the death penalty if convicted.
Claude Walbert
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