Danielle van Dam

Case background and investigation

Danielle van Dam was a 7-year-old girl who disappeared from her family's home in the Sabre Springs neighborhood of San Diego, California, during the overnight hours of February 1-2, 2002. Her parents had last seen her when she was put to bed on the evening of February 1. When the family discovered her missing the next morning, they reported her disappearance to police at about 9:39 a.m. on February 2. A sliding glass door and other openings in the home were later noted by investigators as possible points of entry, and the case quickly drew intense local and national attention.

In the days that followed, hundreds of volunteers joined organized searches across San Diego County, and law enforcement conducted an extensive investigation into the child's whereabouts. Suspicion focused on David Alan Westerfield, a self-employed design engineer who lived two doors from the van Dam family. Westerfield had been away in his motor home over the weekend of the disappearance, and investigators placed him under surveillance beginning February 4. Forensic examination of items connected to him produced physical evidence linking him to the girl, and he was arrested on February 22, 2002. Danielle's remains were found by searchers on February 27, 2002, in a remote area along Dehesa Road near Harbison Canyon, east of the city.

The trial of David Westerfield began June 4, 2002, in San Diego County Superior Court, with prosecutor Jeff Dusek leading the case. Prosecutors presented forensic evidence that included bloodstains matching Danielle's DNA profile found on Westerfield's jacket and inside his motor home, as well as her fingerprints in the motor home, hairs consistent with hers and with the family dog, and fiber evidence. A DNA analyst testified that the probability of the blood matching someone other than Danielle exceeded one in a billion. The prosecution also introduced evidence of child pornography found in Westerfield's possession. The defense challenged the timeline and forensic entomology estimates of when the body was left, arguing the insect evidence pointed to a period when Westerfield was already under police surveillance.

On August 21, 2002, after a trial lasting roughly two months, a jury found Westerfield guilty of first-degree murder and kidnapping, and of possession of child pornography, and found true a special-circumstance allegation that the murder occurred during a kidnapping. On September 16, 2002, the same jury recommended the death penalty. In January 2003, Superior Court Judge William Mudd formally sentenced Westerfield to death.

Westerfield's conviction and death sentence were subject to automatic appeal in California. On February 25, 2019, the California Supreme Court unanimously affirmed both his conviction and his death sentence in People v. Westerfield. Westerfield has remained on death row. California has maintained a moratorium on executions since Governor Gavin Newsom ordered one in 2019, meaning no execution date has been set. As of the most recent reporting, Westerfield remains incarcerated in the California state prison system as a condemned inmate.