FWDI, SantaDI etc etc

[Gidgette]

Supporters of David Westerfield say that there was no evidence which placed him at the scene. This is GARBAGE. The vanDam murder crime scene did not comprise solely of the vanDam house. Danielle was removed from her house. There is no evidence to suggest she was murdered there. Her body was dumped miles away in the desert. We know Westerfield spent the weekend driving around in that desert in his motorhome. There is evidence that places her in his motorhome - her blood and strands of her newly cut hair. The motorhome was the crime scene and there is plenty of evidence to place him there.QUOTE]

Not exactly correct. He did drive to the desert but her body was not found in that desert. Her body was found at Dehesa which is 25 miles away from Saber Springs.

The evidence that you claim to have been found in the motor home is also quite questionable. Danielle's DNA that was supposedly found on Westerfield's jacket wasn't seen by the dry-cleaner attendant as testified to by Julie Mills and others. In fact it wasn't even seen by Sean Soriano, the criminalist who took posession of the jacket after it was collected from the cleaners, until the THIRD time he looked at it. A clipping of the jacket wasn't even sent to Bode Labs...it was only EXTRACTED DNA. In other words it was a swab of DNA that SDLE sent and the lab was told it was FROM the jacket. Of course it was verified to be Danielle's DNA. Who knows where it came from? Also no close up pictures were ever taken of the stain prior to it being cut out and they used a Poloroid camera from a distance. The photo of the jacket was AFTER the cut-outs were made and this was supposed to be 1-3/8 inches long. The criminalists saying this is where the stain WAS. Westerfield's blood was also found on his jacket and it was degraded because of the dry cleaning process and yet Danielle's DNA provided ALL 13 markers. Makes me question this evidence. The fingerprint discovery was not a fingerprint at all. It was from an area of the hand that to my knowledge has never been used to identify any one. It was the left hand ring and middle finger at the first joint above and to include a very small part of her palm. So it was very misleading to say they found her "fingerprints" in the motorhome. Add to that Graham had to re-hydrate her hands in order to get this print.

The "blood" on the carpet is also very questionable. NO photos of that were ever taken either. Just Annette Peer saying that is where it was discovered. And lo and behold....not enough left after the testing to share with the defense. There were photos of all of the other stains that were discovered in the MH but the very ones that we are to convict a man and sentence to death are not photographed. Once again no notes by Peer were written and she testified from her "memory" as it being "about a quarter the size of a pencil eraser."
There was a phone call to Brenda on the 15th of February saying "Danielle was alive but abused." The entomolgists all pretty well verified that the TOD was between the 9th and the 19th of February. Of course you can always revert back to Rodriquez's testimony who testified that she could have died as early MID-to the 31rst of January. Dusek had to make him stretch that time to include the 4th as a possibilty.

There were BRIGHT red blood stains found in the van Dam home, there were drag marks found along the side of the house, there was mixed DNA on Danielle's blanket with Danielle being a MINOR contributor and Westerfield was excluded as the second contributor but the blanket was never tested further to see if it would match any one else.

There was a hair found on Danielle's body that didn't match Westerfield. Nothing of Westerfield was ever found in the van Dam home or on Danielle. Nada - Zip - Nothing. And Danielle had been in his home along with her brother and Brenda just a couple of days prior to Danielle's disappearance. So the hair that was found may or may not have been found in the MH could have been locard transfer. According to an article written after the verdict, Dusek and Clark commented at a luncheon that they didn't even think of the hair cut length until some one read it on a "chat room."

And then add in the Selby "confession" letter.

And all of the open and closing of the doors in the van Dam house during the night and no one checking on the kids even once is a huge red flag to me.

I am not a "supporter" as you may call me, but there is still way to many questionable things about that case that cause me to still wonder if the right man is on death row.

I am not necessarily against the DP, but let's make sure we know for a fact that we have the right person. I could pull the plug in a heartbeat on Couey and Duncan.

As long as there are so many unaswered questions I will remain on the fence and I do hope that some day it will be reviewed on appeal.

JMHO

Gidgette

 

[trixie]

Didn't Jonbenet call Bill McRenolds (santa)" Old Sam?" Then how would anyone know WHICH Santa she was talking about when she said that to Barbara Kostinak? I mean, she said Santa, not Old Sam. And if she was maybe talking about another Christmas at the house in Michigan then at her young age did she think "old Sam" would be coming there?

 

[Jayelles]

I'm not going to copy your long post in order to reply!

What you are basically saying is that the forensic team in the Westerfield case could have been involved in some big conspiracy to frame David Westerfield - yes? That they planted the evidence or switched the samples.

They didn't take photos of the bloodstained jacket BEFORE it was cleaned because Westerfield was at the drycleaners at 7am on the Monday morning - in his shorts and bare feet. The attendant recognised him and described his demanour as unusual.

The jury found it compelling that Westerfield was so desperate to get the very jacket cleaned which turned out to have Danielle's blood on.

We saw the jacket. It was brought out at trial. Photos exist of where the samples were removed from. I don't think there is any doubt about that evidence.

Or the hairs and fingerprints which were found in his RV and which belonged to Danielle. That the RV was scrubbed out leaving only a few fingerprints in odd places is also compelling. All the cleaning... and the bleach.... The orange fibres found in his tumble dryer and on the body.... which were described as very unusual by the fibres expert.

Getting back to my similar discussion on another thread - where would the doubt ever end? You have samples being cut from a jacket and sent for testing. You are saying that makes the integrity questionable - i.e. were those samples the same samples cut from the jacket? If the jacket had been sent to the lab would you question whether it was the same jacket? If someone went with the jacket and remained with it throughout - would you ask who could verify THEIR word that they never left th jacket and if a second person went along to witness the first person witnessing the jacket - would you be looking at their backgrounds to see if they'd ever had lunch together in the past - because they might have been in some conspiracy together?

See what I mean? To some people, evidence will always be questionable. If the evidence seems clear - resort to some conspiracy theory.

It was a clear cut case. There is no doubt in my mind about that. I have witnessed on these very forums that there are people who will simply never see the significance of evidence. Thankfully, most people do and that is why killers like Westerfield get convicted.