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Dad's, now Poway’s famous bar, undergoes media scrutiny
Very interesting article. Most of the people interviewed who expressed an opinion thought Westerfield was guilty, though some were undecided and some even thought he might have been covering for somebody. While most of those who thought him guilty believed he is a pedophile and was after Danielle, others thought he desired Brenda and her swinging girlfriends and wanted revenge at being rejected. An attraction to young children and an attraction to adult women are pretty much mutually exclusive, so the difference of opinion points to the lack of evidence of motive. He didn’t have a history of violence, so why would anyone think he would react so violently to rejection? And an article in the Union-Tribune in March had mentioned a police report which stated that they didn’t find child pornography on his computer, which removes that motive and should have been a big red flag, to both the media and the public, but was ignored by both: he was being charged with possessing child pornography even though expert opinion was that his pornography didn’t include child porn. Adding to that uncertainty over motive some people’s uncertainty as to whether he was even guilty, makes one question the strength of the evidence. As one person you interviewed pointed out, it is just circumstantial. Another person pointed out that Westerfield’s “dirty dancing” with Brenda would have spread evidence. More importantly, yet another person just didn’t believe that the van Dam kids never crossed the street. I don’t either. Westerfield’s motor home was parked so often in the streets outside their houses, often unlocked, and Danielle could easily have snuck inside. A weekend-long kidnapping, sexual assault and murder, would have left a mountain of evidence; maybe as many as 200 of her hairs and a lot of blood. Instead, there were only three of her hairs in his motor home, and two stains of blood that were so small and so faint that they could barely be seen. That’s much more consistent with just a sneak visit. We don’t know what clothes she was wearing during the cookie sale in his house about two days earlier, so the orange fibers that another of your interviewees mentioned might have come from that. One interviewee thought Westerfield’s actions were weird. On the contrary, they would have been weird for someone who was guilty, particularly bringing Danielle back home with him twice and going to the Strand where he was in close proximity to other campers. Finally, one of your interviewees said the scientific evidence against him was very strong, and there was nothing to counteract it. DNA and fingerprints might be powerful in placing someone at the scene, but they can’t tell us when that person was there. By contrast, insect evidence, which is also scientific, does provide a date, and in this case it told us that Danielle probably only died several days after Westerfield was placed under police surveillance.— July 1, 2012 11:13 a.m.