Family, Friends Speak Fondly Of Westerfield

SAN DIEGO -- Friends and relatives of David Westerfield recalled fond memories of him Tuesday as his lawyers neared the end of their effort to spare him from the death penalty for kidnapping and killing 7-year-old Danielle van Dam.

WESTERFIELD TRIAL Judge William Mudd Issues Death Penalty Sentence Hear Jury's Death Penalty Recommendation Watch The Jury's Verdict Being Read Share Your Thoughts DANIELLE VAN DAM 1994-2002 Watch Danielle Video Montage E-mail: daniellevandam @yahoo.com Send mail to: P.O. Box 501515 San Diego, 92150

A high-school sweetheart, two aunts, former co-workers and neighbors all praised the Westerfield they knew from years together in the San Diego area and Maine.

"He's been a very special part of my life," said Kathleen Miller, a former neighbor and longtime friend who visited Westerfield in jail, via a closed-circuit video screen, over the weekend.

The defense plans to call two more witnesses Wednesday in the penalty phase of the trial. After prosecution rebuttal and closing arguments, the jury could begin deliberating later in the day whether to recommend the death penalty or life in prison without parole -- the only two options.

In seeking to spare his life, the defense has attempted to portray the 50-year-old engineer as someone who has contributed to society through his design work devices used in medicine and other fields as well as a devoted father with close personal ties to a variety of people.

One former supervisor, Wesley Hill (pictured, right), said he and Westerfield remained close friends since working together in 1977, taking annual canoe trips together on the Colorado River and playing on the same softball team.

"We were together a lot, we just seemed to hit it off," said Hill, who now lives near Salt Lake City and has also visited Westerfield in jail.

"Did he express any remorse?" prosecutor Jeff Dusek asked. But defense attorney Robert Boyce objected and Hill was not permitted to answer.

Danielle was reported missing from her San Diego home on Feb. 2. Her nude body was found nearly a month later along a rural road.

The same jury that convicted Westerfield on Aug. 21 must reach a unanimous verdict to recommend the death penalty. Under California law, Judge William Mudd can reduce the sentence to life in prison without parole but he can't impose a death sentence without the jury's recommendation.

Westerfield has not testified during the penalty phase and is not expected to do so. All the defense witnesses so far have been friends, relatives and former colleagues.

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Margaret Hennon (pictured, left) said she dated Westerfield during her senior year in high school in the early 1970s.

"He was my first serious sweetheart," said Hennon, who for her appearance in court wore a pair of earrings given to her by Westerfield during their relationship. "He was an important person in my life."

Hennon said the two met in physics class and often drove around San Diego and nearby Del Mar, admiring the landscape. "He was a member of the family," she said. "He called my mother 'Mom.'"

She read an inscription she wrote to Westerfield in a greeting card she sent him after his arrest in the van Dam case. She wept as she read aloud her offer to help him in any way she could.

Hennon did not explain what ended their relationship. She later moved out of state and had not seen him or spoken to him in nearly 30 years.

"So you don't really know much about him since that time do you," prosecutor Jeff Dusek asked her. "That's right," she said.

Earlier Tuesday, two of Westerfield's aunts took the stand to speak of happy childhood years the defendant spent with them on a family farm in Maine. They remembered picking blueberries with him and water-skiing.

But the two women, Ina Bousselot and Andrea Whittwer (pictured, right), acknowledged that they had only scant contact with him in recent years and had not communicated with him since his arrest.

On Thursday, Westerfield's younger sister, identified as Tania P., testified about their childhood and his adult years.

The defendant's eyes welled up and he wiped away tears as his sister described an idyllic childhood in Maine, followed by sometimes difficult adult years marked by two divorces.

Tania said her brother was especially upset by his 1996 split from his second wife, who asked for a divorce after about 17 years of marriage.

The sister said Westerfield still loved her and was worried about the impact the split would have on their two children.

Westerfield's eyes pooled as he watched Tania cry frequently during her testimony. He rubbed his cheek once and his right eye as she described his divorce.

The defendant has remained almost stoic during months of suspicion, arrest, pretrial hearings and trial testimony. Reporters who looked closely thought he trembled, though, when the verdicts that could send him to death row were read Aug. 21.

Under cross-examination by Deputy District Attorney Jeff Dusek, Tania said her brother lacked for little during his childhood, and agreed there was no drug and alcohol abuse, physical abuse or molestation among family members to provide a negative influence.

When the family moved back to San Diego in 1967, Westerfield entered Madison High School. He was married for five years before he wed his second wife, Jackie, in 1979. Lisa was born two years later and Neal, 19, a couple of years after that.

Tania testified that "Alan," as she calls the defendant, was upset when their parents separated in 1974. The defendant wanted to know where they could take their children at Christmas, since he wanted to maintain traditional family values.