By Rochelle Steinhaus
Court TV
(Court TV) The jury considering the case of an accused child killer took a tour to view a motor home where prosecutors believe 7-year-old Danielle van Dam spent her last days alive.
As the prosecution continued its case against defendant David Westerfield Wednesday, another witness added to the mounting evidence that the little girl's DNA was found in the defendant's motor home.
Westerfield, who lived only doors away from the van Dam's suburban San Diego home, claims that he spent a good part of the days following Danielle's Feb. 1, 2002, disappearance in the RV alone.
But before the panel left the courthouse to view the vehicle, they heard from a forensic DNA specialist who testified that DNA matching Danielle's was found in both a carpet stain and a strand of hair recovered in Westerfield's motor home.
Mitchell Mark Holland also analyzed hairs found on Westerfield's bedding, on his boxer shorts recovered from his clothes dryer and lint in the trash found in his garage, and said that those samples could belong to Danielle.
Other testimony relating to the motor home was offered by volunteer canine handler Jim Frazee, who said that a search and rescue dog trained with Danielle's scent sniffed his way into the motor home on his own through the passenger side door.
The canine was part of the search that ensued after Danielle's disappearance but ended when her decomposed, lifeless body was discovered Feb. 27.
A forensic computer specialist also took the stand, testifying that digital photos of girls being sexually assaulted and of people having sex with animals were recovered from Westerfield's.
During his second day on the stand, James Watkins testified that 8,000 pornographic images were recovered from the defendant's several computers, CD-ROM and ZIP disks. Of those, approximately 85 appeared to be of underage girls engaged in sexual acts, Watkins said.
"Generally speaking, it depicts a girl being surprised by somebody behind them," said Watkins, who testified as he thumbed through two thick white binders filled with thousands of images printed out from the defendant's computer.
Some of the disturbing photographs showed girls being sexually assaulted and even had captions that depicted the young victims pleading to their attackers, "What are you going to do?"
Though Westerfield is not charged with sexually abusing the slain girl, previous witnesses testified that the girl's body was so badly decomposed when found a month following her disappearance that it could not be determined whether she was raped. In addition to kidnapping and murder, he is also charged with possessing child pornography, a misdemeanor.
The testimony came a day after some jurors were brought to tears as they viewed graphic photos and videos of girls who appeared to be as young as 7 years old being raped with some of the videos containing sounds of the young victims screaming in pain as grown men violated them.
While Watkins spent much of Tuesday on the stand discussing graphic images shown to the jury, Wednesday's questioning focused on the technical methods he used to recover the computer files and determine when the files were last accessed and by whom.
Watkins testified the registered user on one of the computers was David A. Westerfield, the defendant not David Neal Westerfield, the defendant's 18-year-old son, whom the defense has said could have downloaded the images rather than his father.
The witness did, however, admit that of the 8,000 pornographic images, he identified only 85 of them as depicting underage girls. Under cross-examination, he acknowledged that some of the photos could have been of adult females who look younger than their ages.
In his testimony, Watkins also said that a folder on Westerfield's computer was named "young ones," and contained some of the 85 photos he suspected were juveniles.
Testimony in the case resumes Tuesday and is being broadcast live on Court TV.
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