SAN DIEGO — A jury Wednesday convicted David Westerfield of the kidnapping and murder of his 7-year-old neighbor, Danielle van Dam.

"Oh my God," whispered the victim's mother, Brenda, as a clerk read the verdict to a packed courtroom at 2:15 p.m. ET. The panel of six women and six men had deliberated 40 hours over 10 days prompting speculation they were deadlocked over Westerfield's guilt.

As he did for most of the trial, the 50-year-old engineer shook slightly, stared straight ahead and showed no emotion. The same jury that convicted him of murder, kidnapping and child pornography possession will reconvene Aug. 28 to decide whether to sentence him to death or life in prison without parole.

Danielle van Dam

Westerfield's sister, sitting with her husband in the second row of the gallery, wept behind dark sunglasses. As each juror was polled, she shook her head back and forth in apparent disbelief.

Outside the courthouse, whoops of joy rose up from crowds gathered to watch the proceedings on television monitors. Danielle's disappearance last February, among the first of a string of missing child stories to garner national attention, captivated the city, and Westerfield's trial attracted blanket media coverage in southern California.

The jurors never looked directly at Westerfield as the verdict was announced. One young male juror dabbed at a single tear on his cheek. A female panelist wept into a tissue.

Brenda van Dam, dressed in a suit of lavender, her daughter's favorite color, buried her face in her husband Damon's neck and cried softly. After the last juror was polled, the couple locked in a long embrace.

Over the course of the two-month trial, prosecutors presented a mountain of physical evidence, including fingerprints, blood, hair and fibers, that seemed to link Westerfield to Danielle's abduction and murder.

The second-grader was snatched from her canopy bed the night of Feb. 1. A massive search failed to locate her for nearly a month until volunteers happened across her body in a trash-strewn lot some 25 miles from her home.

Police initially focused on Westerfield, a twice-divorced father of two college students, because his alibi for the weekend she vanished seemed convoluted. He told officers he took a meandering 560-mile solo roadtrip in his recreational vehicle.

Investigators later found strands of Danielle's long blond hair in Westerfield's bed, RV and laundry. There were drops of her blood on the floor of his RV and a stain of it on his jacket. Her palm and fingerprint was discovered above the RV's bed, and distinctive orange and blue fibers from the death scene were also found on Westerfield's property.

Police discovered a stash of violent child pornography on Westerfield's computer, which prosecutors presented in court as a motive for the crime.

San Diego Police Chief David Bejarano credited the quality and thoroughness of the investigation with the conviction.

"Based on the evidence, the person responsible will not be able to harm another child," Bejarano told reporters outside the courthouse Wednesday, noting that the case was one of the biggest in the department's history. Because of a gag order, the lawyers and family members did not comment.

Assailed by a crush of microphones and cameras on his way to lunch, San Diego District Attorney Paul Pfingst said only that he was proud of the prosecution.

"The lawyers did an excellent job, but their job is not done," said Pfingst, referring to the penalty phase.

Scores of people gathered around the media area outside the courthouse when the verdict was announced.

"I was very surprised that it took them so long, but I wasn’t surprised by the verdict," said observer Ed Bowe, who was in town from Michigan for the National Scrabble Championship. Asked why he was convinced of Westerfield's guilt, Bowe replied simply, "Blood."

A block away, San Diegan Anna Mau said she was surprised and grateful for the verdict, which she said showed some resolution to the spate of recent child abductions.

"We have kids in our neighborhood and we all watch them now. If anyone comes around, we're all watching," said Mau.

Revisiting the forensic evidence

During the trial, Westerfield's defense blamed prosecution "spin," contamination by police and even the van Dam family for the allegations against him.

The defense suggested that the van Dams' unconventional lifestyle could have let a killer into their lives. Danielle's parents testified that they smoked marijuana with friends the night of the abduction and had on previous occasions engaged in group sex with other couples.

But with their verdict, jurors apparently agreed with prosecutors who said the "sex, drugs and rock-and-roll" were irrelevant to the crime.

The jury also apparently put little stock in the insect evidence the defense believed was its strongest hope for acquittal. A forensic entomologist originally retained by the prosecution concluded that the age of maggots plucked from Danielle's badly decomposed remains indicated she was dumped after Westerfield came under close police surveillance.

With the findings of that expert and two other entomologists, the defense suggested that someone else killed Danielle. For the final days of the trial, the courtroom became a course in forensic entomology with the prosecution using its own experts to argue that the field was woefully inexact.

During its deliberations, the jury asked to review some of the testimony concerning Danielle's time of death, but also the child pornography evidence taken from Westerfield's home and his audiotaped statement to police.

In his closing argument, prosecutor Jeff Dusek said he could sense the jury was struggling to reconcile the brutality of the crime with the outwardly normal appearance of its perpetrator.

"If he is the guy, that destroys all of our senses of protection. How can I protect mine if there are are not any outward signs?" Dusek said. "But he did it. He did it."