The Girl Scout

Danielle van Dam was seven years old and lived with her family in Sabre Springs, a neighborhood in San Diego, California. A couple of days before she vanished, she and her mother went door to door selling Girl Scout cookies and stopped at the house of David Westerfield, a 49-year-old design engineer who lived nearby.

On the morning of February 2, 2002, Danielle’s parents found her bed empty. That weekend Westerfield had taken his motorhome on a rambling trip to the coast and the desert while a large volunteer search got under way. Investigators found Danielle’s blood on his jacket and in the motorhome, along with her fingerprint and fibers and hair that matched her. He was arrested on February 22, and five days later searchers found Danielle’s body near Dehesa, east of the city.

In August 2002 a jury convicted Westerfield of murder, kidnapping and possessing child pornography. The same jury chose death, and a judge formally imposed the sentence in January 2003. The California Supreme Court affirmed the judgment on February 4, 2019. Five weeks later Governor Gavin Newsom placed a moratorium on executions, and in 2024 Westerfield was reported to have been moved off death row as the state dismantled it.