'Cold-hearted' child killer sentenced to death

David Westerfield, called a ”cold-hearted child killer” by California prosecutors, was sentenced to death today in the kidnap and murder of 7-year-old girl who was snatched from her bedroom last February.

San Diego Court Judge William Mudd imposed the sentence after tearful testimony from Danielle van Dam’s parents.

“What were you thinking as you killed her? Did she not touch your heart one bit? If not, you are heartless. You are an empty shell,” Brenda van Dam, told Westerfield while fighting back tears.

“You did not deserve any leniency, any mercy, because you refused to give it to Danielle.”

Westerfield sat without emotion, as he had done throughout the trial.

“Our precious Danielle was taken by a monster seeking only self-gratification,” she said. She remembered her daughter as “a real girly girl” who liked to cook and have her nails painted.

She urged Westerfield to apologise for his actions, but he declined to make a statement before sentencing.

The killing was the first in a string of child abductions that gripped the US last year. The sentence, which is automatically appealed, made the 50-year-old engineer the 617th inmate on California’s death row.

Prosecutors said there was no justification for anything less than the death penalty for such an “evil, selfish, cold-hearted child killer.”

Westerfield’s said police misconduct would justify a lesser sentence. They contended detectives interrogated Westerfield without reading him his rights or letting him talk to a lawyer.

Danielle was last seen when her father put her to bed in the family’s home in an upper-middle class neighbourhood of San Diego. Her nude body was found nearly a month later along a road outside the city, too decomposed to determine the cause of death or whether she had been sexually assaulted.

Westerfield, who lived two doors away and bought Girl Scout cookies from Danielle days before her disappearance, became an early suspect.

California’s death row is by far the largest of any state. Just 10 people have been executed there since 1976, including one in 2002.