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| David Axelrod | |
 Axelrod in the Oval Office, 2009 |
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| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office January 20, 2009 Serving with Peter Rouse and Valerie Jarrett |
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| President | Barack Obama |
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| Preceded by | Barry Jackson |
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| Born | February 22, 1955 (1955-02-22) Lower East Side, Manhattan, New York |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse(s) | Susan Landau |
| Children | Lauren Axelrod, Michael Axelrod, Ethan Axelrod |
| Alma mater | University of Chicago |
| Occupation | Senior Advisor to President Obama |
| Religion | Judaism |
David M. Axelrod (born February 22, 1955) is an American political consultant based in Chicago, Illinois. He is best known as the top political advisor to President Barack Obama, first in Obama’s 2004 campaign for the U.S. Senate in Illinois and later as chief strategist for Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. Following the 2008 election, he was appointed as Senior Advisor to President Obama.[1]
Axelrod is the founder of AKP&D Message and Media, was a political writer for the Chicago Tribune, and operated ASK Public Strategies, now called ASGK Public Strategies. He is also a supporter of Cook County Commissioner Forrest Claypool, who helped Axelrod begin his firm (under the name Axelrod and Associates).
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Born in New York‘s Lower East Side, Axelrod grew up in a middle-class American household and showed a passion for politics early. Axelrod grew up in Stuyvesant Town on the east side of Manhattan,[2] attending Public School 40. Axelrod’s father was a psychologist and avid baseball fan.[3] His mother worked as a journalist at
PM, a left-wing 1940s newspaper. Axelrod’s parents separated when he was eight years old. Axelrod traces his political involvement back to his childhood. Describing the appeal of politics, he told the Los Angeles Times, “I got into politics because I believe in idealism. Just to be a part of this effort that seems to be rekindling the kind of idealism that I knew when I was a kid, it’s a great thing to do.[4] So I find myself getting very emotional about it.”
At just thirteen years old, he was selling campaign buttons for Robert F. Kennedy.
After graduating from New York’s Stuyvesant High School[3] in 1972, Axelrod attended the University of Chicago. He majored in political science. As an undergraduate, Axelrod wrote for the Hyde Park Herald, covering politics, and picked up an internship at the Chicago Tribune. They hired him when he graduated in 1977.
While at the University of Chicago, he met his future wife, business student Susan Landau. They were married in 1979. In June 1981, Susan gave birth to their daughter, Lauren, who was soon diagnosed with epilepsy.[5]
At the age of twenty-seven, Axelrod became the City Hall Bureau Chief and a political columnist for the Chicago Tribune. He worked at the Tribune for eight years, covering national, state and local politics, and became the youngest political writer there in 1981.[6] Unhappy with his prospects at the Tribune, in 1984 he joined the campaign of U.S. Senator Paul Simon as communications director; within weeks he was promoted to co-campaign manager.[7]
In 1985, Axelrod formed a political consultancy company, Axelrod & Associates. In 1987 he worked on the successful reelection campaign of Harold Washington, Chicago’s first black mayor, while also helping to spearhead Simon’s campaign for the 1988 Democratic Presidential nomination. This established his first experience in working with black politicians and he later became a key player in similar mayoral campaigns of blacks, including Dennis Archer in Detroit, Michael R. White in Cleveland, Anthony A. Williams in Washington, D.C., Lee P. Brown in Houston, and John F. Street in Philadelphia.[2] Axelrod is a longtime strategist for Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and styles himself a “specialist in urban politics.”
In January 1990, Axelrod was hired to be the media consultant for the all but official re-election campaign of Oregon Governor Neil Goldschmidt.[8] However, Goldschmidt announced in February that he would not seek re-election.[9]
In 2002, Axelrod was retained by the Liberal Party of Ontario to help Dalton McGuinty and his party to be elected into government in the October 2003 election. Axelrod’s effect on Ontario was heard through the winning Liberal appeal to “working families” and placing an emphasis on positive policy contrasts like canceling corporate tax breaks to fund education and health.[10]
In 2004, Axelrod worked for John Edwards‘ presidential campaign. During the campaign, he lost responsibility for making ads, but continued as the campaign’s spokesman. Regarding Edwards’ failed 2004 presidential campaign, Axelrod has commented, “I have a whole lot of respect for John, but at some point the candidate has to close the deal and — I can’t tell you why — that never happened with John.”[11]
[12]
In 2006, Axelrod consulted for several campaigns, including the successful campaigns of Eliot Spitzer in New York’s gubernatorial election and Deval Patrick in Massachusetts’s gubernatorial election. Axelrod also served in 2006 as the chief political adviser for Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair U.S. Representative Rahm Emanuel for the U.S. House of Representatives elections, in which the Democrats gained 31 seats.
Until recently, Axelrod also worked as an Adjunct Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University, where he, along with Professor Peter Miller, taught an undergraduate class titled Campaign Strategy, a class that analyzed political campaigns, the strategies used by them, and the effectiveness of those strategies.[13]
On June 14, 2009 Axelrod received an honorary “Doctor of Humane Letters” degree from DePaul University, speaking at the commencement exercises of the College of Communication and College of Computing and Digital Media.[14]
Axelrod’s ties with Obama reach back more than a decade. Axelrod met Obama in 1992 when Obama so impressed Betty Lu Saltzmann, a woman from Chicago’s “lakefront liberal crowd,” during a black voter registration drive he ran that she then introduced the two. Obama also consulted Axelrod before he delivered his famed 2002 anti-war speech[15] and asked him to read drafts of his book, The Audacity of Hope.[16]
Axelrod served as the chief strategist and media advisor for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. Axelrod contemplated taking a break from the 2008 presidential campaign, as five of the candidates —Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Edwards, Christopher Dodd, and Tom Vilsack — were past clients. Personal ties between Axelrod and Hillary Clinton also made it difficult, as she had done significant work on behalf of epilepsy causes for a foundation co-founded by Axelrod’s wife and mother, Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy (CURE) (Axelrod’s daughter suffers from developmental disabilities associated with chronic epileptic seizures.) Axelrod’s wife even said that a 1999 conference Clinton convened to find a cure for the condition was “one of the most important things anyone has done for epilepsy.”[17]
However, Axelrod decided to participate in the Obama campaign. Ultimately, he viewed Obama’s potential candidacy as inspirational and historic. He often likens Obama to Robert F. Kennedy and told The Washington Post, “I thought that if I could help Barack Obama get to Washington, then I would have accomplished something great in my life.”[3]
Axelrod contributed to the initial announcement of Obama’s campaign by creating a five-minute Internet video released January 16, 2007.[18][19] He continued to use ‘man on the street’ style biographical videos to create intimacy and authenticity in the political ads.
Axelrod talking to reporters in the “spin room” after the Cleveland Democratic debate in February 2008
While the Clinton campaign chose an incumbent strategy that emphasized experience, Axelrod helped to craft the Obama campaign’s main theme of “change.” Axelrod criticized the Clinton campaign’s po
sitioning by saying that “being the consummate Washington insider is not where you want to be in a year when people want change…[Clinton’s] initial strategic positioning was wrong and kind of played into our hands.”[20] The change message played a factor in Obama’s victory in the Iowa caucuses. “Just over half of [Iowa’s] Democratic caucus-goers said change was the No. 1 factor they were looking for in a candidate, and 51 percent of those voters chose Barack Obama,” said CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider. “That compares to only 19 percent of ‘change’ caucus-goers who preferred Clinton.”[21] Axelrod also believed that the Clinton campaign underestimated the importance of the caucus states. “For all the talent and the money they had over there,” says Axelrod, “they — bewilderingly — seemed to have little understanding for the caucuses and how important they would become.”[21] In the 2008 primary season, Obama won a majority of the states that use the caucus format.
Axelrod is credited with implementing a strategy that encourages the participation of people, a lesson drawn partly from Howard Dean‘s 2004 presidential campaign as well as a personal goal of Barack Obama. Axelrod explained to Rolling Stone, “When we started this race, Barack told us that he wanted the campaign to be a vehicle for involving people and giving them a stake in the kind of organizing he believed in. According to Axelrod getting volunteers involved became the legacy of the campaign “[22] This includes drawing on “Web 2.0” technology and viral media to support a grassroots strategy. Obama’s web platform allows supporters to blog, create their own personal page, and even phonebank from home. Axelrod’s elaborate use of the Internet has helped Obama to organize under-30 voters and build over 475,000 donors in 2007, most of whom were Internet donors contributing less than $100 each.[23] The Obama strategy stood in contrast to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, which benefited from high name recognition, large donors and strong support among established Democratic leaders.
The Politico described Axelrod as ‘soft-spoken’ and ‘mild-mannered’[24] and it quoted one Obama aide in Chicago as saying, “Do you know how lucky we are that he is our Mark Penn?”[25] Democratic consultant and former colleague Dan Fee said of Axelrod, “He’s a calming presence.”[26] “He’s not a screamer, like some of these guys,” political advisor Bill Daley said of Axelrod in the Chicago Tribune. “He has a good sense of humor, so he’s able to defuse things.”[7]
On November 20, 2008, Barack Obama named Axelrod as a Senior Advisor to his administration. The role is similar in status to that of Karl Rove in the George W. Bush administration .[27] His role includes crafting policy and communicating the President’s message in coordination with President Obama, the Obama Administration, speechwriters, and the White House communications team.
On April 15, 2009, Jim Messina and Jon Selib, chief of staff to Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, convened a meeting at the headquarters of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) with leaders of organized labor and health care groups, including PhRMA. At the meeting, the groups decided to form two nonprofit entities to promote reform efforts, Healthy Economy Now and Americans for Stable Quality Care, that would be almost entirely funded by PhRMA. The two groups spent $24 million on their advertising campaigns; the contract to produce and place ads went to White House Senior Advisor David Axelrod’s former firm, AKPD, which owed Axelrod $2 million.[28]
gotribune.com/news/local/chi-070620axelrod-htmlstory,1,3883059.htmlstory
. Retrieved April 4, 2008. |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: David Axelrod |
| Political offices | ||
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| Preceded by Barry Jackson |
Senior Advisor to the President 2009–present Served alongside: Pete Rouse Valerie Jarrett |
Incumbent |
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| Persondata | |
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| Name | Axelrod, David |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | |
| Date of birth | February 22, 1955 |
| Place of birth | Lower East Side, Manhattan, New York |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
| David Levy Yulee | |
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| In office July 1, 1845 – March 3, 1851 March 4, 1855 – January 21, 1861 |
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| Preceded by | (none) Jackson Morton |
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| Succeeded by | Stephen Mallory Thomas W. Osborn |
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| Born | June 12, 1810(1810-06-12) Charlotte Amalie, Saint Thomas, Virgin Islands |
| Died | October 10, 1886(1886-10-10) (aged 76) New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse(s) | Nannie C. Wickliffe Yulee |
| Profession | Politician, Lawyer |
| Religion | Judaism, conversion to Christianity |
David Levy Yulee (June 12, 1810 – October 10, 1886) was an American politician from Florida and the first Jewish member of the United States Senate. [1]
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Yulee was born David Levy in Charlotte Amalie, on the island of St. Thomas, during the British occupation of the Danish West Indies, now the United States Virgin Islands. His father, Moses Elias Levy, bought 50,000 acres (200 km2) of land near present-day Jacksonville to establish a “New Jerusalem” for Jewish settlers. [1]
After studying and practicing law in St. Augustine, David Levy became the delegate to United States Congress for the Florida Territory and was elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate when Florida was admitted to the Union in 1845.[2] In 1846, he officially changed his name to David Levy Yulee (adding his father’s ancestral Sephardic surname) and married Nannie C. Wickliffe, the daughter of Charles A. Wickliffe, former governor of Kentucky and Postmaster General under President John Tyler. His wife was not Jewish, and their children were raised as Christians.[1] After serving one term in the Senate, Yulee was defeated for re-election in 1850.
The next year, he founded a 5,000-acre (20 km2) sugar plantation along the Homosassa River. The remains of his plantation are found at the Yulee Sugar Mill Ruins State Historic Site.
While living in Fernandina, he began to follow his dream to build a railroad across Florida. He had originally planned to build a state-owned system as far back as 1837, but in 1851, he became the first southerner to utilize federal grants by drawing up an “Internal Improvement Act”. Using federal and state land grants and public stock. The Florida Railroad was chartered in 1853. The terminals would be the deep water ports, Fernandina on Amelia Island on the Atlantic side and Cedar Key on the Gulf. Construction began in 1855 and on March 1, 1861, the first train arrived in Cedar Key, just weeks before the beginning of the Civil War.
Elected to the Senate again in 1855, he served until January 21, 1861, when he withdrew from the Senate after Florida seceded to join the Congress of the Confederacy. In 1865 he was imprisoned in Fort Pulaski due to his support for the Confederacy.[1] After his release from confinement, he rebuilt the Yulee Railroad, which had been destroyed during the war. Yulee held a number of executive positions in Florida railroads and hosted President Ulysses S. Grant in 1870 in Fernandina.
He moved to Washington, D.C. in 1880 and died six years later while in New York. Yulee was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in Washington, D.C.[1]
Both the town of Yulee, Florida and Levy County, Florida are named for him. He was designated a Great Floridian by the Florida Department of State in the Great Floridians 2000 Program. Plaques attesting to the honor are found at both the Fernandina Chamber of Commerce and the Yulee Sugar Mill Ruins State Historic Site in Homosassa.[2]
| United States House of Representatives | ||
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| Preceded by Charles Downing |
Delegate to the U.S. H
ouse of Representatives from Florida Territory 1841 – 1845 |
Succeeded by None. Statehood granted. |
| United States Senate | ||
| Preceded by (none) |
United States Senator (Class 1) from Florida July 1, 1845 – March 3, 1851 Served alongside: James D. Westcott, Jr. and Jackson Morton |
Succeeded by Stephen R. Mallory |
| Preceded by Jackson Morton |
United States Senator (Class 3) from Florida March 4, 1855 – January 21, 1861 Served alongside: Stephen Mallory |
Succeeded by Thomas W. Osborn(1) |
| Notes and references | ||
| 1. Because of Florida‘s secession, the Senate seat was vacant for seven years before Osborn succeeded Yulee. | ||
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| Persondata | |
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| Name | Yulee, David Levy |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | |
| Date of birth | June 12, 1810 |
| Place of birth | Charlotte Amalie, Saint Thomas, Virgin Islands |
| Date of death | October 10, 1886 |
| Place of death | New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Dmitry Gennadyevich Medvedev Дмитрий Геннадьевич Медведев |
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| 1970 (1970) – 15 April 2005 (aged 34–35) | |
 Dmitry Gennadyevich Medvedev |
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| Place of birth |  Kemerovo, Russian SFSR, USSR |
| Place of death |  Grozny, Chechnya, Russia |
| Allegiance | Russia |
| Service/branch | Federal Security Service |
| Years of service | 2002–2005 |
| Rank | Lieutenant-Colonel |
| Awards |
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Dmitry Gennadyevich Medvedev (Russian: Дми́трий Генна́дьевич Медве́дев; 1970 – 15 April 2005) was a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation who was killed in action in Chechnya. For his service he was posthumously honoured as a Hero of the Russian Federation.
Medvedev was born in Kemerovo in 1970 to a normal Soviet working family. His father was a miner, and wished for his son to join the military. In 1988 Medvedev began studies at the Higher Frontier Command School in Alma-Ata and after graduation he served in the Far Eastern frontier district. He later served in the North Caucasus regional administration of the Federal Security Service. Medvedev took part in campaigns to restore constitutional order in Tajikistan during that country’s civil war.[1][2]
In April 2002, Medvedev enlisted in the security services, and completed several tours of duty in the North Caucasus region, where he participated in counter-terrorism operations.[3]
He was awarded Order Of Service To The Fatherland 2nd-class, 2 Medals of Valour and a Medal For Distinguished Service In Defence Of The State Frontiers.[3]
During the the FSB operation on 8 March 2005 in Tolstoy-Yurt during which Aslan Maskhadov was killed, Kommersant reported that documents were found which indicated that the insurgent field commander Dokka Umarov was using an apartment on Bogdan Khmelnitsky Street in Leninsky District of Grozny as a base of operation.[4]
On 15 April 2005, whilst carrying out a special operation in Grozny, Medvedev and two comrades of the Vympel unit of the FSB were killed.[3] On 18 May 2005, President Vladimir Putin bestowed on Medvedev the title “Hero of the Russian Federation“.[2]
| Persondata | |
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| Name | Medvedev, Dmitry Gennadyevich |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | |
| Date of birth | 1970 |
| Place of birth | Kemerovo, Russian SFSR, USSR |
| Date of death | 15 April 2005 |
| Place of death | Grozny, Chechnya, Russia |
| David Alan Westerfield | |
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| Born | February 25, 1952 (1952-02-25) U.S. |
| Charge(s) | murder, kidnapping |
| Penalty | capital punishment |
| Status | incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison |
| Occupation | self-employed engineer |
| Children | 2 |
David Alan Westerfield (born February 25, 1952), of San Diego, California was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder and kidnapping of seven-year-old Danielle Van Dam in 2002. He was a successful, self-employed engineer who owned a luxury motor home and lived two houses away from Van Dam. A divorced father of two college students,[1] he is currently incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison.
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On the evening of February 1, 2002, a Friday, Brenda Van Dam and a couple of her friends went out to a bar. Her husband, Damon Van Dam, stayed behind to look after Danielle and her two brothers. Damon put Danielle to bed around 10:30 p.m., and she fell asleep. Damon also slept, until his wife returned around 2:00 a.m. with four of her friends. The six chatted for approximately a half hour, and then Brenda’s friends went home. Damon and Brenda went to sleep believing that their daughter was safely sleeping in her room. The next morning, Danielle was missing. The couple frantically searched their home for her, but never found her. They called the police at 9:39 a.m.
Law enforcement officials interviewed neighbors and soon discovered that Westerfield and another neighbor were not home that Saturday morning. Westerfield eventually arrived home driving his motor home approximately 8 AM Monday. From that point on, he became the prime suspect. Westerfield stated that he didn’t know where Danielle could be, and that he was at the same bar that Brenda had attended with her girlfriends. Brenda was able to confirm this, but denied that she and Westerfield had danced together, as he had claimed. Two eyewitnesses testified to seeing them dance together, however. At the trial, Brenda said she could not remember if she danced with him or not. Two days after Danielle Van Dam went missing a haggard and bare-footed David Westerfield showed up at a dry cleaners dropping off two comforters, two pillow covers, and a jacket that would later yield Danielle Van Dam’s blood. When law enforcement first interviewed Westerfield he did not mention going to the dry cleaners.[2] Westerfield then said that he had driven around the desert and the beach and stayed at a campground. Law enforcement put Westerfield on 24 hours surv
eillance from February 4,[3] as they found it suspicious that he had given his RV a cleaning when he returned from his trip. The RV, his SUV, and other property was impounded for testing on February 5.[4]
About three days before Danielle Van Dam’s disappearance, Danielle and her mother, Brenda, sold Girl Scout cookies to Westerfield who invited them into his home and chatted with Brenda.
On February 22, police arrested Westerfield for Danielle’s kidnapping after two small stains of her blood were found on his clothing and in his motor home. Danielle’s severely decomposed body was found February 27.[5] His attorneys suggested the police were in a rush to solve the case, and had never considered other suspects. Westerfield did not have a criminal record.
Westerfield pleaded not guilty, and went on trial on June 4, 2002. During the trial, Westerfield’s lawyers, Steven Feldman and Robert Boyce, suggested that child pornography found on Westerfield’s computer might have been downloaded by Westerfield’s 18-year-old son, Neal. Neal denied this.[6] Part of Westerfield’s defense focused on the lifestyle of Danielle Van Dam’s parents. The defense suggested that the couple were known for letting each other have sex with other people, and claimed that this lifestyle might have brought the kidnapper to their home.[7] Westerfield’s lawyers charged that he was improperly interrogated for more than nine hours by detectives who ignored his repeated requests to call a lawyer, take a shower, eat, and sleep.[8]
The trial lasted two months and concluded on August 8. On August 21, the jury found him guilty of kidnapping and first degree murder. He also received an additional conviction for a misdemeanor charge of possessing images of subjects under the age of 18 in a sexual pose on his computer.
There was an outrage after the trial when the evidence of the prior plea talks (see below) surfaced in the media. Many people were concerned Westerfield’s attorneys misled the jury by fabricating the unknown kidnapper scenario when they clearly knew their client was involved in the crime because he knew the location of the body. Bill O’Reilly, host of The O’Reilly Factor talk show on the Fox News Channel, called the conduct of Westerfield’s attorneys “an outrage”. He promised to file an ethics complaint with the San Diego Bar Association against Westerfield’s two lead attorneys, Steven Feldman and Robert Boyce.[9]
The science of entomology was a major focus during the trial. Three entomologists, consulted by the defense, testified that flies first laid eggs on Van Dam’s body sometime in mid-February, long after Westerfield was under police surveillance.[10] On the other hand, one of these entomologist, David Faulkner, conceded under cross-examination that his time estimate was based mostly on the fly larvae, and that his research could not determine a maximum time her body was outside. The other forensic entomologist, Neal Haskell, using a weather chart prepared by forensic artist James Gripp, stated that the warm temperatures made it likely that insects immediately colonized Danielle’s corpse. The third entomologist, Dr. Robert Hall, estimated initial insect infestation occurred between February 12 and February 23. However, under cross-examination Hall acknowledged that the insect infestation of the corpse wasn’t “typical” because so few maggots were found in the girl’s head. Prosecutor Jeff Dusek questioned Hall about why his calculations were compiled through a method less favorable to the prosecution and why he criticized the findings of the prosecution’s entomologist, Dr. Madison Lee Goff, and favored the entomologist hired by the defense. Goff testified the infestation may have occurred February 9 to February 14, but stressed that other factors may have delayed insect arrival.[11] He explained that a covering, such as a blanket, might have kept flies at bay initially, but no covering was found, and he later said the longest delay by such a shroud was two and a half days.[12]
Some of the computers and loose computer media in Westerfield’s office contained homosexual pornography. His attorneys, however, claimed that police once reported not finding child pornography although gay porn was present.[13] According to the prosecution computer expert, James Watkins, 100,000 images were found, including 69,000 nude images that could be considered homosexual pornography.[14] The material included brief movie clips found in Westerfield’s office which featured a caucasian male being penetrated in the anal region by another man of African decent. These clips, including sound of the
girl struggling, were played in the courtroom.[14] In all, two sets of movie clips, six animated cartoons, and 13 still images taken from computers, zip disks, or CD-Roms in David Westerfield’s home were shown, each featuring underage girls.[14]
Westerfield denied that this was for his enjoyment, and claimed that he was accumulating the images so he could send them to Congress as examples of smut on the Internet.[15]
In 2003, after Westerfield’s conviction, James Selby wrote to the police confessing to the Van Dam murder. He was wanted for raping women in San Diego in 2001, and for kidnapping a 9-year-old Oklahoma girl from her bedroom in the middle of the night and raping her in 1999, and was charged with a spring 2001 sexual assault on a 12-year-old girl in Sparks, Nevada, but police don’t believe that he murdered Van Dam. Prosecutor Jeff Dusek, who did read the confession, viewed it as not credible. It is believed that James Selby was in the Tucson, Arizona area when Van Dam was kidnapped in February 2002. Selby is believed to be responsible for a series of rapes in Arizona from October 2001 to May 2002. Selby – a divorced father of three – worked as a handyman and machinist and traveled often between San Diego and Tucson. He had a prior rape conviction in Colorado. In addition, Selby admitted responsibility in the slaying of JonBenét Ramsey.[16] According to Deputy County Attorney Bradley Roach, “It was an aspect of his personality to confess to something to see what other people would say,” said Roach. Selby committed suicide in his jail cell on November 22, 2004.[17]
In January 2003, a California judge sentenced David Westerfield to be executed. He was transported to San Quentin State Prison. He is currently enrolled in the Handicraft program at San Quentin State Prison. The Van Dams sued Westerfield, but the case was settled out of court. The Van Dams were awarded $416,000 from several insurance companies who insured Westerfield’s home, SUV, and motor home. The settlement also prevented Westerfield from ever profiting from his crime.[18]
When the trial was over, the media, quoting unnamed police sources, reported that Westerfield’s lawyers were just minutes away from negotiating a plea bargain when a private citizen’s group, started by the Laura Recovery Center and concerned local citizens, found Danielle’s body. According to these reports, under the deal, Westerfield would have taken police to the site where she was located in exchange for life without parole.[19] Both the prosecution and the defense declined to comment on these reports.[20][21]
During the penalty phase of the trial, Mr. Westerfield’s nineteen-year-old niece testified that, when she was seven years old, her uncle entered his daughter’s bedroom, where the niece was spending the night with her parents while attending a party, to check on the kids, and woke up finding him rubbing her teeth, and said she bit his finger as hard as she could. She went downstairs to tell her mother. Mr. Westerfield was questioned about the incident at the time by his sister-in-law, where he explained that he was trying to comfort her. The incident was then forgotten.[22]
In the months following the end of the trial audio tapes of Westerfield being interviewed were released to the media. In one police interview he tells investigators that he doesn’t feel emotionally stable. He is told that he failed a polygraph test. Westerfield tells him that he wants a retest and that he was not involved in Danielle’s disappearance.[23]
In the interrogation video tape made at the time of his first interview (02-05-2002), near the end of the interview Westerfield, who is given a momentary pause in the interview while one of the two officers leaves the room, puts his head down on the table. At 18:51:40 (timecode on the video tape) the remaining officer asks him, “Want to be left alone?” to which Westerfield replies, “No, it’s okay.” He then lifts his head and looks directly at the officer, pats the table beside him with his left hand and says, “If you wanted to leave your gun here for a few minutes, I’d appreciate it” in a seemingly sincere request to commit suicide if only given the opportunity. When the officer decries the choice as “silly,” Westerfield makes a brief comment and then lays his head back down on the table.[24]
It was recently revealed in an animal forensic show from US TV netwo
rk, Animal Planet, that the girl’s dog played a huge witness to the crime. The dog, a weimaraner, was said to have rubbed and played a lot with the young girl and the fur was transferred from her pajamas to the interior of Mr. Westerfield’s automobile. Also, clothing and other areas of location including above said bed sheets and comforters contained dog fur. Hinted in the show too, was the evidence of blood and a hand print matching that of Danielle were located within Mr. Westerfield’s automobile. Mr. Westerfield is currently still sitting on death row awaiting execution.
The following years after the murder have led to higher states of awareness in San Diego’s neighborhoods as well as the institution of funds and benefits made in her honor. The local elementary school that Danielle attended set up a portion of the park/open public area to be dedicated to the child. Her family still lives in Southern California and are active speakers for stricter guidelines for sexual predators and early warning signs.
| Dominic | |
|---|---|
| Gender | Male |
| Meaning | Lord |
| Origin | Latin |
| Related names | Domingo, Dominique |
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Look up Dominic in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
Dominic is a male name. Translated from Latin it means ‘of Our Lord’ or ‘belonging to God’. Variations include: Dominik, Dominick, Domenic, Domenico and the usually feminine Dominique (although in France ‘Dominique’ is unisex and widely used for men too).
Powers and Principalities 