Exposed By The Dry Cleaner

By John Cloud

After weeks of crushing uncertainty, the Danielle van Dam case lurched forward last week with the discovery of her corpse, following the arrest of a neighbor, David Westerfield, 50. He has pleaded not guilty to charges of murder, kidnapping and possession of child pornography; the authorities say they have no other suspects. The investigation leading to his arrest involved the usual combination of legwork and luck. A police source told TIME that the San Diego cops had to learn a couple of major details--including the fact that volunteers had found Danielle's body 25 miles east of downtown San Diego--from the media.

But Westerfield had immediately drawn the suspicion of investigators. Julie Mills, who works at his dry cleaner, says that while Westerfield was normally well dressed and smiling, he came in barefoot and long faced one day shortly after Danielle went missing. He asked to have a jacket and linens cleaned--rush service. "[Sometime] after he dropped them off, the police picked them up," says Mills. (Police officials have confirmed that blood was found on one of his jackets.) It was also learned that Westerfield belongs to a gambling club on a Native American reservation less than two miles from the place where searchers found the body.

The mystery continues, meanwhile, over why Brenda and Damon van Dam were unaware that Danielle, 7, was taken from their house. They have said they noticed an open door after 1:30 a.m. but didn't check her room. Kidnapping a child of Danielle's age from her home is an exceedingly uncommon crime. Child homicides have declined in the past decade, and children ages 6 to 11 are the least likely of any age group to be murdered. "This is a particularly rare case," says David Finkelhor, director of the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center. "This is the kind of crime that brings communities and nations together."

--By John Cloud. Reported by Jill Underwood/San Diego

With reporting by Jill Underwood/San Diego