(Court TV)— The last time Damon van Dam saw his 7-year-old daughter, Danielle, she was falling asleep in her four-poster bed with a toothy grin on her face and Mickey Mouse earrings dangling from her ears.

As her father planted a goodnight kiss on her forehead that Friday, few places seemed safer than Danielle's lilac and pink bedroom in her family's upscale home in suburban San Diego.

The next morning, however, the bubbly blond second-grader was gone, apparently snatched from her upstairs room by some unseen assailant. By the time Danielle's body was found three weeks later and her neighbor charged with murder, the whole country seemed to have redefined its notion of safety.

Damon and Brenda van Dam made numerous tearful appeals for the return of their kidnapped daughter.

Prosecutors say Danielle was stolen from her room, sexually assaulted and suffocated by David Alan Westerfield, a 50-year-old engineer who lived just two doors away. Investigators found Danielle's blood on Westerfield's clothes and child pornography, including images of a young girl being raped, on his home computers. The prosecution will seek the death penalty at his June trial.

Westerfield maintains his innocence. His lawyers have cast suspicion on the van Dams. Both parents admit using marijuana the night of their daughter's disappearance, and Westerfield's legal team has suggested they practiced "swinging," or wife-swapping, and regularly came in contact with unsavory characters who might have done harm to their daughter.

The Crime

Danielle disappeared from her home in the Sabre Springs area during the night of Feb. 1. Her homemaker mother, Brenda, had planned a night out with some girlfriends while Damon van Dam agreed to stay home with Danielle and her two brothers. When Brenda van Dam's friends arrived at the family home, the adults drank beer and at one point, ducked into the garage to share a joint. Then Brenda and her friends set out for a local bar.

Damon van Dam told police he put his children to bed at about 10:00 p.m., leaving each of their doors a crack open. He then fell asleep. When his wife returned from the bar at 2 a.m. with two female friends and two other men, she found the garage door ajar. She closed it and then woke up her husband, who greeted and talked with their guests for another hour.

The couple told police they never looked in on their daughter before turning in for the night. Damon van Dam woke once to check on the family dog. He found a sliding door ajar, closed it, and returned to bed.

The next morning, the family gathered in the kitchen for breakfast, but Danielle, who liked to sleep late, wasn't there. When her mother went to rouse her at 9 a.m., she found an empty bed.

David Alan Westerfield, who lived two houses away from the van Dams, has been charged with kidnapping and killing Danielle van Dam.

Scores of officers responded to the van Dams' 911 call. Some interviewed neighbors, others searched the area and crime scene analysts began collecting evidence in the house. A massive investigation that included the search of 200 homes and some 900 tips from the public followed.

On Feb. 27, a team of volunteers discovered Danielle's naked body near a cluster of oak trees in a trash-strewn lot 20 feet from a busy street. The medical examiner concluded the body was too decomposed to determine how she died or whether she was raped.

Chief Suspect: The Prosecution's Case

Five days before Danielle's body was discovered, police arrested Westerfield on suspicion of kidnapping. He had been under scrutiny since the morning Danielle was reported missing. Then, his house was the only empty one in the van Dam's neighborhood.

Damon van Dam told police he barely knew Westerfield, a self-employed man twice divorced. But Brenda van Dam had encountered her neighbor on several occasions. Once she and her children knocked on his door to sell Girl Scout Cookies.

They chatted while the kids raced around his house. At the preliminary hearing, Brenda van Dam described a conversation tinged with sexuality.

He invited her to a bar, Dad's, where he had once seen her before and told her to bring female friends.

"He said to tell them I had a rich neighbor to introduce them to," she said. He also took her phone number, saying he sometimes threw "adult parties" and would invite her and Damon.

She said she found the term "adult parties" so strange that she called her husband when she got home to relate the encounter.

Brenda van Dam also told police she had seen Westerfield at Dad's bar the night her daughter went missing. He bought drinks for her and her friends and she played pool and danced with some of his friends.

When Westerfield returned to his home the Monday after the abduction, police were waiting for him. Detectives approached him as he stepped onto his front porch. Westerfield immediately struck them as nervous.

Keene

Despite the cold February morning, "Mr. Westerfield was sweating profusely under both armpits to the point the sweat rings were protruding out from his armpits several inches," sheriff's officer Johnny Keene recalled at the preliminary hearing in March.

Keene said the alibi Westerfield gave did not make sense. He told police he took his recreational vehicle first to the desert, then the beach, then headed home only to turn toward the mountains and then back to the desert. In all, he ticked off 13 different destinations, Keene said.

Detectives also noticed small cuts on his hands and considered Westerfield's eager attitude alarming.

"In my opinion, he was overly cooperative," Keene said.

Detectives got search warrants and scoured his home and RV. In his home computer files, they found 64,000 pornographic pictures, including "less than 100" images of young girls in sexual acts. One file contained a cartoon in which a terrified girl begged a man not to rape her.

In his RV, crime scene investigators found blood, hair and a fingerprint matching Danielle's. Her blood was also found on a jacket Westerfield had taken to be dry cleaned.

Prosecutors say they will ask jurors to conclude that Westerfield was fixated on sex with young girls. They will contend he raped and suffocated Danielle even though pathologists cannot say for sure how she died. Some of her front teeth were missing, indicating that she was smothered, prosecutors say. The fact she was found naked suggests a sexual assault, they say.

The Wrong Man: The Defense Case

Westerfield maintains he had nothing to do with his young neighbor's disappearance. At the preliminary hearing, his public defender said he would wait until the trial to challenge the prosecution's blood and fingerprint evidence.

Defense lawyer Steven Feldman has indicated he will attack the way officers carried out the investigation and the van Dam's lifestyle.

Cross-examining the van Dams during the preliminary hearing, Feldman repeatedly pressed them on their drug and alcohol consumption the night of the abduction. Brenda van Dam, who also used marijuana in the parking lot of the bar, admitted she got high that night and had on about 30 previous occasions. She also said she had three cranberry and vodka cocktails and a shot of tequila. She insisted, however, that she was clearheaded.

Westerfield's lawyers also allege that the van Dams were amused by Westerfield's reference to "adult parties" because they were swingers themselves. At the preliminary hearing, a judge precluded his defense from asking many questions about their sex life, but Brenda van Dam did acknowledge that one of her female friends tried to grope her breasts at the bar. And Damon van Dam admitted having a relationship with the same woman and kissing and massaging her that night in his bed.

The sexual discussion frustrated Superior Court Judge William Mudd, who will preside over the case. He recently expressed dismay over news coverage of the swinger lifestyle, saying, "The media in this community cannot exercise restraint, in my humble opinion."

In court papers, Westerfield's lawyers also charge 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.

"During the nine hours Mr. Westerfield was questioned, the taped portions reveal he requested or inquired about a lawyer five times, asked to stop the interview or leave four times, expressed concern he had no one on his side six times, inquired about his rights four ties, requested to make a telephone call five times, asked for a clean shirt or a shower twice, asked for a drink and stated he was being abused," the defense charged.

Danielle van Dam was snatched from her bed as she slept in her San Diego home.

Westerfield's lawyers want any statements he made to police thrown out.

During the preliminary hearing, Feldman also charged that blood spots were found inside the van Dams house and suggested that Damon van Dam had tampered with evidence by vacuuming the house the day his daughter went missing.

But detectives said they knew nothing about either allegation and van Dam denied cleaning the house that day.

The trial will be broadcast live on Court TV.