Did Dale Hausner and Sam Dieteman know authorities were closing in on them? According to Phoenix police detective Clark Schwartzkopf, the pair made at least two unusual moves in the weeks before their arrests.

First, they moved their attacks eastward from eastern-central Phoenix into the Scottsdale and Mesa areas. This came after a July 12, 2006 town hall meeting in which police gave detailed information about the attacks to the public in order to keep Valley residents safe. At the meeting, police talked about the pattern of the attacks, and that information was widely broadcast through the local and national media. Afterward, Schwartzkopf said, “The shooters went east to the city of Mesa with the shootings of Raul Lopez-Garcia and Robin Blasnek.”

The next unusual thing took place Aug. 2, 2006, just days before the men were arrested at their Mesa apartment. While the men were being watched by undercover police officers, Dieteman was seen throwing away a bag of trash. That bag, seized by police, was filled with evidence that has become key in the trial today. Inside it, Schwartzkopf said, was a map with dots all over it. Many of the dots coincided with shooting sites. “Some of them were close to shootings. Some of them were specifically on top of shootings. And some of them I couldn’t correlate to anything,” Schwartzkopf said.

Another item was a Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper can with a used shotgun casing stuffed inside it. The third item was a piece of paper that read “Robin Blasne 7-70-06 11:20p,” which perhaps was a reference to the shooting of Robing Blasnek, a Mesa woman who was killed at about 11:20 p.m. on July 30, 2006.