Archive for the 'police' Tag
December 18th, 2008, 3:12 pm by Nick R. Martin
After more than two months of testimony, many of the jurors seem to be going through some sort of vacation-itis. Most have stopped taking notes. Some are yawning from time to time. Some aren’t even looking at the forensic scientists on the witness stand today. They all appear ready for a long break.
They’re going to get it, too. Today is the last day of the trial for the year. The trial will be on vacation from tomorrow through the New Year. However, today brings some of the most important forensic evidence of the case to date. A former Mesa police DNA analyst named Virginia Smart just took the stand and is expected to tell the jury that she found Dale Hausner’s DNA on a pair of latex gloves that also had gunshot residue on them. This would explain why his fingerprints were not found on the recently-fired shotguns seized in a search of his apartment and car following his arrest in August 2006.
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Jurors • Prosecution • DNA • Mesa • police • Serial Shooter | 2 Comments »
December 17th, 2008, 3:22 pm by Nick R. Martin
Of the two shotguns seized from Dale Hausner’s property on the night of his arrest, neither one had his fingerprints on them, a Mesa police fingerprint analyst testified this afternoon. Instead, investigators found six fingerprints of Samuel Dieteman, the man believed to be Hausner’s co-conspirator, on one of the guns and two mystery prints — which could not be linked to either suspect — on the other gun, said analyst Kelly Speckels.
 This is significant for Hausner’s defense. Throughout the trial, his attorney, Ken Everett, has floated the theory that Dieteman (pictured) took his friend’s guns and car and did all the shootings by himself. Dieteman has already pleaded guilty to two homicides in the Serial Shooter killing spree and agreed to testify early next year against Hausner, who has maintained his innocence.
This information is also a big deal because it means Hausner, so far, has not been connected forensically to any murder weapon. In the early part of the killing spree, authorities believe the Serial Shooter used a .22 caliber rifle. However, no such rifle was ever recovered from Hausner’s property. Investigators also believe Dieteman was only present for the later part of the spree, which all took place using shotguns. Though Dieteman will point the finger at Hausner for the later shootings, he probably has no intimate knowledge of the earlier shootings.
It’s not clear how damaging the analyst’s testimony is to the case. She was intended to be a witness for the prosecution, but this information seems to more strongly benefit the defense.
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Defense • Prosecution • Ken Everett • Mesa • police • Serial Shooter | 1 Comment »
December 15th, 2008, 12:02 pm by Nick R. Martin
Prosecutors are continuing to play video this morning showing police investigators interrogating Dale Hausner in the hours of his arrest. Video playback already went on for several hours on Thursday and is expected to continue into this afternoon.
 The detectives in the Serial Shooter investigation became increasingly intense with their questioning into the late morning of Aug. 4, 2006. By that time, they told Hausner, his suspected accomplice Sam Dieteman had begun to confess to his role in the shootings and also implicate Hausner in the crimes while being interrogated in another room. They even told Hausner that his brother, Jeff Hausner (pictured), had implicated him in the shootings, too. It’s not clear right now whether the detectives’ statements about the brother were true, or just a ploy to get Dale Hausner to talk. Either way, it didn’t work.
All the while, Dale Hausner maintained his innocence, saying he would not confess to crimes he did not commit. “You guys are trying to get me to confess to something I didn’t do,” Hausner said. “I’m telling you everything I know…I’m sorry, I don’t know what else to tell you guys.”
Dieteman has continued to cooperate with the investigation ever since. He is expected to testify against Hausner in the trial sometime in January.
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Prosecution • Samuel Dieteman • jeff hausner • police • Serial Shooter • video | 1 Comment »
December 12th, 2008, 3:49 pm by Nick R. Martin
The trial is off for a couple days, and we’re headed into the weekend, so I wanted to leave you with a bonus post to tide you over. Here are the official police transcripts (PDF 1.5MB) of the secret wiretap conversations between Dale Hausner and Samuel Dieteman, which were recorded in the 24 hours before their arrest in Mesa.
[Please be warned: The language in the transcript, which can be downloaded at the link above, is filled with expletives and other crude references -- the kind that generally would not be printed in a general circulation newspaper. If this kind of language makes you squirm or is inappropriate for somebody reading along with you, do not download the transcripts.]
 The wiretaps were some of the most anticipated evidence in the trial against Hausner (pictured). The jury, as well as the public, got the chance to hear these recordings for the first time this week. Police planted small audio recorders in his apartment and captured him talking in detail about the killings and shootings with his roommate and supposed accomplice, Dieteman. The men talk about their strategy and even compare themselves to serial killers across the nation. Following his arrest, Hausner told police the comments were just sick jokes.
The transcripts may differ slightly from some of the news accounts of when the recordings were played Tuesday in court. Reporters, like the jury, only got to hear the recordings once, and the quality is very poor. In contrast, Phoenix police detective Jason Buscher, who created the transcripts, testified that he listened to the recordings countless times since they were made, and made revisions to the transcript as recently as two weeks ago.
In addition to the transcripts, the full audio of the wiretaps has been posted online by KTVK-TV (Channel 3). The link was originally posted Tuesday by a reader in the comments section, but it’s worth mention here. Again, the same warning that applies to the downloaded document should also apply to clinking on the audio link. Though the sound is fuzzy and tough to hear, the language is not for sensitive ears.
Programming note: The trial is scheduled to resume Monday morning.
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Prosecution • ktvk • Mesa • phoenix • police • Serial Shooter • wire • wiretap | Post a Comment »
December 10th, 2008, 12:16 am by Nick R. Martin
Out of the soft fuzz and hiss of background noise came a voice, rough and deep.
“It now brings the total to six,” the man said, talking about news reports of a spate of recent killings throughout the Valley.
“It’s higher than that!” said another, his voice higher-pitched and louder. “What about the guy I (expletive) shot at twice at 27th Avenue in the yard?”
Jurors on Tuesday in a downtown Phoenix courtroom heard the garbled recordings of two men boasting and cheering about the Serial Shooter killing spree, which in reality had left eight people dead by that point.
Dale Hausner, the man heard with the higher-pitched voice, was only a few feet away in the courtroom, sitting stone-faced and listening as prosecutors and police said it helped prove that he and the other man, Samuel Dieteman, were responsible for the killings.
In all, prosecutors played about a dozen snippets from more than four hours of secret police recordings made on Aug. 3, 2006, just prior to midnight when they arrested the pair at their Mesa apartment.
The audio recordings were some of the most-anticipated and explicit evidence to be presented by Maricopa County prosecutors as part Hausner’s lengthy murder trial.Dieteman, believed to be the accomplice, has pleaded guilty to two murders and agreed to testify against his former roommate in the coming weeks.
The recordings, played publicly for the first time, revealed that Hausner and Dieteman talked almost obsessively about media coverage of the Serial Shooter killing spree, which had been going on since May 2005.
In one snippet played for jurors, they talked about a news report that mentioned a “new” detail that the Serial Shooter often roamed and circled around certain areas of the Valley looking for victims.
“You think?” Hausner shouted on the recording. “You dumb (expletive.) It took you a year-and-a-half to come up with that? Wow.”
In another snippet, the men talked about their individual techniques.
“I try to wait to the last second when somebody’s getting near me,” Dieteman said. “I don’t even think I get it level. I just get it to where it’s pointed at somebody.”
Hausner was heard mumbling something inaudible in the recording, then mimicking a gunshot. “And bam!”
Read full story…
Submitted photo. Dale Hausner shakes hands with boxer Mike Tyson in this undated photo. Hausner was heard on secret audio recordings Tuesday saying he hoped Tyson would volunteer his time searching for a suspect in the Serial Shooter killings that plagued the Valley in 2005 and 2006.
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Defense • Judge Steinle • Jurors • Prosecution • Samuel Dieteman • Andrew Thomas • maricopa county • Mesa • Mike Tyson • phoenix • police • Serial Shooter • wire • wiretap | 1 Comment »
December 4th, 2008, 2:21 pm by Nick R. Martin
With the trial off until Monday, take some time to catch up with some of the stories from it you might have missed in recent weeks.
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Defense • Prosecution • Samuel Dieteman • Mesa • phoenix • police • Serial Shooter | Post a Comment »
December 3rd, 2008, 11:57 pm by Nick R. Martin
As many as 24 people were being eyed in the summer of 2006 as potential suspects in the Serial Shooter killing spree until a secret informant led police to zero in on two men in Mesa.
That informant, since identified as Ron Horton, called police tip lines three times in July 2006 telling investigators that they should be looking at a man named “Sammy” for the killings.
In the first two calls, Horton kept his own name out of the messages. He also failed to provide a last name for Sammy.
But in the third call on July 25, Horton spilled everything he knew. The suspect’s name was Sam Dieteman, and he left his own name so he could be contacted.
It was a major break in the series of dozens of random shootings that had put the Valley on edge that year.
During testimony Wednesday in Maricopa County Superior Court in the trial against Dale Hausner, Phoenix police detective Clark Schwartzkopf told how he and the other investigators came across Dieteman and Hausner as the main suspects in the Serial Shooter case.
Before Horton first called the Silent Witness tip line on July 16, investigators were having little luck figuring out who was behind the series of killings and other attacks that already left seven people dead.
Read full story…
Tribune file photo. Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon speaks during an August 2006 news conference announcing the capture of Serial Shooter suspects Samuel Dieteman and Dale Hausner. Programming note: The trial is off for the weekend. It will resume on Monday.
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Prosecution • Samuel Dieteman • Clark Schwartzkopf • Mesa • phil gordon • phoenix • police • ron horton • Serial Shooter | Post a Comment »
December 3rd, 2008, 3:08 pm by Nick R. Martin
 If you were one of the hundreds of people who went to community meetings about the Serial Shooters killing spree in the summer of 2006, chances are you were recorded and tracked by the police.
Phoenix police detective Clark Schwartzkopf, the lead detective in the case, testified this afternoon that the license plates of every attendee were recorded and investigated by the Serial Shooter task force. It wasn’t clear from his testimony how deep the investigation into the license plates went or how long the information was kept.
“You were running the license plates of the vehicles that were coming to the town meetings. Is that correct?” asked defense attorney Ken Everett.
“Yes,” replied Schwartzkopf.
“The thinking there was that the actual perpatrator of these shotgun shootings might be so brazen that they might show up to the meeting,” Everett said.
“Yes, sir.”
Update (3:35 p.m.): Schwartzkopf just testified that every license plate at four separate town hall meetings was recorded. While he gave no estimate of how many cars were investigated, he said each meeting was “crowded.”
Update (4:06 p.m.): A review of previous Tribune stories, linked above, puts the number of attendees at these meetings as well above 1,000.
Tribune file photo. Cecilia Perez, right, of Mesa, holds her daughter, Priscilla, 10, while attending a meeting Mesa police held about the Serial Shooter on Aug. 1, 2006 at Longfellow Elementary School in Mesa.
Posted in: Defense • Prosecution • Clark Schwartzkopf • Mesa • phoenix • police • Serial Shooter • town hall | Post a Comment »
December 3rd, 2008, 2:17 pm by Nick R. Martin
  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.
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Prosecution • Samuel Dieteman • Clark Schwartzkopf • Dale Hausner • Dr. Pepper • Mesa • police • Sam Dieteman • Serial Shooter | Post a Comment »
December 3rd, 2008, 11:46 am by Nick R. Martin
In July 2006, the Valley was dealing with two sets of serial killers. One, the Baseline Killer was targeting and raping women in south Phoenix. The other, the Serial Shooters, were randomly shooting pedestrians in the east Phoenix area.
Because of the danger and tension gripping the Valley, Phoenix police, along with Silent Witness, set up tip lines and asked the public to help find these serial killers. On the witness stand this morning, Phoenix police detective Clark Schwartzkopf said that some 2,000 calls came in during a single two-day period in mid July.
Because of this, “there were a lot of mix ups between task forces,” Schwartzkopf said. Some of the tips intended for the Baseline Killer case were being routed to the Serial Shooter investigators and vice versa.
On top of it, there were a lot of off-the-wall calls that weren’t helping. “I had one person call and say they thought it was the Zodiac Killer, the infamous Bay Area serial killer,” the detective testified. “I had psychics. I had people with crystal balls. I had all kinds of people calling in to tell me who they thought it was.”
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Defense • Prosecution • Clark Schwartzkopf • phoenix • police • psychic • Silent Witness | Post a Comment »
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