Archive for the 'tempe' Tag
November 20th, 2008, 11:27 am by Nick R. Martin
For a month and a half, the testimony in the trial of Serial Shooter suspect Dale Hausner has been a litany of victims, family members and first responders — the police and paramedics called out to the incidents as they happened. Prosecutors call it the “scenes” segment of the trial. It was their chance to document every shooting, stabbing and arson they’ve linked to the Mesa man in the defendant’s chair.
That segment of the trial is expected to end today. Prosecutors are bringing out their final witnesses laying out the 87 crimes attributed to Hausner. More than 100 witnesses have taken the stand so far. Only three of them have linked Hausner to any of the crimes or crime scenes:
- John Kane, a Gilbert man, testified that Hausner confessed to shooting up an empty car outside of a Tempe bartending school on Dec. 29, 2005. That shooting is believed to have kicked off the bloodiest night of the killing spree.
- Timothy Davenport testified that Hausner distracted him on May 17, 2006 so that another man could stab him from behind. He identified Hausner “100 percent” as one of the men who participated in the nearly fatal attack.
- Marianne Thone said that Hausner and his suspected co-conspirator Samuel Dieteman appraoched her outside the scene of her brother’s shooting on May 30, 2006 and told her they were looking for a lost cat.
Some of the final testimony will be in the shooting death of Robin Blasnek, who was killed while walking alone in Mesa on July 30, 2006. Blasnek is believed to be the final victim of the Serial Shooter.
After the Thanksgiving break next week, prosecutors will return with riveting testimony about how investigators began to track a serial killer and eventually came upon Dieteman, who has already confessed to two murders, and Hausner as the suspects. The evidence will include hours of secret recordings that police obtained of the two men reportedly discussing the crimes. The jury may get to hear the recordings by the first week of December.
Photo by pool photographer. Prosecutor Laura Reckart questions a witness while defendant Dale Hausner looks on in the background.
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Prosecution • Samuel Dieteman • Dale Hausner • gilbert • Mesa • phoenix • police • Samuel Dieteman • Serial Shooter • shooting • tempe • victims • witnesses | Post a Comment »
October 24th, 2008, 1:41 pm by Nick R. Martin
 It was easily the bloodiest night of the killing spree.
Beginning in Tempe, he worked his way into the heart of Phoenix, passing within sight of the state Capitol, and then cruised back toward the suburbs.
Along the way, authorities say, Serial Shooter suspect Dale Hausner killed two men and three animals. He also wounded another man, a prostitute and a pair of dogs.
On Thursday, as part of his eight-count murder trial in Maricopa County Superior Court, the Mesa man listened silently as survivors of that night talked about their experiences.
It was just four days after Christmas 2005, and prosecutors say it took Hausner all of three hours to unloose havoc across the Valley.
“I kind of panicked a little bit,” said Clarissa Rowley, a 24-year-old who was working as a prostitute on Van Buren Street in Phoenix when she was shot. “I sort of ran a few steps, then somebody pulled up to the side of the curb and offered to take me to the hospital.”
Rowley was hit with a shotgun blast on her left side while walking the street looking for a client.
She saw the barrel of a shotgun poke out of a car before the blast. Her right hand caught most of the pellets as she tried to block her face from the shot.
Despite subsequent surgeries and medical treatment, she testified, she still has a shotgun pellet lodged in her neck.
Read full story…
Photo by pool photographer. Serial Shooter suspect Dale Hausner listens as a witness speaks during the opening week of his trial.
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Prosecution • Dale Hausner • phoenix • Serial Shooter • tempe • victim | Post a Comment »
October 23rd, 2008, 12:03 pm by Nick R. Martin
Prosecutors this morning have questioned a pair of Phoenix police officers about the particularly bloody string of shootings on the night of Dec. 29, 2005. The series of shootings left at least two men dead and another wounded in central Phoenix. The dead men, both believed to be homeless, were Marcos Carillo and Jose Ortis, and their bodies were found within blocks of each other.
None of the officers has connected Dale Hausner to any of the shootings, but all happen to fall within hours after Hausner is said to have shot up an empty car in Tempe.
More testimony is expected after the lunch break.
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Prosecution • Dale Hausner • phoenix • police • Serial Shooter • shooting • tempe | Post a Comment »
October 22nd, 2008, 10:22 am by Nick R. Martin
He rolled his eyes. He flailed his arms. He yelled. He cursed. He did everything but spit.
Defense attorney Ken Everett did his best Tuesday to try to discredit a key witness in the case against his client, Serial Shooter suspect Dale Hausner.
 In the end, the full-throated attack on witness John Kane appeared only to agitate the one man no attorney wants to upset - the judge.
“The questions are becoming repetitive,” Judge Roland Steinle warned Everett from the bench. “And nothing more than harassing.”
A day earlier, Kane, a former bartending instructor from Gilbert, testified that Hausner confessed to him about shooting an empty car in December 2005 in the parking lot of the Tempe bartending academy where they first met.
Kane told the jury that he and Hausner had become friends, and that Hausner thought he was doing his newfound pal a favor by shooting the car of a woman who recently filed a sexual harassment complaint against Kane.
The testimony was the first time anybody so far in the marathon trial directly tied Hausner to the Serial Shooter crime spree, which included eight murders and dozens of other shootings.
In court on Tuesday, Everett worked hard to debunk Kane’s story by forcefully and loudly attacking the man’s credibility.
Everett brought up Kane’s four prior felony convictions, his drug use and his alcoholism in an attempt to destroy his character. Then, he went after Kane’s motives for agreeing to testify.
He pointed out that Kane was arrested in April 2006 on drug and gun charges, and the testimony was part of an agreement he struck with prosecutors to get out of jail.
Along the way, the normally baritone voice of Everett grew ever stronger, and his attitude more critical, as he tried to show that not even he believed what Kane was saying.
Read full story…
Photo by pool photographer. Defense attorney Ken Everett questions a witness during the trial of Serial Shooter suspect Dale Hausner.
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Defense • Judge Steinle • attorneys • Dale Hausner • judge • Judge Steinle • phoenix • Serial Shooter • tempe | Post a Comment »
October 21st, 2008, 3:56 pm by Nick R. Martin
Prosecutors just played an emotional tape recording of a phone call John Kane made from jail to his wife late in 2006 while he was considering turning in Dale Hausner for one of the shootings. “I just want to get home, you know?” Kane could be heard saying on the tape. “That’s all I care about is getting home. That’s all I think about is coming home.”
“I’ll do whatever I have to,” he said on the tape.
The conversation was filled with tears and pleas from Kane to his wife, who was obviously upset that he had been arrested on drug and weapons charges in earlier that year after his long struggles with drug addiction. The recording appeared to hang heavy on many of the jurors, whose faces were long and stoic while the tape played for several minutes. It seemed most to affect two women in the jury who wiped their eyes as it played.
In the end, Kane’s apologies and tears to his wife didn’t do much to help their relationship. The two are now divorced.
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Jurors • Prosecution • Dale Hausner • gilbert • jail • Serial Shooter • tempe | Post a Comment »
October 21st, 2008, 2:36 pm by Nick R. Martin
 Ken Everett continued to roll his eyes, yell expressions like “gee, John” and spew expletives throughout the cross examination of the first witness to implicate his client in one of the shootings.
“You told Dale, ‘That’s the (expletive)’s vehicle right there,’ didn’t you?” Everett said, grilling John Kane, the Gilbert man who said Serial Shooter suspect Dale Hausner confessed to shooting up a vehicle on Dec. 29, 2005.
Normally, Everett is aggressive and speaks at volumes above and beyond those of anyone else in the courtroom. But today, he has even crossed beyond his usual level in trying to discredit Kane.
The exclamations and cursing only come when he is quoting somebody else, but Everett doesn’t hold anything back.
This morning, Judge Roland Steinle told him to keep his voice down, but Everett has struggled to do so. This afternoon, Steinle asked the jury to leave the room so he could reprimand Everett once again. “You used other expressions to show that you clearly don’t believe what is being said out there,” Steinle told him, calling many of his questions “nothing more than harassing.”
In fact, Steinle told Everett to wrap up his questions with Kane, saying many of them were “becoming repetitive.” And, Steinle added, “You will stop rolling your eyes and other facial gestures.”
Photo by pool photographer. Dale Hausner’s attorney Ken Everett listens to testimony last week in Maricopa County Superior Court.
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Defense • Judge Steinle • attorneys • Dale Hausner • gilbert • Serial Shooter • tempe | Post a Comment »
October 21st, 2008, 11:35 am by Nick R. Martin
John Kane, the Gilbert man who said Dale Hausner confessed a shooting to him, is facing a knock-down drag-out attack from the Hausner’s attorney this morning. Attorney Ken Everett has been pushing hard on Kane’s four prior felony convictions and the plea deal he made in exchange for testifying in the trial. The implication is that Kane’s testimony is not to be trusted.
As is Everett’s style, he’s loud and mad. And he’s pushing the envelope of what’s proper. In fact, Judge Roland Steinle just asked the jury to leave the room for a few moments so he could tell Everett to, well, chill out.
“Your questions are becoming argumentative and your tone is going way above,” Steinle said. He called some of Everett’s comments “totally inappropriate.”
“I’m asking you to lower your tone,” Steinle said.
Everett did not respond. But once the jury was brought back into the courtroom, he resumed his questioning at about half the volume.
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Defense • Judge Steinle • attorneys • Dale Hausner • gilbert • Serial Shooter • tempe | Post a Comment »
October 21st, 2008, 9:27 am by Nick R. Martin
A Gilbert man on Monday gave the first testimony linking Dale Hausner to the Serial Shooters killing spree, making him perhaps the most important witness yet in the marathon trial.
John Kane, 41, became friends with Hausner in late 2005 while teaching him how to make cash and mix drinks at a Tempe bartending school.
But their budding friendship took a bizarre turn in December of that year, when Hausner offered to help Kane deal with a young woman at the school who had accused him of sexual harassment.
“I asked him what he was going to do about it,” Kane testified at Hausner’s eight-count murder trial in Maricopa County Superior Court. “He said, ‘Don’t worry about it. You’ll know it when it happens.’ ”
A few nights later, on Dec. 29, a car believed to belong to the young woman was shot in the parking lot of the ABC Bartending School near Mill Avenue and Baseline Road.
No one was hurt in the shooting, but the bizarre event set the school on edge.
The next morning, Kane said, he had an abrupt conversation with Hausner in the offices of the academy.
“I sat down at my desk and said, ‘What the (expletive) are you doing?’” Kane testified.
“He just smiled and said, ‘Taking care of business.’
“I asked, ‘Did you do that?’
“He said, ‘Yeah.’”
The shooting at the academy is just one of dozens of crimes prosecutors say Hausner committed between May 2005 and August 2006 across the Valley.
Hausner, 35, of Mesa, is accused of being the main half of a duo that became known as the Serial Shooters during that period.
Read full story…
Photo by Ralph Freso, Tribune. Serial shooter suspect Dale Hausner attended the ABC Bartending School in Tempe where, in December 2005, prosecutors say he tried to shoot a woman who also attended the school.
Posted in: Dale Hausner • Prosecution • attorneys • bartending • Dale Hausner • seial shooter • sexual harassment • tempe | Post a Comment »
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