Massachusetts Law Enforcement Network

Massachusetts Police News, Information and Discussions on MassCops

Posted by: kwflatbed

By CHRIS KAHN
Associated Press Writer

PHOENIX- Police on Friday said that two men captured at a gated apartment complex were responsible for a string of apparently random late-night killings that have terrorized residents of this city's far-flung suburbs for months.

Authorities gave no details about why they believe Dale S. Hausner and Samuel John Dieteman are responsible for the three dozen shootings investigators had labeled as the work of the "Serial Shooter."

The attacks, which began in May 2005, left six dead and were all the more frightening because another, apparently unrelated serial killer has been preying on Phoenix-area victims at the same time.

At a news conference Friday, authorities said they were confident they had the right suspects.

"These are the two monsters we have been hunting, and I promise you and our colleagues promise you, we are not finished," Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon said.

Hausner, 33, and Dieteman, 31, were arrested late Thursday in a Mesa apartment where neighbors said both men lived.

Complex resident Loraine Salyers said she lives near where police came in. "I came out and there were like a hundred cops," Salyers said. I was so scared. My heart's pounding."

Police Chief Jack Harris said the suspects will face numerous counts of murder and aggravated assault, though authorities did not have specifics on how many.

Hausner and Dieteman were being interviewed at police headquarters Friday afternoon but had yet to be booked, a police spokesman said. An initial appearance had not been set.

Investigators searching the apartment complex Friday morning used flashlights to peer through the windows of a car, which was later hauled away by a tow truck, and television footage showed police carrying what appeared to be several rifles or shotguns away from the apartment.

The Serial Shooter targeted pedestrians and bicyclists on empty streets in far eastern and western areas of Phoenix's sprawling suburbs. Twenty-three people were shot, six fatally, and even horses and dogs were among the victims.

"I hope they got him," said Caroll Roberts, whose 19-year-old son was shot in the torso last month and survived after four hours of surgery. "I want to shoot him in the stomach to see how he'd like it, like he did my son."

Assistant Police Chief Kevin Robinson said the crimes appear unrelated to the still-unsolved "Baseline Killer" cases: eight slayings and 11 rapes since August 2005. Investigators are scouring the city's trove of unsolved crimes for links to the serial predator and clues that might help police catch him before he strikes again.

The two serial-killer cases doubled the fear and paranoia gripping Phoenix neighborhoods in recent months, and led law enforcement agencies to devote more than 200 investigators to track down the killers. Authorities said they will move investigators from the Serial Shooter to the Baseline Killer case.

Robinson described Hausner and Dieteman as friends who had no obvious connections to any of the victims.

"The best we could tell, they were just random victims. These individuals just picked victims out and that was it," Robinson said.

Police would not discuss what tipped investigators off, or what they thought the men's motives were.

Authorities said they tracked Hausner and Dieteman closely after identifying them as suspects Monday evening, but would not discuss the evidence that led to their arrests.

"It wasn't just one source," Robinson said. "We were able to get on these individuals from a lot of different sources."

The most recent shooting in the case occurred Sunday in Mesa, less than three miles from Hausner and Dieteman's apartment. Robin Blasnek, 22, was killed as she was walking from her parents' home to her boyfriend's house.

Tom Mangan, a spokesman with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, said that Hausner and Dieteman also are believed to have committed arson.

Mangan said ATF investigators had spotted two people who looked like Hausner and Dieteman in surveillance video from two Glendale Wal-Marts that had been set on fire in June.

___

On the Net:

Phoenix Police Department: http://www.phoenix.gov/police


Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

---

Posted by: kwflatbed



(left) Samuel Dieteman stands for his booking mug shot,
Friday at the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office's Madison Street
Jail in Phoenix in connection to the Phoenix serial killer case
that has been pending since mid 2005. (
right) Dale Hausner stands for his booking mug shot also in connection to the Phoenix serial killer


Police Find Map Marking Phoenix Slayings

Two Suspects Captured


AMANDA LEE MYERS
Associated Press Writer


PHOENIX -- One of the two suspects in a series of apparently random late-night killings discarded a trash bag in which police found a map with red and blue dots representing the locations of the attacks, court documents said. The bag also contained an expended .410-gauge shotgun shell and a piece of paper referring to serial violence, according to a probable cause statement released Friday night.
The trash bag had been tossed into a bin at the suburban Mesa apartment complex where Dale S. Hausner and Samuel John Dieteman lived, the report said. The men, accused of shooting two dozen people, including six fatally, were arrested late Thursday after police tailed them for a week.
A person who called police said Dieteman drove around selecting random targets. It was only later that police connected Hausner to Dieteman. Police watched them as they "suspiciously drove through the areas of prior attacks and slowing in the areas of vagrant activity," according to the report.
Hausner and Dieteman would take turns driving and shooting, and Dieteman admitted to carrying out many of the shootings, the report said.
It said detectives found a .410-gauge shotgun and ammunition in the suspects' possession. Police also found other guns and long rifles and news clippings about the killings.
Hausner, 33, and Dieteman, 30, were booked Friday afternoon for investigation of two counts of first-degree murder in the Sunday killing of Robin Blasnek and the May 2 killing of Claudia Gutierrez-Cruz and for investigation of 13 counts of attempted first-degree murder. Police said other charges are possible.
At an initial court appearance Friday night, both men were ordered held without bond. Their preliminary hearings were set for Aug. 14 and the court assigned them attorneys.
The attacks, which began in May 2005, were all the more frightening because another, apparently unrelated serial killer has been preying on Phoenix-area victims at the same time. Even horses and dogs were among the victims.
Assistant Police Chief Kevin Robinson said the shootings attributed to the "Serial Shooter" appear unrelated to the still-unsolved "Baseline Killer" cases: eight slayings and 11 rapes since August 2005. Investigators are scouring the city's trove of unsolved crimes for links to that serial predator.
The cases doubled the fear and paranoia gripping Phoenix neighborhoods in recent months and led law enforcement agencies to devote more than 200 investigators to track down the killers. Authorities said they will move investigators from the Serial Shooter case to the Baseline Killer one.
Robinson described the Serial Shooter suspects as friends who had no obvious connections to any of the victims.
"The best we could tell, they were just random victims. These individuals just picked victims out and that was it," he said.
Police would not discuss what they thought were the men's motives.
They said they knew nothing about the suspects' occupations, but the city said Hausner worked as a janitor at the Phoenix airport and neighbors said he also worked as a freelance photographer.
According to a report in Saturday's editions of The Free Press, of Mankato, Minn., Dieteman had lived in at least six different addresses in south-central Minnesota and had dozens of run-ins with local police.
Records obtained by the newspaper show that from 1992 to 1999, police had nearly 40 contacts with Dieteman, including drunken driving incidents, thefts and assaults. The newspaper also found court records showing Dieteman failed to pay child support to his ex-wife. He left Minnesota in 1999.
The most recent shooting occurred Sunday in Mesa, less than three miles from the men's apartment. Blasnek was killed as she was walking from her parents' home to her boyfriend's house.
Hausner's brother, Randy, told The Associated Press his family is devastated by the arrest.
"I mean, who would do something like that?" Randy Hausner said. "That's harming innocent people."
Associated Press Writer Chris Kahn contributed to this report.
On the Net:
Phoenix Police Department: http://www.phoenix.gov/police




AP Photo/Matt York

An investigator looks through the windows of a Toyota Camry early Aug. 4 outside the Windscape Apartments in Mesa, Ariz., where two men were arrested in connection with the serial shootings case.


AP Photo/Matt York

An ATF agent, left, talks with an investigator early Aug. 4 outside the Windscape Apartments in Mesa, Ariz.


AP Photo/Matt York

Police confer outside the Windscape Apartments in Mesa, Ariz.


Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

---

Posted by: kwflatbed

Suspected Phoenix serial killers took turns at the trigger, police say
By CHRIS KAHN
Associated Press Writer
PHOENIX- One of two men arrested in a string of serial shootings in the Phoenix area has denied any wrongdoing.

"I am not a monster," said Dale S. Hausner in a jailhouse interview Sunday with the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

Hausner, 33, told the newspaper he is not a killer, but said the other man arrested for the crimes - Samuel John Dieteman - might have taken Hausner's car and guns to commit the crimes.

"I feel very sorry for the families of the people who were hurt, but I didn't do it," Hausner told the Press.

Hausner said his brother introduced him to Dieteman, 30, six months ago. About a month ago, he said he let Dieteman move into his apartment because he felt sorry for a guy with no job or home.

Dieteman declined to be interviewed by the Press. The sheriff's department has not yet responded to requests from The Associated Press for interviews with the inmates.

Hausner told the newspaper he believes Dieteman implicated him in the killings to deflect blame, though he said he is not sure Dieteman is capable of such violence. During the manhunt for the "Serial Shooter," Hausner said he did not suspect Dieteman was involved.

Hausner said Dieteman did not have weapons of his own, as far as he knows. Now, Hausner said, he wonders and worries about whether Dieteman used Hausner's firearms and car during the killing spree.

Dieteman, 30, and Hausner, 33, face two counts each of first-degree murder and 14 counts each of attempted first-degree murder. A preliminary hearing is scheduled Aug. 14.

Overall, they are being investigated in 36 shootings, including 17 that targeted people and others that involved animals.

Police who interviewed Dieteman said the two took turns shooting people in the city over the course of more than a year.

Some nights it was Dieteman, a burly electrician with a ragged mop of jet black hair. According to court documents, he would blast at lone pedestrians from the window of a silver Toyota Camry in what he called "random recreational violence."

Police said he told them that on other nights, the trigger was pulled by Hausner, a baby-faced janitor and freelance photographer.

After each shooting, the pair would drive slowly away, leaving little evidence other than the victim's body on a sidewalk.

"We are so confident that these are the people," Chief Jack Harris told The Associated Press.

An expert on serial killers, Katherine Ramsland, said it's common in team killings that one person is "egging the other on" to join in.

"If one was the quiet timid type, he may have been the follower who got himself in a situation and just kept going because the reality was created by the dominant partner," she said. "That happens in team killings quite often."

Until last week, investigators had no idea who was responsible for the late-night attacks. They didn't know if the attacks were committed by one person or more, and grouped the attacks under one name: the "Serial Shooter."

The arrests are expected to free up about 50 officers to help track down another shooter, dubbed the Baseline Killer, who is believed responsible for eight killings, some in the area of Baseline Road.

While the Serial Shooter investigation is not complete, police believe the attacks started just past midnight on May 24, 2005, with the killing of 56-year-old Reginald Remillard, who was shot in the neck while he slept at a bus stop.

The last shooting the men are accused of occurred on July 30. Robin Blasnek was shot in the back as she walked to her boyfriend's house in Mesa. She was alive when a neighbor found her, but died later at a hospital.

In between, a probable cause statement alleges, Dieteman and Hausner had taken turns driving while they selected victims at random.

On May 2, the probable cause statement said, Hausner pulled along the curb next to Claudia Gutierrez-Cruz, 20, after she stepped off a bus on her way home from work at a Scottsdale restaurant.

Dieteman allegedly fired one blast from a shotgun, hitting Gutierrez-Cruz on the left side. She died later at a hospital.

A few minutes later, police say, the duo shot a 17-year-old in the back while he was walking along a street.

After targeting people and animals across Phoenix and its suburbs on the west side, the attackers moved east.

Early on the morning of July 22, they found a man in his 30s riding his bicycle in Mesa. Dieteman told police that Hausner pulled close in the Camry, pulled the shotgun over the steering wheel and fired out the driver's side window, according to the probable cause statement. The man survived but was seriously injured.

Police say the last attack, the one that killed Blasnek, occurred less than three miles away from the apartment Hausner and Dieteman shared. Hausner shot her while driving, Dieteman said, according to the statement.

"The circumstances of Robin's death tells us how wicked this world has become," Blasnek's mother, Sandra, said Saturday at her daughter's funeral.

Investigators had started looking for Dieteman in July as a suspect in arson fires in June at two Wal-Marts in suburban Glendale, but did not spot him until one day after Blasnek was shot. They found out where he lived and kept him and his roommate under surveillance for most of the week.

Thursday night, police decided they had enough to make the arrests in connection with the Serial Shooter attacks. Authorities said their evidence against the men included weapons and a map marking the locations of dozens of shootings.

Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

---

vBulletin Copyright ©2000 - 2008, Jelsoft Enterprises Limited.
vB Easy Archive Final ©2000 - 2008 - Created by Stefan "Xenon" Kaeser