Dale Hausner was a janitor at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport who took photographs at boxing matches in his spare time. Between 2005 and the summer of 2006 he drove the streets of the Phoenix area at night and shot strangers from his car: people walking home, people on bicycles, people waiting for a bus, and dogs and horses. The Arizona Supreme Court later summed up what the jury found. Six people were killed and eighteen were wounded, most of them pedestrians or bicyclists, and most of the shootings happened between 10 at night and 3 in the morning. The weapons were 12-gauge or .410 shotguns and a .22 rifle, fired from Hausner's car.
For much of that period he had help. Samuel Dieteman, a friend who moved into his Mesa apartment in the summer of 2006, took part in many of the crimes and later testified against him. The man who told police about Dieteman was a drinking companion named Ron Horton, who said Dieteman had bragged about the shootings and called them "RV'ing," short for random recreational violence.
Police arrested the two men at the apartment in August 2006. In March 2009 a Maricopa County jury convicted Hausner of six murders and 74 other offenses and acquitted him of two earlier killings. He told jurors he believed a death sentence should be imposed to help the victims heal, and the jury sentenced him to death six times. The Arizona Supreme Court upheld the sentences in July 2012. Less than a year later, on June 19, 2013, he was found unresponsive in his prison cell. The medical examiner ruled that he had died of an overdose of an antidepressant and that the death was a suicide.
Little is known about Hausner's early life. The Associated Press gave his age as 33 when he was arrested in August 2006. By then he worked as a janitor at the Phoenix airport, the city said, and neighbors knew him as a freelance photographer. He was a regular at boxing events. The owner of a Phoenix-area boxing gym told the AP that Hausner had been heavily involved in the sport and that it seemed strange when he stopped coming to fights about a year before his arrest. A Las Vegas photographer who had known him since 1999 said he did not look as though he would know which end of a gun barrel a bullet came out of. An Oregon police officer who ran a boxing website said he had done freelance photo coverage for her in 2003 before she ended the arrangement.
At his trial he described himself to the jury as a busy man: a divorced father of a sick daughter, a bachelor with several girlfriends, and someone with side jobs in standup comedy, bartending and boxing photography. He had also appeared in a television commercial for a personal injury law firm, the AP reported.
His family life had included a heavy loss. According to a 1994 report in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, cited by the AP in 2006, his two young sons died in 1994 after a car crash in which his wife at the time had fallen asleep at the wheel. One of his brothers told the AP that Hausner was still deeply shaken by it.
Both of his marriages ended in divorce. His first wife's husband told the AP she had described Hausner as mentally abusive and said she feared him. In a 2001 divorce filing his second wife alleged that he had taken her to a remote area outside Phoenix, threatened her with a shotgun and said he would kill her. At his 2009 trial she testified, as the Arizona Supreme Court later recorded, that in 2001 he drove her into the desert near Wickenburg and held her at gunpoint, and that on another occasion he chased her down in his car. The court found this evidence properly admitted to rebut his own testimony that he was not a violent man. At the time of his arrest he had a two-year-old daughter, who was in the apartment that night and was returned to her mother unharmed.
Police dated the Serial Shooter attacks from May 2005. In August 2006 the AP reported that police believed the first attack was the shooting of Reginald Remillard, 56, who was shot and killed on May 24, 2005. A later AP report, in March 2007, said the attacks were thought to have begun on May 17, 2005, with the fatal shooting of Tony Mendez, who was riding his bicycle. Both killings were charged against Hausner. The jury acquitted him of both in March 2009, so neither death is his in law. Remillard's sister told reporters after the verdict that the family was glad he would never be free again, though she noted the not-guilty verdict in her brother's case.
The convicted crimes began in June 2005, according to the Arizona Supreme Court. The court did not set out every incident in its opinion, but it named the six people whose murders the jury found proved.
David Estrada was one of the six. His mother testified at the trial, and she was one of two witnesses who told the jury that Hausner had raised his middle finger at them in the courtroom, something he denied. The date and place of his death were not reported. The jury found two aggravating factors in his case under subsections (F)(1) and (F)(2) of Arizona's death penalty statute, and it imposed death.
Nathaniel Shoffner was killed on November 11, 2005. Two dogs, named in the court record as Irving and Shep, were shot the same night, and Hausner was convicted of animal cruelty for both. The Supreme Court held that the evidence supported those counts. As in Estrada's case, the jury found the (F)(1) and (F)(2) aggravating factors.
Jose Ortis and Marco Carillo were killed in Phoenix on December 29, 2005, within two blocks of each other, according to the Supreme Court. That evening another pedestrian was shot and survived, and the next night another person was shot and also survived. For Ortis and Carillo the jury found the (F)(6) aggravating factor, which concerns the manner of the killing, on its depravity ground, and the (F)(13) factor, a killing committed in a cold, calculated manner, along with the (F)(1) and (F)(2) factors.
Claudia Gutierrez-Cruz was 20 and worked in a restaurant, the AP reported. On May 2, 2006, she got off a bus in Scottsdale and was shot with a .410 shotgun. She died in surgery. The Supreme Court described the shooting as carried out by Hausner and Dieteman, and Dieteman later admitted that he fired the fatal shot. The court noted a remark of Hausner's about "the first murder of the year in Scottsdale." In May 2006, five other people were wounded; from June 1 to July 22, eleven more were shot and survived.
Robin Blasnek was 22. She was one of four daughters, and she had attention deficit disorder and learning disabilities. Her mother, a dental hygienist, told the AP about the lemonade stand Robin ran as a child and about how she quizzed patients at her mother's dental office. In high school she volunteered with children who had mental and physical disabilities, singing and reading to them. As an adult she moved from her parents' home to a group home in Tempe, with a family promise of weekend visits. She worked as an administrative assistant, trained new employees and had been named employee of the month that April. Her father described her as having special needs and said, "She was just a great kid." Her mother said Robin sometimes struggled with her disabilities and wanted to fit in like everyone else.
At about 11:15 p.m. on July 30, 2006, she was walking to her boyfriend's home in Mesa when she was shot. Neighbors heard the shot and ran to help, but she died at a hospital. The Supreme Court said she was killed with a .410 shotgun; its opinion places the killing in Phoenix, while news reports place it in Mesa. Dieteman later admitted helping in her killing. About 400 people attended her funeral at a Latter-day Saints church in Mesa, a day after the two men were booked. For Blasnek, as for Gutierrez-Cruz, the jury found the (F)(6) factor on both its cruelty ground and its depravity ground, and the (F)(13) factor for a cold, calculated killing.
Many of those shot lived, and most have asked for privacy or been named only in passing. A man shot while walking in June 2006 told reporters after the 2009 verdicts it was a good day "because we took something bad off the street." A man shot in June 2006, who nearly died, later attended Dieteman's sentencing. A young man walking his bicycle on July 3, 2006, was shot and survived. A man riding his bicycle to work in Mesa early on July 22 was shot and treated in hospital; he asked that his name not be released.
One wounded man became a point at trial. Hausner said he had come upon him by chance while searching for a lost cat and stayed to talk with a police officer at the scene. The AP gave a different account of the same visit: the two men had returned to the spot where the man was shot, posing as residents looking for a lost cat, and Hausner spoke with an officer there.
The animal victims included several dogs, named in the court record, and a horse called Apache. The jury convicted Hausner of nine animal cruelty counts; it acquitted him of a July 2005 horse shooting. The Supreme Court later reversed the conviction for shooting Apache because the evidence did not prove that he was the shooter.
Phoenix police set up a task force in the spring of 2006, the Supreme Court recorded, after concluding that one shooter was behind a series of attacks that was speeding up. By early August the AP was reporting that police linked the Serial Shooter to about three dozen shootings of people, dogs and horses since May 2005, with six people dead and 17 wounded. The attacks came late at night, there were no witnesses, and police had no description of a suspect.
The same task force was hunting a second, unrelated attacker that police called the Baseline Killer, blamed at the time for killing seven women and one man and for a series of sexual assaults over the previous year. About 200 officers worked on the two cases, and a reward of $100,000 was offered for information leading to the capture of either. The AP later described families staying indoors that summer while police searched, and public meetings drawing hundreds of people. After Robin Blasnek's death, Mesa police announced a community meeting, more patrols, and a detective assigned to the Phoenix task force.
In June 2006, fires were set at two large retail stores in Glendale, west of Phoenix. Federal investigators said surveillance video from the stores showed people resembling the two men, and Dieteman became a suspect in the fires in July, the AP reported. At trial Hausner was convicted of two counts of arson of an occupied structure. Dieteman testified about other fires as well: he said that he, Hausner and Hausner's brother Jeff had set a palm tree on fire, and a Chandler police officer also testified about that fire.
In mid-July 2006 an anonymous caller to Silent Witness, the Phoenix-area crime tip line, said that a friend called "Sammy" was involved in the shootings. The caller was later identified as Ron Horton. He told a detective that "Sammy" was Samuel Dieteman, and he picked out Dieteman in surveillance video from one of the burned stores. On July 28 and 29 Horton told detectives that Dieteman had said he was involved and had used a .410 shotgun, a detail police had not made public.
On July 30, Robin Blasnek was killed. Police found Dieteman the day after that shooting, when an investigator spotted him in his car, and from then on they watched him. Hausner was not yet a suspect. Horton later told the AP that the group's own name for the shootings was "RV'ing." He died in 2008, before the trial.
On August 1, 2006, Hausner dropped Dieteman at a bar at about 6:30 in the evening, where Dieteman had arranged to meet Horton. Hausner came back, talked with Dieteman in the parking lot for about half an hour, and returned to his apartment at about 8:20 p.m. Police followed Hausner to a mall that day and attached a GPS tracker to his car.
Shortly after 1 a.m. on August 2, Hausner met Dieteman at a casino. Officers watched them open the trunk, wait for a security guard to pass, and move a duffel bag to the back seat. For about two hours the two men drove through cities in the southeast of the Phoenix area. They slowed when they came near pedestrians or bicyclists and sometimes circled back. At about 4 a.m. they returned to the apartment, and an officer overheard one of them say, "it's probably because of the rain."
Late on the afternoon of August 2, detectives briefed the Maricopa County Attorney, who approved emergency wiretaps on Dieteman's phone and on Hausner's apartment and car. Warrants for the apartment and car were obtained that evening. On August 3, from about 9:35 a.m. until 11:55 p.m., the conversations inside the apartment were recorded. According to the Supreme Court, the recordings captured the two men making statements that implicated them, joking or boasting about certain killings, and mocking victims.
The same day, police collected a bag the men had thrown into the apartment dumpster. It held a map of the Phoenix area with markings near some of the shootings, carrying both men's fingerprints; .410 shotgun shells; a note listing Robin Blasnek's name with the date and time of her shooting; and newspaper clippings about the shootings. News reports said the map was marked with red and blue dots, and that the bag also held a videotape of the television program "America's Most Wanted" and clippings about the Baseline Killer. Police obtained search warrants for the apartment and car at about 2 p.m. On August 4 they filed the affidavit for a court order approving the emergency wiretaps, and the superior court granted it that day.
The two men were arrested at the apartment near midnight on August 3, 2006, according to the Supreme Court; some news reports placed the arrest early on August 4. Hausner's two-year-old daughter was in the apartment and was returned to her mother. Police took away shotguns, ammunition, and news clippings and videos about the shootings. In the car they found .22 shell casings and bullets, .410 shot and 20-gauge shotgun shells. Hausner had once owned two .22 Marlin rifles, and a forensic expert later linked a .22 Marlin to six of the crimes and matched casings from the car to guns used in some of them.
Phoenix's police chief, Jack Harris, said the department was highly confident it had the right men. An assistant chief, Kevin Robinson, said the men had no evident connection to the people they shot: "The best we could tell, they were just random victims." Each man was booked on two counts of first-degree murder, for Robin Blasnek and Claudia Gutierrez-Cruz, and 13 counts of attempted first-degree murder, and both were held without bond. Court documents said Dieteman had admitted that the pair was involved in some of the crimes. Police said the two had taken turns driving and shooting.
Hausner admitted to police that he owned shotguns but said he was not involved. In the same interview he mentioned that a .410 had been used, which police had not made public, the Supreme Court noted. In a jailhouse interview with the St. Paul Pioneer Press, reported by the AP on August 7, he said, "I didn't do it," and suggested that Dieteman might have used his car and guns without his knowledge. He said his brother had introduced him to Dieteman about six months earlier and that he had let Dieteman move into the apartment about a month before the arrests. On August 7 he held a press conference and again denied any role.
The Oregon officer who had once used his photographs told the AP that about three weeks before the arrests Hausner had called her, excited about the news of the Phoenix shootings, asking whether the coverage was everywhere and wanting help with a law enforcement question. She reported the call to Phoenix police.
Hausner's brother Jeff was charged separately. In March 2007 he pleaded guilty to aggravated assault over an April 14 stabbing of a homeless man outside a supermarket; prosecutors dropped an attempted murder charge. He did not agree to testify against his brother or Dieteman. Police linked that stabbing to the Serial Shooter case without saying how, and said Dieteman had nothing to do with it. He was sentenced to seven and a half years.
He was later indicted in a second stabbing, of a man attacked on May 17, 2006, and convicted of attempted murder and aggravated assault. Dieteman testified that he saw Jeff Hausner commit that stabbing, and the victim, who survived, testified that Dale Hausner distracted him while another man attacked him, and recognized the car Dale Hausner drove that night. The Arizona Court of Appeals upheld the conviction, rejecting arguments that publicity and references to the Serial Shooter case had tainted the trial and that Dieteman was not believable. Jeff Hausner's sentences totaled 25 years, 18 for one stabbing and seven for the other, Phoenix New Times reported. At Dale Hausner's own trial, Dieteman testified over objection that both he and Dale were present for that stabbing; Dale had testified that his brother was arrested for it but denied being there.
The state filed 88 charges against Dale Hausner in five indictments and consolidated them for a single trial. They included eight counts of first-degree murder, 26 counts of drive-by shooting, ten counts of animal cruelty, two of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and two of arson, along with attempted murder, aggravated assault and firearms counts. The trial court refused to split them up. On appeal the Supreme Court agreed: a forensic psychiatrist had testified that the crimes formed a thrill-seeking scheme aimed at excitement or relief from boredom or bad feelings, two detectives had testified to the similarities among the shootings, and the court held that Hausner had not shown the joint trial unfairly prejudiced him.
Dieteman pleaded guilty to two murders under a plea agreement and became the prosecution's main witness. His plea did not protect him from a death sentence; a jury would decide his punishment later.
The guilt phase of the trial lasted about six months and ended in March 2009. Dieteman testified that he and Hausner cruised at night looking for strangers to shoot. He said Hausner professed hatred for prostitutes and homeless people but never explained why he wanted to shoot people. He told the jury Hausner had said to him, "It's your turn, dude."
Hausner took the stand. He denied any part in the shootings, offered alibis, and suggested that Dieteman might have carried out some attacks. His lawyers argued that Dieteman had fed authorities bad information to escape the death penalty. Prosecutors said Hausner shot people for fame and kept the news clippings as trophies.
The court let the jury hear other acts to rebut his claim that he was not violent: he admitted slashing tires in a casino parking lot, and his former wife described the desert episode with the gun. The trial court also admitted testimony that Hausner had made obscene gestures in court and evidence about his bisexuality, which the Supreme Court later found within the judge's discretion. Testimony about shoplifting should not have been admitted, the Supreme Court said, but the error was harmless. The jury also heard hearsay statements from one wounded victim that the Supreme Court later found were admitted in error, again harmlessly.
The jury returned its verdicts in mid-March 2009; the AP reported them on March 13. Hausner was convicted of six counts of first-degree murder, 18 counts of attempted first-degree murder, two counts of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, 16 counts of aggravated assault, 23 counts of drive-by shooting, nine counts of animal cruelty, three counts of discharging a gun at a structure, one count of unlawfully discharging a gun, and two counts of arson of an occupied structure. He was acquitted of the killings of Tony Mendez and Reginald Remillard, of a July 2005 horse shooting, and of a December 2005 attack on a woman who was not hurt. The Supreme Court's count was 80 convictions, seven acquittals and one charge dismissed by the state.
Hausner scribbled notes and whispered to one of his lawyers as the verdicts were read. His lawyer, Tim Agan, declined to comment. The mother of one wounded man, in court that day, said: "I'm just very thankful."
The penalty phase began later in March. Hausner told his lawyers he wanted to waive mitigation, the evidence a defendant offers to argue for a life sentence. The trial court ordered a competency examination, and the examiner found him competent. The court then confirmed that he had discussed the choice with his lawyers and found his waiver knowing, intelligent and voluntary. His lawyers asked to withdraw, arguing that continuing would breach professional guidelines; the court refused, and the Supreme Court later held that the lawyers were ethically bound to follow their client's decision. They gave no opening statement and no closing argument.
In his statement to the jury, Hausner apologized to his family and to the victims and their families and asked for a death sentence, saying he firmly believed it should be imposed to help the victims heal.
Later that month the jury sentenced him to death for each of the six murders; The Bulletin of Bend, Oregon, reported the sentences on March 28, 2009. He showed no expression and kept his head down. Before he was led out he thanked the judge. The court imposed consecutive life terms for the two conspiracy convictions, with further prison terms for the other offenses.
Samuel Dieteman had met Hausner in April 2006, the AP reported, about nine months after the attacks began. He was charged with two murders and with attacks on 14 other people. He admitted fatally shooting Claudia Gutierrez-Cruz and helping in the killing of Robin Blasnek. At his own penalty trial in July 2009, his lawyers portrayed him as Hausner's follower; prosecutors called him a willing participant who pulled the trigger and acted as Hausner's lookout.
He did not ask for leniency. "I'm truly sorry for the pain that I've caused to many, many people," he told the court, and in a written apology to one of the wounded men he said he would make "no cries for mercy." He said he regretted not turning Hausner in when he first learned of the shootings. In late July 2009 the jury chose a life sentence over death; KNAU and the AP reported the verdict on July 30. Two jurors told reporters they had first favored death before agreeing on life. The wounded man to whom he had written attended the verdict and said it was the closest thing to closure he could have. A Phoenix police sergeant, Andy Hill, called the verdict just. Phoenix New Times later reported that Dieteman was serving his life sentence at the state prison in Buckeye.
Because he was sentenced to death, Hausner's case went straight to the Arizona Supreme Court. Justice Bales wrote the court's opinion, issued July 11, 2012. The court rejected his challenges to the jury selection, to the emergency wiretap, to the joint trial of all the charges, to the other-acts evidence, to the aggravating factors and to the handling of his mitigation waiver. On the wiretap, it held that an emergency existed, that a normal wiretap order could not have been obtained in time with due diligence, that the later court order was timely, and that the Arizona Constitution's protection of the home did not require the recordings to be excluded. It also directed trial courts in future cases to question defendants on the record before accepting a waiver of mitigation.
The court found the evidence too thin on one count, the shooting of the horse Apache, and reversed that conviction. It affirmed every other conviction and all six death sentences. Hausner listed 17 federal constitutional claims to keep them open for later review.
The next day, July 12, 2012, Hausner wrote to the Supreme Court by hand on lined paper. "I do not want any more of my appeals filed on my behalf by my appeal team," he wrote, and asked the court to "issue a death warrant for me as soon as possible." He said mental evaluations before and during his trial had found him of sound mind and able to make his own decisions. The court noted that he still had lawyers representing him, and KJZZ reported that it was unclear whether anything further would happen in the case. Phoenix New Times placed him among the death row prisoners known as volunteers, who ask to hasten their own executions, and noted that capital appeals in Arizona often took about 20 years.
On June 19, 2013, shortly after noon, Hausner was found unresponsive in his isolation cell at the Eyman state prison complex in Florence. He was 40. He was pronounced dead at a hospital about an hour later. In July 2013 the Star Tribune reported that a forensic pathologist with the Pinal County Medical Examiner's Office, Dr. Gregory Hess, gave the cause of death as "amitriptyline intoxication," an overdose of an antidepressant, and that the death had been ruled a suicide. County authorities said he had tried to kill himself before his trial with an overdose of cold tablets.
In June 2014 the Arizona Department of Corrections released the report of its investigation. A fellow prisoner had told the Inspector General's Office that he gave Hausner four to five amitriptyline pills a week for about two months, after Hausner said he was having trouble sleeping. The prisoner believed Hausner was taking them as he received them; the AP reported that Hausner had instead been saving them in the months before his death.
He was never executed. His six murder convictions and death sentences stood, as affirmed, at his death.
How many people were killed. The jury convicted Hausner of six murders. Police and prosecutors had charged eight, and some news reports, including a 2009 KNAU report and a 2013 KJZZ report, said the shootings killed eight people. Two of those eight, Tony Mendez and Reginald Remillard, were deaths of which the jury acquitted him.
How many were wounded. The Supreme Court says eighteen people were wounded. AP reports from 2009 to 2014 speak of attacks on 19 others. Police figures during the hunt in 2006 were 17 people wounded among about 36 shootings, a count that included animals.
When the series began. One AP report in August 2006 said police believed the first attack was Remillard's shooting on May 24, 2005; an AP report in March 2007 said the attacks were thought to have begun on May 17, 2005, with the shooting of Tony Mendez. The Supreme Court dated the convicted crimes from June 2005.
Where Robin Blasnek was killed. The Supreme Court opinion says she was walking at night in Phoenix. News reports, including AP reports from 2006 and 2009, say she was shot in Mesa while walking to her boyfriend's home.
The number of charges. The Supreme Court says 88 charges, of which 80 ended in convictions, seven in acquittals and one in dismissal. AP verdict reports said 80 of 86 charges.
Who fired. Police said in 2006 that the two men took turns driving and shooting. Hausner denied firing at anyone and suggested Dieteman acted alone on some nights. Dieteman admitted firing the shot that killed Claudia Gutierrez-Cruz. The jury convicted Hausner of all six murders, and the Supreme Court described him as the shooter in the series as a whole without assigning every shot.
Jeff Hausner's part. Jeff Hausner was convicted only of the two stabbings, and was not held responsible for any shooting.
1994: Hausner's two young sons die after a car crash (Fort Worth Star-Telegram, as cited by the AP).
2001: His second wife's divorce filing alleges he threatened her with a shotgun.
May 17, 2005: Tony Mendez is shot and killed while riding a bicycle (Hausner later acquitted).
May 24, 2005: Reginald Remillard, 56, is shot and killed (Hausner later acquitted).
June 2005: Start of the shootings of which Hausner was convicted, by the Supreme Court's account.
November 11, 2005: Nathaniel Shoffner is killed; two dogs are shot the same night.
December 29, 2005: Jose Ortis and Marco Carillo are killed in Phoenix; another pedestrian is wounded that evening.
Spring 2006: Phoenix police form a task force.
April 2006: Dieteman meets Hausner (AP).
May 2, 2006: Claudia Gutierrez-Cruz, 20, is shot in Scottsdale and dies.
May 17, 2006: A man is stabbed; Jeff Hausner is later convicted of the attack.
June 2006: Fires at two large retail stores in Glendale.
June 1 to July 22, 2006: Eleven more people are wounded.
Mid-July 2006: Ron Horton calls the Silent Witness line about "Sammy."
July 28 and 29, 2006: Horton tells detectives about the .410 shotgun.
July 30, 2006: Robin Blasnek, 22, is killed.
August 1 and 2, 2006: Surveillance of both men; GPS tracker on Hausner's car; emergency wiretaps approved.
August 3, 2006: Recordings in the apartment; dumpster bag recovered; arrest near midnight.
August 7, 2006: Hausner denies involvement in a jailhouse interview and at a press conference.
March 2007: Jeff Hausner pleads guilty to aggravated assault in a separate stabbing.
March 13, 2009: The AP reports Hausner's convictions on 80 counts, including six murders, and his acquittal of two killings.
March 2009: Hausner waives mitigation and asks for death; the jury returns six death sentences (reported March 28).
July 2009: A jury gives Dieteman a life sentence (reported July 30).
July 11, 2012: The Arizona Supreme Court affirms, reversing one animal cruelty count.
July 12, 2012: Hausner writes to the court asking for no further appeals and a death warrant.
June 19, 2013: Hausner is found unresponsive in his cell at Florence and dies.
July 2013: The Pinal County Medical Examiner's Office rules the death a suicide (amitriptyline intoxication).
June 2014: The Arizona Department of Corrections releases its report on the pills.