Mark Goudeau

Victims

9 convictions - all nine counts of first-degree murder, part of sixty-seven guilty verdicts on seventy-two counts arising from thirteen attacks on thirty-three people

Years active

2005 - 2006

Location

Phoenix, Arizona, USA

Method

Shooting

Status

Convicted in September 2007 of the sexual assault of two sisters in 2005 and sentenced to 438 years on December 14, 2007. Tried separately for the murders, he faced seventy-two counts and in November 2011 a Phoenix jury found him guilty on sixty-seven of them, including all nine counts of first-degree murder, failing to reach a verdict on one count. On November 30, 2011 the same jury returned a death sentence on each of the nine murder counts, with consecutive prison terms totalling more than 1,700 years for the remaining felonies. The Arizona Supreme Court affirmed all sixty-seven convictions and the nine death sentences in 2016, in a unanimous seventy-six page opinion by Justice John Pelander that rejected his argument that he was entitled to separate trials. In April 2026 he filed a petition for post-conviction relief alleging that Phoenix police framed him, that his jury was never told he would have been ineligible for parole, and that his trial counsel failed to present sufficient mitigation; the Arizona Attorney General had not responded when the petition was reported. He has denied the killings throughout.

Goudeau was born in 1964 in Phoenix and had served thirteen years for armed robbery and aggravated assault, being released in 2004 having completed a sentence that had originally been much longer.

Between August 2005 and June 2006 he attacked people on the streets of south Phoenix, mostly near Baseline Road, which gave the case its name. He robbed, raped and shot; nine people died, eight women and one man, and there were more than a dozen sexual assaults. Phoenix at the time was also being worked by the Serial Shooter, a separate pair of men attacking people at random from a car, and the city had two unconnected serial cases running at once, which is part of why the investigations took as long as they did.

He was identified by DNA from a September 2005 assault on two sisters in a public park, one of whom was pregnant, and arrested on September 7, 2006. He was convicted in that case in 2007 and sentenced to 438 years on December 14, 2007. He was then tried for the murders, convicted on all counts in November 2011, and sentenced to death in December 2011.

He has maintained his innocence throughout. The DNA evidence has been challenged by his defence at every stage, including allegations of contamination in the Phoenix crime laboratory, and the appeals are continuing.