Samuel Dieteman was one of two men behind the Serial Shooter attacks, a run of random drive-by shootings that kept the Phoenix area on edge from 2005 to August 2006. The shooters fired from a car at night, mostly at people walking or riding bicycles alone, and also at dogs and horses. The other man, Dale Hausner, had been shooting for months before Dieteman met him. Dieteman joined in the spring of 2006, and in four months he killed one woman and took part in the killing of another.
He was also the reason the case was solved. He boasted about the shootings to a man he drank with, and that man called a police tip line. After the arrests Dieteman pleaded guilty to two murders and a conspiracy charge and spent days on the witness stand against Hausner, who was convicted of six murders and sentenced to death. A jury spared Dieteman the death penalty in July 2009. He is serving life in prison in Arizona.
The Serial Shooter attacks were not the only crimes frightening metro Phoenix in 2005 and 2006. At the same time police were hunting a different man, called the Baseline Killer, who was blamed for a separate series of killings and sexual assaults. Police said when Dieteman and Hausner were arrested that they saw no link between the two cases. A parolee named Mark Goudeau was later charged in the Baseline Killer case. Nothing in either case connects him to Dieteman or Hausner, and the two series should not be confused. The AP reported in 2006 that the Serial Shooter arrests were expected to free about 50 officers to work on the Baseline Killer inquiry.
Little about Dieteman's early life has been published. The Free Press of Mankato, Minnesota, reported after his arrest that he had lived at at least six addresses in south-central Minnesota and that records showed nearly 40 contacts with police there between 1992 and 1999. They included drunken driving, theft and assault, as well as unpaid child support. He left Minnesota in 1999. Arizona court records showed traffic cases against him dating to June 2001, the Associated Press reported, though it was not clear whether he lived in the state at that point.
By 2006 he was working as an electrician, and the AP described him at his arrest as a burly man with a mop of black hair. The lead detective in the case later told a jury that Dieteman had abused alcohol and methamphetamine before he ever met Hausner. When his life was at stake in 2009, his lawyers spoke of a mother, a daughter and a grandson he had never met.
Dale Shawn Hausner was a few years older. He worked as a janitor at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport and took photographs at boxing events in his spare time. Friends in the boxing world described him to the AP as polite and friendly, and they were stunned by his arrest. In 1994, according to a Fort Worth Star-Telegram report cited by the AP, his two young sons drowned in a creek after a car crash in which his then-wife, who was driving, had fallen asleep. In 2006 he had a young daughter, who was in his apartment on the night of his arrest.
His brother Jeff Hausner was also part of the story. Dieteman later testified that Jeff took part in some of the attacks, and Jeff was separately convicted of stabbings, one of which Dieteman said he and Dale witnessed.
The attacks that the Arizona Supreme Court attributed to Hausner began in 2005. Police dated the first linked attack to May 24, 2005, when a man named Reginald Remillard was shot while he slept at a bus stop. Hausner was later acquitted of killing Remillard and of killing a second man, Tony Mendez, in May 2005, so neither death can be laid at his door in law.
The killings for which Hausner was convicted began later that year. The Arizona Supreme Court's account names Nathaniel Shoffner, shot on November 11, 2005, and Jose Ortis and Marco Carillo, shot two blocks apart in Phoenix on December 29, 2005. A fourth man, David Estrada, was also among the six murder victims in Hausner's case. On the same nights, the court found, dogs were shot outside their owners' homes and other people were wounded. All of this happened before Dieteman entered Hausner's life.
Accounts of how and when the two men met differ slightly, but they agree that Jeff Hausner introduced them in early 2006. Dieteman testified in 2008 that Jeff made the introduction earlier that year. The AP, summing up the case in 2009, said they met in April 2006, about nine months after the shootings began. Hausner, interviewed by the St. Paul Pioneer Press days after his arrest, said a brother had introduced him to Dieteman about six months before and that he had let Dieteman move into his apartment about a month before the arrests.
Dieteman later described their first weeks together in plain terms. He told the court in August 2008 that the two began by shoplifting alcohol and CDs, which Hausner sold, splitting the money with him. They set garbage on fire, shot out car windows with BB guns and punctured tires. He said the Hausner brothers were wary of him at first, and that he felt he had to keep committing crimes in front of them to be trusted. "As long as I committed a crime in their presence, their trust went up," he said. He summed up the relationship as "just random, senseless destruction."
Claudia Gutierrez-Cruz was 20 years old and worked in a restaurant. On the night of May 2, 2006, she got off a bus in Scottsdale on her way home from work. As she walked, she was shot with a .410 shotgun from a passing car. She died at a hospital; the Arizona Supreme Court's opinion records that she died in surgery. Little else about her life appears in the published coverage.
Dieteman testified that he fired that shot. In his account, Hausner was driving and told him it was time to take his turn. It was, by his own testimony, his first shooting. Police said a 17-year-old was shot shortly afterward.
Over the following weeks the attacks came often. The court records that five people besides Gutierrez-Cruz were wounded in May 2006. Dieteman told the court that Hausner never explained why he wanted to shoot people, though he had talked of hating prostitutes and homeless people. Dieteman said the two found it funny when they believed a man they had shot was not badly hurt.
In June 2006 two Wal-Mart stores in Glendale were set on fire. Investigators first looked at Dieteman over those fires, and the two arson counts later formed part of Hausner's convictions. Dieteman also testified that he was present with Dale and Jeff Hausner when they set fire to a tree.
Several people shot that summer survived and later spoke about it in public. Paul Patrick was shot in the side while walking near 78th Avenue and Indian School Road in Phoenix in June 2006 and nearly died. He attended Hausner's trial every day and became, in the AP's words, the public face of the victims. Tony Long was shot while walking that June and still carried about 30 shotgun pellets in his body when Hausner was convicted. On July 22 a man in his 30s riding a bicycle in Mesa was shot and seriously injured. Dieteman testified that about two months before the arrests he watched Hausner shoot a man, and that the two went back to the scene afterward and told police they were looking for a lost cat.
Robin Blasnek was 22, one of four daughters of Sandra and Steve Blasnek of Mesa. She had attention deficit disorder and learning disabilities, and her father described her as a special needs child. As a girl she went with her mother, a dental hygienist, to her office. As a teenager she volunteered with disabled children, singing and reading to them. As an adult she lived first in a group home in Tempe, spending weekends with her parents, and later worked as an administrative assistant, answering phones, paging staff and training new employees. In April 2006 she was named employee of the month. "She wanted to be normal and fit in just like everyone else," her mother said.
At about 11:15 p.m. on Sunday, July 30, 2006, she was walking from her parents' home to her boyfriend's house when she was shot in the back with a .410 shotgun. A neighbor found her alive, but she died at a hospital. Press reports at the time put the shooting in Mesa; the Arizona Supreme Court's 2012 opinion says she was walking in Phoenix. Dieteman admitted helping in her killing. She was the last person killed in the series.
About 400 people came to her funeral at a Latter-day Saints meetinghouse in Mesa on the Saturday after the arrests. "The circumstances of Robin's death tells us how wicked this world has become," her mother said.
Phoenix police formed a task force on the shootings in the spring of 2006. By August about 200 officers were working on it, and a reward of $100,000 had been offered. Police were working the two serial cases side by side, and the city was tense. The AP later described neighborhood watch groups on alert that summer, families staying indoors and community meetings that drew hundreds of people.
The break came from a man who had been drinking with Dieteman. In mid-July 2006 an anonymous caller left a message with Silent Witness, the Phoenix area's anonymous crime tip program. He said a friend called "Sammy" had admitted taking part in the shootings. The caller, later identified as Ron Horton, then met a detective, named Sammy as Dieteman, and picked him out of a security video recorded at one of the Wal-Mart stores that had been set on fire. He told police that Dieteman used a .410 shotgun, a detail police had not made public, and that Dieteman called the attacks "RRV'ing," for random recreational violence. Horton told the AP in 2006: "They called it 'RV'ing.' Random Recreational Violence." Horton died in 2008, before either man was sentenced.
Police spotted Dieteman the day after Robin Blasnek was killed and kept both men under watch for most of the following week. On August 1, Dieteman met Horton at a bar. Officers saw Hausner drop him off, followed Hausner afterward and placed a GPS tracker on his car.
Shortly after 1 a.m. on August 2, the two men met at a casino, where officers watched them move a duffel bag from the trunk to the back seat. For about two hours they drove through several cities. When they came near people walking or riding bicycles, the car slowed and circled back. No one was shot that night.
That evening the Maricopa County Attorney approved emergency wiretaps on Dieteman's phone and on Hausner's apartment and car, and detectives obtained search warrants. The bug in the apartment began recording at about 9:35 a.m. on August 3. Over more than four hours of recorded talk, the two men discussed news coverage of the shootings at length and laughed and boasted about them. In one passage played to the jury in 2008, Dieteman says a news report put the total at six, and Hausner replies that it is higher. In another, Dieteman describes how he waits until the last moment as someone gets close, and Hausner breaks in with "And bam!"
Police also searched the trash bins at the Windscape Apartments complex in Mesa where the men lived. They found a map marked with red and blue dots at attack locations, a spent .410 shell, news clippings about the shootings and about the Baseline Killer, a paper referring to serial violence, and a note with Robin Blasnek's name and the time she was shot. Both men's fingerprints were on the map.
Officers arrested Hausner and Dieteman at the apartment late on August 3, 2006; the Arizona Supreme Court gives the time as 11:55 p.m., and early press reports described the raid as taking place early on Friday, August 4. Officers carried out shotguns, rifles and ammunition. Hausner's daughter was in the apartment and was returned to her mother. Police also seized the car, a Toyota Camry.
"They are the serial shooters that this task force has been hunting," said Jack Harris, the Phoenix police chief. Court papers released the next day said Dieteman had admitted carrying out many of the shootings and that the two men had taken turns driving and shooting at random targets.
Hausner took a different line. He admitted owning shotguns but denied any part in the attacks. He nevertheless knew that a .410 had been used, which police had not released. In a jailhouse interview he said Dieteman might have used his car and guns without his knowledge and was blaming him to protect himself. On August 7 he held a press conference and again denied involvement.
Both men were first booked on two counts of first-degree murder, for Claudia Gutierrez-Cruz and Robin Blasnek, and 13 counts of attempted first-degree murder. A Maricopa County grand jury then indicted each of them on 46 felony counts: two of first-degree murder, 14 of attempted first-degree murder, 14 of aggravated assault and 16 of drive-by shooting. Police said they were still looking at whether the pair were responsible for further killings, nonfatal shootings and animal shootings going back to May 2005.
Andrew Thomas, the Maricopa County Attorney, announced that he would seek the death penalty against both men. "This campaign of terrorism is fully deserving of the ultimate penalty allowed by law," he said. Both pleaded not guilty.
In April 2008 Dieteman pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder and one count of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. The deal required him to give truthful and thorough testimony against Hausner. In return, charges tied to the shooting of Paul Patrick were dropped. The deal did not take death off the table: it allowed a jury to weigh his cooperation when it decided whether he should be executed or imprisoned for life.
At a hearing in August 2008 Dieteman said he did not so much want to die, "but if that's what the people want, I'm not going to waste a bunch of time and fight it." He later said he pleaded guilty because the harm done to innocent people had become too much to bear and he could not let it go unpunished.
Hausner went on trial in Maricopa County Superior Court in the fall of 2008. Judge Roland Steinle III presided over the pretrial hearings at which Dieteman first testified. Prosecutors had filed 88 charges against Hausner in five indictments, including eight counts of first-degree murder, and the cases were tried together. Testimony began in early October 2008.
Dieteman was the prosecution's main witness. He told the jury that he and Hausner drove around late at night looking for strangers to shoot. He described attacks he had seen and others that he said Dale and Jeff Hausner had told him about. He testified that Hausner was driving and fired a .410 from the driver's window when a 19-year-old man walking with his bicycle was shot in July 2006. He also described being present when Jeff Hausner stabbed a man.
Hausner's lawyers attacked his credibility. Ken Everett told the court in 2008 that Dieteman had been drinking heavily and using drugs at the time and would "do anything to save his own skin." The defense argued that he had given false information to escape a death sentence. Hausner testified in his own defense, denied being the Serial Shooter, offered alibis and suggested that Dieteman might have carried out some of the attacks himself.
The wiretap recordings, the map, the clippings and the guns supported Dieteman's account. A firearms examiner matched a .22 Marlin rifle that Hausner had owned to six of the crimes through marks on the bullets.
In March 2009 the jury convicted Hausner on 80 of 86 charges, including six counts of first-degree murder, 18 of attempted first-degree murder, two of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, 23 of drive-by shooting, nine of animal cruelty and two of arson of an occupied structure. He was acquitted of the May 2005 killings of Tony Mendez and Reginald Remillard, of the July 2005 shooting of a horse and of a December 2005 attack on a woman who was not hurt.
The six people Hausner was convicted of murdering were Nathaniel Shoffner, Jose Ortis, Marco Carillo, David Estrada, Claudia Gutierrez-Cruz and Robin Blasnek. Remillard's sister, Marci Matt, said her family felt a sense of closure even after the acquittal in her brother's death, because Hausner would never be free again.
In the penalty phase Hausner waived mitigation other than his own statement, and his lawyers made no opening or closing argument. He apologized to the families and said he would take his punishment "like a man" if it helped them heal. On March 27, 2009, the jury sentenced him to death for each of the six murders. He received consecutive life terms for the two conspiracy counts and prison terms on the other convictions.
Because Dieteman faced a possible death sentence, a separate jury heard his case in the summer of 2009. Clark Schwartzkopf, the lead Phoenix police detective, testified that Dieteman had been a follower of Hausner's, had committed two of the killings and had been vital to the investigation. He said Dieteman knew people were being killed before he joined in, and warned that as a known informant Dieteman would face either isolation or danger from other prisoners for the rest of his life.
The detective also read a letter Dieteman had written on January 9, 2009, to Paul Patrick. In it Dieteman said he had "taken lives, destroyed lives, caused unimaginable pain to people," and that he would not appeal or ask for mercy. Patrick, who had suffered a stroke that spring that may have been linked to pellets still in his body, now used a wheelchair and spoke in a whisper. He said the letter was not enough, but that he appreciated Dieteman taking responsibility.
In closing, the prosecutor, Vince Imbordino, argued that it was too late for redemption, since Dieteman had done nothing to stop Hausner. He pointed out that Dieteman had not come forward on his own; Dieteman had said he was afraid of what would happen to him. The defense lawyers, Maria Schaffer and Quinn Jolly, said Dieteman had been under Hausner's heavy influence, had admitted his crimes and helped convict the man who did most of the killing. Jolly asked the jury for mercy and quoted the hymn "Amazing Grace."
Dieteman spoke to the jury himself. "I'm truly sorry for the pain that I've caused to many, many people," he said. He said he regretted not turning Hausner in when he first learned of the shootings, and thanked the court for treating him as a human being.
On Wednesday, July 29, 2009, the jury chose life in prison. Two jurors said afterward that they had first leaned toward death; the foreman called life "the most lawful decision." Patrick agreed with the verdict. "It's not a cause to celebrate; a mother just lost a son, and children lost their father," he said. Sgt. Andy Hill, a Phoenix police spokesman, said the verdict brought to a close four years of pain for the victims and their families.
According to KTAR, Dieteman received consecutive natural life sentences for the two murders, plus a life term with possible release after 25 years for the conspiracy. Phoenix New Times reported the outcome as two life sentences plus 25 years and later described it as life without parole. In 2018 the Maricopa County Attorney, Bill Montgomery, said that freeing Dieteman would take a change in state sentencing law by the Legislature, and that he would oppose any such change.
Hausner's death sentences went to the Arizona Supreme Court on automatic appeal. On July 11, 2012, the court, in an opinion by Justice Bales, affirmed his convictions and sentences, except for one count of animal cruelty, which it reversed for lack of evidence. The opinion is the most detailed public account of the investigation, from the tip line call to the wiretap.
Within days Hausner wrote to the court by hand, saying he did not want his lawyers to file any more appeals and asking for a death warrant "as soon as possible." He said death was the right penalty to help the victims heal. The court noted that he still had lawyers, and no death warrant was reported.
On June 19, 2013, Hausner was found unresponsive in an isolation cell at the Eyman state prison complex in Florence. He was pronounced dead at a hospital about an hour later, aged 40. The Pinal County Medical Examiner ruled his death a suicide, caused by an overdose of the antidepressant amitriptyline. An Arizona Department of Corrections investigation later found that another prisoner had passed him the tablets over about two months, cell to cell on a homemade line, saving pills that nurses had not watched him take. Hausner had earlier tried to kill himself with cold tablets while awaiting trial.
He therefore died as a convicted man under six death sentences that had been affirmed on direct appeal, without being executed.
Paul Patrick died in November 2018, more than 12 years after he was shot. Cliff Jewel, a retired Phoenix police detective who had become friends with Patrick and his mother during the trial, said the death was directly related to his injuries and called him the ninth murder victim of the shootings. He remembered Patrick's humor and said the shooting had never held him back. Jewel said a prosecution of Dieteman for the death should be considered, though he acknowledged it would be hard to prove which man fired the shot that hit Patrick, or even that Dieteman was there.
The AP had reported in 2009 that Dieteman shot Patrick. Montgomery said in November 2018 that no new charge could be filed, because the charges over Patrick's shooting had been dropped under Dieteman's plea agreement.
Dieteman is serving his sentence in the Arizona state prison system. KTAR reported in November 2018 that he was serving life in prison, and when ABC15 summarized the case in August 2022 his status had not changed. No later court action in his case is known.
Proven by Dieteman's guilty pleas, and final: the murders of Claudia Gutierrez-Cruz and Robin Blasnek, and a conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.
Proven at trial against Hausner and affirmed on appeal: six murders, among them the two to which Dieteman pleaded guilty, and a long list of shootings of people and animals.
Not proven: the May 2005 killings of Tony Mendez and Reginald Remillard, of which Hausner was acquitted, and which were never charged against Dieteman. Police and the press long counted eight deaths in the Serial Shooter series; the courts convicted on six.
Never charged: the death of Paul Patrick in 2018. One former detective counts him as a ninth victim, and the AP reported in 2009 that Dieteman shot him, but the charges over his shooting were dropped in 2008 and prosecutors said they could not be revived.
Who fired at Robin Blasnek: Dieteman admitted helping in her killing. Published sources do not say which man pulled the trigger.
Details that vary between sources: where Robin Blasnek was shot (Mesa in press reports; Phoenix in the 2012 opinion); when and how Dieteman and Hausner met (early 2006 or April 2006, through Jeff Hausner); how long Dieteman had lived in Hausner's apartment; the time of the arrests (late August 3 or early August 4, 2006); the number of people wounded (17, 18 or 19 in different reports); and the spelling of several victims' names, which varies even within the court's opinion.
1992 to 1999: nearly 40 police contacts in south-central Minnesota.
1999: Dieteman leaves Minnesota.
June 2001: earliest Arizona traffic case on record.
May 24, 2005: first attack later linked to the series (Hausner acquitted of this killing).
November and December 2005: Hausner kills Nathaniel Shoffner, Jose Ortis and Marco Carillo, by the later convictions.
Early 2006 (April, by one account): Jeff Hausner introduces Dieteman to Dale Hausner.
Spring 2006: Phoenix police form a task force.
May 2, 2006: Dieteman shoots and kills Claudia Gutierrez-Cruz, 20, in Scottsdale.
June 2006: Paul Patrick and Tony Long are wounded; two Wal-Mart stores in Glendale are set on fire.
Mid-July 2006: Ron Horton calls Silent Witness about "Sammy."
July 30, 2006: Robin Blasnek, 22, is shot and killed; Dieteman later admits helping.
August 1 to 2, 2006: surveillance, GPS tracking and a night drive watched by police; emergency wiretaps approved.
August 3, 2006: the apartment is bugged; the two men are arrested at their Mesa apartment that night.
August 2006: indicted on 46 felony counts each; prosecutors later announce they will seek death for both.
2008: Ron Horton dies.
April 2008: Dieteman pleads guilty to two first-degree murders and conspiracy.
August 2008: testifies at a pretrial hearing.
October 2008: testimony begins at Hausner's trial; wiretap recordings are played in December.
March 2009: Hausner convicted of six murders; sentenced to death on March 27.
July 29, 2009: a jury spares Dieteman the death penalty; he is sentenced to life, reported as consecutive natural life terms.
July 11, 2012: the Arizona Supreme Court affirms Hausner's convictions and death sentences (one animal cruelty count reversed).
July 2012: Hausner asks the court to stop his appeals and issue a death warrant.
June 19, 2013: Hausner dies by suicide on death row.
November 2018: Paul Patrick dies; prosecutors say no new charge is possible.
August 2022: ABC15 summarizes the case; Dieteman is serving his sentence.