With the beginning of their illicit malevolent activities a little more than a year earlier, in May 2005 to be precise, Dale Shawn Hausner and Samuel John Dieteman started shooting passengers in the streets at random while driving by the Phoenix area. Since the one who fired the shots was hidden in the trunk of the car, initially the task to identify who was the individual targeting people in the streets randomly at night proved itself to be very difficult. Dale Hausner and Sam Dieteman had a very discreet modus operandi. They drove by the streets quietly, and when they sppoted someone that looked like a potential target, then one of them shot at the person. It is believed that the two accomplices had committed almost forty shootings in total, with eight fatal victims. To complicate affairs, the hunt promoted by police against the fearful and unpredictable serial shooter – the police wasn’t aware at the time that the crimes were being perpetrated by two individuals – occurred concomitantly to the persectuion of another dangerous serial offender, known then as the Baseline Killer, who became also the target of a complicated police investigation. Like the serial shooter, the Baseline Killer, who later was revealed as a man named Mark Goudeau, was active from 2005, until his arrest in 2006. He was indicted for a string of serious crimes, that went from murder to rape and kidnapping.
Dale Hausner and Sam Dieteman’s trial was severely covered by the media. Considered to be the mastermind behind the atrocious crimes committed by both, Dale Hausner received the most hard sentences, upon which were included six death penalties. In the trial, Dale Hausner apologized to his victim’s families, and advocated himself the capital punishment as the only possible quest for justice, arguing that he not only deserved, but that his execution should occur as soon as possible, for the sake of his victim’s families relief. Dale Hausner also apologized to his own family, begging forgiveness for having ruined the family’s reputation. Sam Dieteman was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Dale Hausner was found dead in his cell in June 19, 2013. The cause of death was ruled a suicide.
Wagner