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Who Were Phoenix Serial Shooters Dale Hausne And Samuel Dieteman?
Dale Hausner and Samuel Dieteman terrorized Phoenix, Arizona by shooting at random people, and animals, for more than a year.
Over the course of a little more than a year, two men kept the Arizona city of Phoenix in a state of fear as they shot at innocent people at random.
Beginning in May of 2005, police in Phoenix noticed a pattern of pedestrians being shot from passing cars. They soon became aware that they had a serial shooter on their hands. They originally attributed 38 shootings to a lone gunman, ABC News reported in 2006. But as the “The Phoenix Serial Shooter” episode of the second season of Netflix's “Catching Killers” reveals, they actually had two shooters at large.
Dale Hausner, a janitor and sports journalist who once interviewed Mike Tyson, and Samuel Dieteman were working as a team, terrorizing the city by shooting at random people and animals alike. By the time the pair was arrested in the summer of 2006, at least eight people were dead and19 were injured.
One of the victime was Nathaniel Shoffner, 44, who was murdered in November of 2005 while attempting to protect a dog from being shot. Robin Blasnek, 22, was shot after walking away from an argument with her boyfriend. Former Phoenix Police Detective Clark Schwartzkopf said in the Netflix series that the shooter was an "asshole" who targeted the "innocent."
After a night of drinking, Dieteman eventually confessed to his pal Ron Horton that he thought he had fatally shot a woman, according to “Catching Killers.” Horton alerted investigators and then worked with them to capture Dieteman. Soon it became clear that Hausner wasn't only involved, he was actually the mastermind.
Hausner was convicted in 2009 of 6 of 8 murders, as well as 80 other charges which ranged from attempted murders to aggravated assaults to cruelty to animals and arson.That same year, Dieteman pleaded guilty to two murders, plus conspiracy to commit murder. Dieteman received a sentence of life without parole while Hausner received six death sentences.
Hausner died by suicide in his cell in 2013, Reuters reported. Dieteman is 46 and still behind bars.
