Dale Hausner
Live from the courtroom: The undercover officers who were following Samuel Dieteman and Dale Hausner in the days and hours before their arrests had good reason to fear something terrible might happen before their eyes. According to Dieteman’s testimony today during Hausner’s eight-count murder trial, the two of them were cruising the East Valley in the pre-dawn hours of Aug. 2, “to find somebody to shoot on the way back to (Hausner’s) apartment.
As Dieteman tells it, he and Hausner even found a target: a pair of kids riding together on a single bicycle. “The defendant handed me the shotgun, and said, ‘There you go.'” Dieteman said. “And as I started pulling the shotgun up, I was like, no way. I can’t shoot two kids on a bike.”
Instead of telling Hausner the truth, he told him he thought a helicopter was circling above them, Dieteman testified. Hausner responded by telling him it was just paranoia.
It turns out, though, that investigators were watching the two men at that very moment. Last month, several undercover officers who were assigned to follow Hausner and Dieteman, by that time the prime suspects in the Serial Shooter case, testified they were terrified they were going to watch an innocent victim get shot as the men cruised the Valley.
“We were just sick,” said Phoenix police detective Bryan Benson.
The main problem was investigators just didn’t have enough evidence to arrest the men yet, Benson said at the time. So all they could do is tail the suspects at a distance and watch their actions. The situation reached a fever pitch on numerous occasions when undercover officers saw Hausner and Dieteman slowing down or circling back when they approached a pedestrian or bicyclist who was out alone in the dark.
Benson said he even took the extraordinary step of rolling down his own window of his car and yelling at loners to “get out of here!” and “run away!” He risked blowing his cover to shoo away potential victims.
Dieteman’s testimony today confirms the worst fears of those officers. According to him, another victim was almost made.