Marianne Lescher
Live from the courtroom: One of Serial Shooter suspect Dale Hausner’s former lovers, a school principal, took the stand this afternoon and denied she could vouch for his whereabouts on the nights of the shootings.
Marianne Lescher, an elementary school principal in the Kyrene School District, dated Hausner for several months in 2005, and maintained a friendship with him into the summer of 2006. On the witness stand today, she contradicted every one of Hausner’s claims that he was spending the night at her Gilbert house when the shootings were taking place.
“I am absolutely positive,” said Lescher, testifying that Hausner left her home hours before the first murder took place in the Serial Shooter case on May 17, 2005.
On the witness stand last week, Hausner said there was no way he could have committed a number of the 2005 shootings in Phoenix because he was spending the night with Lescher in Gilbert on those occasions. He even had a code penciled into his day planner to mark the nights he slept with her: SNAML, which he said stood for “spent night at Marianne Lescher’s.”
In May of that year, the couple went to Las Vegas for three days. When they returned on May 17, Hausner testified that he stayed the night at Lescher’s. His own day planner backed this up, he said. But on the witness stand today, Lescher said she never spent the night with Hausner on weeknights. “I would have gone to work the next day, so I know he would have not have spent the night,” she said. She said he left her home by 7 p.m. after dropping her off.
Later that night, according to authorities, Hausner drove to Phoenix and shot a man named Tony Mendez, marking his first kill.
“We’ve had testimony that on the 17th of May that the defendant spent the night at your house,” Maricopa County prosecutor Laura Reckart said, asking Lescher about that night.
“No,” Lescher said. “That’s not correct.”
And so it went time and again this afternoon in Maricopa County Superior Court, where Hausner is facing 87 criminal charges including eight murders. The prosecutor asked Lescher about the nights of the shootings when Hausner said he had marked SNAML in his day planner. Each time, Lescher denied he was with her in GIlbert. She didn’t know where he was on those nights, she said.
Earlier today, another of Hausner’s former girlfriends, Michelle Boteri, took the stand and gave similar testimony. On one of the nights that Hausner said they were together, she said it just wasn’t so.
Hausner avoided the courtroom today, opting to stay in his jail cell rather than see the string of former lovers take the stand. (His ex-wife testified this morning.) In doing so, he also avoided watching much of his defense collapse. During the past three weeks of testimony, Hausner essentially asked the jurors to take him at his word that he was with these women instead of at the shooting scenes.
Hausner has pleaded not guilty to each of the 87 crimes.