Samuel Dieteman
Live from the courtroom: Almost immediately after the arrests of Dale Hausner and Samuel Dieteman in 2006, court documents revealed the pair had allegedly used the term “recreational violence” to describe their crime spree.
Today on the witness stand in Hausner’s eight-count murder trial, Dieteman described more about the violence that encompassed the phrase. More than anything, he said, the violence was simple vandalism.
“Anywhere and everywhere we parked,” he testified, “the people next to us, on either side of us, got their tires punctured.”
The men kept tools in their car, he said, for breaking out car windows or sticking holes in a tire — a meat tenderizer, a knife, an icepick, a spring-loaded center punch. Nearly anything did the trick.
There was the time when they found a patch of old palm trees in south Chandler and lit it on fire. “That was the whole point of going over to that area,” Dieteman said, “because Dale said he knew of an area where there was nothing but dry palm trees.” The police never caught them for any of it. On rare occasions, he said they were stopped and questioned, but they were always released.
It wasn’t anything new for Dieteman. When he testified last month, he said he had always sort of run with a rough crowd. These were the kind of guys who would pick a fight with someone just for looking at them funny.
And Dieteman was friends with Jeff Hausner long before he ever knew the younger brother, Dale. Dieteman said he and Jeff would sometimes pick fights with random people on the street just for kicks.
That string of violence for fun became its own monster, authorities now say. It turned into stabbings, shootings and murder, leaving eight people dead and numerous others wounded, and Dieteman said both Hausner brothers talked about being involved with the killings.
Dale Hausner continues to insist he was never involved with violence or crime. Jeff Hausner has been convicted of one stabbing and charged with another, though he has not been charged with any shootings. Dieteman pleaded guilty to two murders and a charge of conspiracy to commit murder.