Dale Hausner
Live from the courtroom: On the evening July 19, 2005, Dale Hausner had his heart broken by one of his girlfriends, he testified this morning. “The question was: Will you marry me?” Hausner said on the witness stand. That was the night he proposed to Marianne Lescher, a woman he had been dating for months by that point. She told him no. Hausner testified that he rushed back to a jewelery shop to return her ring the next day.
Hours after he returned the ring, authorities say he drove to to a neighborhood in west Phoenix and shot two animals, which were being kept just miles away from each other.
Some five months later, Hausner was marking the eve of the anniversary of the death of his two sons, who were killed in a car crash in 1994 in Texas. The date was Nov. 11, 2005, and Hausner said he went to his children’s cemetery in north Phoenix to lay carnations on their headstone.
That night, according to authorities, Hausner took a wild trip through Phoenix, killing a homeless man named Nathaniel Schoffner and shooting two dogs. It was one of the bloodiest nights of the Serial Shooter killing spree.
In both cases, Hausner testified that he was nowhere near the shooting scenes. Instead, he said he was spending the night with Lescher at her home in Gilbert. “I stayed the entire night,” Hausner said about both dates. He has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Schoffner and the shootings of animals, as well as the dozens of other crimes he has been charged with.
Lescher has not testified in the case, presumably because she cannot verify Hausner’s story. However, she may be called by the prosecution later this month to rebut Hausner’s testimony.