Dale Hausner
Live from the courtroom: On the witness stand earlier this month, Serial Shooter suspect Dale Hausner used his cell phone records to try to prove he was nowhere near the sites of the Serial Shooter crimes in 2006. The records, he said, often helped show he was elsewhere in the Valley at the time of the shootings.
Today, a Phoenix police detective essentially contradicted Hausner’s claims, saying the records are inconclusive. Detective Jason Buscher said Hausner’s phone records don’t put him near the crime scenes, but they don’t exonerate him either. The only way the records could track Hausner’s cell phone would be if the phone was used at the times of the crimes. Often, there was a large gap in phone calls around those incidents.
“I can’t account for the location of the phone during those hours,” Buscher testified.
For example, the night that Robin Blasnek was murdered, Hausner’s cell phone made a call at about 10:45 p.m. While it was impossible to tell exactly where the cell phone was at the time, the cell tower nearest to Hausner’s home was the one receiving the signal. That means the call was probably made from his home.
Blasnek was shot about half an hour later at 11:17 p.m.
The cell phone was not being used at the time, nor was it used again until about 5:30 a.m. the next day. That means the shooting took place during a gap of six hours or so in which Hausner is accused of killing Blasnek. Again, Buscher said the cell phone records don’t prove whether Hausner was at the scene or away from it.
“So you don’t know if he was home at 11:17 or not?” asked defense attorney Timothy Agan.
“That is correct,” Buscher said.
Moreover, Buscher also testified that there’s no way to even know who was using the cell phone at the time of the calls. It could have been Hausner. It could have been somebody else.
In other words, for most of the incidents in 2006, the cell records provide no real proof of Hausner’s guilt or innocence.
Hausner has pleaded not guilty to 87 crimes, including eight murders, and insists he had nothing to do with the Serial Shooter killing spree.