Dale Hausner
Dale Hausner tried to explain away everything today.
In more than five hours of testimony today, the Serial Shooter suspect denied time and again that he was involved in killing eight people and wounding numerous others in 2005 and 2006. But even more than that, the 35-year-old Mesa man tried to convince the jury of his innocent explanations for every piece of damning evidence Maricopa County prosecutors have presented during the past four months of his trial.
Lead defense attorney, Ken Everett, asked the questions throughout the day, but it was clear that Hausner was the man in the spotlight, following a tightly woven script with the whole world — or at least a few dozen people in a downtown Phoenix courtroom — watching his performance.
Caught on a secret audio recording talking about shooting and killing people, “It was part of my dark sense of humor,” Hausner said. “It was always just a joke.” When police watched him and his former roommate Samuel Dieteman cruising the East Valley, supposedly looking for their next victim, Hausner said they were just “wired up,” taking a sort of impromptu tour to help Dieteman look for work, and to drive by an old girlfriend’s house. The latex gloves authorities say he used to load his weapons? They were for his work. “As a photographer, you never touch somebody’s photos with your bare hands.” The .22 caliber rifle that he owned but was never found? It was broken, and he destroyed it “so that nobody could take it and shoot somebody and then leave it somewhere.”
“I still to this day have nothing to hide,” he said near the end of the day.
Hausner was dressed in a blue-gray shirt and wearing a blue-gray tie, an outfit almost military-like in the way it matched. He was remained cool headed and clear spoken, even as his own attorney asked him almost rhythmically every half-hour or so whether he had taken part in the shootings. “No, sir,” Hausner replied almost every time without deviation. “Absolutely not.”
Hausner, who turns 36 on Wednesday, also spent much of the day showing a personal side, which the jury had yet to see. He welled up with tears when talking about his two sons who died in a Texas car crash in 1994. He spoke of his family, and of his father who died in October in the middle of his trial.
But mostly, Hausner talked his long string of girlfriends; he had at least seven from 2004 to 2006 but “there could have been others,” he said. There was the school principal, the medical technician, the girls in his apartment complex, the girls in Las Vegas. Hausner had so many girlfriends, he said, that he kept a series of day planners just to keep track of them all.
Hausner will take the stand again Tuesday, and is expected to continue testifying throughout the week and into early next week.