Heat City

Laura Reckart

Live from the courtroom: Maricopa County prosecutor Laura Reckart began her closing presentation this morning with a stark quote by Serial Shooter suspect Dale Hausner: “I love shooting people in the back. It’s so much fun.”

The quote was picked up by microphones secretly planted in Hausner’s Mesa apartment hours before his arrest. Hausner has said it was just a sick joke. Authorities had another theory.

“With those words, this case turned from a whodunit to a he-did-it,” Reckart said this morning as she turned and pointed at Hausner.

Piece by piece, Reckart has been laying out all the evidence for the jury, connecting the dots between the DNA, the shell casings, the secret recordings and other bits of the case. “It is not happenstance nor is it coincidence,” Reckart has repeated numerous times.

Clark Schwartzkopf

Two final witnesses testified today in the marathon trial of Serial Shooter suspect Dale Hausner, bringing the possibility of a verdict just days away. Lead investigator Clark Schwartzkopf, a Phoenix police detective, gave the final bit of testimony to wrap up loose ends with the state’s 87-count criminal case against the suspected serial killer. His testimony followed that of fellow Phoenix detective Jason Buscher, who talked about how Hausner’s cell phone records fit in with the case. The testimony from both men was neither spectacular nor ceremonial, providing a muted end to a lengthy trial. 

Hausner himself was back in the courtroom after having sat out the past two days of testimony from witnesses who said things that damaged both his defense and him personally. He sat still and quite during most of the day, and could be seen taking notes and whispering with his attorneys throughout the testimony.

On Tuesday morning, closing arguments begin with Maricpa County prosecutors taking the full day to summarize their entire five-month case for the jury. After that, the defense has been scheduled for a day of closings, and the prosecution will get an extra half-day on Thursday. If all goes according to plan, the jury could get the chance to decide Hausner’s guilt or innocence as early as lunchtime on Thursday.

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.

Prosecutor Vince Imbordino (far right) questions Serial Shooter suspect Dale Hausner (left) during the ongoing 87-count criminal trial in Maricopa County Superior Court. Photo by Julio Jimenez

The trial against Serial Shooter suspect Dale Hausner began nearly half a year ago in a downtown Phoenix courtroom with hundreds of people being screened for jury duty. Come next week, just 12 from that original pool will have the chance to decide whether authorities got the right man for the 87 crimes that took place over a 14-month period, a spree that left eight people dead and some 17 others wounded.

Closing arguments are scheduled to begin — and end — this week following five months of testimony in the murder trial. The prosecution dominated most of that time, with a parade of victims, witnesses, investigators and Hausner’s supposed accomplice, Samuel Dieteman, testifying about the crime spree.