Closings begin: 'He did it'

By Nick R. Martin | February 24th, 2009 | 10:32 am | No Comments »


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.

Read the full story…

In wake of escape, court hires outside investigators

By Nick R. Martin | February 23rd, 2009 | 9:56 pm | 2 Comments »


Adrian Cruz

The top judge in Maricopa County has hired outside investigators to look into a security breach that allowed a convicted child rapist to escape from custody last week at a downtown Phoenix courthouse.

Convicted rapist Adrian Gonzalez Cruz escaped his shackles, a locked room and the county’s main court complex on Feb. 17 and is still on the loose. He had been sentenced to life in prison for raping and impregnating a 9-year-old girl, but was on trial for two other attacks that came to light after his arrest. Cruz simply walked out the front door of the courthouse unnoticed after slipping out of custody.

In an interview today, Maricopa County presiding Judge Barbara Rodriguez Mundell revealed she has hired a Virginia-based firm called the National Center for State Courts to look at security measures at the court complex. Though she emphasized detainee security is “solely” the job of the sheriff’s office, Mundell said she hired the investigators “because I don’t want this to happen again.”

“When I heard about the incident, we immediately called them and asked if they could send their security experts to come and assess the situation and give recommendations on how best to improve so that this doesn’t happen again,” Mundell said this morning.

Read the full story…

Last witnesses testify; closings to start Tuesday

By Nick R. Martin | February 23rd, 2009 | 9:15 pm | No Comments »


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.

Read the full story…

Detective: Cell phone records are inconclusive

By Nick R. Martin | February 23rd, 2009 | 1:33 pm | No Comments »


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.

Read the full story…

Closing arguments expected this week in Serial Shooter trial

By Nick R. Martin | February 22nd, 2009 | 7:44 pm | No Comments »



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.

Read the full story…

Deadline passes, setting Tucson Citizen on path to closure March 21

By Nick R. Martin | February 20th, 2009 | 12:19 pm | No Comments »

No buyer stepped forward to save the Tucson Citizen during the month since its parent, Gannett Co., put the 138-year-old newspaper up for sale, the paper reported today. A Feb. 19 deadline to find a buyer came and went, sending one of Arizona’s few remaining daily newspapers toward closure next month.

Last month, Gannett announced it would shut down the Citizen if it couldn’t find a buyer. The move stunned the staff, despite sharp declines in its circulation over the past decade. In a front page story today, the newspaper said plans are now in place for it to close on March 21.

Read the full story…

The escape: Photos show room where child rapist fled

By Nick R. Martin | February 19th, 2009 | 4:26 pm | No Comments »

Newly released photos show the inside of the courthouse room in downtown Phoenix where authorities say convicted child rapist Adrian Gonzalez Cruz broke from his shackles and escaped. He apparently managed to undo himself from the chains on Tuesday and walk out of the Maricopa County Superior courthouse unnoticed while his trial on unrelated charges was on a lunch break. The Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies assigned to guard him were reportedly away from the area when the escape took place. [This post has been updated with videos after the jump.]

The superior court released the above photos today, showing the inside of the room, which turns out was an interview room and not one of the heavily-fortified cells that can be found in other parts of the courthouse. Cruz is still on the loose. He was previously convicted of raping and impregnating a 9-year-old girl. Cruz’s attorney, Jeffrey Kirchler, declined to comment.

Read the full story…

Cuts coming to ABC 15, and other Ariz. media news

By Nick R. Martin | February 18th, 2009 | 10:15 pm | 2 Comments »

This has been a particularly bizarre week in Arizona media. ABC 15 is implementing deep budget cuts. The Arizona Republic is rearranging the deck chairs. And yes, it’s true: The Arizona Daily Star is suing a punk rock band.

Cuts at ABC 15

The E.W. Scripps Company, which owns KNXV-TV (Channel 15) in Phoenix, announced today it would be cutting budgets throughout the company. For many employees nationwide, it means outright pay cuts. It also means the company will stop contributing to employee 401(k) plans starting in April.

In a memo leaked on the Romenesko media blog, Scripps chief executive Rich Boehne said this: “I can assure you these decisions were not taken lightly. A comprehensive and wrenching process led us to these decisions, but we must act now to reduce costs and remain competitive.”

Read the full story…

It's official: Ariz. reporters win Polk award

By Nick R. Martin | February 17th, 2009 | 12:24 am | No Comments »

Heat City first broke the news nearly two weeks ago, but it became official Monday. Two Arizona reporters have been named winners of a 2008 George Polk Award, one of the top honors in American journalism.

Reporters Ryan Gabrielson and Paul Giblin won in the justice reporting category for a series published last year in the East Valley Tribune called “Reasonable Doubt” which showed the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office was pursing minor immigration infractions at the cost of violent crime investigations and emergency response times.

Giblin now writes for the online political news upstart, the Arizona Guardian, as does Patti Epler, who oversaw and edited the series. Gabrielson remains at the East Valley Tribune.

Read the full story…

Looking back at a Chandler cop's murder case

By Nick R. Martin | February 16th, 2009 | 2:50 pm | 8 Comments »


Dan Lovelace

In a front-page story on Sunday, the San Francisco Chronicle looked back at a 2002 case that rocked the Phoenix area after a suburban police officer was accused of murder in the on-duty shooting death of a mother of three.

The Chronicle took a close look at the trial of former Chandler police officer Dan Lovelace, acquitted in 2004 of second-degree murder, in light charges being filed against a Bay Area police officer, accused of killing an unarmed man on an Oakland train platform while on duty.

In the profile, the newspaper shows how rare it is for a police officer to be accused of what it calls “the ultimate charge.” Police kill 350 people a year nationally, but the Lovelace case was just one of six in the past 15 years — not including the Oakland case — in which prosecutors have filed murder charges. None were convicted of murder.

The newspaper scored interviews with a wide array of players in the case, including a juror who acquitted Lovelace, and former Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley, who said he brought the charge in part to send a message to law enforcement. The husband of Dawn Rae Nelson, the woman who died in the shooting, was also interviewed.

Read the full story…

« Newer stories | Older stories »