Dieteman says shoplifting with Dale Hausner led to vandalism, arson, then murder
by Michael Kiefer - Aug. 23, 2008 12:00 AM The Arizona Republic
Samuel Dieteman says his life as a killer began with shoplifting liquor and DVDs and setting fire to trash piles, then graduated to beating transients and eventually to the late-night random murders of the "Serial Shooter" spree.
In an hour and a half of testimony in Maricopa County Superior Court on Friday, Dieteman described seven months of "random, senseless destruction" with Dale Hausner, suspected of being his accomplice, and Hausner's brother, Jeff.
Dieteman took the witness stand to testify in a hearing on whether Dale Hausner's prior bad acts could be brought into evidence in Hausner's upcoming trial.
Dieteman looked pale and tentative, dressed in jailhouse stripes; he was clean-shaven with combed hair, in contrast to his last court appearance, when he had a shaved head and goatee.
Hausner frequently shook his head no and whispered to his attorneys during Friday's testimony. Dieteman seemed not to notice.
Under cross-examination by Hausner's defense attorney, Ken Everett, Dieteman said he was ready to be sentenced to death for his crimes.
"Do you still want to die?" Everett asked him, referring to an earlier interview they'd had.
"I go back and forth, depending on the day," Dieteman answered.
Dale Hausner and Dieteman are thought to have committed eight murders and 17 other shootings in which people were wounded, and to have killed 10 animals during a 14-month spree in 2005 and 2006.
Dieteman, 32, pleaded guilty in April to two murders with no assurances that he would not be sentenced to die. Prosecutors dropped about 40 other counts against him, including four shootings. But he claims to have no involvement in Serial Shooter crimes that may have been committed before he met Hausner in 2006.
Hausner, 35, is charged with about 90 crimes, including the eight murders. He is scheduled to go on trial Sept. 3 in Judge Roland Steinle's courtroom. Jury selection is expected to last through September, and the trial may last nine months or more.
Hausner's older brother, Jeff, 41, is serving a 7 1/2-year sentence for a 2006 stabbing that police say Dale Hausner and Dieteman witnessed. Jeff and Dale are expected to stand trial involving another stabbing.
According to Dieteman's testimony, the killing spree attributed to the Serial Shooters began before Dieteman became friends with the Hausner brothers. Dieteman said he first met Jeff at a Glendale bar in October 2005 and moved into his apartment in January 2006, and the two would shoplift alcohol from supermarkets.
Jeff introduced Dieteman to Dale in April 2006, Dieteman said, and Jeff told Dale that Dieteman "was almost as adept" at shoplifting as Dale was.
Dieteman said he then went to work for Dale. Hausner, he said, would take orders from his co-workers at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, where he was a janitor, for expensive liquor, DVD movies and video games, and the two would steal 50 to 60 items per night from Wal-Mart, Target, Sam's Club and various supermarkets. Hausner would pay Dieteman half of what he made selling the merchandise.
Then, after business was done, Dieteman said, the three of them would smoke crystal meth and drink and drive around, looking for mayhem. Dieteman said he moved in with Dale Hausner in July 2006, when Jeff had to move into a smaller apartment.
Dieteman said he and Dale frequented casinos and seldom left a parking space without flattening tires of nearby vehicles; in July 2006, they were caught doing so at one casino and were told never to return. Dieteman said they lit fires in trash piles and palm trees and roamed the streets, looking for people to beat up. Both stabbings attributed to Jeff Hausner took place during those rides, Dieteman said.
"As long as I committed a crime in their presence, their trust in me went up," Dieteman said.
Once, Dieteman said, Dale Hausner shouted out the window at a woman on a sidewalk.
"Are you working?" he asked, meaning, was she a prostitute. When she told the men to leave her alone, Dieteman said, Hausner shot her in the chest with a pellet gun.
Then, Dieteman claimed, the Hausner brothers brought him into their game of shooting people and animals from car windows.
During one of their rides in May 2006, Dieteman said, Dale gave him a .410-gauge shotgun, which he used to kill Claudia Gutierrez Cruz, 20, as she walked from a bus stop on Indian School Road in Scottsdale.
Dieteman said he was surprised that the small-gauge shotgun could cause that much damage.
"The (fatal) shooting that happened before, the guy didn't seem all that injured," he said.
But Dale and Jeff Hausner already knew that the gun could kill, according to Dieteman. That night, as they sat at Jeff's kitchen table, Dieteman said, they let him in on how they had killed a transient in Phoenix who tried to keep Dale from shooting a dog.
"Mind your own business," Hausner supposedly told Nathanial Shoffner, 45.
Shoffner called Hausner a "Bill Clinton-looking (obscenity)," Dieteman said, and Hausner then tried to shoot him with a .22-caliber rifle.
When it misfired, Dale asked his brother to hand him the .410, and the brothers argued over whether it would kill a man, Dieteman said.
After the Gutierrez Cruz murder, Dieteman claimed, he tried to miss whenever it was his turn to shoot.
He pleaded guilty to Gutierrez Cruz's murder and to the July 30, 2006, murder of Robin Blasnek, 22.
Dieteman has identified Dale Hausner as the triggerman in that murder. "I was there," Dieteman said. "I did nothing to stop it."
Days later, on Aug. 3, 2006, Dieteman and Hausner were arrested at their apartment in Mesa.
Joe Arpaio-America's toughest sheriff. A short biography.
You probably know him as Americas Toughest Sheriff, a name given to him years ago by the media. Its a name he certainly has earned as head of the nations third largest Sheriffs Office which employs over 3000 people. But even before he became Sheriff in 1993, Joe Arpaio was one tough lawman. After serving in the U.S. Army from 1950 to 1953, and as a Washington, D.C., and Las Vegas, NV, police officer for almost five years, Arpaio went on to build a federal law enforcement career and a reputation for fighting crime and drug trafficking around the world.
He began his career as a federal narcotics agent, establishing a stellar record in infiltrating drug organizations from Turkey to the Middle East to Mexico, Central, and South America to cities around the U.S. His expertise and success led him to top management positions around the world with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). He concluded his remarkable 32-year federal career as head of the DEA for Arizona.
In 1992 Arpaio successfully campaigned to become the Sheriff of Maricopa County. Since then he has been reelected to an unprecedented four 4-year terms. During his tenure as Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arpaio has consistently earned extraordinarily high public approval ratings.
With over four decades experience in law enforcement, Arpaio knows what the public wants, The public is my boss, he says, so I serve the public. He has served them well by establishing several unique programs.
Arpaio has over 10,000 inmates in his jail system. In August, 1993, he started the nations largest Tent City for convicted inmates. Two thousand convicted men and women serve their sentences in a canvas incarceration compound. It is a remarkable success story that has attracted the attention of government officials, presidential candidates, and media worldwide.
Of equal success and notoriety are his chain gangs, which contribute thousands of dollars of free labor to the community. The male chain gang, and the worlds first-ever female and juvenile chain gangs, clean streets, paint over graffiti, and bury the indigent in the county cemetery.
Also impressive are the Sheriffs get tough policies. For example, he banned smoking, coffee, movies, pornographic magazines, and unrestricted TV in all jails. He has the cheapest meals in the U.S. too. The average meal costs about 15 cents, and inmates are fed only twice daily, to cut the labor costs of meal delivery. He even stopped serving them salt and pepper to save tax payers $20,000 a year.
Another program Arpaio is very wellknown for is the pink under shorts he makes all inmates wear. Years ago, when the Sheriff learned that inmates were stealing jailhouse white boxers, Arpaio had all inmate underwear dyed pink for better inventory control. The same is true for the Sheriffs handcuffs. When they started disappearing, he ordered pink handcuffs as a replacement. And later, when the Sheriff learned the calming, psychological effects of the color pinksheets, towels, socks everything inmates wear, except for the old-fashioned black and white striped uniform, were dyed pink.
Arpaio has started another controversial program, the website WWW.MCSO.org, so that all those arrested (about 300 per day) are recorded on the Sheriffs website as they are booked and processed into jail. Just under a million hits daily come into the website, making it one of the most visible law enforcement sites on the World Wide Web.
In addition to these tough measures, the Sheriff has launched rehabilitative programs like Hard Knocks High, the only accredited high school under a Sheriff in an American jail, and ALPHA, an anti-substance-abuse program that has greatly reduced recidivism.
As chief law enforcement officer for the county, Arpaio continues to reduce crime with hard-hitting enforcement methods. His deputies and detectives have solved several high-profile murder cases, including nine child murders. The posse, whose ranks have increased to 3,000 members under Arpaio, is the nations largest volunteer posse. Posse men and women help in search and rescue and other traditional police work as well as in special operations like rounding up deadbeat parents, fighting prostitution, patrolling malls during holidays, and investigating animal cruelty complaints. The posses contributions are invaluable and essentially free to taxpayers.
No wonder Sheriff Arpaio has been profiled in over 2,000 U.S. and foreign newspapers, magazines, and TV news programs. His leadership and the excellent work of his staff have catapulted the Maricopa County Sheriffs Office into the ranks of elite law enforcement agencies.
On a personal note, Sheriff Arpaio and his wife Ava have been married for over 48 years and have two children, both residing in the Phoenix area. The Arpaios have four grandchildren.
Arpaio looks forward to many more years as Sheriff of Maricopa County.
__________________
Hmm. That address doesnt look right. It looks like the link pointing here was faulty.
