Phoenix – He was always polite to friends, never rude. A lover of boxing who decorated his room with drawings of his favorite athletes. A father to a 2-year- old girl, and to two young sons who died in a tragic car accident.
To people who know him, Dale S. Hausner simply is too sweet, too timid, to have terrorized city residents in a rash of late-night shootings as police said Friday.
“He doesn’t even look like he would know which end of the (gun) barrel the bullet would come out of,” said Mary Ann Owen, a Las Vegas photographer who has known Hausner since 1999.
Hausner and his alleged accomplice, Samuel John Dieteman, have each been booked on two counts of first-degree murder and 13 counts of attempted first-degree murder in a series of attacks since May 2005.
Police arrested Hausner, 33, and Dieteman, 30, on Thursday after keeping both under tight surveillance for four days. Authorities say the two are clearly the men sought in the city’s so-called Serial Shooter case.
An unidentified person told police that Dieteman would drive through cities selecting random targets that he called “RV” – Random Recreational Violence.
Investigators later searched the Mesa apartment that the men shared, finding shotgun cartridges, shotguns and long rifles.
The two men also apparently kept close tabs on what people were saying about the shootings, which included the killings of six people.
Police searching through their trash found a map with red and blue dots representing the locations of the attacks. The bag also contained an America’s Most Wanted video and news clippings of the shootings and other attacks linked to another serial assailant dubbed the Baseline Killer.
The men are being investigated in 36 shootings, including some involving animals.
They’re also suspected of committing two arsons.
A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Aug. 14.
“We are confident these are the individuals involved,” Assistant Police Chief Kevin Robinson said.
Hausner’s daughter was in the apartment when he and Dieteman were arrested outside, police said. She was returned to her mother, police said.
Friends remembered Hausner having sad moments, recalling the loss of his sons.
“He told me he lost a whole family to a car accident,” Owen said.
According to a 1994 report in the Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram, Hausner’s sons, ages 2 and 3, drowned in a creek after a car crash.
The story said Hausner’s then- wife, Karen, was driving the car and fell asleep.
At the gated complex where Hausner and Dieteman shared an apartment, the news of Hausner’s arrest came as a shock to Jill O’Donnell.
“It makes me wonder what kind of background checks they do,” O’Donnell said.
O’Donnell, 20, said she spent a considerable amount of time chatting with Hausner, and he was always “really nice.”
Court records show that Dieteman had traffic cases against him in Arizona as early as June 2001, though it wasn’t clear whether he was living in the state at the time.
“I’m still really rattled about this,” Hausner’s brother, Randy, said Saturday.
Dieteman, he said, “was a friend of his that he’d met awhile back. I didn’t even know they were staying together. And Dale hasn’t even known him that long. They met through my other brother.”
