'Serial Shooter' suspect launches defense

A defense attorney for a man accused in a notorious string of shootings across metropolitan Phoenix described a key prosecution witness as the real killer who was implicating his client to avoid the death penalty.

Attorney Ken Everett told jurors during his opening statement on Tuesday that his client, Dale Hausner, always has denied involvement in dozens of shootings that killed eight people and targeted 20 others.

Former Hausner roommate Samuel Dieteman confessed to two of the murders and is expected to testify against Hausner. Everett told jurors that Dieteman is the serial shooter and is pointing the finger at Hausner to avoid execution. Hausner simply had the bad luck to be his roommate, Everett said.

“He has every motive to lie,” Everett said. “He has every motive to blame my client. His testimony is his effort to shift blame to Dale and save his own life.”

Hausner's trial opened Monday with prosecutors calling him a narcissist who watched with excitement as news reports logged his alleged killings and fear spread across the Phoenix area in 2005 and 2006.

Hausner, 35, has pleaded not guilty to the 87 criminal counts, including the eight killings. Prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty if he is convicted. The trial is expected to last nine months.

Deputy County Attorney Vincent Imbordino told jurors on Monday how the series of random drive-by shootings terrorized neighborhoods from 2005 to 2006.

During Monday's session in Maricopa County Superior Court, Imbordino also told jurors that Hausner kept newspaper clippings of the shootings in a black binder. Imbordino said Hausner recorded an America's Most Wanted show about the serial attacks and bragged to Dieteman that the death toll was higher than the official police count.

But Everett said Tuesday that the locations of the shootings in metro Phoenix were closer to Dieteman's home until he moved in with Hausner in July 2006.

“The shootings follow where Sam is,” Everett said.

It was Dieteman and not Hausner, Everett said, who had access to the weapons used in the shootings. He said recorded conversations between the roommates revealed only Hausner's dark sense of humor, not a confession to the killings.

Everett also began going count by count through the charges, detailing what he said are Hausner's alibis. One of those was a Nov. 11, 2005, incident where a man was killed and two dogs were shot.

Everett said Nov. 12 is the anniversary of the death of Hausner's two young sons in a Texas car crash, and that Hausner spent the 11th and morning of the 12th with a girlfriend and couldn't have committed the shootings.

When Everett displayed pictures of the boys and the scene of the crash, Hausner held his head in his hands, wiped away tears and blew his nose.