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Phoenix Authorities Hold Press Conference on Capture of Serial Shooters

Aired August 04, 2006 - 13:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone.
I'm Kyra Phillips live at the CNN world headquarters in Atlanta.

Will U.S. troops soon be helping the Lebanese military?

CNN's Pentagon correspondent, Barbara Starr, is breaking the story.

An arrest after a summer of fear in Phoenix. The case of the so- called Serial Shooter possibly solved. But another killer is on the loose. Details live this hour.

And only on CNN -- behind the mystery of Fidel Castro. His daughter tells me about his health, life with dad and the sordid family secrets.

LIVE FROM starts right now.

Straight to that news conference regarding the so-called Serial Shooter and the search for another.

Let's listen in.

CHIEF JACK HARRIS, PHOENIX POLICE: ... investigators cast a wide net over a vast array of shooting cases that included homicides, aggravated assaults and animals as victims. This wide net was alternately expanded and narrowed as police investigators and criminalists tirelessly examined volumes of cases, evidence and methods of operation.

Investigators began to create a matrix of possibly related cases. Phoenix police investigators were joined by members of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Mesa Police Department, the Scottsdale Police Department, the Taliesin Police Department, Immigrations and Customs and the Maricopa County attorney's office.

This task force of agencies has worked tirelessly for many months to try to solve these crimes, bring suspects to justice and some relief to our community.

In addition, the community in which we live has responded positively to this crisis, with literally thousands of calls to Silent Witness. The group assembled here with me, including police chiefs, special agents in charge, Mayor Gordon and council members, and others, represent the cooperative effort that has led to the arrest of two suspects we believe are responsible for these crimes.

At approximately 11:30 p.m. last night, after intense investigative follow-up to information received from the public, members of the task force arrested Dale S. Hausner and Samuel John Dietman for numerous counts of murder and aggravated assault. They are the serial shooters that this task force has been hunting.

I will now introduce Mayor Phil Gordon.

MAYOR PHIL GORDON, PHOENIX: Thank you very much, Chief.

Let me also acknowledge Vice Mayor Walters from Mesa here.

Thank you very much.

And my colleagues that have joined me from the Phoenix City Council.

Well, this morning I am a grateful mayor. What you've heard, early this morning, our police department and the task force made not one, but two arrests in the Serial Shooter case. These are the two monsters we've been hunting. And as I promised you and my colleagues promised you, we're not yet finished.

I said last week that we had turned the tables on these criminals, that the hunters had become the hunted and that Phoenix is a city on the offensive. No one should question that today.

This morning, though, my message is a very simple one.

First, I thank the Phoenix Police Department for all their dogged and relentless pursuit of these criminals and whose tireless work continues. They will not stop to let us give them the thanks they've earned. They will continue working and risking their lives for all of us.

I am so very, very grateful to all our officers and to their families, whose sacrifices are no less than heroic.

Secondly, I want to thank all the agencies represented here today that have been part of the task force that have helped our department. No egos, no jockeying for jurisdiction, just solid, professional police work. That is the evidence that has resulted in working together. The cooperation that Arizona and this valley is known for, cooperation, plainly, that doesn't happen very much throughout the rest of the country and certainly doesn't result because of an overnight coming together. It's simply because that's the way our valley law enforcement agents -- federal and county and state -- work together day in, day out, every year.

Thirdly, I also want to take this opportunity to remember the victims of these two monsters and to send our continuing thoughts and prayers out to the families and to the friends of the victims.

And, finally, I want to thank and acknowledge the people of this wonderful, wonderful community. They have not been afraid to go about and live their lives. They have not been afraid to call Silent Witness or our police department with their tips and information. They've asked every day what they can do to help, and they're doing it.

Phoenix is a great city and it's a safe city. The FBI has said that we're the third safest major city in the country and today this city, this mayor and this council extend our sincere thanks to every law enforcement individual who have made our city safer by getting these two monsters off the street.

Thank you very much.

GREG FOWLER, INTERIM POLICE CHIEF, LA MESA: Good morning.

I'm Greg Fowler.

I'm the interim police chief in La Mesa.

Today is a great day for the valley, to get us back to -- start us getting back to our normal lives, for this great city and this great metropolitan valley.

What I'd like to talk about today is the men and women of every police department and law enforcement agency that worked on this collaborative effort. The countless hours, no complaining, constantly volunteering to work more hours because of their compassion to make this a safer place to live and to put these criminals in jail.

To them I say thank you for their efforts. To their families, I say thank you to them for all the time that they lost from their loved ones because of this.

We still have work to do on another case. We will still have a collaborative effort, we will continue to work on this and this Phoenix metropolitan area will still be the best place in the country to live.

Thank you.

BILL NEWELL: Good morning.

My name is Bill Newell (ph).

I'm the special agent in charge for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

I just want to echo what Chief Fowler said. I can attest to the fact that all the men and women that you see here, all the law enforcement professionals have not gotten a lot of sleep in the last many, many months and many, many days.

ATF's participation in this investigation started several months ago, but it really came to bear when on June 8th, the two Wal-Mart fires in Glendale, Arizona, working in conjunction with the Glendale Fire Department we developed some suspects. We provided that information to the Phoenix Police Department and to the task force. We began involving ourselves, providing more analytical investigative support and the Phoenix Police Department and the Mesa Police Department and the Scottsdale Police Departments were nothing but true professionals.

I was there. I saw it. They worked hard, long hours. The community needs to know that these men and women have a vested interest in the safety of this community, as do we in ATF, our men and women. We've done everything we can to bring this to fruition and I just want to say that I'm very proud, ATF is very proud to be part of this effort. And I just want to commend everybody and let the community know that they're a little bit safer because of all the professionalism that has been exhibited by this task force.

Thank you.

ALAN RODBELL, CHIEF, SCOTTSDALE POLICE: Good morning.

I'm Alan Rodbell, Scottsdale police chief.

May 2nd, Claudia Gutierrez-Cruz was murdered at 61st and Thomas in Scottsdale. We are encouraged by this -- these arrests in hopes that we will bring some conclusion to that case and some conclusion for the families.

We're very proud of the partnership that was created to work on the cases valley wide. I've got to tell you, you've heard it several times and we keep saying it, I've lived other places and I've got to tell you, no place like the Phoenix area, the valley area, for cooperative law enforcement.

I'm very proud of the work, as well, that was done in conjunction with federal government, state government, local government, county governments in bringing this to a successful conclusion.

There is still a lot of work to be done, and that's why I say I'm encouraged that we'll be able to close our case. There is still an awful lot of work that needs to be done to tie up ends and to identify all the events that these two were involved in.

But I am very appreciative of all the hard work and partnerships done by all the agencies represented by the people behind me and all the hard work done by the men and women on the street who were either assigned to the task force or on active patrol or investigations in these matters.

Thank you.

JOHN LEWIS, FBI: Good morning ladies and gentlemen.

My name is John Lewis, special agent in charge of the FBI here.

First, I would like to commend the local law enforcement in your community. They have worked tirelessly, as you all know, over the last year, on this investigation, while continuing to serve you, providing protection and other services they are responsible for in their respective jurisdictions.

I have experience in leading major investigations while continuing to address crime problems within one's venue, I can assure you this was no easily accomplishment for the task force that gathered to address this.

What has occurred in this investigation over the past year, and particularly in the last days and weeks leading up to this announcement today, is excellence in law enforcement and excellence in cooperation. And they are all to be truly commended.

While the FBI provided some assistance in this role, let me tell you, our role was minimal compared to the dedicated effort that the local partners we work with every day put forth.

Part of our assistance was provided through the behavioral science unit in Quantico, Virginia. We had a team of agents for the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime and from the Violent Crime Apprehension Unit here meeting with the detectives gathered on this task force back in April of '06.

During this meeting, they reviewed intelligence and evidence collected by the Phoenix Police Department and others in reference to these crimes. They provided a preliminary behavioral assessment designed to establish victimology in order to provide insight as to whom the perpetrators may target and, thus, any segment of the population that might be at more of a risk and to establish or provide insight as to the possible characteristics of the offenders.

Let me conclude by simply saying that it's a privilege for us at the FBI to be associate with such a professional effort as we have here. I have not seen, in my past 30 years, any effort that is greater than the cooperation and the effort that I've seen put forth, particularly over the last several days, a truly worthwhile effort on the part of all the agencies gathered, and my hats off to them.

Thank you.

SALLY WELLS, CHIEF ASSISTANT ATTORNEY, MARICOPA COUNTY: Good morning.

I'm chief assistant for Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas. And I want also to echo our appreciation to the task force. And we were privileged to work along with some extremely professional and expert law enforcement agents to accomplish what we accomplished yesterday and tonight.

County Attorney Andrew Thomas wants to pledge to the citizens of Maricopa County that we will aggressively prosecute these defendants, that we will bring justice to the victims of these terrible crimes and that we'll bring a certain end to this reign of terror.

KEVIN ROBINSON, ASSISTANT CHIEF, PHOENIX POLICE: Good morning, everyone.

My name is Kevin Robinson, the assistant chief over our investigations division with the Phoenix Police Department.

My role this morning is I'm going to facilitate some questioning. But before we get to that point, I want to acknowledge some things. A lot has been said about the partnerships, but before we get that far, Assistant Chief Bill Lewis needs to come up front.

Bill was our -- the -- he was our commander in our -- in our Violent Crimes Bureau for the last year or so, living this entire investigation, living it and sleeping it for the last year. He has recently been promoted to assistant police chief and he has been out here with us the whole time.

A lot has been said about partnerships and I will tell you, I was a very small part of it. The real partnership is with the community. It's with the law enforcement agency. And it's with all the law enforcement agencies and the relationships that we have with this community.

Folks, we really came together on this one. I think you really needed to be there to understand how fluid, how dynamic -- you know, this thing just moved awfully quickly and everyone standing up here, all their folks and the folks to really be commended are the officers, the detectives, the sergeants, the undercovers, the lieutenants, folks who, quite honestly, have been working nonstop for an extended period of time.

When we started to focus on these individuals, we have people who haven't gone to bed since last Saturday, more than likely, because they're putting their all into this investigation.

So with that having been said, I wanted to acknowledge all those folks. They meant everything. We wouldn't have been successful without that partnership. And with that, I will try to facilitate and answer some questions or bring the folks up to answer some questions.

But there's one thing I'd like to mention. And please understand this. It's not that we want to hold information back from you. We still have another investigation ongoing. The Baseline Rapist -- there's a lot of things. Obviously, we're going to continue with that investigation. But this current investigation, while these individuals are being interviewed, while we are confident that they are the individuals responsible for the shootings -- they will be charged -- we need to follow-up on that investigation. There's still a lot of work for us to do.

So we want to be careful about what questions we can answer so as not to make the job any more difficult for the investigators who have been putting their all into this.

PHILLIPS: Talk about pulling out all of the stops, live from Phoenix, Arizona, basically every police chief in Arizona speaking at this news conference.

Let's listen one more time about the second investigation going on.

ROBINSON: ... the litany of information from all over the place -- the community, the thousands of calls that have come in, the work in relationship with all of the law enforcement agencies putting all the information together.

We started moving in that direction once we had these individuals identified and from that point on, we kept building the case, building the case, continuing all of our other efforts, not to put all of our eggs in one basket, so to speak, but we just kept moving forward.

And we got to the point where a lot of folks standing behind me, late at night, early in the morning, were sitting around looking at what we had. We were getting even more and more confident as each day went on and recognized that these were the individuals. And from that point on we just concentrated our efforts and were able to take them into custody last evening.

QUESTION: When did you first become aware of these men?

ROBINSON: When did we first become aware of these men is the question that was asked. That -- what I -- it's hard to explain. What needs to be explained -- and, Bill, if you would please come up, because I think that there are some things that Chief Lewis can explain better than I.

It's an investigation. It's ongoing. There's a whole lot going on in these investigations. Different names come up at different times. You try to follow-up on leads. You try to find out how people are connected, what relationship may be here, what -- how is this -- you know, you just try to follow-up on all of that.

So it's been going on first time.

QUESTION: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)?

ROBINSON: It was not just calls from the public. It was the work of all the law enforcement agencies. And I'm not trying to be evasive. I need you to understand that it was coming in from a bunch of different directions. And it was the detectives following up on information saying hey, this makes sense, this looks like it belongs here, and it all starting to come together.

So it came from every different direction. It wasn't just one source. We were able to get onto these individuals from a lot of different sources.

QUESTION: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)?

ROBINSON: Yes, the question was asked, why didn't we arrest them weeks ago?

We didn't know who they were weeks ago. We were -- we were definite, we were confident as to who they were and where they were, you're -- please, don't confuse what happens on they've and the cop shows -- and I'm not being condescending to you -- what happens on cop shows and things along those lines. This is an awfully big valley. There are a lot of different folks out there.

We identified these folks Monday, late Monday evening. From that point, we continued on. But we knew about them, we had some information about them prior to that. We had to work to that point, get the information and move from there.

QUESTION: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)?

ROBINSON: The circumstances of the arrest, we -- and I say we -- and I mean Assistant Chief Lewis, myself, Sally Wells from the county attorney's office, Greg Fowler from the Mesa Police Department, Bill Newell (ph) from the Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Alan Rodbell from the Scottsdale Police Department and his folks, all of us -- and I hope I'm not forgetting anyone -- we sat around and we listened. We listened to our investigators. We walked through everything.

We sat down with our tactical teams last evening. We empowered them to make some decisions. When we knew these were the individuals that we wanted, we empowered them to make the decision as to when they could best take these individuals into custody.

We'd love to stand up here and say it was us that went out there and did it. But quite honestly, the folks who are going to do the work, the ones who are out there, who know what's going on, those are the officers, the detectives, the sergeants who are out all night long, whatever it takes, doing the job, who understand, watching the suspects, doing those types of things.

They have to be the ones that make that decision. You have to give them that power.

QUESTION: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)?

ROBINSON: How did it go down was the question.

They presented themselves. It was an opportunity for the tactical teams from the Phoenix Police Department, from the Mesa Police Department to move in and grab a hold of them. They were able to do that without any problems.

QUESTION: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)?

ROBINSON: Have we identified a motive?

Not completely. The interviews are still in process. We may not know that for a while.

Again, remember, please, as we go through this whole thing, there's a lot of information out there. We're going off in a bunch of different directions following up on information. So we may not know that for while.

Question?

QUESTION: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)? ROBINSON: Has either confessed? We're not going to get into confessions and things along those lines. Our interviews are in process. Statements have been made. We are moving forward. We are confident these are the individuals involved.

QUESTION: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)?

ROBINSON: What are their occupations and do they have family?

Yes, they have family. I'm not going to give a whole lot of information as to where they live. There is some follow-up, again that we want to do. There is some more questioning, some more people that we want to talk to in that regard.

As for employment, in the time that we have been watching them, they haven't been working or anything along those lines. And I'm not saying they aren't employed, but they haven't been working while we've been watching them.

So we'll follow -- we will follow up on that.

QUESTION: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)?

ROBINSON: Is anybody in the military?

Not that I'm aware of.

QUESTION: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)?

ROBINSON: Anybody else involved?

Not that we believe. We think we have -- we know, I say think -- we know we have the individuals involved.

QUESTION: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)?

ROBINSON: What's the relationship and did they live in Mesa?

The relationship? They were friends.

Did they both live in Mesa? Did they live in Mesa?

they've been there for a while. We're researching some information. We believe there were times when they lived in Phoenix. We're researching that. Please understand that, you know, some folks, there's not a whole lot of information on them. Not like you folks that we can, you know, you have a driver's license, you have history, there's things like that.

We're working on all of that stuff. We're trying to get to the bottom.

QUESTION: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)?

ROBINSON: I'm going to let Bill Lewis answer that question.

Thank you.

LEWIS: Well, you know I'm not going to answer with specific evidence we have at this point, because it is an ongoing investigation.

I can tell you, to reiterate what Chief Robinson said, when we first identified these two individuals earlier this week, our main goal was to develop probable cause. Probable cause for an arrest and more than probable cause so that we felt confident that we could secure a conviction.

So we have, as Chief Robinson said, we were working this thing from all different angles for the last four days, 24 hours a day, with forensic evidence, follow-up on other crimes, some witness interviews, a whole slew of different things that we were trying to accomplish to make sure we had the right guys and to start putting back into place some of these events that had occurred over the last year.

At this point, it was be premature for us to talk about any type of specific evidence that we have. But I assure you, these are the right guys.

QUESTION: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)?

LEWIS: We're not done with the interviews. We've got a lot of work to do. Like we said earlier, the hunt is over, but the work has just begun-right now. We have a tremendous amount of work to do. When you think about our job, when we have one person under arrest for one offense, how difficult that is to put a successful case together, we're talking about dozens of offenses here.

It's going to take us a long time to compile enough information to make sure that we have them tied to the offenses that we believe.

PHILLIPS: You heard the chief, the hunt is over, but the work is not over.

They've got a lot to do, as they still are looking for a Baseline Rapist, they're now calling him.

But, as we told you, two men named and in custody for these various shootings that have been taking place all throughout Phoenix, Arizona.

Coming up after the break, we're going to talk with Pat Brown, investigative criminal profiler, about this case, the success for the various chiefs there, in addition to ATF and the FBI working in Arizona to catch these guys. And we'll talk about that rapist still on the loose.

Stay with us.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Two men named and in custody now. The end of a serial shooter nightmare for people in Phoenix, Arizona.

They were arrested early this morning at an apartment complex in suburban Mesa, Arizona. The Serial Shooter is blamed for 36 shootings over the past 15 months. Six people were killed, 18 others wounded. Most of the victims were either walking or riding bikes. The shots were fired from a passing car.

So how did police zero in on these two men?

Pat Brown is an investigative criminal profiler.

She joins us now from Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Pat, good to see you.

And I just want to take a bit of that news conference that we just were able to see.

The mayor surprising us, actually, and naming the names of these two men that were arrested.

Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GORDON: These are the two monsters we've been hunting. And as I promised you and my colleagues promised you, we're not yet finished.

I said last week that we had turned the tables on these criminals, that the hunters had become the hunted and that Phoenix is a city on the offensive. No one should question that today.

CHIEF JACK HARRIS, PHOENIX POLICE: At approximately 11:30 p.m. last night, after intense investigative follow-up to information received from the public, members of the task force arrested Dale S. Hausner and Samuel John Dietman for numerous counts of murder and aggravated assault. They are the serial shooters that this task force has been hunting.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: So, Pat, previously, actually within just the past half an hour or so, we were able to show the video, but we had to pixalize their faces. And that was because I think that police weren't quite sure.

But they came out and they gave the names.

So does that mean they have their men?

PAT BROWN, INVESTIGATIVE CRIMINAL PROFILER: Well, I think they're pretty sure they have the men. I don't think they would go to this large of a press conference and be so thrilled about everything if they weren't too sure they had the right guys in custody. That would be kind of a jumping ahead of the gun-then.

PHILLIPS: Silks pretty good?

BROWN: Oh, yes.

PHILLIPS: So...

BROWN: Absolutely. I'm sure everybody in Phoenix is thrilled. My -- I have a home in Washington, D.C. I know what it was like to live through that sniper time back there and the day they arrested Muhammad and Malvo, as you say, oh my god, thank god I can go out now and breath a little bit. Except for the Baseline Rapist they've still got going down there.

PHILLIPS: And we'll talk about the Baseline Rapist in just a second.

But you even mentioned the Malvo case. There was some thinking that there was this serial shooter in Washington, D.C. We followed it. Then it turned out there were two...

BROWN: Right.

PHILLIPS: ... like in this case.

Is that usually -- well, first of all, you wonder, OK, was this a copycat type of -- type of crime spree? And is -- does -- is this usually how it works in this type of situation, from what you see and how you've been able to look at how these crimes went down? Were you surprised there were two operating together, one driving, one shooting?

BROWN: Right. Well, Kyra, you know, it's been interesting. In the past, it's been more likely to be one, because it's very hard, in a sense, for a psychopath to get good friends to hang around with.

But we are seeing a bit of a change in that. We're seeing people who have been -- many young people who are becoming disaffected together, as we're seeing all the increase in the school shootings, something we didn't have in the past either, where now we're having a couple of teens get together, stockpile the weapons and take out a bunch of schoolmates.

So I think we are seeing this on the rise, which is a little bit concerning that we have them grouping up now to take -- to terrorize a community.

PHILLIPS: You...

BROWN: And so it's surprising in one way, but not surprising in another.

PHILLIPS: And you say it's a very impersonal crime.

Tell me what you mean by that.

BROWN: Well, when you're doing a sniping type of thing, you're at a distance. And most serial killers like to be up close. They like to play god by grabbing someone in their hands and tearing the life out of them and looking in their eyes and saying ha-ha, I've got you.

And this serial snipers, on the other hand, are happy making their mark from a distance and watching their, just targets drop and running from the scene and adding up the numbers.

So it's a little bit more like a video game, shall we say, or paint ball, where you can go bang, bang, bang, take out people, but you don't really have to put your hands on the people and suffer any up close contact.

PHILLIPS: All right, so if you look at the profile of these guys and then this Baseline Rapist that the police are still looking for in the same area -- we've got a sketch up right now -- the difference between the two, some have said well, could they have all been acting together?

But from the profile perspective, two totally different things, right?

BROWN: Oh, absolutely. And they wouldn't get along at all. I mean the Baseline Rapist would think what the snipers were doing was not very interesting at all and they would think he was probably pretty sick for raping women. So, even psychopaths have their standards, shall we say?

So they're two entirely different groups of people. The Baseline Rapist is another kind of character and hopefully they'll be able to catch up with him pretty soon.

PHILLIPS: Now, the Baseline killer has been linked with sexual assault, robbery and murder.

Is it unusual for a serial killer to have all these types of crimes under his or her belt?

BROWN: In a way it is. Most serial killers tend to just focus on that one specific crime of grabbing a victim alone and raping and murdering them. That's the way they get their kicks. And in the rest of their lives they try to pretend they're good guys.

But there are the kind that I call kind of natural born killers, natural born criminals. They go from one to another and they keep increasing their violence. And this is what we've got with the Baseline Rapist.

I do want to mention something else about the public's help. It was said during the press conference at one point that the police were able to zero in because of the public's help and tips coming in. And this the way that most of the time we'll catch serial killers. You've got to have help from the public, because in all of that population you haven't got a clue. So it's the community and the police working together to bring down these kind of people.

PHILLIPS: Great point. Pat Brown, thanks a lot. BROWN: My pleasure.

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