The Horrific Acts of Michael Bruce Ross - The Roadside Strangler - Serial Killer Documentary

The Horrific Acts of Michael Bruce Ross - The Roadside Strangler - Serial Killer Documentary

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
M M.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
My fascination in Tiroka is not confined to death row
inmates by a lunchur. I have witnessed executions. By witness
Michael Ross being executed. He had an IQ of one
hundred and fifty five. He snatched girls off the street.
He was called We called him the road roadside strangler.

(00:57):
A hard nos New York journalists made a very good
comment about mac Ross. She said, if I was walking
up a dark eydywire at night and I heard footsteps
behind me and around and saw Macloss, she had only
relieved he looked on the boy next door hus chilling.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
When Michael Bruce Ross was just ten years old, one
of his many chores was strangling the weak and deformed
chickens on the family egg farm in Connecticut. As a
young boy, he cared little for the birds and was
more concerned with pleasing his parents. By the time he
was twenty one, a man later dubbed the roadside Strangler

(01:37):
had progressed to choking the life out of human victims.
The seeds of evil that would claim eight young women
were sown in a violent household where Ross's mother, who
was later admitted to a psychiatric hospital, dispensed a erratic
and frenzied punishment on her eldest child, her violent tendencies,
and a relationship with Ross's father that all was seemed

(02:00):
to be beyond repair. Dominated a farm life that was
far from idyllic.

Speaker 4 (02:06):
But you can see from Michael Ross's childhood how it
set him on the path had been so bad. He
had a horrendous childhood. He was the eldest of four children,
totally abused and beaten by his mother. He ended up
leaving home an extremely angry young man, and in addition

(02:27):
to that, he'd also been raped by an uncle as well,
so he didn't like the world at all.

Speaker 3 (02:33):
For some years, And despite the abuse at home, which
Ross later claimed not to remember, he developed a strong
work ethic. He was also intelligent, and his impressive high
school grades earned him a place at Cornell University, where
he presented as an approachable, although sometimes awkward young man
who had little trouble establishing relationships.

Speaker 4 (02:54):
So when he went out into the big wide world
at twenty two, he's tried to sort of form relationships
with girls, and he didn't have the human skills or
technique or the empathy to have any sort of meaningful
sort of human relationship with other girls.

Speaker 3 (03:11):
The explicit charm and good character was peper thin. It
was only a matter of time before his sexually charged
fantasies played out for real.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
They don't become a serial killer over night. I mean,
there's a long incubation period, you know. They start off
with petty offenses, stalking, looking through windows, touching somebody in
a telephone box, getting a kick out of it, a rape.
I think I won't do it again, and I got
away with that. I'll do it again again and get
hooked on it. Then sometimes it gets to a point
where they killed because they have to be the woman screaming,

(03:41):
putting up a fight.

Speaker 4 (03:43):
He found that as soon as a girl dumped him,
pissed him off, got rid of him, that's when he
took his anger out on a victim. Didn't matter who
the victim was, it just had to be another girl.
And he in fact rapes and murdered eight girls over
a five year period. But it was always after something

(04:04):
happened in his personal life and he wanted to take
this anger out on someone else. He saw them as
quite impersonal people. He never saw them as victims. He said,
if you'd have asked me to go on an identity parade.
Immediately after the murder. I couldn't even pick out the
face of the victim. I'm just killed, he said, But
I just needed to take it out on someone.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
Once you cross that crashold into murder and you don't
get caught, I can get all too powerful, and then
the events get closer and closer to gather until it
implodes for them. That's basically what it is. But every
serial killer is different. What makes a serial killer different? Too,
view and them, be and them. Some people are good

(04:51):
and some people are extremely evil. Most of us live
in the middle ground. If we say a deeply religious mission,
very men would be at the good end of the
sky God fairy man at the other end of the
style had the devil. And that's why those people sit

(05:12):
where in the middle they are extremes.

Speaker 3 (05:16):
There would soon be no middle ground from Michael Ross,
who felt compelled to kill and his taste for power
and control over the young women he came across would
lead to the violent murder of eight victims, seven of
them sexually assaulted either before, during, or after they were killed.

(05:36):
Although fellow Cornell University students. Zoom not too was one
of the last to be linked to Ross. She'd been
the first to die. The twenty five year old faced
the killers Evil in May nineteen eighty one, shortly after
the pair had been in the same evening class on campus.
Police initially suspected suicide when Two's body was found in

(05:57):
a creek at the bottom of a gorge near the
fraternity house where Ross lived. Family and friends were furious
with the initial assessment and refused to believe that Two
would take her own life. She was funny, happy, highly intelligent,
and had the world at her feet. Even when a
subsequent examination revealed injuries not consistent with the theory she

(06:19):
had left to her death, police found no evidence to
link the killer to the crime. It would be years
before Two's shattered family would learn the truth of her death,
But it wasn't long before Ross's criminal intent landed him
in jail. Shortly after graduating from Cornell, where he'd studied economics,
he was convicted of an assault on a teenager that

(06:41):
could have been far more serious. Police had no idea
Ross had already killed and that he would kill again.
When their intervention effectively saved the life of the sixteen
year old girl whom Ross had dragged into a local woods.
A fine and a two year probation served as no deterrent,
and set about finding more victims, killing seven more girls

(07:04):
in just three years, intimidating them, raping them, comforting them,
and then killing them.

Speaker 4 (07:13):
He would tell him, look, I'm just going to ripe you,
all right, and he would perform the act however he
did it, and then afterwards he would say he get
them to lie on their stomachs and say, look, I'm
just going to tie you up and I'm going to
walk away and leave you, so just cooperate. So he
would tie them up, and then once they were on
their stomachs looking on the ground, he'd get behind them
and he would then just grop them from behind.

Speaker 3 (07:35):
In January nineteen eighty two, Ross killed again, this time
seventeen year old Tammy Williams, who lived just a mile
from the Ross family farm, was raped and murdered. Her
body wasn't found for more than two years, leaving her
devastated parents to wonder what happened to their only child.
Less than two months after Tammy Williams went missing, Paula

(07:57):
Pereira's body was found by the roadside in north of
New York City. The sixteen year old high school student
had been missing for two weeks after hitching a ride
to a vocational cooking class. It wasn't unusual for Perreerra
to hitch rides with strangers against the advice of her friends,
but this ride with Michael Ross would be her last.

(08:19):
In June nineteen eighty two, Deborah Smith Taylor disappeared after
an argument with her husband. Their car had run out
of fuel, and rather than stay together as they set
out to find a service station, they went in different directions.
It was a decision that would cost Smith Taylor her life,
as Ross took his fourth victim. Mischievous teenager Robin Stavinsky

(08:42):
was the next to die at the killer's hand. A
successful track and field athlete at school, the nineteen year
old was said to be strong and muscular. She went
missing in November nineteen eighty three. Although family and friends
found it hard to believe, Ross had overpowered, rape and
murdered Stavinski. On Thanksgiving Day nineteen eighty three, Stevinski's mother,

(09:06):
Joan had the heartbreaking task of identifying her daughter at
a moor The depths of depravity that Ross had trawled
in killing his first five victims would be surpassed by
the murder of April Brunei and Leslie Shelley, as close
as sisters. The best friends had been to the movies
and were hitchhiking home when Ross offered them a ride.

(09:27):
Instead of taking them to their anxious parents, Ross drove
them to a deserted road at Preston and began his assault.
He forced Shelley into the boot of his car so
she couldn't escape, before turning his attention to Brunei. In
his confession, Ross claimed Brunet used a small name as
she desperately trying to defend herself while Shelley shouted words

(09:49):
of comfort to her friend. Brunet was brutally raped and
then strangled to death before Ross returned to the car
for Shelley. Ross later said he had considered Shelley to
been brave, so he decided not to rape her, but
instead killing her choking her to death. That way he
could avoid the possibility of Shelley identifying her assailant. It

(10:12):
was April nineteen eighty four, and April Brunet and Leslie
Shelley were just fourteen years old.

Speaker 4 (10:20):
He wasn't haunted by any of his victims other than
the youngest one, the fourteen year old one. For some reason,
that one, he said, played on his mind, but the
rest of them he had no effect on him whatsoever.
So he killed these innocent girls, raped them, garrotted them,
and had no impact on his mind at all.

Speaker 3 (10:38):
Wendy Berrebould would become Michael Ross's final victim. The seventeen
year old's body found under a pile of rocks on
the side of the road in Griswold, Connecticut in June
nineteen eighty four. She had left a note to her
parents to tell them she was walking to a local shop,
but never returned this time. During their investigation, police reat

(11:00):
received a tip off that a man had been sitting
in a blue Toyota car close to where Beererbolt had
been found. Ross owned a car matching the description, and
since his house was in the vicinity of the murders,
he was one of the first suspects police visited. The
game was up. Some serial killers deny their guilt, leaving

(11:20):
the detail of their murders to be unpicked by police
and their forensic teams. Others can't wait to tell more,
driven by ego and the same power that had compelled
them to kill. Michael Ross's immediate admission to several murders
was only part of the story. Prompted by criminologist Christopher
Barry Dee, he spilled the final chapters with alarming candor,

(11:44):
allowing police to uncover the extent of his serial killing.

Speaker 2 (11:47):
He sat in front of me, and I had two
unsold homicides that I wanted to clear up with him,
and I wanted from him information that only the police
and nobody else knew. And we'd formed a good relationship,
if you like, through correspondence and a previous visit. People say, why,

(12:09):
you must be terrified, You must be scared, you must
frighten you. But it doesn't because I am as cold
as ice when I'm with them. They can tell me anything,
they can shout, they can scream, but they can't touch me.
They won't touch me because they only killed the vulnerable people.

(12:32):
And if you show any emotion whatsoever when you're interviewing
these people, you become weak in their eyes. And it
is that control. It's knowing that they psychopaths. They can

(12:54):
lie and cheat and lie and cheat, But I'm already
inside their heads and manipulate them. I have no fear
at all. He knew that I was compassionate towards him.
In other words, I made sure that he had Coca cola,
and I made sure his cuffs were taken off behind
his back, and he was unshackled, and we were talking

(13:16):
and talking, and I could see him manipulating. He was
boasting about his murders, how long it took to strangle
a girl, that sometimes there were multiple bruises around the
next because they wriggle around on the floor. Then he
lets it off because he can't come and he needs
to build his sexual pressure up again. And I looked
at him and I didn't even blink, and I said

(13:37):
to him, Michael, you're not a big hitter six seven,
what's that. You're not a ted Bundy. You're not a
kind of beanky, a small fry little guy. And he
looked stunned. I said, I said, you've only got five
and he suddenly said, no, I've done seven. I said, no,

(13:58):
I've He said I've done seven. And I have to
worry about entrapment. You understand me, And he said, I
killed Zum NUK two and Paula Peira. I said he didn't,
and I said, tell me about zoom Up too. He said,
I threw over a dam into the river, he said

(14:18):
at Cornell University. He said, I didn't kill her. He
said that she drowned, and then asked him about Paula Pereira.
And I had all the crime scene photographs, everything, the maps, everything,
So I led across to him and I said, Michael,
with Paula, what did you do with the body? He said,

(14:40):
I dumped her buy a willow tree near a little
stream by a pull off off the road. I said,
what was she wearing? He said, and he told me
a school uniform? I said, what did you do with
the body? Then, Michael, he said, I treated it like
so much trash, like garbage. I'd used a abused and

(15:01):
walked away. I've got my confessions. The police, armed with that,
and armed with the transcripts and the film tapes of that,
went back to interview him, and he was subsequently charged
with another two homicides. And I had letters of commendation
from the New York State Police and the Crystal Run Police,

(15:24):
and letters of thanks from the parents for putting their
minds at rest, but that's what happens when you get
involved with somebody like Arkle Ross.

Speaker 3 (15:39):
In July nineteen eighty seven, Michael Ross received six separate
death sentences for killing Wendy Berreboult, Robin Stavinski, Leslie Shelley,
and April Brunei. In July nineteen ninety four, following years
of legal argument, the death sentences were overturned because a
judge had incorrectly he excluded a letter from a psychiatric report.

(16:03):
Four years later, Ross gave up his fight against his
death sentences. He claimed to have felt guilt and in prison,
found God and worked as a Braille translator in the
hope of redemption. Some saw him as a reformed character,
including Susan Powers, who was engaged to the killer but
broke up with him two years before he was put

(16:23):
to death. On May thirteen, two thousand and five, Michael Ross,
a sadistic rapist who had killed his victims to cover
his tracks, was administered a lethal injection at Osborne Correctional
Institution in somers Connecticut, watched by the family of some
of those he had murdered. The roadside strangler was dead

(16:54):
in the dry, hot summer of two thousand and five,
the desert city of Phoenix, Arizona, was facing an unprecedented
number of gruesome homicides. Serial shooters Dale Hausner and Samuel
Dietman were fine for airtime against the brutal baseline killer
in the most heinous possible way, randomly shooting dead people

(17:17):
on the street.

Speaker 5 (17:19):
I was a public information officer and the same time
we had two cases come up, a series of crimes
that were distinctly separate but apparently serial cases. One of
them was the serial shooter case, which started out with
a number of animals being shot and turned into the

(17:39):
number of people being shot and a number of homicides,
and the other one was the baseline killer case.

Speaker 3 (17:45):
Instigator Dale Hausner was determined to make headlines.

Speaker 5 (17:48):
The serial shooters kept track. They would follow the baseline
killer case as well as their own case and the
numbers of people that were murdered.

Speaker 6 (17:57):
I thinks he's notorious. He was on the news. It
was almost like, well, this serial killer got the press tonight,
we better go out and do something so we get
the press back on us, you know, the notoriety on us.

Speaker 3 (18:13):
He was.

Speaker 6 (18:13):
He was all about himself and being in the limelight,
as so many serial killers are.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
Yeah, and that's not unusual. Again, this is all about
damage and control and fear and anarchy, and that's what
these two did on a on a daily or weekly basis.
That was there. That's what you have when you have
serial murder. You have people that want to cause as
much damage, as much fear in a community as they can,
and that's exactly what they did.

Speaker 3 (18:39):
Detective Clerk Schwartzkoff was the lead investigator in the serial
shooter case.

Speaker 1 (18:45):
It's not unusual for thrill killers to cause as much
havoc and damage as they want to or as they can.
They when you're a when you're a serial murderer and
you you target humans, you do it because you want
to inflict pain on the human. If you want to
inflict pain on humans, what's the one way that you
can do it without shooting a humanis that's shooting their animal.

(19:06):
People are very attacked attracted to animals, and you can
cause a lot of carnage and you can cause a
lot of heartache to the owner of that animal when
you got it down.

Speaker 3 (19:14):
When Phoenix police realized they were dealing with two sets
of serial killers, the urgency to identify and capture the
killers plaguing the city was palpable.

Speaker 6 (19:24):
It was a shock to the police department because it
was something that the police department had to face not
only with trying to solve this, but manpower to get
enough people to cover certain areas so that they could
try to catch this person, deal with the public, to
satisfy their needs, and to calm the public down. It

(19:47):
was quite a task for them, something that I don't
think they've ever been faced with before.

Speaker 1 (19:52):
And you're talking about fourteen months of chaos and havoc
and fear in a public. So the longer the serious
on obviously, the more pressure it became. Our story gained
more interest in the summer of two thousand and six
based on them stepping up their activity when the baseline

(20:13):
killer fell off, So ours became more and more pressure
towards the end of the case the last two months
than it was in the first twelve months.

Speaker 5 (20:21):
It takes a very strong toll on you, especially when
you're working on two hundred and twenty hours a week
trying to balance all those things. But what you have
to keep doing is just you have to keep pushing forward.
The goal is to get a resolution to make an
arrest and stop the crimes. So you just have to
keep looking towards that goal and not letting things that

(20:42):
come up detract from that.

Speaker 3 (20:45):
Dale Sean Housner was born in Nebraska in February nineteen
seventy three. The youngest of five boys. Housner grew up
with a tough, disciplinarian father, a school dropout. Malicious behavior
came early to Dale.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
He was a bad seed from the very beginning. He
is a psychopath. At age eight, he sat as long
on fire. When he was seventeen, and I'll go through
the progression of how bad he really was. He was
a master thief from about age ten. At seventeen, he

(21:24):
went to purchase a vehicle and tried to negotiate a
lower price on the vehicle, and then the owner said no,
and Dale came back later and arson the vehicle, blew
it up basically and started on fire. At about age eighteen,
he went to work at a Walgreens and began to
embezzle products from the store to fund his whatever it was,

(21:51):
whatever was he was doing, he was completely antisocial. Dale was,
like I said, born bad.

Speaker 3 (21:57):
Samuel John Deetman was born in October nineteen seven and
raised in Minnesota. He married his high school girlfriend, fathering
a child with her, but they later divorced. Deetman developed
a criminal record that spanned forgery, disorderly behavior, drunken driving,
and shoplifting. By the time Deeton was arrested in two

(22:18):
thousand and six, he'd already notched up thirty seven encounters
with the police across two states. Tracy Wittenberger's brother, Ron Horton,
knew Deatman.

Speaker 7 (22:29):
He lived with my brother for a short time and
he wasn't a bad guy at that point. I think
he was just down on his luck and ended up
getting in with the wrong people. He didn't have a job,
he didn't he didn't have anything. So this person was
taking care of him and I think that kind of

(22:50):
led him into this path. He was doing what he
was told for a place to stay in food to eat,
and drugs and beer and not beer but liquor. He
was just kind of following Dale.

Speaker 1 (23:07):
Sam became kind of a sociopath where he was actually
put in different situations because of a social upbringing and
who was associated with. That's how he became dangerous. Dale
in their hand, was just a bad bad person for
the very get go.

Speaker 3 (23:21):
The torment of drive by shootings had continued for over
twelve months, but with the shooters leaving few clues and
no eye witnesses, police had little to go on, so
they continued to ask the public for help.

Speaker 1 (23:35):
Well, you you want to solve them as quickly as
possible because you don't want more you don't want more
people hurt. But the problem was we just didn't have
any information. We had no witnesses, no one that it
could identify anybody one shot fired, very little information on vehicles.
So we're basically grasping the dark. These guys are operating
as ghosts at late at night, I mean your typical stocking,

(24:00):
predatory type of violence, and we were struggling to try
to get any information, any intel we could, any tip
that we could to give us some kind of direction
to go.

Speaker 5 (24:09):
The more information the public has, even if there's no
solution yet, the more they know, the more they're aware
that the police department is willing to share with them,
the better it is in terms of the public remaining
peaceful and vigilant and calling it.

Speaker 3 (24:25):
Because there's a.

Speaker 5 (24:26):
Great dependency to get tips from the public.

Speaker 6 (24:29):
There was a key witness that came forward. Where we
were putting tips out or asking for the public's help
all the time and telling people to be vigilant and
call in with any suspicious activity, and boy, we got
thousands of calls, but we did get one call from
a gentleman who said that he thought he knew who

(24:50):
was killing these people, and that was Ron Horton.

Speaker 3 (24:54):
Horton was perhaps one of the most unlikely people to
call police with a tip off.

Speaker 7 (24:59):
My brother on the outside was rough, tough, biker kind
of guy, but he was very generous and kind. I
know it was very difficult for him to do what
he did to turn Sam and Dale in because he

(25:21):
considered it snitching and bikers don't do that, so I
know that that was difficult for him, but he felt
he knew he was doing the right thing.

Speaker 6 (25:31):
I had a ton of respect for Ron and still
due to this day and his family. And Ron was
the type of guy that hung out with some rugged,
rough people who wouldn't talk to the police if their
life depended on it. But yet Ron, knowing what he
knew and knowing people were getting killed, came forward. I

(25:53):
was fortunate enough to be able to talk to Ron
when that tip came in, and I interviewed Ron about
what happened over the phone, and then I met with
him later on in the day.

Speaker 3 (26:04):
Ron Horton's information was key to leading the police to
the identity and whereabouts of the serial shooters.

Speaker 6 (26:10):
Ron new specifics about the case that the public didn't
know about, and he learned that from Sammy, particularly using
a shotgun, a four to ten shotgun. Nobody knew that.
So when Ron told us that, we knew we had
something good there. Ron's story was he hung out at

(26:33):
a bar with a bunch of his friends, played pool
all the time, and he was talking to this friend
of his name sam and one night while they were drinking,
sam just asked him if he knew what it was
like to kill anybody. And Ron thought, now, that's just

(26:54):
drink talking going on, and kind of pushed his side.
But then Sammy kept pushing the issue, even started telling
him about shooting somebody. So Ron thought, well, there's more
to this. I know what's going on in the news.
I better tell somebody about it. And he did. He
came forward and told the police and told me his story.

Speaker 3 (27:17):
Police already knew who Samuel Deeatman was he'd been named
as a person of interest for an arson attack on
a Walmart store. Following Ron's revelation, Sam immediately became a
person of interest in the serial shooter case.

Speaker 6 (27:33):
Well, I convinced Ron to obviously try to make contact
and stay in contact with Sammy, try to meet for
beers and whatever so we can get a tail on him,
so we can keep an eye on him, and not
only that, to see who he's hanging around with and
where he's living. He wasn't worried, and even if he was,

(27:54):
he was able. He was willing to take that.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
On.

Speaker 6 (27:58):
If somebody was to throw numb or come after him,
he was ready for that. He still felt in his
mind that he wanted to do the right thing and
this killing spray.

Speaker 3 (28:09):
The investigation team wanted Ron and Sam to meet again quickly.
Sam would likely reveal more leads to Ron, enabling police
to make an arrest. But getting Sam to meet Ron
again wasn't so simple.

Speaker 6 (28:22):
The first night we were able to identify Sammy through Ron,
he was trying to arrange a meeting with Sammy that
night and so we could get our surveillance going that night. Well,
it turned out. Sammy did not want to have anything
to do with Ron. During the night. He seemed preoccupied.

(28:44):
They were texting each other back and forth, and Sammy
just wouldn't cooperate with Ron that night. I come to
find out that's because they were out hunting a victim
and they found one, the young girl in Mace Arizona,
And we found out that. And Ron found out that
night and was just devastated that he couldn't convince him.

Speaker 7 (29:09):
I know he took that last. I believe it was
like a twenty one or twenty two year old girl.
He took that one really hard. He felt that had
he done something sooner or pushed sam to meet with
them sooner, that he could have prevented that one, so
that one really ate at him.

Speaker 3 (29:28):
The following night, sam accepted Ron's invitation to meet for
a beer. The police were ready in waiting.

Speaker 6 (29:36):
When the meeting time happened, Our vehicle that we knew
we were looking for pulled into the parking lot with
Sammy and it being driven by who we later found
out to be Dale. And that was the vehicle that
we knew they were driving when they were doing these primes.

Speaker 1 (29:50):
The reason we knew and the reason I knew it
was I was sitting in the bar parking lot waiting
for Sam to show up, and I saw the vehicle
roll in. And at that point the investigation, we'd had
a pretty good des description from one of the victims
that I recognized the vehicle meeting, and I knew it
was our two guys. We were able to get the
license plate to the vehicle, a description of the vehicle,
and then we had surveillance. Shudents followed Dale after he
dropped Sam off at the bar. When we followed Dale Hausner,

(30:13):
he went looping around the city and took a route
which he should have never taken, which was down Van
Buren Street. He was surveiling Van Buren Street. It was
a killing street for him in our city. There had
already been six shootings on that seat on that street alone.
So when I followed him down the street, I knew
that he was surveillant. I also knew that we were
on the right track of the right person.

Speaker 6 (30:32):
We kept a tail on him the whole night, and
he led us to where they were living. Sammy, on
the other hand, stayed at the bar with Ron. They drank.
They moved to another bar, did a little bit more
drinking and then comes to find out that Ron took
him to a casino and that's where he left him.

Speaker 3 (30:58):
The police had to tread to find between gathering evidence
and intervening to prevent a kill while retaining their cover.

Speaker 1 (31:06):
It was the worst night of my life as a
as a police detective or officer. This is where I
got really, really, really scary. We knew that they shot
from their car, and we knew that there was two
of them, or at least I knew that Sam was
seen taking something from the trunk of the vehicle and
placing it inside the vehicle, which was a bag, And
of course we first thing that we thought of, okay,

(31:28):
that's the gun. That's the gun they're going to be using. So,
with multiple people, multiple surveillance, we watched them troll the
seat the streets of Southeast Phoenix, Chandler Gilbert in circles,
slowing down looking for pedestrians, watching people on bicycles, doing

(31:50):
counter surveillance of people, looking to see if anybody was
following them. And for two and a half hours, they
trolled those streets looking for someone to shoot, and we
could tell based on their actions a lie with plane
overhead watching them. Ten surveillance units continually rolling around. Then
we knew that they were out there actually looking for victims.
They actually rolled up on two kids on a bicycle,

(32:11):
slowed down, but we had units right on top of
them going both ways, and a guy right on their bumper,
and they failed to shoot. Sam later told me that
they were going to shoot, but they did. The coast
wasn't clear.

Speaker 6 (32:23):
After they started cruising the streets looking for a victim,
they were pretty confident they found one that they were
intending on assaulting, but we shoot those people out of
the area. That person out of the area, and then
it started raining, so they just drove home back to
the apartment.

Speaker 3 (32:41):
By the time Dale and Sam returned home, undercover police
had wire tapped their apartment.

Speaker 6 (32:47):
We were able to listen to them and they were
chatting quite a bit. They were bragging. They were comparing
themselves to the DC sniper that was going on that
had just occurred in Washington, d C. And they're pretty
proud of what they were doing.

Speaker 1 (33:05):
For about seven hours that evening, they would switch channels
on their TV to every news station that was covering
any information about the serial shooter case. And we were
monitoring the same stations that they were watching and flipping to.
Then that night for the very first time, and Sam
admitted this as it goes, It was the best night
for you guys to tap our conversations because they went

(33:25):
through numerous shootings that they had been involved in, laughing,
yucking it up, talking about individuals who'd been shot, individuals
who went down, individuals who'd been screaming, individuals that they
actually actually on one of the one of the shootings,
actually went out and contacted the victim. They talked about that.
They made fun of Robin Blasnick, who was the last

(33:46):
murder victim, oh, I know, making fun of her name.
They called her blast Neck, which referred to the shooting
over the show. So they went through numerous cases and
laid them out for us, and that was all we needed.

Speaker 6 (34:05):
The wire tap was crazy, you know, before when we
first got the wire tap on and Dale had a daughter,
a little daughter, and this just killed us to listen
to was before they when they put their daughter to bed,
Dale told the daughter to tell Sammy not to kill

(34:26):
anybody tonight, and she repeated.

Speaker 5 (34:29):
It in the morning. They don't kill anybody, They don't
kill anybody, you know.

Speaker 6 (34:46):
To hear a little kid say that and her baby
talk was just gotcha.

Speaker 3 (34:53):
Over the next few days, the investigation team patiently listened
and watched Dale and Sam, accruing little pieces of evidence
that would later help to convict the pair.

Speaker 1 (35:03):
Sam had emptied a garbage full of trash throat and
a trash bin. One of our undercover units had seized it,
brought it down to me, and inside it we found
some very incriminating evidence. A piece of paper with the
victim's name on it, a shotgunshell of the exact same
caliber and cartridge that was used on our last victim.

(35:27):
We were able to get newspaper clippings from this garbage
on days of the murder, so it was any map
which actually pinpointed locations where they'd actually shot people. It
was a treasure trove.

Speaker 3 (35:42):
Within nine days of Ron Horton's telephone call to the
Phoenix police, the Swamp Team stormed Dale's apartment and arrested him.
In Sam, the serial shooter. Scourge of Phoenix was over.

Speaker 1 (35:55):
It seems like it was just yesterday when we were
so tired, and we'd been up when we made the rest.
Most of us been up for like fifty four straight hours.
We hadn't slept. You know, we were uncapped. You know,
we were just done. We were at our ends rope.
And I look back at that and I go, I don't.
I wonder somehow how we survived, how we really function
how we were able to put it all together in

(36:17):
such a very short period of time, a fourteen month
crimes free of serial shootings within a nine day period.
Dale had told me that he thought it was some
kind of drug sting because he was a heavy methem
femine user. Both he and Sam were, and they used
drugs constantly when they went out and shot people. I
think that was where Sam got the courage. I think
it fueled Dale's passion for the thrill killing.

Speaker 3 (36:39):
The investigators were confident they had the serial shooters in custody,
but they didn't want to get the hopes up of
the families devastated Mike the killer's crimes. After all, police
still had no eye witnesses to the murders, and getting
a conviction would be another major hurdle.

Speaker 1 (36:56):
It was a tough case to prove. It was when
you don't have witnesses and you have little evidence, and
most of the stuff that you have is tough to
try to prove in court. The question was whether what
jury would be able to look at this and figured
out based on just small pieces of evidence wasn't enough
to convict both of them of eight murders and twenty

(37:19):
seven other human shootings and then fifteen other animal shootings.

Speaker 3 (37:24):
Schwartzkoff interviewed both suspects extensively. At first, he thought Sam
was the ringleader. That impression soon changed when he interrogated Dale.

Speaker 1 (37:33):
Well, I just sat and let Dale talk. I let
him explain, you know, his life, and I would and
he went in. He was the one that broached the series,
and I just let him talk about it. He was
laughing at police, how stupid we were, how you couldn't
find somebody. How come we couldn't set up, you know,
people on corners to catch these guys. So he just

(37:56):
and I let him just continue to hang himself as
he continued to tell us and tell me how ridiculously
dumb investigators are when we are dealing with this, Why
couldn't we catch these guys? And then he proceeded to
lay out his guns, what he had, his ammunition, how
he knew Sam where he met Sam, how Sam came
into his life, everything that I would need to just

(38:18):
basically come back and say, well, what about this, this
and this? What about the map? I found the garbage?

Speaker 3 (38:23):
What is so?

Speaker 1 (38:23):
I don't know what that is? Well, what about the
shotgun shelts in your guardage? I don't know what that is?
What's this name on this? Why is this victim's name
written down? Why do you have obituaries of people that
have been murdered? So once he realized that the game
was up, then he kind of shut down. But for
five hours, I said in this, I said, and let
him tell us how stupid we were.

Speaker 6 (38:44):
Dale came across as You're never going to catch me.
I'm too good and too great at what I do
to catch me, and really arrogant. Sammy, on the other hand,
was somebody that seemed like a follower and would do
anything for somebody that's trying to lead him to do

(39:04):
bad things, and he was more of the pretty passive
and apologetic and pretty calm of the two.

Speaker 1 (39:14):
Sam Deetman turned state's evidence for us, so he gave
me everything in numerous interviews about how they would plan
their attacks, what they would do, what they did to
finance their operations, how they got their money, how they
got their drugs, how they picked their targets. Everything.

Speaker 3 (39:34):
Sam's confession was a thrilling development for the investigation team.
In contrast, news of their star witness, Ron Horton was grave.

Speaker 8 (39:43):
He became ill right after that. So he wasn't alive
during the trial at all, because I remember the detectives
coming to the hospital to see him because at that
point they were concerned about the whole case being gone.
But so, yeah, and he passed away probably what within

(40:05):
a few weeks, right, I think it was just pretty close.

Speaker 7 (40:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (40:09):
I was there the day, just pretty much the day
he died in the hospital. I remember going and seeing him,
and I know he even though he was in a coma.
I went into the room by myself and I grabbed
his hand and I said, Ron, you're great. I told
him I loved him, and he squeezed my hand.

Speaker 3 (40:30):
In March two thousand and nine, Dale Hausner was convicted
of eighty counts of attempted homicide, drive by shooting, and
cruelty to animals. He received the death penalty. Four years later,
he committed suicide. Samuel Dietman was convicted of two homicides
and conspiracy to commit homicide and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Speaker 5 (40:56):
You know, I never had the sense that it was joyful.
I had the most the sense was a relief. I
was relieved for those suffering families and loved ones who
needed to begin to be able to work through their grief.
I was relief for the investigators who just poured themselves
out endlessly. And it was more of relief.

Speaker 3 (41:19):
After Deatman was sentenced. Tracy Wittenberger corresponded with Samuel Dietman
while he was in prison.

Speaker 7 (41:26):
Did give me some closure. I did ask him how
he felt about Ron, knowing that he was the one
that turned him in, and he was grateful. He said
Ron was a good friend and.

Speaker 3 (41:37):
He was glad it happened.

Speaker 7 (41:41):
He wasn't angry at him. And you know that gave
me some peace too, Not that it mattered what he thought,
but it helped me. Detective Darryl Smith has kept in
touch with my mother ever since. I mean it's been
what nine ten years now, and he still calls her

(42:04):
on my brother's death.

Speaker 8 (42:06):
You know, it was a tragedy, I mean horrible, but yeah,
I think sometimes too, when these horrible things happen, it
does bring people closer together, like our family