Catching Killers (2021) s02e02 Episode Script

1
Three o'clock in the morning,
I got the call.
There had been
a triple shooting that night.
Three individuals shot
in the city of Phoenix.
I went to, uh, James Hodge first.
He said, "Some son of a bitch shot me."
He had a large spray
of shotgun pellet injuries
to his entire back area.
The next person I go see
is Miguel Rodriguez.
And Miguel said
he had been walking on a sidewalk
when a vehicle drove by him and fired.
Daryl Davies took
a large shotgun blast on his left side
from a vehicle.
Daryl was upset,
and he said, "What kind of an asshole
shoots somebody who's out walking around,
minding their own business?"
And I'm looking at him, I'm like, "Yeah."
"What kind of an asshole does do
something like that?"
There was no evidence.
No witnesses.
And really no leads to go on.
What a piece of crap crime spree
to try to investigate.
- I'm Clark Schwartzkopf.
- Sorry, just a minute.
Okay.
One more time.
Okay. And you're having fun.
I'm Clark Schwartzkopf.
In 2006, I was a detective assigned
to the Violent Crimes Bureau
with the Phoenix Police Department.
I've been a street cop my entire career.
I never wanted to be in management.
To me, the the fight
was out on the streets,
and I liked being there.
Me against them.
But working this case
would be the largest challenge
I'd ever faced in my entire life.
Gonna be a bright, sunshiny day
out on the streets of Phoenix.
We're expecting a high
of about 108 degrees.
The sun was just coming up,
and I get a phone call.
There's been two more
random drive-by shotgun shootings.
I rush to the scene,
which is at a liquor store.
So, we come here and we find out
that Federic Cena
has been shot in the back.
We found a blood trail starting
from here all the way across here,
to right where that entrance is,
and then he walked across the street.
We followed it to that big white building,
which is the VA Hospital.
In this case, and in these cases,
there just was not enough information
to do anything with.
But the patrol supervisor
that was in charge of the shooting
told me that they had
a shooting last month
of a young male.
He had taken a shotgun blast
to the lower back area
and had survived.
Our research person told me that,
"Oh, by the way,
Scottsdale had a murder that same night
of a female who was shot,
uh, with a shotgun."
If these two can occur,
and we don't know anything about them,
how many other ones are out there?
One of the first ones that I found
was the murder of a young man,
shot walking along the side of the road
attempting to try
to hitchhike to Los Angeles.
And then there's this massive crime spree
that occurs almost six months earlier.
We had four individuals shot,
two dead.
The same exact MO.
Nighttime shootings,
random drive-bys.
We have a problem here.
There's a very distinct possibility
that we have somebody,
or a group of some people out there,
randomly gunning down pedestrians
on major thoroughfares
in the city of Phoenix.
And I had the job
of walking this up
the chain of command and saying,
"This is what's happening,
and we need to do something immediately."
- Here we go.
- Okay.
Okay. Yeah, no problem.
My name is Kevin Robinson, and in 2006,
I was the assistant police chief
over the investigations division
of the Phoenix Police Department.
Det. Clark Schwartzkopf
is someone I had known
for a very long time in uniform,
then as a detective.
He's a a very likable person,
very smart.
He's intense.
And Clark had come to the conclusion
that there was
a serial shooter in Phoenix.
Four people,
all killed by the same individual
or individuals for unknown reasons,
which really, you know,
makes you stand up and take notice.
I had wanted to be a police officer
ever since I was a little kid.
I saw police officers,
and I saw myself as being someone
who could keep people safe.
So, I felt extremely responsible
for not just myself and other officers,
but everyone who lived in the Valley.
July 8th, I get woken
about 1:00 a.m. in the morning.
There have been
two more random shotgun shootings.
A white female
by the name of Ashley Armenta
had been shot in the head with a shotgun.
So, the first thing I thought was,
"She's not gonna make it."
When I arrived at the hospital,
they showed me X-rays
of where she'd been hit.
Much to my surprise,
she was sitting up, in a gown
completely coherent.
She goes, "My husband and I
got into a little argument
and I stupidly left the car
and started walking."
And out of the clear blue,
she she said that
she got this funny feeling that
somebody was watching her.
It made the the hair
on the back of her neck stand up.
She feels what she described
as all these bees
stinging her in the back of the head.
And she goes,
"Oh, my God. I've been shot."
And she watches
as this vehicle just slowly takes off.
That was what scared me,
was how good they were.
How they were able to sneak up on people.
How were
they were able, calmly, to raise a gun.
It's frightening to think
that someone could do this
time, and time, and time again.
Code three. Room 836.
I say, "Can you describe the car?"
She goes, "Oh, yeah."
"Without a doubt."
It was a 2000 Toyota Camry,
light blue in color.
I now have a make and model
to the shooter's vehicle, which is huge.
Thirteen random
shootings with no apparent pattern.
It's a cause for concern citywide.
As I drove to work,
I remember getting a call
from my sister-in-law,
and you can tell that she was distraught.
She wanted to know, "Was it safe?"
Was it safe for her and for the kids?
Should they go out? Should they stay in?
Should she keep the kids home?
Should they not go to the movies?
What I wanted to say was,
"Of course, you're gonna be fine."
But the reality is I couldn't say that.
Anybody could be the victim.
Anybody at all.
I felt I have to do better.
We are going to have
to step up our efforts,
and that really meant
ramping up and activating a task force.
And if it saves one person's life,
then it's worth it.
I figured, "Okay, it's Saturday."
It was my son's birthday party that day.
I was really looking forward
to spending some quality time
with him and his friends.
And, uh, the phone call came.
It's my supervisor,
and he says,
"We are gonna put a task force together,
and you'll be in charge of it."
I remember my son standing there,
and I told him, I said,
"I'm gonna do everything I can
to get back for your birthday party."
And he kind of looked at me
and kind of just shook his head,
slumped his shoulders and walked away.
He knew that there was no way in hell
his old man was coming back that day.
I felt terrible.
But I'm gonna take a stand,
and I'm gonna do what I can
to to stop this this killing.
I get up in front of the investigators
and I begin to explain to them
why they're there.
We have a series of shootings
that are random in nature.
We have a definitive description
of our vehicle,
2000 Camry, light blue in color.
You'll be out there every night
between the hours
of 10:00 p.m. and 3:00 a.m.
That is when they hit the most.
We're gonna cast a wide net
and hope that we catch something in it.
After the briefing,
I wanted to get on the street.
I wanted to see what our shooter saw.
And what I saw was, frankly, frightening.
Pedestrians everywhere.
Dark spots
where you can easily lurk and hide.
Anyone that was by themselves
on a major thoroughfare was a target.
The best way to get away
with this type of shooting
is to have someone else with you
who can watch and look
for witnesses and/or people around.
So, there are at least two perpetrators
in these drive-by shootings.
There's no sexual motivation here.
Robbery and money is not a motive.
So, it really falls down
to thrill killing.
Flat out pure evil.
Over a week later,
I received a call
from one of our detectives.
And he had just received a phone call
with a person by the name of Ron Horton.
He said he's named a gentleman
by the name of Sammy Dieteman
as one of your possible shooters.
And for the first time
I actually kind of got excited
that we really had a solid lead.
We're in front
of the former Mexican restaurant
known as The Taste of Mexico.
And as I watched Ron
pull in the parking lot from over here
I introduced myself
and I said, "Are you Ron Horton?"
He says, "I am Ron Horton."
I said, "Okay, let's go inside, and
we'll, uh we'll share a meal,
and you can tell me why it is you believe
Samuel Dieteman is one of the shooters."
Ron said that Sam told him,
"I think I shot and killed a woman."
Sam said,
"We call it recreational violence."
"We do this recreationally."
For fun, basically. For the thrill of it.
I said, "Listen, we need to find this guy,
because I don't know where he's living."
And I said,
"Do you have his phone number?"
He said, "No, but I can get one."
And I said, "I would appreciate it
as quickly as possible."
I was feeling desperate
and and extremely frustrated.
It's another Saturday afternoon,
and we're in the office.
I'd been Clark's partner
for almost six years at that point.
Clark and I
were definitely very outspoken.
Very detail-oriented.
Uh, leave-no-stone-unturned
kind of, uh, personalities,
and therefore, uh,
we were a good match for each other.
Clark was very high-strung.
He wore his feelings
on his shoulders at all times.
He'd come over and kick my garbage can
and say, "This fucking thing!"
And this and that.
Myself and others were concerned
about his, uh his health,
and he recognized it as well.
It was a 24-hour,
seven-day-a-week nightmare
that I could never escape.
I really honestly felt
a personal responsibility
to find these people
and and to stop this madness.
Two nights later, I received a phone call.
A young white female had been shot.
When I walked up,
all her clothing
was right in this area right here.
She had her slippers
and the stuff she was wearing.
One of the Mesa Police lieutenants
came over to me and told me
that the white female had died.
Her name was Robin Blasnek.
Twenty-two years old,
completely, you know, innocent.
Gunned down for absolutely no reason.
It's a sick, sick tragedy.
I was sick to my stomach.
This is the first homicide
that's occurred under my watch.
Now the death toll is five in total.
I remember just feeling
horribly depressed.
Did I miss something? Did
Is this my fault?
And I vowed to myself at that point,
this was it.
There was there was
gonna be no more killing.
Breaking news
out of Phoenix.
No way to predict where
the Phoenix shooter will strike next.
He is definitely stalking
this desert town so far
The next morning,
I got a phone call from Ron Horton.
He had watched TV
and heard about the killing
of Robin Blasnek,
and he felt terrible.
He was blaming himself for what happened.
He said he was able to get a hold of Sam,
and they were gonna
get together and have a couple beers.
Wow, this is it.
It was a breakthrough
to be able to find Sam Dieteman.
So, I arranged an entire surveillance unit
to watch everything
that Sam Dieteman did when he arrived.
My name is Don Sherrard.
What about the other side?
At that time, I was assigned
to the Drug Enforcement Bureau
for the Phoenix Police Department,
doing drug investigations,
and we were all called in to help
with the serial shooter investigation
because of our surveillance experience.
This is what I'd been doing
for many years.
The old adage that law enforcement
is hours and hours of sheer boredom
interrupted by moments
of terrifying horror, you know.
We were on our way to the Stardust Lounge,
and we were looking
for a man named Sam Dieteman.
For our surveillance that night,
I had eight detectives assigned to me.
I had tall, I had short,
I had skinny,
I had beards, I had baldheads.
They would fit in anywhere.
One of my detectives
announced over the radio
that he saw a light blue Camry
pull up to the front of the bar.
I'm parked right here,
and I'm like, "Holy hell."
This is the exact
model, make of vehicle and color
that Ashley Armenta
had seen when she got shot.
One of my detectives reported
that a guy that he recognized
as Sam Dieteman got out
and walked into the Stardust Lounge.
The light blue car
pulled away from the curb.
And at that point, I broke my team in two
and left some of them there
to watch Dieteman,
and we followed this suspect car
over to a large shopping mall
called Metro Center.
And he parked his car,
and a couple of detectives
followed the driver in.
A specialty unit that attaches
tracking devices to vehicles got there.
Crawled under the car.
Our target went to two stores.
And then came out of the mall.
I'm sitting on the edge of my seat.
And the guy attached the tracking device
and was able to get out
from underneath the car.
The suspect got into the car
and he made his way back
to the Stardust Lounge.
They radioed
the license plate of that vehicle.
The registered owner was Dale S. Hausner.
So, I decided to head back
to main police headquarters
where I started
to go through information on Dale Hausner.
No real violent history.
Nothing to flag him
as a as a potential violent perpetrator.
We followed this suspect car
out to the casino,
where a couple of our detectives
see him interact with Dieteman.
Then they open the trunk.
One of my detectives
was close enough to see
that they had a duffel bag.
As I'm hearing this,
I I got really nervous.
And I'm asking, "What size?
What kind of duffel bag is it?"
I said, "Big enough to carry a gun?"
And they're like, "Well, it's dark,
it's hard to see, but we think
it probably could contain a weapon."
It was like a ton of bricks hit me,
and I started driving like a madman
down to the Southeast Valley.
They started driving
on the main thoroughfares
just willy-nilly.
Sometimes,
they'll get off the main arteries
and drive into a neighborhood
and just go around the block.
Somebody on a bicycle,
they drive slowly by them.
It was like they were looking for prey.
But
we don't have enough evidence
to pull them over
and say, "Hey, what are you guys doing?"
So, we tried to keep one of our cars
somewhere close enough
that they didn't take the opportunity
to try and and shoot someone.
I was driving so fast
to try to get down there.
Screaming on the communication,
"Don't leave them alone."
"I want a unit
on the back of them at all times
without blowing the surveillance."
So that they don't feel
that they could shoot
without somebody at least seeing them.
The radio and the phones
were alive.
"Pull out ahead of him now."
"You'll be ahead of him, I'll turn off,
and then you'll have a car in sight
that maybe he won't
take a chance at doing anything."
They're going slow by somebody.
They're slowing down.
That's when your blood pressure jumps,
that's when the adrenaline spike hits.
Are we going to
witness a murder?
Are we gonna be
a day late and a dollar short
when when this goes down?
In my mind, I kept envisioning
another Robin Blasnek
simply walking down the street.
And And I kept thinking to myself,
"How do I explain this
if these guys actually get a shot off
and and kill somebody?"
After about three hours
of this terrifying hell,
they finally drove
into an apartment complex
on McKellips Road.
We didn't see them again
for the rest of the night.
I I was almost, um,
you know, almost in tears,
and all I could do was just sit back,
and take a deep breath,
and and and blow it out
and go, "Oh, thank God."
You know, we're going to make a case
on these individuals,
and we're gonna do it the right way
before they do end up
shooting somebody else.
The next afternoon,
we're watching the apartment,
and suddenly Dieteman appears
between the buildings,
and he's got a trash bag.
And he heads over
to the community dumpster
and throws the trash bag in
and then returns back into the apartment.
One of my detectives, God bless his soul,
he climbed into that nasty, old dumpster
and withdrew that trash bag.
And we'd sent him
to the main police headquarters
in Central Phoenix.
We open it,
and I start to go through it,
and the first thing I find
is a scrap of paper
that's been torn in two.
And on it is Robin Blasnek's name,
and her age, and the day of her murder.
Next thing we found
was an empty Dr. Pepper can.
As I was moving it,
actually, to photograph it,
it was apparent
that there was some object inside of it.
And as Clark and I examined it further,
we were able to remove a
shotgun cup.
And then I unfold this
piece of paper
that I recognized to be a map of Phoenix.
And there are blue dots and red dots.
And I go, "Oh, my God."
"There's marks on here showing locations
where some of these shootings
have occurred."
I'd say we were elated.
However, as any
long-term homicide investigator
will tell you,
there are a lot of creeps out there
that follow homicide investigations.
They write down details,
they make maps,
they make drawings or photos.
What we had at this point
would be insignificant in court.
I understood the difference
between arrest and conviction,
and I knew that the convictions
were a long ways away.
I get a phone call from my supervisor.
"We are not going to make any arrests
tonight."
"Go home, get some sleep."
"We will meet in the morning
and take it from there."
I was relieved.
I was looking forward
to getting a little shut-eye.
I'd only been asleep for five minutes.
It's my supervisor
and he said
it was a chain of command decision
to arrest Dieteman and Hausner.
I'm like, "What?"
"Why would you risk this?
Why would you do this?"
What was paramount
in everyone's mind was public safety.
We recognized
we have enough to make an arrest.
The question as to whether or not
we'll have enough to completely convict,
obviously, is further down the road.
But we were gonna make sure
that no one else was gonna be injured
by these individuals.
Hey!
Got him!
I knew that not everybody
is gonna be happy with that decision.
I was furious.
I was livid.
We don't have enough evidence
to try to get a prosecution.
I really honestly felt betrayed,
and I was not happy.
What on earth do I do now?
I drive back to the station.
I'm watching both Sam and Dale
on two different monitors.
I realized that I was gonna have to get
one of them or both of them
to incriminate themselves.
Sam, there was no panic in him.
He just laid his head down on the table
and fell right asleep.
Dale, he's looking around the room.
He's calm, but he's fidgety.
And I think to myself, "You know,
he'll be the one I think that will break."
So, I picked Dale,
uh, as the first one to interview.
- Morning.
- Morning. How are you?
- Good, how are you?
- Pretty good.
Dale, I'm Detective Schwartzkopf.
I'm with the Phoenix Police Department.
Um
I asked you to be brought down today.
I have some questions I have to ask you
about some stuff, okay?
- No problem.
- Um, before we do that
My strategy in an interview
is to get them to talk
and to feel comfortable
with me as a as an investigator.
So, I start to ask personal questions.
- Do you own a vehicle?
- Yes, I do.
It's a 1998 Toyota Camry.
And, um, it's blue.
He was very comfortable
telling me everything
that he knew about his personal life
and his personal property,
including his guns.
Are you a hunter?
Yes. I'm not technically a hunter,
I like to go out shooting in the desert.
Gotcha.
So, you're
You consider yourself a weapons person?
- I love them. Yes, I do.
- Okay.
Have you been following at all
what's going on in the city of Phoenix?
A little.
I keep track of the serial killer.
He's going out shooting people.
It hit me, you know,
like a brick in the face.
What do you know
about that particular case?
Um, 35 people shot, uh
He goes into this big, long narrative
about everything he knew
and how he was following it.
And then I fibbed and I said,
"Your roommate has made
some incriminating statements
about his behavior."
Uh, it's very important that you continue
to be honest with me about Sammy.
And yeah, I know you guys are friends.
No, we're buds, but, man,
if he killed 85 people, man
- He didn't kill 85.
- I'm just saying.
If he killed
however many people he killed or shot,
that's on him, that's not on me,
so I'm I'm not protecting anybody, so
I'll be very honest with you about this.
Um, I'm I I don't think
you've been completely honest with me
about Mr. Dieteman,
and I don't think you've been honest
about what you've been doing.
- Okay.
- Okay.
When they find whoever did the shooting,
it's not gonna be me.
I can guarantee that without a doubt.
I'll look you in the eye, I'll polygraph.
I have never shot anybody in my life.
I was in the monitoring room,
and it was very obvious
that this individual
sitting across from Clark
was, uh, pure evil.
He had zero remorse.
He was very flippant, uh, very arrogant
in his remarks to Clark,
and it was very clear
that there was a chess game going on,
and he was gonna have Clark prove to him
that we had
any information on him whatsoever
before he was gonna divulge anything.
I dropped a bomb on him.
I'm just very curious.
Okay.
Let me show you this.
Have you ever seen this before?
I pulled out the map.
Does that
look familiar at all?
- Yeah?
- No.
I could see
panic starting to set in.
He was closing up.
And he wasn't gonna give me
any more information.
So, it was time to push on towards Sam.
Sammy.
- Hey.
- How you doing?
Half asleep.
I admit
I'd been worn down by Dale's interview
and the lack of sleep,
and I was flat-out tired,
and so I just kind of asked Sam
Do you have
any idea why you're here?
Uh, yeah, I believe it'd be
the serial shooter case.
I was not ready for that.
Why would you think that?
Um
'Cause I think I know who's been doing it.
I have been staying with the guy.
So, I just let him talk.
I lean back, the window is going down,
just kinda watching him, watching that,
and just kind of wondering,
"What the hell?"
So, there's just kind of a loud pop,
and I look back,
and there's a guy screaming
on the side of the road.
And what does Dale do after he fires?
Uh, he kind of chuckles a little bit,
and and has a gun
down beside his leg there.
Just looked at me for a second
and kept driving.
Then, he started to admit
his responsibility
in some of the shootings.
What'd you shoot?
There was like a hooker
or something walking there.
Okay. And you think
it was a female you shot?
Yeah.
I'm obviously ecstatic.
I know that we've got them.
That was your true
television-slash-movie high-five moment.
All of us were high-fiving,
and we were all yelling and screaming,
whooping it up, uh,
like a a a bunch of assholes
that were overtired and and hungry.
It was a fantastic feeling.
The best thing
that I can do for my community
is to take evildoers off the street,
and this case
is the perfect example of that.
To arrest and convict these type of people
is really the the the epitome
of of of what we do,
and I'm glad
that I was given
the opportunity to do that job.