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'Competing' Serial Killers Terrify Phoenix


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[quote]'Competing' serial killers terrify Phoenix
By Jon Kay
BBC News, Phoenix

Two serial killers are bringing such fear to the streets of Phoenix in the US that residents are taking steps to arm themselves.

Linda O'Neill's hands are shaking as she aims her brand new gun at the target.

She shoots. She misses. It is hardly surprising. At the age of 41, she has never owned a weapon before - in fact she has never even touched a gun - but this week she spent more than $500 (£270) on a Glock 9mm pistol.

"I just had to get something to protect myself," she says.

Linda is one of hundreds of people in the US desert city of Phoenix who have decided to arm themselves after weeks of terrifying news headlines about two serial killers.

Local people believe the two are competing with one another, to try to kill the most victims in this usually peaceful city.

"I'm a wreck," says Linda.

"It's terrifying. I won't go out at night. No way.

"Some of my friends used to work in the evenings, but now they've given up their jobs. They're too scared to be out after dark. They'd rather be safe at home - even if they're not earning money."

The attacks started last August, but it has taken several months for the police to realise that there seem to be two separate assailants on the loose.


The first is known as the Baseline Killer - named after the neighbourhood where he committed his first murder.

Since that attack, he is believed to have killed at least another five people, as well as raping and kidnapping 20 more.

The police have issued a photo-fit of a black man with dreadlocks, but they admit they do not know how accurate the picture is. The assailant wears many different disguises.

The second man is known as the Serial Shooter.

He is believed to be operating entirely separately from the Baseline Killer - shooting human beings and animals randomly from his vehicle. He has taken the lives of at least five people.

Empty streets

Most local people believe the two killers are involved in a deadly game of one-upmanship. When one strikes, the other follows.

"The sooner they are caught, the better it is for this whole city," says Justin Schneider, wearing a red beret as he patrols the park. The 21-year-old is a Guardian Angel - one of 30 volunteers now trying to restore calm on the streets of Phoenix.


Even at night the temperature exceeds 38C (100F) here, but Mr Schneider and his colleagues are undeterred.

They sweat in the heat as they search a local petrol station where a woman was murdered last week.

"You can't have two guys on the loose, seeing who can kill the most innocent people," Mr Schneider says.

"There's so much bad stuff going on right now. I just want to do something to make this neighbourhood feel better."

At this time of year, the shopping malls and cinemas are usually busy in the evening, as people take advantage of free air-conditioning - but this summer things are different.

Restaurants are empty - in fact much of the city falls silent once the sun has set.

"I'd rather be sweatin' hot in my home than out on the streets being shot at!" remarks one passer-by.

"Every community goes through crises," says Sergeant Andy Hill, "and we'll get through this crisis."

He acknowledges there has been criticism in some communities, but he defends his officers for not making more progress.

"No, we haven't found these killers yet, but it's not for the lack of trying. We are doing everything possible - but there isn't much to go on," he says.

"You have to remember, we don't even have a description of the Serial Shooter at this stage."

The police will not say categorically that the two men (and it's not certain they are both men) are competing with one another, but in the city's multi-ethnic neighbourhoods there is little doubt that this is a contest.

There are now more than 120 officers working on the hunt for the two murderers - and police are offering a reward of $100,000 (£54,000) - but, as thunder and lightning crackle over the empty streets of Phoenix, it seems nobody knows who these serial killers are. And they may not even know one another.[/quote]


[quote][b]The Basline Killer: [/b]

Baseline Killer's bloody trail
Almost a year of brutality

Judi Villa, Michael Kiefer and William Hermann
The Arizona Republic
Jul. 25, 2006 12:00 AM

He is brazen.

He once robbed a store at gunpoint, then ran across the street to carjack a woman and sexually assault her.

He strikes at night and wears disguises, snatching women from crowded corners to rape them or kill them.
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And he kills without lingering, sometimes leaving the bodies just a short distance away.

Phoenix police believe the "Baseline Killer" is linked to seven sexual assaults, eight robbery incidents and six homicides. The latest was a woman abducted from a carwash and killed on June 29.

It started with a sexual assault in August, but police didn't know it yet. By late September, they started making connections.

Sept. 28
Victims: A 12-year-old girl and her 36-year-old mother.

Attacker: Unknown.

They sat in their car in a restaurant parking lot at South Central Avenue and Baseline Road, waiting for someone inside to return. It was 9:30 p.m.

Nearby, a man jumped through the restaurant's takeout window, snatching a purse and other items from an employee before he left through the same window. In the parking lot, he saw the woman and her daughter and forced his way into their car at gunpoint. He made the mother drive. In the back seat, he sexually assaulted her daughter.

Then he told the mother to park nearby. She was next.

The following day, police went public with their suspicions. The attack was similar to two others in August: Two girls, ages 13 and 14, had been sexually assaulted at gunpoint behind a church, and two women had been forced into the bushes and sexually assaulted as they walked home from a park.

In all three attacks, the description of the rapist and his behavior were remarkably similar.

As the almost-yearlong investigation progressed, police would link 21 incidents to the attacker from Aug. 6 to June 29. Known first as the "Baseline Rapist" and now as the Baseline Killer, he has shot six people to death and is connected by evidence to three robbery incidents. His tally of violence would include seven sexual assaults and five other robberies, although there is no firm forensic evidence in the latter cases. In many of those incidents, there was more than one victim.

But, back in September, police weren't 100 percent sure what they had. They released a composite sketch of the rapist, a Black man with dreadlocks and what looked like a fishing hat.

"We were going to hopefully get a handle on it before we got much further," Assistant Police Chief Kevin Robinson said of the decision to go public.

But it wasn't just sexual assaults. Early on, the robberies started, too.

Nov. 3
Incidents to date: Nine.

Victims: A 61-year-old man and a 29-year-old woman.

Attacker: Unknown.

A man with dreadlocks and a fishing hat walked into a lingerie shop on North 32nd Street.

"I'm a little nervous," he told the woman behind the counter. She didn't think much of it. A lot of guys say that when they're buying lingerie or sex toys.

Owner Henry Loeb, who was not present during the robbery but arrived shortly afterward, said the man pulled a gun and ran out of the store with $720. Less than 10 minutes later, the same man reportedly abducted a woman from a grocery-store parking lot across the street and sexually assaulted her. She had been putting clothes into a donation bin when she was taken in her own car.

Four days later, on Nov. 7, a Black man with a wig and a fishing hat robbed a Mexican grill, a pizza place next door to it and four people standing in the parking lot at 32nd Street and Thomas Road. Police reports say he made off with $463 and fired a round into the air as he fled on foot.

By this time, police already had cast a wide net, looking at every robbery involving a Black man with a gun to see if they might possibly be linked and if any could provide valuable clues. They were looking at sexual assaults, too, and noticed similarities between the Nov. 3 attack and the three previous ones, even though the rapist apparently had moved from south Phoenix to east Phoenix.

Police again released a description of the rapist, noting his shoulder-length hair was possibly a wig. He had round plastic glasses.

Dec. 12
Incidents to date: 14.

Victim: A 39-year-old woman.

Attacker: Unknown.

Tina Washington regularly took the bus to work. She was a preschool teacher and a mother of two. She had told co-workers that two men had been harassing her as she waited at the bus stop at 40th Street and Southern Avenue to catch a ride home to Tempe.

Just before 7 p.m., a witness heard shots and saw a man with a drawn gun standing over a woman behind a fast-food chicken restaurant and a gas-station convenience store at Southern Avenue and 40th Street. Washington had been shot in the head. Another bullet had ripped through her hand as if she was trying to protect herself.

Washington was the Baseline Killer's second murder victim, although police didn't know it yet. Georgia Thompson, 19, had been shot in the head Sept. 8 in the parking lot of her Tempe apartment complex. It would be 10 months later and seven months after Washington's death before police forensically linked Thompson's murder to the Baseline Killer.

In January, though, police sifting through evidence began to suspect that Washington's murderer might be the same man who had committed the three robberies on Nov. 7. While forensic evidence seemed to link the crimes, there was nothing that conclusively pointed to one attacker.

A day after Washington's murder, another woman was robbed. Then three months passed with no similar crimes.

March 15
Incidents to date: 16.

Victims: A 23-year-old man and a 20-year-old woman.

Attacker: Unknown.

Chao "George" Chou and Liliana Sanchez-Cabrera left their place of employment, Yoshi's restaurant, at 24th Street and Indian School Road, at about 10:30 p.m. on March 14. Chou, a Taiwanese national described by his boss as a "very nice and polite young man," had been working at the restaurant about four years. Sanchez-Cabrera had just completed her first shift .

They left together in Chou's vehicle.

At 8:02 the next morning, employees of another fast-food restaurant across the street and down the street at 22nd Street and Indian School called police to report finding a body in a car in the parking lot. It was Sanchez-Cabrera's. She had been shot in the head at close range.

Nearly four hours later, Chou's body was found in an alley about a mile away. He also had been shot in the head.

March 29
Incidents to date: 18.

Victim: A 26-year-old woman.

Attacker: Unknown.

Glenn Notsch, who runs a swimming-pool service from a home on 24th Street about a mile south of Thomas Road, parked his car in the back of the business eight days or so after Chou and Sanchez-Cabrera were found dead and noticed drag marks in the gravel and patches of blood on the stones. He called police, who looked around and found nothing.

The next week, on March 29, Notsch noticed a strong odor when he came to work. His dog insisted on nosing through a pile of debris between the house used by the business and a storage shed. Notsch moved some boards.

"I remember seeing an arm and a leg with no clothing on them. And I just ran out of there," he said.

It was the body of Kristin Nicole Gibbons. She also had been shot in the head, and her body was badly decomposed.

Police say evidence indicated that the three murders were connected and that all three were linked to Washington's death.

A small task force formed in April, and police prepared to go public with the information linking all the murders and the three robberies.

But before they did, a man in a latex Halloween mask abducted a woman in a car from a parking lot on 32nd Street at Thomas, right in front of the Mexican grill and pizza joint that had been robbed in November, and sexually assaulted her at gunpoint.

The May 1 attack "told us a number of things that we needed to know," Sgt. Andy Hill said. But Hill would not be more specific.

What was clear was that police then knew they had a serial killer and robber who looked to be the rapist who had first attacked last August. They went public on May 5 with a list of 18 violent crimes they believed to be linked.

The composite remained the same: a Black man with dreadlocks and a fishing hat. Police said it was the best description they had. The attacker likely wore disguises and committed his crimes after dark. They appealed for tips.

"We don't want anyone else to be harmed," Robinson, the assistant police chief, said at the time.

June 29
Incidents to date: 20.

Victim: A 37-year-old woman.

Attacker: Unknown.

Carmen Miranda, a mother of two, went to a carwash at 29th Street and Thomas Road, just a few hundred yards from parking lot where the November robberies and the May assault took place. It was 9:30 p.m. She washed her car and was at the vacuuming station, standing by the driver's side. The car door was open. Miranda was talking on a cellphone.

A man approached from the passenger side, said James Garnand, who owns the carwash and saw the attack on surveillance video afterward. Miranda told the friend she was talking to on her cellphone that someone had just asked for her change.

Then, according to Garnand, the man charged around the car, grabbed Miranda and threw her into the back seat.

As word spread by telephone that Miranda had been kidnapped from the carwash, her friend Leybi Muñoz, 33, rushed there, arriving at about 11 p.m. Miranda's family was already there. Police were putting up crime-scene tape.

"They took us to the apartments alongside the carwash," Muñoz said. "We waited there until about 4 or 5 in the morning. That's when they told us they had the car with a dead body in it. That's all they said."

Miranda's body was found behind a barbershop about 100 yards away. She had been shot in the head.

The surveillance video showed her vehicle exiting the carwash's parking lot, but it did not give a clear view of the attacker.

Police called it a "blitz attack."

That was nearly four weeks ago. Police and residents alike wait and wonder if he will strike again and where.

Today
Total victims: Six killed; 11 sexually assaulted; 22 robbed.

Attacker: Unknown.[/quote]


[quote][b]The Serial Shooter[/b]

PHOENIX, July 28, 2006 — He's struck again. Police believe that the person who shot a man riding his bicycle through Mesa, Ariz., in the early morning hours this past weekend is a "serial shooter" who has stalked the Phoenix area for nearly a year. Police say the victim survived.

See the full story on "Nightline" at 11:35 ET tonight.

If the latest shooting is the work of the same person, it would make three dozen attacks by the notorious assailant in the last 11 months. He's accused of killing five people.

That would be bad enough for a city known for its safe, comfortable lifestyle, but this summer Phoenix residents are also anxious about a second serial killer, the so-called Baseline Killer named after the broad boulevard that runs through the southern neighborhoods of this sprawling city of 1½ million people.

So far the two have been blamed for the apparently random fatal shootings of 11 people, killing sprees that have terrorized the Valley of the Sun.

"In my 30 years in the Phoenix Police Department, this is by far the most serious set of crimes that I have seen," Phoenix Police Lt. Bob Sparks said as he patrolled the downtown streets one recent weekday night. Periodically, he'd roll down his window and check on those walking alone through darkened neighborhoods.

"You doing OK? Just saw somebody behind the building here … wanted to check," he said to a man.

Police describe the Baseline Killer as a black man who may use a disguise that includes fake dreadlocks and a floppy hat. He is suspected of killing five women and one man. He's also accused of committing eight robberies and seven sexual assaults.

At Poncho's Mexican restaurant near Baseline Road, a security camera captured three images of the suspect as he robbed the cash register. In the parking lot outside, he then raped a woman and forced her to watch as he raped her 12-year-old daughter. Despite newly installed lighting and security cameras, employees of he restaurant are not taking any chances.

Blanca Lopez says she's still afraid. "Yeah, because I work in the evenings, so I don't go out by myself, I wait for my ride," she said.

Another worker who refused to give her name said she had changed her routine when she gets off work late at night.

"I never go out until I see my ride is out there," she said. "I never get out of work and go waiting out there no more. Especially since we live around here you got to be careful."

Farther uptown, the Baseline Killer is suspected of murdering two employees of Yoshi's fast-food restaurant after their late-night shift. Their bodies were found the next day.

Most recently, a 37-year-old mother of two was carjacked at a car wash in the area. She was found dead behind a nearby barbershop. A video camera recorded the attack. Jim Garnand, who owns the carwash, has seen the tape of the attack, which the police have not released.

"Even if they blow it up and enhance it and use all the video techniques in the world, it's not going to give you a clear shot of this guy's face," Garnand said. "He doesn't come up like brandishing a gun. It's nothing like in the movies where you see somebody attacking somebody. He got right up on her."

The serial shooter also attacks at night and preys on individuals who are walking alone or waiting at deserted bus stops. Less is known about the suspect, and no composite sketches have been created. The shooter is also accused of shooting animals and has been known to use a shotgun.

Police have reviewed video tapes recorded by security cameras at two different crime scenes. But very few details about either suspect have been released to the public — leading many here to suggest that police are either worried about tipping off the killers and thwarting the investigation or that they've come up empty-handed.

The police department has turned down repeated requests for interviews with detectives, leaving it up to Mayor Phil Gordon to defend what appears to be an increasingly frustrated investigation.

"Certainly frustrated because out of professionalism," he told ABC News during an interview at his downtown Phoenix office. "These are officers that are community members — they're fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers. And these two individuals are causing a lot of anxiety in this community and certainly with the national attention, it isn't what this city is about."

When pressed on whether the police investigation is stalled, Gordon became irritated.

"This is a safe city. It's a great city. It's growing," he said. "People have their entire families outside playing in the evening, during the day. Listen, I'm proud — I live in the center of the city. I have a 7-year-old and he's out playing, but we watch our children just like any parent should."

But many others are not out at night. Phoenix is virtually deserted after sundown. Anxiety and paranoia have kept many off the streets

Dana Gray, a financial analyst, is one of them — and for good reason.

"I actually had the gun pulled on me," she said.

In December 2005, she was held up at gunpoint inside the gate of her central Phoenix apartment house. Now, with two serial killers on the loose, she's decided to take action.

"I'm here at the gun range because I want to learn how to shoot firearms. I want to feel safe," she explained. Gray is training for a "conceal carry weapons" permit, which requires several hours of classroom instruction and target shooting.

"Get out! Get out! Get out of my house! NOW! Get out!" she yells at the projected image of a burglar on a large video screen meant to simulate a residential break-in.

"I won't go out at night," she says after finishing the drill. "I once in a while walk my dog at night if that's necessary, but usually we take care of that before dark, and I just don't go out at night. I think more people need to do what I'm doing."

After firing a 9 mm pistol at a target several feet away, Gray's confidence seems to build.

"We need to even the score here a little bit," she said. "We need to start taking care of ourselves and learning to defend ourselves. And maybe as bad people know that this is happening they'll be a little less likely to approach people."

At a gun shop in Tempe, handgun sales are booming, but it's the mace and pepper spray that dealers can't keep on the shelves. During our visit, a man bought the last two canisters for his daughter and his wife. He explained his daughter worked the late shift at a bar and felt vulnerable just getting to her car after work.

Down the street a martial arts class was full. Dozens of young women and men yelled, kicked, punched and shoved one another using Israeli Defense Force training called Krav Maga. Jay Ackerman, the chief trainer, told ABC News "attendance has spiked" since the two serial murders began their crime spree.

"We teach aggressive street fighting. Your elbows, knees, and feet can be powerful weapons," he said.

The Valley of the Sun — this urban oasis in the desert — has become a city under siege and in true Western style, its residents are fighting back.[/quote]
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