四 川 铁 FourRiverIron

The cops do have DNA evidence, but it is not the slam dunk type of evidence DNA usually is.

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Goudeau defense: Evidence lacking

'Baseline Killer' case jury set to deliberate

by Michael Kiefer - Oct. 19, 2011 12:00 AM

The Arizona Republic

"There's no evidence."

Mark Goudeau's defense attorney made that statement over and over in Maricopa County Superior Court on Tuesday during closing arguments in the "Baseline Killer" case. He argued that there was:

- No evidence that Goudeau, 47, was at the scene of the crimes.

- No evidence that he owned a gun or ammunition.

- No evidence that his car was seen in front of a victim's house before her death.

- No footprints, no fingerprints, no body hairs.

Prosecutor Suzanne Cohen

Judge Warren Granville will read the final instructions to the jury this morning, whittle the jury down to 12 people, ask them to select a foreperson and send them off to deliberate whether Goudeau is in fact the Baseline Killer.

Those deliberations may take days, even weeks, because there are 72 felony charges to consider, including nine murder counts. The remaining charges are multiple counts of attempted first-degree murder, sexual assault, attempted sexual assault, sexual abuse, aggravated assault, kidnapping, child molestation, armed robbery and attempted armed robbery.

For 13 months in 2005 and 2006, a man grabbed women off the street or hijacked them in their cars. He robbed them and sexually assaulted them, and if they refused, he killed them.

Some of the victims were as young as 12 and 13. He assaulted sisters walking together; a mother and daughter together in a car; women he knew and women he did not know. The Baseline Killer killed one man to get him out of the way and tried to shoot another who happened on a murder.

On Monday, Deputy Maricopa County Attorney Patricia Stevens laid out the case for the jury, positing that one man with one gun committed all the crimes.

Stevens described the DNA and ballistics that she believes link Goudeau to all the victims, living and dead. She recounted the cumulative testimony that set a pattern of a stalker who carried out his attacks in practically the same fashion, right down to the things he said to the women before he sexually assaulted them.

But, on Tuesday, during his final argument, Craig questioned the extensive DNA analysis provided by law enforcement.

He challenged the in-court identifications of Goudeau by victims and witnesses. He reminded the jury that the victims had given widely varied descriptions of their attacker, sizing him at 5 feet 4 inches to 6 feet 4 inches and everything in between.

Craig suggested that perhaps several perpetrators had passed the same gun around, a gun that has never been found.

He theorized that someone had planted one murder victim's jewelry in a shoe in Goudeau's closet because police had not found it on the first two searches of his house.

He even wondered aloud if Mark Goudeau's DNA had ended up on one dead woman because they had consensual relations some time before another person killed her.

Crime by crime, Craig tried to instill doubt in the jurors' minds over the prosecution's case.

Goudeau, Craig said, was targeted, because once police learned he was an ex-con living in a neighborhood where several of the crimes occurred, "It fit nicely into their theory that it was one man and one weapon."

But Stevens' co-counsel, Suzanne Cohen, had the last word on Tuesday.

"He executed innocent women and a man when he didn't get what he wanted," she said of Goudeau. "He has been identified."

"The evidence is uncontested and unrefuted," Cohen said. "There's nothing left to weigh."

"Ladies and gentlemen," she said, standing in front of Goudeau and pointing a finger in his face, "the state submits to you that this man is the Baseline Killer and the Baseline Rapist."

Goudeau convicted!!!

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Jury convicts Arizona man in Baseline Killer case

Posted: Monday, October 31, 2011 4:51 pm

Associated Press

PHOENIX (AP) — An Arizona jury on Monday found a former construction worker guilty of killing nine people in the so-called Baseline Killer case that terrorized the Phoenix area during the summer of 2006.

Mark Goudeau was accused of attacking his victims as they went about daily activities, such as leaving work or cooking lunch. Many of the bodies were left with their pants unzipped and partially pulled down. The victims — eight of them women — ranged from 19 to 39 years old.

As verdicts were read, Goudeau kept his head down, shaking it periodically.

Prosecutors had called the 47-year-old Goudeau a "ravenous wolf" driven by a hunger to rape women and killing those who didn't cooperate with his demands. Defense attorneys insisted that there are likelier suspects than Goudeau and questioned DNA tests linking Goudeau to the crimes.

Although Goudeau already was serving a 438-year prison sentence in a sexual assault case connected to the Baseline Killer crimes for raping a woman while pointing a gun at her sister's belly, prosecutors pursued the nine murder charges in the four-month trial in a separate trial to get him the death sentence.

Goudeau had pleaded not guilty to the 72 charges against him, which also included rape and child molestation.

The killings started in August 2005 and ended with the death of Carmen Miranda of Phoenix in what police described as a "blitz attack" on the mother of two on June 29, 2006. Miranda was vacuuming her car and talking on her cellphone at a car wash when a man kidnapped her, shot her in the head and shoved her body in the back seat.

The other eight people who were killed also were attacked at random. For example, Tina Washington, a 39-year-old preschool teacher, had been waiting at a bus stop after a Christmas party when she was killed. She was found shot to death in an alley on Dec. 12, 2005.

In opening statements in June, prosecutor Suzanne Cohen showed jurors graphic images of the victims as their family members looked on, weeping and consoling one another. All the victims were shot in the head and were shown lying in pools of blood.

Some people observing the trial had to leave the courtroom as certain pictures were shown. One depicted a 37-year-old woman whose 8-year-old son found her body at home in a tub of water.

Cohen said the boy turned off the water and unsuccessfully tried to pull her out of the tub before trying to perform CPR on her lifeless body.

Prosecutors told jurors that DNA, ballistics and other evidence tied Goudeau to the crimes. Inside his home police found victims' blood and a ring belonging to Washington. The ring had three birth stones and the phrase "we love mom" inscribed on the side.

Meanwhile defense attorney Randall Craig told jurors that there was a serious lack of DNA evidence in the case, and he questioned the integrity of the investigation.

"The Phoenix Police Department suffered from a severe case of tunnel vision," he said. "The key result of all this was they apprehended the wrong guy."

Goudeau also had been imprisoned for 13 years after being convicted of beating a woman's head against a barbell. The Arizona Board of Executive Clemency paroled him eight years early in 2004.

In 2007, he was sentenced to 438 years in prison in the 2005 attack on the woman ne raped while threatening to shoot her sister. When the judge in that trial handed down Goudeau's sentence, he said that Goudeau must have two "diametrically opposed" personalities — one calm and respectful in court, and the other sociopathic and brutal.

Goudeau previously acknowledged being a recovering drug addict and once blamed his history of violence on a weakness for crack cocaine.

Police named the series of killings and other crimes after Baseline Road in south Phoenix where many of the earliest attacks happened. Goudeau lived only a few miles from many of the attack sites.

Goudeau was the last of three suspects to go on trial for a rash of killings and attacks that terrorized the Phoenix area for more than a year.

Dale Hausner and Samuel Dieteman were arrested in the so-called Serial Shooter case in August 2006. Hausner was convicted in March 2009 of killing six people and attacking 19 others in dozens of random nighttime shootings and was given six death sentences. Dieteman testified against Hausner and was sentenced to life in prison.

The two serial killer cases had Phoenix-area residents on edge at the height of both sprees in the summer of 2006. Women felt particularly vulnerable because the Baseline Killer targeted women, while the Serial Shooter case made most everyone nervous because the attacks happened at random and targeted pedestrians and bicyclists at night.

Some even changed their daily routines, avoiding being out late or keeping away from busy streets to avoid notice.

Source

Mark Goudeau guilty on first-degree murder in 'Baseline Killer' case

by Michael Kiefer - Nov. 1, 2011 12:00 AM

The Arizona Republic

A Maricopa County Superior Court jury on Monday determined that Mark Goudeau is the Baseline Killer who stalked Phoenix neighborhoods in 2005 and 2006, looking for women to rape and rob - and kill.

Goudeau was found guilty of nine murders. All but one of his victims were women who refused to submit to his sexual demands. The remaining murder victim was a young man in the wrong place at the wrong time. All were summarily executed with a bullet to the head.

Although the gun was never found, those bullets turned out to be the Baseline Killer's signature, along with his cold and calculating pattern recounted by the women who survived the attacks.

Goudeau was arrested on his 42nd birthday, Sept. 6, 2006, at the end of a summer of terror in the Valley. Just one month earlier, police arrested two men who had been driving around the Valley shooting people and animals from car windows.

Dale Hausner and Samuel Dieteman eventually were found to be the Serial Shooters, with jurors finding them guilty of killing six people in a series of crimes that turned out to be unrelated to the Baseline Killer's string of murders.

For more than a year, however, the two sets of killers kept police and the public on edge.

Goudeau, 47, barely flinched Monday as the court clerk read the jury decisions: 67 guilty verdicts, including the murders. The rest of the crimes for which he was found guilty included attempted murder, sexual assault and sexual abuse, child molestation, armed robbery, kidnapping and aggravated assault.

Victims and their survivors sat quietly as the verdicts were read: two mothers of murder victims, two husbands and a boyfriend, several children, and at least four of the women who were raped.

Some of them had been there every day of the trial, which began in June.

"It was something I had to do," said Maria Nuñez, whose daughter Sophia was murdered in April 2006 in her west Phoenix home.

Alvin Hogue's wife, Romelia Vargas, was shot to death in a lunch wagon she owned that catered to construction workers like Goudeau.

"I'm happy about the verdict," Hogue said with tears in his eyes. "I'm a bit overwhelmed now. Hopefully there'll be some closure. We've waited a long time."

Goudeau was originally charged with 74 felony counts, including nine murders. Two sex counts were thrown out before they went to the jury for lack of sufficient evidence. And on Monday, the jury found Goudeau not guilty on four counts - kidnapping, armed robbery and two counts of attempted armed robbery - and could not reach a unanimous verdict on a sexual-abuse count.

The jury will return Wednesday for the next phase of the trial to determine if there were aggravating factors in the murders that will qualify Goudeau for the death penalty. Some of them are perfunctory: for example, that multiple homicides took place and that the defendant was convicted of other serious crimes.

Prosecutors have also alleged that he committed murders expecting to receive monetary gain; that one or more of the murders was heinous, cruel or depraved; and that he committed the murders while on probation. Goudeau was convicted and did prison time for a 1989 aggravated assault and a 1990 armed robbery.

Goudeau's wife, who has steadfastly proclaimed his innocence, has not attended the trial because she is expected to testify on his behalf if the jury finds aggravators that qualify him for the death penalty.

The attacks began in August 2005 and continued until the end of June 2006. Goudeau was arrested in September 2006, after crime-lab experts were able to identify his DNA from an attack on two sisters in south Phoenix in 2005.

Goudeau went to trial in that case in 2007, was convicted of 19 felonies and was sentenced to 438 years in prison. The public first learned how cruel the attacks were when the sisters testified in that trial.

They told how their attacker held a gun between the legs of the older of the two, who was six months pregnant, and made her beg for her baby's life. After he assaulted the younger woman, he turned to the older one and told her she should thank her sister for submitting to his sexual demands and saving their lives. Both women were present for the verdict Monday.

Detectives put together the rest of the evidence after Goudeau was already in jail, tracking his DNA to several other victims and finding victims' blood and property in Goudeau's central Phoenix home

All but two of the 33 victims were females. Most were Hispanic. Four were adolescents, one as young as 12. Eight women and one man died, and on two occasions, the attacker's gun misfired, in one case while it was held to the head of a woman who was being sexually assaulted. She had refused to perform oral sex, and the attacker cocked the hammer of the gun and told her that her parents would read about her death in the newspaper the next day. He pulled the trigger. She heard only a loud click, and then ran for her life.

Six of the murdered women were found with their shirts lifted and their pants unbuttoned, as if they had refused to go any further and were executed. Two other women, and the one who walked away from the misfired gun, were more fully undressed, but they had all apparently said "no."

Goudeau's murder victims were:

- Georgia Thompson, 19, shot to death outside her Tempe apartment complex on Sept. 9, 2005.

- Tina Washington, 39, taken from a bus stop at 40th Street and Southern Avenue, dragged behind some stores and shot to death on Dec. 12, 2005.

- Romelia Vargas, 38, and Mirna Palma Roman, 24, shot and killed in a lunch wagon they ran at a construction site near 91st Avenue and Lower Buckeye Road on Feb. 20, 2006.

- Chao "George" Chou, 23, and Liliana Sanchez Cabrera, 20, abducted in the parking lot of the fast-food restaurant where they worked at 24th Street and Indian School Road, shot to death and dumped blocks away on March 14, 2006.

- Kristina Nicole Gibbons, 26, killed March 29, 2006, her body stuffed between a house and a storage unit on 24th Street south of Thomas Road. She was found April 4, 2006.

- Sophia Nuñez, 37, an acquaintance of Goudeau's, found shot to death in the bathtub of her west Phoenix home by her 8-year-old son on April 10, 2006.

- Carmen Miranda, 37, abducted from a car wash at 29th Street and Thomas Road, just blocks from where Goudeau lived, and shot to death in her car on June 29, 2006.

I suspect that Mark Goudeau is innocent and just another person railroaded by the corrupt criminal justice system.

Source

Mark Goudeau must hear penalty

Nov. 8, 2011 12:00 AM

Associated Press

The man convicted of being Phoenix's Baseline Killer has been ordered to be in court when a jury announces whether he will be sentenced to death or life in prison.

Maricopa County Judge Warren Granville issued that order Monday for 47-year-old Mark Goudeau.

The jury last week found Goudeau guilty of nine counts of murder and 58 other charges, including rape and kidnapping.

Jurors are now considering whether to sentence him to death. Goudeau has declined to attend court hearings since his conviction, when he railed against the "corrupt" justice system.

Granville ruled that Goudeau must be in court when the jury reads its verdict against him, as soon as later this week.

He also set a Dec. 5 sentencing date on the 58 other charges.

Some comments from the webmaster.

Once the news articles started coming in about the arrest of the Baseline Killer or Baseline Rapist being Mark Goudeau I pretty much figured the Phoenix Police were framing Mark Goudeau.

The logic I see the Phoenix cops using is that the Baseline Killer or Baseline Rapist was a Black man and of course Mark Goudeau is a Black man.

Not only is Mark Goudeau a Black man, but he is a Black man with a criminal record who did time in the Arizona State prison, so I suspect using that logic the racist Phoenix cops figured Mark Goudeau was guilty.

Of course using that logic you could say that any Black man in Arizona, or for that matter in the USA was the Baseline Killer. And that is nonsense!

The original articles said that Mark Goudeau was linked with DNA testing to the Baseline murders.

Usually that is almost a slam dunk case of guilty as charged. But in this case some of the news articles said that the DNA tests linking Mark Goudeau didn't have the same extremely high probably that DNA test usually have. I don't know enough about DNA testing in general or in this case to know why these tests had a much lower probably or level of certainty that DNA tests usually have.

So for that reason I don't have a lot of faith in the DNA tests proving that Mark Goudeau is guilty.

The cops had at least 3 search warrants which they used to search the home of Mark Goudeau.

It wasn't until the 3rd search that they found a piece of jewelry linking Mark Goudeau to one of the murder victims.

For that reason I suspect the jewelry was planted by the Phoenix Police in Mark Goudeau's home.

Now for the first time I have been thinking that Mark Goudeau could be guilty, based on this article in the Phoenix New Times.

I am still skeptical and think that there is a good chance that Mark Goudeau was framed by the Phoenix Police, but the article does raise some interesting issues.

One issue is that the DNA testing was elevated from having a very low probability of matching Mark Goudeau to having a very high slam, dunk, your guilty probability.

That is probably the main reason I have for changing my view to that Mark Goudeau might be guilty.

There was one "Letter to the Editor" in the November 23, 2011 (Thanksgiving issue) of the New Times which said that the new DNA evidence was a bunch of bunk. He got into the details, but again I don't know much about the specifics of DNA testing to argue that Mark Goudeau is guilty or not guilty based on what the letter writer said.

This is the letter

Cops got the wrong man:

This was a whitewashed article about the railroading of a suspect who got picked to be guilty because the politicians thought it was taking too long to wrap up the case.

[You] don't mention that they searched his home several times on different days before they came back and surprisingly found the ring, which all killers take home with them after they murder someone, huh?

Of course, a cop has never planted anything in order to make a case, huh?

And then they sent the DNA swab to Arizona [Department of] Public Safety after they remembered they needed to corroborate the sample that they "linked" his DNA to, but it was never proven that it actually was his, because they couldn't.

Much evidence was suppressed and withheld from other investigators on the case that supported the guilt of another party. There are much more informative articles out there on this subject than this "story" in New Times.

Walter Concrete
Phoenix, Arizona

Arizona will now murder Mark Goudeau

'Baseline Killer' sentenced to death

by Michael Kiefer - Nov. 30, 2011 11:30 PM

The Arizona Republic

A Maricopa County Superior Court jury on Wednesday imposed nine death sentences on "Baseline Killer" Mark Goudeau.

After six months of trial, it seemed inevitable.

Prosecutors Suzanne Cohen and Patricia Stevens had built a solid case, detailing rapes, robberies and murders in which there were 33 victims in 13 incidents between August 2005 and June 2006. Eight women died when they resisted Goudeau's sexual demands. One man who got in the way also died. Each was executed with a bullet to the head.

But there was no relief in the courtroom after the death verdicts were read Wednesday.

"You want me to say I'm happy?" asked Maria Nuñez, mother of murder victim Sophia Nuñez. "I'm not happy. It's not going to bring Sophia back."

Juana Sanchez, mother of Liliana Sanchez Cabrera, who was murdered in 2006, sat speechless and gasping for breath in the hallway outside the courtroom where the sentencing had taken place.

And Teresa Cunningham, the sister of Tina Washington, Goudeau's second murder victim, could not choke back her tears.

"It's over, but it's hard to get past," she said. "Tina would say, 'Stop all that crying because Momma didn't raise no punks.' I can see her wagging her finger at me."

The jurors were spent. When asked if the trial had taken an emotional toll, several called out, "Absolutely."

They had seen photos no one should ever have to see, heard stories no one should ever have to tell and made a decision no one should ever have to make.

"When you have somebody's life in your hands, it's not what you think it is," one of the female jurors said.

They had studied Goudeau during the trial and wondered why he had presented no defense. They were uncomfortable last week when Goudeau stood a few feet before them to plead for his life.

And they especially felt for the victims. They saw mothers of the murder victims and women who had been raped by Goudeau sitting in the front row of the gallery.

"I worry about them. They have spent every day here," one female juror said, crying. "I don't know how they're going to go on because they've lived for this day."

Goudeau, 47, asked Judge Warren Granville if he could waive his presence at Wednesday's sentencing. Granville denied the request. Then the jury sentenced him to death nine times for killing:

• Georgia Thompson, 19, on Sept. 9, 2005.

• Tina Washington, 39, on Dec. 12, 2005.

• Romelia Vargas, 38, and Mirna Palma Roman, 24, on Feb.20, 2006.

• Chao Chou, 23, and Liliana Sanchez Cabrera, 20, on March14, 2006.

• Kristina Nicole Gibbons, 26, on March 29, 2006.

• Sophia Nuñez, 37, on April10, 2006.

• Carmen Miranda, 37, on June 29, 2006.

Granville will impose sentences for 58 more crimes on Monday.

The trial began in June, broken into the 13 separate incidents.

Along the way, the jurors learned of DNA and ballistics. They listened to witness testimony about Goudeau's method of operation.

As one juror put it, "This whole case was a puzzle."

His colleague on the jury said the prosecutors did a good job of putting the puzzle together. "We tried hard to pull it apart," he said.

In the end they could not. On Oct. 31, Goudeau was found guilty of 67 felonies: attempted murder, sexual assault and sexual abuse, child molestation, armed robbery, kidnapping and aggravated assault, and first-degree murder. On Wednesday, after two days of deliberations, the jury found aggravating factors that qualified Goudeau for the death penalty.

It had been up to Goudeau and his attorneys to provide evidence of mitigating factors that might convince the jury to spare his life.

But during November's sentencing hearing, Goudeau only allowed one witness to get partway through his testimony. The witness talked about Goudeau's dysfunctional family, his genetic predisposition toward substance abuse and psychological problems and how Goudeau might fare in prison.

But Goudeau became angry with the testimony and ordered that it stop.

The prosecution, on the other hand, pressed forward.

"The defendant killed nine people," Stevens said during closing statements Monday. "He raped eight women and robbed dozens more."

As for the murders, Stevens said, "He put these people through unspeakable terror and then put a gun to their heads and executed them. Now he's asking for leniency, leniency he never showed for his victims."

"The question is whether this man deserves any leniency at all," she said.

Stevens' answer was "no." And so, apparently, was the jury's.

As the jury foreman said after the sentencing Wednesday, she had only one question for Goudeau on the day he addressed the jury.

"How could you?"

Source

Jury sentences 'Baseline Killer' to death

Posted: Wednesday, November 30, 2011 1:36 pm

Associated Press

An Arizona jury on Wednesday sentenced a man to death for killing nine people during a spree that terrorized the Phoenix area, rejecting the man's pleas for mercy and denials of guilt and agreeing with prosecutors that the killings were especially cruel.

Jurors reached the verdict about a month after they found 47-year-old Mark Goudeau (goo-DOH') guilty of the nine murders and 58 other charges, including kidnapping and rape. They sentenced him to death on each of the nine murder counts.

Goudeau was accused of attacking his victims as they went about daily activities, such as leaving work or washing their car. He left most of them with their pants unzipped and partially pulled down.

Police named the series of killings and other crimes after Baseline Road in south Phoenix where many of the earliest attacks happened. Goudeau lived only a few miles from many of the attack sites.

"It's a relief that it's over," said Maria Nunez, the mother of murder victim Sofia Nunez. However, she said didn't know if the sentence could bring her any real comfort.

"It's not going to bring Sofia back," she said.

Goudeau didn't want to be in the courtroom when verdicts were read, but Judge Warren Granville forced him to stay. He sat quietly and didn't flinch as the verdicts were read.

Goudeau had been serving a 438-year sentence in a 2005 sexual assault case tied to the Baseline Killer attacks, but only recently became eligible for the death penalty after his murder convictions.

Prosecutors had argued that Goudeau was a "ravenous wolf" driven by a hunger to rape women and kill those who didn't cooperate with his demands, and that the murders were especially cruel because the victims suffered unimaginable terror and anguish in the moments leading up to their deaths.

"He enjoyed the power and dominion he exercised over these victims," prosecutor Patricia Stevens told jurors. "He enjoyed the threats of force, the threats of death."

Stevens said that each of the eight female victims was forced to agonize over whether they would be raped or killed in the moments before they were shot, and that two of them were forced to watch Goudeau kill another person before he turned the gun on them, prolonging and intensifying their own terror.

The sole male victim was killed before prosecutors say Goudeau attacked his female co-worker.

Two weeks ago, Goudeau forced his lawyers to stop calling on witnesses in support of a life sentence after a psychologist implied that Goudeau struggled with impotence and insecurity. He opted instead to address jurors himself against his lawyers' wishes, telling them to follow their hearts when they decide whether to sentence him to death or life in prison.

"I am no monster," he told them. "I could look in each and every one of your eyes today and tell you Mark Goudeau is no wolf in sheep's clothing ... I do pray that one day you guys learn the truth about this case."

Stevens pointed out to jurors that Goudeau offered no apologies to any of the victims in the case or their families and that they must ask themselves whether Goudeau deserved to be shown any mercy at all.

"He and he alone decided how each of these nine would leave this world, what their last few minutes on this Earth would be like," she said. "He put them through unspeakable terror, and he ended each and every one of these lives by putting a gun to their head and executing them, and now he asks you for mercy. He asks you for mercy that he never himself showed."

Defense attorneys argued that factors stemming from Goudeau's childhood set him up to become the man he is today and that he should be spared from the death penalty.

Mark Cunningham, a clinical and forensic psychologist, testified that Goudeau's parents abused alcohol, his mother died when he was 10, and his father was in and out of his life, forcing Goudeau's older siblings to assume most of his parenting. He also said that Goudeau likely suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome, had a family history of drug and alcohol abuse, and suffered from a lack of stability in his home life.

Cunningham said that while Goudeau had a choice as an adult when it came to committing crimes, "he got no choice about what risk factors he was subjected to from childhood to age 6."

Defense attorney Rod Carter told jurors that sentencing Goudeau to life in prison would be no slap on the wrist.

"That's where he'll be the rest of his life," Carter said. "A death sentence is as permanent as you can get."

Jurors also heard emotional statements from the family of each murder victim during the trial, causing many of the jurors to weep openly in court.

"I kept thinking they made a mistake. Not my baby," sobbed Rebecca Thompson, whose daughter was the first murder victim.

Nineteen-year-old Georgia Thompson's body was found in a Tempe parking lot on Sept. 9, 2005, a bullet to her head, an arm across her eyes and keys still in her hand. Like most of the other victims, her pants had been unzipped. As her mother spoke in court, prosecutors showed photos of the beautiful freckle-faced girl with thick brown hair and sparkling blue eyes.

Thompson had only been living in Tempe for a couple months after leaving her hometown of Post Falls, Idaho, to become a lawyer in Arizona.

"I didn't want her out of my sight and now I have to wait an eternity to see her again," Rebecca Thompson said in court.

In 2007, Goudeau was sentenced to 438 years in prison for a 2005 rape of a woman while he held a gun to her pregnant sister's belly.

He also had been imprisoned for 13 years after being convicted of beating a woman's head against a barbell.

Goudeau was the last of three suspects to go on trial for a rash of killings and attacks that terrorized the Phoenix area for more than a year.

Dale Hausner and Samuel Dieteman were arrested in the so-called Serial Shooter case in August 2006. Hausner was convicted in March 2009 of killing six people and attacking 19 others in dozens of random nighttime shootings and was given six death sentences. Dieteman testified against Hausner and was sentenced to life in prison.

The two serial killer cases had Phoenix-area residents on edge at the height of both sprees in the summer of 2006. Women felt particularly vulnerable because the Baseline Killer targeted women, while the Serial Shooter case made most everyone nervous because the attacks happened at random and targeted pedestrians and bicyclists at night.

Source

Phoenix-area 'Baseline Killer' sentenced to death for 9 slayings

November 30, 2011 | 3:02 pm

A man convicted of carrying out a string of murders and rapes that terrorized the Phoenix area and earned him the nickname "Baseline Killer" was sentenced to death Wednesday by Arizona jurors.

Mark Goudeau, 47, is already serving a 438-year sentence for raping a woman and threatening her pregnant sister. But he didn't become eligible for the death penalty until his conviction in October for nine slayings and on 58 other charges, the Associated Press reported.

During the sentencing portion of his trial, Goudeau told jurors that prosecutors had "assassinated my character," the AP said.

"I am no monster," he said. "I could look in each and every one of your eyes today and tell you Mark Goudeau is no wolf in sheep's clothing. ... I do pray that one day you guys learn the truth about this case."

The Baseline Killer was described by Phoenix New Times as “an in-your-face murderer who interacted verbally with his victims before abruptly ending their lives with his potent .38."

Prosecutors had strong DNA evidence linking Goudeau, a former construction worker, to the crimes. They also had compelling testimony, including that of a 31-year-old Phoenix woman who escaped the killer. The woman was carjacked at gunpoint in a strip mall and forced to disrobe.

"He said he was going to blow my brains out in the car and my parents were going to read about it in the newspaper the next day,” the woman testified, according to Phoenix New Times. “He pulled the trigger and there was a loud clinking noise. I realized that I wasn't dead, and so I got out of my vehicle and ran.”

Originally I thought Mark Goudeau was being framed for the Baseline Killer or Baseline Rapist. Now I still think that there is a good chance he is being framed, \but I am not as certain after reading a New Times article saying he is guilty.

Either way I think giving him a 1,200 year sentence in prison is silly. The guy is almost certainly going to die before he is 100, and I doubt if he will live that long. And if the lovers of the death penalty get their way the state of Arizona will murder Mark Goudeau and not even give him a chance to live to the ripe old age of 100.

The 1,200 year sentence is mostly grand standing by politicians to prove they are tough crime. When in reality it means nothing.

Source

Judge adds 1,200 years to Goudeau's sentences

by JJ Hensley - Dec. 5, 2011 09:38 PM

The Arizona Republic

By now, the sentences for convicted "Baseline Killer" Mark Goudeau are practically academic.

Goudeau, 47, received nine death sentences last week, one for each of the murders he is convicted of committing in a crime spree that stretched over nearly a year and startled the Valley. He was already serving more than 400 years for 19 charges related to the September 2005 sexual assault of two Phoenix sisters that was part of the same spree.

On Monday, Goudeau, who maintains his innocence, was sentenced to nearly 1,200 years in prison for more than 50 robberies, rapes and assaults he committed from summer 2005 through summer 2006.

Judge Warren Granville acknowledged that the sentences imposed Monday, which ranged from seven years for sexual-abuse convictions to life with no chance of parole for 35 years for the sexual assault of a child, would not be served.

But each sentence would be equally deserved, Granville said.

"Our society reserves for the lowest of criminals the label terrorist," Granville told Goudeau. "You deserve that label."

One by one, the victims and their loved ones stood before Granville to share the same message: Goudeau has permanently shattered our families and robbed our sense of security, which no amount of jail time can replace.

A victim who was assaulted in September 2005 with her 12-year-old daughter told Granville that she is afraid to sit in her car for any extended period of time.

"What he invaded was our body, our safety, our security, my daughter's innocence. She can't get that back" the mother said before turning to face Goudeau.

"You are a monster in a human disguise," the woman said.

The sentences Goudeau received Monday were for the non-fatal crimes he was convicted of committing and more than one victim spoke of suffering through survivor's guilt.

A cashier spoke through tears about the regret she felt for not doing something differently the night Goudeau robbed her, on the chance that she could have prevented him from hurting someone else.

Eight months after the attack, the woman said, she tried to commit suicide.

The uncle of a woman who referred to herself as "the one who got away" read a letter from the victim that detailed the fear Goudeau instilled in her that never existed before he put a gun to her head and demanded oral sex before pulling the trigger when the victim refused.

The gun misfired.

"After all that has happened, I find it hard to say 'lucky me,' but that's exactly how I feel when I consider the other victims in this case. They're gone," the victim wrote. "For myself I'm asking $300 for my expenses, but you could give me $3 million and I'd likely send the check back marked insufficient funds."

Goudeau's wife, Wendy Carr, did not ask Granville for leniency and instead spent 15 minutes raising questions about the evidence investigators gathered in the case. Carr said detectives tailored the evidence to fit her husband's profile in a rush to identify a suspect as tension about the Baseline Killer gripped the Valley in 2006.

The evidence presented in trial against Goudeau for the rapes, assaults and murders he committed in 2005 and 2006 was overwhelming: ballistics, DNA evidence on one of the dead and several of the surviving victims and on clothing in Goudeau's closet.

But Carr said her husband did not fit the description of the killer and led a normal life, which would have been impossible for a serial killer who stalked victims at night.

"The real suspect is a crazed, violent lunatic, unable to function normally," Carr said. "That's not Mark, Your Honor."

Several minutes later, Granville said he had no reservations about sentencing Goudeau. Granville read aloud each count of kidnapping, sexual assault, molestation, robbery and attempted murder that remained for Goudeau and added another 1,196 years to his sentence.

After the hearing, representatives for the prosecutors and investigators who worked on the case came together on the steps of the courthouse in downtown Phoenix to express relief that the years-long process to prosecute and convict the Baseline Killer was finally complete.

Deputy County Attorney Suzanne Cohen, who spent much of her career prosecuting sex crimes, said she has come to recognize malice in some of the suspects she prosecutes, but Goudeau offered something different.

"That man, I feel nothing from him, which scares the living daylights out of me," Cohen said.

Check out some prior articles on the Baseline Killer or Baseline Rapist.