Tuesday, April 19, 2011
PHOENIX (AP) — Carmen Miranda was vacuuming her car and talking on her cell phone when a man dubbed the Baseline Killer shot her in the head, shoved her body in the back seat and lodged her legs over her head with her pants pulled down.
The Phoenix woman would be the last victim connected to a string of eight other killings in 2005 and 2006. Now, the man accused of being the Baseline Killer is set to go on trial for murder.
Jury selection is set to begin today in the case against Mark Goudeau, whose trial is expected to last about nine months.
The crimes started in August 2005 and ended with Miranda’s death on June 29, 2006, in what police described as a “blitz attack” of the mother of two at a Phoenix car wash. The dead, eight of them women, ranged from 19 to 39 years old. They were killed going about their daily activities, leaving work, waiting at a bus stop or washing a car.
Police said they have forensic evidence, including DNA and ballistics, tying Goudeau to the killings.
The 46-year-old former construction worker is the last of three suspects to go on trial for a rash of 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.
Goudeau already is serving a 438-year prison sentence. In September 2007, he was convicted of 19 counts in a brutal 2005 attack in which he raped a woman while pointing a pistol at her sister’s belly as they walked home from a park. That crime was part of the Baseline Killer case.
But this year’s trial will be the first time Goudeau is tried on nine first-degree murder counts and 65 other charges, including attempted murder, sexual assault, child molestation, kidnapping and armed robbery.