"Baseline Killer" Suspect Gets 438 Years
A man accused of being the Phoenix Baseline Killer was sentenced to 438 years in prison Friday for the sexual assaults of two sisters.
Mark Goudeau still faces trial for the slayings of eight women and a man in 2005-2006, and faces a possible death sentence if he is convicted. He has pleaded not guilty.
The 43-year-old former construction worker was sentenced for his September conviction on charges of raping one woman and sexually attacking another as they walked home from a park.
During the two-month trial, both sisters identified Goudeau as their attacker. DNA evidence also linked him to the rape.
Goudeau has maintained his innocence, and told Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Andrew Klein that what happened to the two young women was horrible, "but I had nothing to do with it."
Klein said before handing down the sentence that Goudeau must have two "diametrically opposed" personalities, one calm and respectful in court and the other sociopathic and brutal.
One of the victims told the judge Friday through an interpreter that she still wakes up crying at times: "I will hope for him to never get out."
During the two-month trial, the sisters testified that Goudeau rushed toward them with a pistol in hand as they left the park. They said he forced them into some bushes, told them to strip, then had sex with the younger sister while pointing the gun at the other sister's pregnant belly, reports CBS News affiliate KPHO-TV.
"I wanted to get up but I thought if I got up he would hurt my sister," the younger of the two sisters testified through a Spanish interpreter.
It took a year to track Goudeau down, prosecutors said, because he took extra steps to conceal his identity, reports KPHO-TV.
The Associated Press has not identified the woman because she is the victim of sexual assault.
Jurors compared Goudeau's face to a sketch the two sisters made after the attack and debated whether the sisters truly recognized him in court.
But when it came to the biological evidence that forensics experts said placed Goudeau at the crime scene, there was little doubt.
"The DNA was really a lynchpin to the case. It was pretty much irrefutable," jury foreman Michael Voda told KPHO-TV.
Goudeau's wife, Wendy Carr, said she felt the judge has been biased and she blamed prosecutors and jurors for convicting Goudeau based on "junk science."
"This is just another freak show of a hearing where they convicted an innocent man," Carr told KPHO-TV after the sentencing.
Prosecutors had said earlier that Goudeau faced a maximum of 285 years in prison. But Deputy County Attorney Suzanne Cohen proved a prior violent record in court Friday that made him eligible for the higher sentences.
Goudeau is suspected of being a serial predator known as the "Baseline Killer," named for the south Phoenix street where many of the early attacks took place.
He is the first of three suspected serial killers to go on trial for a rash of random attacks that terrorized the Phoenix area for more than a year. All three were arrested last year.
Dale Hausner and Samuel Dieteman were arrested in the so-called "Serial Shooter" case in August 2006 and are expected to go on trial next year. Hausner faces seven murder counts and Dieteman is charged with two. Their trial is expect to begin next year.