The Associated Press
PHOENIX- The top prosecutor in the Phoenix area told residents Tuesday that the rash of serial attacks that put the region on edge for months was finally over.
Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas announced a 74-count indictment against Mark Goudeau, a former construction worker police suspect was the area’s serial “Baseline Killer.”
The charges, which include nine counts of first-degree murder, 15 counts of sexual assault and 11 counts of kidnapping, stem from crimes committed between August 2005 and June 2006 throughout the Phoenix area.
“The reign of terror has ended,” Thomas said. “The quest for justice has just begun.”
Defense lawyer Corwin Townsend said Goudeau will plead not guilty to the new charges. He has already pleaded not guilty to two sexual assaults that authorities also attributed to the Baseline Killer.
“We haven’t changed our position at all,” he said. “The fact that they (added) more charges does not change our belief that they have the wrong guy.”
Townsend said he will add to Goudeau’s defense team to handle the new charges, some of which could lead to the death penalty if Goudeau is convicted.
Police announced last month that the man they believed to be the Baseline Killer was in custody and recommended that Goudeau be charged with murder and other crimes.
Goudeau, an ex-convict, has been in jail since September, when he was arrested in the two sexual assaults. At the time, police stopped short of pronouncing Goudeau the Baseline Killer while they built a case against him.
But last month, police said that investigators had collected forensic evidence -- including DNA and ballistics -- and other evidence implicating Goudeau in the killings.
“We feel very confident about these charges, very good about where we are with the evidence,” Thomas said Tuesday.
Goudeau’s defense team has hired its own forensics expert to analyze evidence that led to the sexual assault charges. According to their expert’s independent review, Townsend said it doesn’t appear that Goudeau can be definitively linked to the suspected sexual assaults of two women in September 2005.
“I feel fairly confident there will not be any type of DNA match,” Townsend said.
Goudeau is still scheduled to face the sexual assault charges in a trial to start Monday. But Townsend said the trial likely will be postponed until March.
The Baseline Killer case originally included eight killings. A ninth was publicly revealed in December. Most of the victims, all but one of them women, were killed going about their daily activities, such as leaving work, washing a car or waiting at a bus stop.
Police have said the killer usually struck at night and wore disguises, including a wig of dreadlocks and a fisherman’s hat. The name Baseline Killer came from the Phoenix street where some of the earliest crimes were committed.
About half of the Baseline Killer attacks occurred within three miles of the Phoenix home Goudeau shared with his wife. One woman was killed just around the corner.
Goudeau had previously served 13 1/2 years in prison for three aggravated assaults, armed robbery and kidnapping before being paroled in 2004. He once blamed his history of violence on a weakness for crack cocaine.
The Baseline Killer was one of two serial killer cases that spread fear across the Phoenix area in recent months.
In August, police arrested two roommates in what was dubbed the Serial Shooter case. The two men are accused of driving around the city and its suburbs at night, firing at people randomly from a car. Seven people were killed.
The defendants, who have pleaded not guilty, are awaiting trial.