Two South Phoenix sisters who were kidnapped and sexually assaulted in September of 2005 had no idea that they narrowly escaped a man who turned out to be a serial killer responsible for taking the lives of nine people.
Mark Goudeau is a serial killer and rapist who terrorized the Phoenix metro area between August 2005 and June 2006. Oddly enough, Goudeau committed his atrocious crimes at the same time as two other Phoenix serial killers, jointly known as the "Serial Shooter.”
The Baseline Killer was first called the Baseline Rapist after Phoenix police announced that a man was sexually assaulting females as young as 12 years old at gunpoint near Baseline Road. His name changed the Baseline Killer in the spring of 2006 after investigators were able to link a series of murders and armed robberies to the rapist.
Goudeau already was in custody when police had the revelation in October of 2006. Phoenix police had arrested him a month earlier, on September 6, 2006, on charges of sexually assaulting and kidnapping two South Phoenix sisters in September 2005. One of the sisters was visibly pregnant at the time of the attack, which happened when they were walking home from a park one evening.
Goudeau was arrested after authorities linked his DNA to swabs collected from the breasts of one of the assaulted sisters.
His DNA already had been in a national databank since 2004 because he provided a DNA swab when he was released from prison after serving more than a decade in person for a string of violent crimes.
The crimes committed by Goudeau had no apparent motive, and the murders were particularly brutal. He usually shot his victims in the head. He also reportedly wore various disguises and tried to impersonate a homeless man or drug addict.
About half of the Baseline Killer's crimes occurred within three miles of the Phoenix home Goudeau shared with his wife.
The murder victims ranged in age from 19 to 39 and were mostly light-skinned Latina women. They included a preschool teacher taken from a bus stop, a stripper, two women cooking in a food truck, a woman washing her car, a prostitute, a mother discovered dead by her young son, and a man and a woman leaving their shift at a Japanese restaurant. Prosecutors said all women were all shot in the head because they would not submit “their bodies” to Goudeau.
Phoenix police spent countless hours following up on hundreds of tips during the summer of 2006. Residents of Phoenix were alarmed by the randomness of the crimes. Police offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to an arrest, but it still took more than a year to finally come up with a viable suspect.
Goudeau was on parole at the time, and his parole officers provided information to the Phoenix Police Department task force suggesting that he matched the sketch of the Baseline Killer.
Officers searched Goudeau's home and found a ski mask and a realistic toy gun. Police got a search warrant and found additional items that linked Goudeau to crimes committed by the Baseline Killer.
Goudeau committed 93 felonies over a ten-month period and went through two separate trials—one for 19 charges related to the attack on the sisters and another related to 74 more charges including murder, robbery, rape, kidnapping, and sexual abuse.
Goudeau was convicted on a total of 76 of 93 crimes and was sentenced to death 9 times and given a total of 1,634 years in Arizona state prison.
Fine more true crime stories here.
