PHOENIX (Reuters) ? A former construction worker and convicted sexual predator was found guilty on Monday of nine murders in a crime spree that stunned the nation's sixth-largest city.
Prosecutors are seeking the death sentence in the next phase of the trial of Mark Goudeau, 47, dubbed the "Baseline Killer" by authorities because it is the name of a major south Phoenix street along which many of his initial crimes were clustered.
All nine of the people he is convicted of killing -- eight women and one man -- died from a single gunshot to the head.
Prosecutors said Goudeau was responsible for 13 separate attacks on a total of 33 people during a 13-month stretch beginning in August of 2005.
A Phoenix jury of six women and six men deliberated for a week before returning guilty verdicts for the nine murder counts and 58 other charges, including sexual assault, kidnapping, armed robbery and child molestation.
In the next phase of his trial, which starts on Wednesday, jurors will determine what "aggravating factors," if any, may be considered in deciding whether Goudeau gets the death penalty.
Goudeau already is serving 438 years in prison for sexually assaulting two sisters, one of whom was six months pregnant, in a south Phoenix park.
"A terrible scourge on our community has now been held accountable for his crimes," Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery said in a statement.
Investigators said the crimes at issue in Monday's verdict began on August 6, 2005, when Goudeau pulled a gun on two 13-year-old girls and a 14-year-old boy on Baseline Road. He took them behind a church and sexually assaulted the two girls.
The first murder in the case came a month later, when 19-year-old Georgia Thompson was killed in a parking lot outside her apartment complex, police said.
His final victim was Carmen Miranda, 37, a mother of two, who was abducted from a carwash as she was talking on her cell phone near Goudeau's home on June 29, 2006. She was found dead inside her vehicle.
During the five-month trial, prosecutors relied on DNA and ballistics to physically link Goudeau to the crimes. No murder weapon was ever found.
Defense lawyers sought to raise questions about the reliability of the evidence and offered no witnesses, saying prosecutors failed to prove Goudeau guilty of the crimes beyond a reasonable doubt.
Goudeau, who had steadfastly maintained his innocence, was arrested in the driveway of his home in September 2006 after an intensive police investigation.
A special 250-member task force worked for months to investigate the crimes, which were first clumped along Baseline Road and later spread to other areas, terrorizing the city as a whole and making national headlines.
It was one of two serial-killing probes that sent a double dose of fear through the Phoenix area and beyond about six years ago. Dale Hausner was convicted of six murders in 2009 and was sentenced to death as part of the "Serial Shooter" investigation. His accomplice, Sam Dieteman, admitted to two murders and was sentenced to life in prison.
In all, eight people were killed and 17 others were wounded during that night-time spree that ended in August 2006.
(Editing by Steve Gorman and Greg McCune)
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