manson murders

WASHINGTON ― Autographs, doodles and drawings from convicted killers, such as serial killer Charles Manson, can be found for sale on the Internet. And U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, marked the National Day of Remembrance for Murder Victims on Tuesday by urging lawmakers to end the sale of such "murderabilia."

"It's reprehensible that when criminals are supposed to be paying their debt for their misdeeds, many are instead turning to the Internet, exploiting their notoriety and profiting from their deplorable crimes," Cornyn said in a statement.



Under legislation from Cornyn, state and federal prisoners would be barred from placing almost any item in the mail for the purpose of selling it. If convicted, criminals would pay fines and receive a minimum of three years in prison, to be served consecutively with any other sentence. The court could award money to families of victims to cover the cost of civil action and attorney fees should they choose to sue the convict.

Largely because of lobbying efforts by Andy Kahan, director of the Houston-based Mayor's Crime Victims Office, the sale of such items has been banned in five states, including Texas. Kahan also successfully pressured online auction site eBay to stop such sales.

Because many items are sold on Web sites outside of the five states, monitoring sales is difficult.

It's difficult to make a name in stand-up comedy when that name is shared with a brother indicted in a shooting spree that terrorized a city. Randy Hausner, brother of the accused, Dale Hausner, is thinking of changing his name to something less offensive. "Like Randy Manson," he says.

The August 2006 arrest of Dale Hausner on scores of murder and attempted-murder charges stunned the family. But after the initial shock wore off, reality set in. Randy Hausner had to decide whether it was still worth pursuing a career in comedy.

Stand-up was still a sidelight. Hausner was a name in local comedy circles only, but he had worked for a decade to get even that measure of recognition. Still, he was ready to abandon it because Hausner had become a household name. advertisement




"There are people who hate my guts for no reason," Randy Hausner said. "They despise me only because of my last name."

That last name was splashed all over front pages and television screens for a time. It was the buzz of talk radio. Randy Hausner, 38, served as de-facto spokesman for his family for a time, e-mailing statements in hopes of keeping reporters away from his parents' home. Other than that, he said he didn't leave his house.

"I did go through a deal of 'He's ruined me,' " Randy Hausner said of his brother. "I thought of moving away, changing my name."

Randy Hausner did spend some time out-of-state to get away from the city whose mayor had called his brother a monster. But he decided to stop running.

"I can no longer worry about what people think of me," Randy Hausner said.

Around February, about six months after his brother's name and face were splashed across front pages and television screens, Hausner was at a comedy night at JJ's Sports Cantina in Scottsdale. The host of the evening asked him to go onstage. Friends sitting at the table with him egged him on. "Go up, go up."

He rose from his chair and took the stage. Hausner recalled how the emcee introduced him: "This next comedian is Randy Hausner. He's going to kill tonight. Of course, it runs in the family."

Hausner said he wasn't sure how many people made the immediate connection between him and his brother. So, he decided to tell them. "Hi," he recalled saying, "my brother just got arrested and accused of being the serial shooter."

Eyes in the audience widened.

Then he pulled out an old joke. "Police pulled me over and found 23 cans of beer in my car," he said. "They couldn't make a case out of it."

He also used the line about changing his name to Manson. "It got me back into it," he said.

It marked the beginning of Hausner's journey to get back to the life he had before his brother landed behind bars.

In that life, Randy Hausner worked with Dale at Sky Harbor International Airport. Both were maintenance men.

"People asked me, 'Didn't you see any signs?' " Hausner said. "I said I saw him feeding some ducks. Didn't think that was unusual. Of course, he was feeding them to his pit bull."

Hausner was joking. He was standing with other comedians outside the recreation center of Mountain View Christian Church, in east Phoenix, on a recent Saturday night. The church is about a half-mile from one of the suspected serial shootings.

Hausner puts on a comedy show here on the first Saturday of each month. It's a clean show, appropriate for the entire family. Admission is $5.

Hausner still does occasional stand-up performances, but he realized he might be better suited to producing shows. "I may not be the best comic," Hausner said, "but I know the best."

One of the comics booked for that evening was Nancy Yeamans. She is a psychologist and has been performing comedy routines for about five years. One of her clients, it turns out, is related to someone shot in the serial shooting cases. Yeamans declined to say which case it was.

She has offered free therapy to Randy Hausner. "I talked to him about not being your brother's keeper. You can't control what your brother may or may not have done," she said.

Another comedian booked that night was Don Steinmetz. He met Hausner at the airport, where Steinmetz is assigned as a sergeant in the Phoenix Police Department airport bureau.

"I've been accusing Randy of a lot of things over the years," Steinmetz said after shaking Hausner's hand in the church parking lot.

Asked his impressions of the Hausner brothers, Steinmetz said, "I've known both Randy and Dale. Randy, because he's into the world of comedy, and Dale, because he's (accused of being) the shooter."

Steinmetz broke into a grin. The 28-year officer and four-year comic said his heart went out to Randy Hausner. "I called Randy as soon as I could (after the arrest)," he said. "I offered some sympathy and support, whatever he needed.

"I mean, he's a guy who brings about happiness. And his brother is the complete opposite."

Steinmetz gave a quick reminder that Dale Hausner has yet to be convicted of anything. Dale Hausner, along with his roommate, Samuel Dieteman, stand accused of a 14-month shooting spree that began in May 2005. Police reports say the two shot victims at random, sometimes in drive-by firings. Dale Hausner was indicted on seven charges of first-degree murder.

Randy Hausner tries to attend all his brother's court proceedings. So far, the mainly procedural monthly hearings have been on Mondays, one of Randy's days off from the airport.

Before one of those hearings, Hausner was chatting in the courtroom hallway with a couple. When it came time to enter the courtroom, Hausner held the door open for the man, who was using a walker.

The man told Hausner he recognized him as the brother of Dale Hausner. "I realized he had a walker because he had been a victim of a shooting," Randy Hausner said.

"I shook his hand and he shook mine and I saw a glow in his eye like, 'People are people,' " Hausner said. "And you cannot hold something against one person just because of their relatives."

When the brothers are sitting in the courtroom, it is easy to see the family resemblance.

They have the same bone structure and facial features. Randy's eyes are a little bigger and more deep-set.

That resemblance led to Randy Hausner's first joke about his brother's arrest. It fell to Randy to clean out his brother's Mesa apartment. As he was sweeping and taking out trash, a neighbor looked at him with an astonished glance.

"I realized, 'She thinks I'm Dale,' " Randy Hausner said. He waved at her and said, "How's it going? I got out on a technicality." The woman went back into her apartment and locked the door, Hausner said.

The Hausner family includes five boys. Randy and Dale are the youngest and, growing up, Randy said he took care of his baby brother.

For a time, the Hausners lived in a shuttered elementary school in Glendale. Randy's father was hired as the caretaker for the property while the school district figured out what to do with it.

The campus made for great hide-and-seek games. But Randy Hausner also would use the school to tutor his brother, who was three grades behind him.

Randy said the tutoring worked. Dale was "a straight-A honor-roll student," Randy said.

Dale Hausner made friends easily, Randy said, adding that he was more of an introvert. Even calling for a pizza, Randy said, would make him start shaking.

At 21, Randy Hausner decided to break out of his shell. He started listening to motivational cassettes. He decided to try being a stand-up. He didn't have a love for comedy, but figured it was a good way to break through his fear of speaking to people.

"It took me months to put together five minutes," he said. He tried out his material at an amateur night at Finney Bones in Scottsdale.

"I was shaking so bad that King Kong could have used me as a neck massager," he said of that first night.

As he continued to do shows, his brother, an amateur photographer, sometimes would tag along and take pictures of the comedians.

But Hausner and his brother weren't joined at the hip. Although the two did work together, Randy Hausner said he never really spent much time with his brother's roommate, Dieteman.

Another Hausner brother, Jeff, was sentenced to seven years in a Yuma prison after being convicted of stabbing to death a transient who had asked him for spare change. Court documents say Dieteman was present during that incident.

"I've always lived a clean life. I've always been on the straight and narrow," Randy Hausner said. He tried to pass on some of his motivational lectures to his brothers. "I try to tell them, 'Work hard at something. Grow and improve at it.' "

For Randy Hausner, that something has been comedy.

"Good evening, Mountain View rec center," he said to the audience, 50 or so people sitting on folding chairs.

Hausner introduced the first comedian of the night: Steinmetz.

"When people find out I'm a police officer they always ask, 'How many people have you shot?' " Steinmetz told the crowd. "Why? Is there a limit?"

Hausner made his way to the back of the room. He quickly checked in with the woman taking the money at the door, then clapped and laughed at some jokes, keeping up the energy in the room.

In the third row from the stage sat Hausner's mother. Hausner said his mother had taken Dale's arrest hard. One day, she fell down and broke her arm while watching coverage of the arrests. But she has been a faithful attendee of these shows.

"She comes to support me," Hausner said, "but it's for her." As a comedian cracked a joke, the mother of the Hausner boys dipped forward in laughter.

Dale Hausner knows his brother references his arrest onstage. In one of his jailhouse visits, Randy says Dale even gave him material: "At least our mother can't say, 'Why can't you be more like your brother?' "

It's a joke he hasn't used onstage yet. TERRE HAUTE ― Former Los Angeles prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi will speak at 7 p.m. Tuesday in Indiana State University's Tilson Auditorium as part of the 2007-2008 University Speakers Series. A book signing and reception is planned immediately after his talk in Heritage Lounge.

Bugliosi was the prosecutor who convicted Charles Manson in the Tate/LaBianca murders. He told the story of that case in the bestselling true crime book in publishing history, "Helter Skelter," which was turned into a successful television movie.

Handy complied, blending the Delta Blues with strains of ragtime, and weaving in some of the popular orchestration and harmony techniques he had perfected in his musical travels. The song "Mr. Crump" not only helped his candidate win the election, it became popular in its own right, especially after Handy renamed it, "Memphis Blues."

Unfortunately, Handy was swindled out of publication rights, making almost nothing on a song that would heavily influence what we now call "The Blues."

Undeterred, in 1914 he wrote, produced and published "St. Louis Blues" and, later, "Beale Street Blues," after the famous street in Memphis. Both songs would become tremendously popular and influential, especially "St. Louis Blues," whose open, free-expression style made its publication one of the two landmark events in the birth of that other uniquely American musical idiom ― jazz.

The second landmark event ― or so the story goes among many jazz purists ― occurred on Nov. 14, 1917, when government officials shut down Storyville, a district in New Orleans that had been created by city ordinance to incorporate (and isolate) the city's prostitution into one section of town. In the Storyville brothels many future jazz greats, Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong among them, had for years honed their skills, but when Storyville was closed, they were forced to find work elsewhere. Many migrated north to Chicago and New York where, in popular big city nightclubs and modern recording studios, they ushered in the Jazz Age by introducing it to the rest of America and the world.

It has been said that jazz and the blues are America's only two worthwhile contributions to the 20th Century. W.C. Handy had a hand in both.
WASHINGTON, D.C. ― State and federal prisoners would be barred from using the mail to sell personal items under a bill introduced in the House of Representatives by the man who caught the Green River Killer.

Rep. Dave Reichert, RWash., a former King County sheriff who spent nearly 20 years tracking Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, says serial killers and other murderers shouldn't be allowed to profit from the sale of socalled "murderabilia."

A handful of Web sites market the items, ranging from a hubcap off Ted Bundy's 1968 Volkswagen Beetle to a Charles Manson fingerprint chart to a Zodiac killer wanted poster. One murderabilia site is offering for $1,700 a fourpage letter Ridgway wrote three weeks after he was arrested. The top bid at another Web site has reached $900 for what's reputed to be Bundy's last Christmas card.

Some of the killers willingly participate in the sales, while others are duped by dealers into providing drawings, letters and other personal items.

"The families of these victims can be assured the federal government ― Congress ― believes this is a sick, sick practice," Reichert said. "In law enforcement, we personally see how crime affects victims, and murder is the most heinous crime. The families of these victims experience enormous, life-consuming pain after losing a loved one, and the exploitation of the crime by a criminal is unacceptable."

While King County sheriff, Reichert at one point interviewed Bundy ― who was on Florida's death row ― seeking insights into who was killing young women and dumping their bodies along the Green River in Washington state. Ridgway eventually confessed to murdering 48 women.

Bundy, who grew up in Tacoma, was executed 18 years ago in Florida for killing two Florida State University sorority sisters and a 12-yearold girl. He confessed to 40 murders, but the true total may never be known. Along with Manson, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer and David "Son of Sam" Berkowitz, Bundy items are among the most sought-after in murderabilia.

Reichert's bill is similar to one introduced in the Senate earlier this year by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. The measure prohibits inmates from using the mail to sell personal items. Five states ― Texas, California, New Jersey, Michigan and Utah ― have restricted such sales.

Reichert said he expects Congress to approve the legislation before the end of the year.

"Federal legislation is the only answer," said Andy Kahan, director of the mayor of Houston's crime victims' office, who has been tracking the sale of murderabilia for eight years. "The U.S. mail is the conduit used by these vultures."