Arizona

Serial rapist case involving Arizona women comes to light for first time

Published

2 years ago

June 3, 2023

Serial rapist case involving Arizona women comes to light for first time

PHOENIX (3TV/CBS 5) — It’s a story that’s flown under the radar for far too long until now. A convicted serial rapist moved from city to city, state to state, terrorizing Arizona women for years. Now, as a journalist puts the pieces together of what truly happened, a new book reveals the horrors these women faced and the daunting thought that there are far more.

“As an investigative journalist, I have covered thousands of stories,” said author Tammy Leitner. “This story literally chose me.” It was April 1999.

Tammy Leitner lived in a Scottsdale apartment complex. She was a newspaper reporter then and would go on to be a national news correspondent. “I opened my door and realized I couldn’t go outside. There was crime scene tape blocking my front door. My neighbor had been assaulted, and in a very strange twist of events a piece of evidence ended up inside our apartment,” said Leitner. “I was quite traumatized, but I didn’t know that at the time.”

She also didn’t know how this man broke in and what he told his rape victim. “He had entered through an open window, but he took the screen off,” said retired Scottsdale Police detective TJ Jiran. “He pointed a gun at her and said, ‘Don’t say a thing.’ She was severely traumatized. It was heart-wrenching to watch.”

Jiran was trying to determine if this man was responsible for another rape in Scottsdale just five months prior. And then – the suspect called the victim in Leitner’s apartment complex, taunting her. Police traced the call to a Valley man named Steve Bezak. Who was that? Turns out Phoenix Police may have been looking for him too, for years.

“This happened about a week and a half or so after my 19th birthday. I was going to ASU at the time,” said Jen O’Neill. She had just moved into a new apartment. Her belongings weren’t even unpacked. It was August 1995. “It was around 4 a.m. I woke up to somebody above me and he had a gun to my head,” said O’Neill. “And then he held my wrists above my head with one hand and proceeded to rape me. After he said if I told anyone, he would kill me.”

Jen O’Neill was raped just after her 19th birthday.(Arizona’s Family)

Just a teen, O’Neill laid petrified in bed. Three years later and just minutes down the road, an eerily same attack on 43-year-old Karen Sullivan. “In the middle of the night I heard ‘shuffle, shuffle’ at the end of the bed, and all of the sudden there was this guy,” said Sullivan. “He took the duvet cover and pushed it up over my head, jammed something cold metal, and said, ‘don’t scream or else I’ll shoot your brains out.’ When he was done, he took those bathrobe ties and tied my ankles and hands together and said, ‘Don’t move, don’t say anything,’ and left.”

Sullivan and O’Neill didn’t know each other and wouldn’t for decades. They both had no idea who their attacker was until dominoes started to fall one by one. “Steve Bezak, the real Steve Bezak, came in and he had his ID stolen in Florida, “said Jiran. A stolen identity and a botched burglary in Florida finally led to an arrest in 1999 after years on the run. “I’m Claude Dean Hull the second. You got me,” said the suspect in an interrogation video with a Phoenix PD detective.

Sullivan got a call from a detective. “The guy’s name is Claude Dean Hull. And that’s when I first heard the name,” said Sullivan.

The name was the first domino. “There was a whiteboard that ran across his wall and it was all of the cases. All of us up on the wall,” said Sullivan, sitting in the Phoenix detective’s office. They were the faces of his victims.

“How many were there?” asked reporter Briana Whitney. “17,” said replied Sullivan. “In Arizona?” asked Whitney. “Mmhmm,” Sullivan said. “Over the next nine months, detectives started piecing together who he was and they determined he was a serial rapist and he had been doing this for several decades,” said Leitner.

California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Florida. His crimes spanned so many states. “Detectives estimated, they believed, that there could be as many as 100 sexual assault victims and 3,000 other victims that he either robbed, stole their identities, broke into their home,” said Leitner.

Woven into his lies, Hull described his MO to the police. “He calls himself a creeper. He said, ‘I creep.’ And he says, ‘You will not believe how many creepers are out there at night that I see, that don’t see me,’” Jiran recalled.

O’Neill found out later how Hull found her. “I basically walked by him. I just either smiled or said hello, nothing major. And he felt that I looked clean, yeah. And from there he watched which apartment I walked into and waited for my lights to go out,” O’Neill said.

He was a serial rapist, a serial predator, using the darkness of the night to strike. They were all innocent victims, the youngest just 11 years old. He was convicted in both Florida and Arizona for multiple rapes.

Leitner couldn’t let any of this go. She needed to know why. After several letters, Hull responded to her from prison. “He said, ‘OK, I’ll tell you. What do you want to know?’” Leitner recalled.

Leitner would correspond with him dozens of times, desperate to understand the depth of his sins for the survivors she had grown close to. “I never got what I was searching for from him. I wanted to understand why he did these things. Was he born this way? Was it a compulsion? Did he care that he hurt these people? And ultimately, I don’t think he has remorse for his crimes. I think the only thing he’s sorry for is he got caught,” said Leitner.

Her new book, “Don’t Say A Thing,” is the story of those who did say something and didn’t let this terrifying moment take life away from them. “Do you think that there are other victims here in Arizona that don’t even know he may have been their attacker?” asked Whitney. “Yes, yes absolutely. Absolutely,” said Leitner.

“There might be a couple victims that hear this and say, ‘That sounds like the guy that sexually assaulted me years ago,’” said Jiran.

The hope is they may come forward because now, there’s power in numbers. They are not victims but survivors. “I like to think, yes, this is part of my story, but it’s not the beginning and it’s definitely not the end,” said O’Neill. “He’s the reason for this story, but it’s about us. And we live to tell the tale,” said Sullivan.

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Arizona

Arizona Cardinals vs Carolina Panthers live score updates for NFL Week 16 game today

Published

10 minutes ago

December 22, 2024

Press Room

Arizona Cardinals vs Carolina Panthers live score updates for NFL Week 16 game today

The Arizona Cardinals continue their 2024 NFL regular season schedule with an NFL Week 16 game against the Carolina Panthers today.

The Cardinals are coming off a 30-17 win against the New England Patriots at home in NFL Week 15.

The Panthers lost to the Dallas Cowboys, 30-14.

The Cardinals are 7-7 on the season. The Panthers are 3-11.

Follow our live updates of the game, which is being played at Carolina’s Bank of America Stadium, for the latest score, news, notes and analysis of the Week 16 NFL game Sunday.

Watch Cardinals at Panthers with FUBO (free trial)

Cardinals vs Panthers schedule: What time is NFL Week 16 game?

The game is on Sunday, Dec. 22, at 11 a.m. MST, 1 p.m. ET.

Cardinals vs Panthers TV: What channel is NFL Week 16 game on?

The game can be seen on FOX.

Cardinals vs Panthers streaming: How do I watch NFL Week 16 game on livestream?

Streaming options for the Cardinals at Panthers game include FUBO and other streaming services that carry FOX.

Cardinals vs Panthers announcers: Who is calling the NFL Week 16 game?

Chris Myers (play-by-play) and Mark Schlereth (analyst) are scheduled to be the announcers for the Cardinals-Panthers Week 16 NFL game.

Cardinals vs Panthers game odds: Who is favored in NFL Week 16?

The Cardinals are a four-point favorite over the Panthers in NFL Week 16 odds for the game, courtesy of BetMGM Sportsbook.

Arizona is -225 on the moneyline, while Carolina is +180.

The over/under (point total) is set at 47 points.

Pregame reading for Cardinals at Panthers game today

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Arizona ‘villain’ Charles Smith arrested after filming himself spray bug killer pesticide on food inside Walmart

Published

8 hours ago

December 22, 2024

Press Room

Arizona ‘villain’ Charles Smith arrested after filming himself spray bug killer pesticide on food inside Walmart

A self-described Arizona social media “villain” was arrested after he filmed himself allegedly spraying bed bug killer on groceries inside a Walmart as he boasted to police about his prank videos.

Charles Smith, 27, is accused of grabbing a can of Hot Shot Ultra Bed Bug and Flea Killer and unleashing the pesticide on a series of perishable items in the Mesa, Ariz. megastore around 8:30 p.m. on Dec. 19.

In the now-deleted video, the influencer filmed himself wearing a black hoodie and pink bandana while spraying the toxin on bananas, acorn squash, potatoes, lemons, green apples and Roma tomatoes at the store — located in a neighborhood southeast of Phoenix.

Police claim the TikTokker, who goes by the username WolfieKahletti, intentionally went to the store to film pranks for his channel.

Smith identifies as an online “troll,” according to court documents viewed by Az Family. He has more than 300,000 followers on TikTok.

The troublemaker allegedly told police that he makes between $6,000 – $10,000 per month filming his provocative prank videos.

”I think social media has got people doing crazy things out here,” Walmart shopper Xavier Griego told the outlet. “It’s unfortunate that somebody would mess up their whole life, potentially, for something on social media for views.”

Smith voluntarily turned himself over to police on Dec. 21.

He faces charges of introducing poison (a felony) as well as three misdemeanors that include criminal damage, endangerment and theft.

A spokesperson from Walmart told AZ Family that store employees removed the directly impacted products and cleaned the affected areas of the store.

It’s not clear if any customers were injured from eating the contaminated items.

“This incident underscores the potential dangers of reckless actions disguised as social media pranks,” the Mesa Police Department said in a statement.

Other videos posted online by Smith include the posts of him seemingly mixing in bacon and eggs in a stranger’s load at the laundromat as well as locking people inside a different grocery store.

The spray is “harmful if swallowed” and “prolonged or frequently repeated skin contact may cause allergic reactions in some individuals” per HotShot’s website.

Suspects convicted of tampering with consumer products face up to 5 to 20 years in prison.

In 2022, an Arizona man was sentenced to 10 years of probation after being convicted of adding harmful chemicals to food at several retail stores in the Phoenix area.

David Lohr was ordered to pay restitution to a grocery chain for $390.42 and ordered to participate in a mental health evaluation and any additional recommended treatment.

There were no reported injuries or illnesses associated with the tampered items during the 2018 stunt, prosecutors said.

Lohr was accused of tampering with products at stores in California one year later and sentenced to a 51-month prison term followed by three years of supervised release with mental health services.

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Arizona

Love scores 24 points as Arizona rolls to a 94-41 win over Central Michigan

Published

16 hours ago

December 21, 2024

Press Room

Love scores 24 points as Arizona rolls to a 94-41 win over Central Michigan

Associated Press

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Caleb Love matched his season-high with 24 points to help power Arizona to a 94-41 rout of Central Michigan on Saturday.

The Wildcats (6-5) won back-to-back games for the first time since beating Canisius and Old Dominion to open the season.

The Chippewas (5-6) scored the game’s first three points but Love knocked down three 3-pointers and scored 18 first-half points to put Arizona firmly in charge at intermission, 44-23.

Arizona shot 54.5% from the field, including 10 of 29 from distance, and got 44 points from its bench. K.J. Lewis hit 4 of 8 from the field and 5 of 5 from the line for 13 points to lead the reserves. Tobe Awaka added a double-double with 10 points and 10 rebounds. The Wildcats dominated the boards, outrebounding the Chippewas 45-27.

Central Michigan struggled from the field, hitting just 14 of 54 (25.9%), including just 3 of 16 from distance. Cayden Vasko hit 4 of 13, including 2 of 5 from 3-point range, to lead the team with 10 points.

Arizona opens Big 12 Conference play at home when it plays host to TCU on Dec. 30. Central Michigan will look to snap its three-game losing string on Dec. 30 when it plays host to Cleary.

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