The Sex Murder Files

Four days later, Fresno police found Hausmann hiding in the bedroom closet at a friend’s apartment. He refused to come out and was Tasered by officers. In the jail interview, Hausmann says that the arresting officers stomped on his face, breaking his glasses, and kicked him in the rib cage and the pelvic area. He claims that the two girls assaulted him and that he was robbed by the older teenager, who beat his head and face with the bottom of a pair of high-heeled boots.

“The kidnapping didn’t occur,” he says. “She stalked me. I don’t date ugly women. I don’t date women with big feet.?.?.?.?I didn’t assault anyone. They beat the daylights out of me.”

Illustration by John E. Miner

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More About

• Roger Hausmann
• Fresno
• Jeffrey Steinhoff
• Murder and Homicide
• Crime

Hausmann, who is representing himself at his June 12 trial, wrote in a failed motion that sought to dismiss the case that the 17-year-old victim “had exhibited a desire to have illicit intercourse with the defendant upon more than one occasion; advertising the lie that she was the defendant’s ‘woman.’ ” He also accused that same girl of extorting money from him and being involved in a prostitution ring.

t is not the first time that Hausmann, who goes by the nickname Super Honky, has caught the eye of law enforcement. In 1991, the Santa Rosa native was one of the main targets of a task force set up by the Fresno police and sheriff’s departments to look into the deaths of 25 African-American women who died between May 1977 and November 1990, some of whom were prostitutes. Hausmann became a suspect after he was arrested on suspicion of beating a prostitute with a steam iron.

“He has a very extensive violent criminal history,” says Fresno police Lieutenant Randy Dobbins. “He’s been a person of interest on several crimes. Due to his lifestyle and history, we have looked at him in the past, and we do so today.”

According to a Fresno Bee article, the prostitute involved in the beating told police that Hausmann said, “You’re harder to kill than the other ones.” A man who witnessed the beating also heard Hausmann say, “This one is hard to kill.”

The beating, along with those statements, led authorities to refocus their attention on the women whose bodies were found in irrigation canals, standpipes, vacant lots, fields and abandoned houses during that 13-and-a-half-year period. Most of the women were between the ages of 18 and 30.

At the time, Fresno homicide Detective Doug Stokes wrote in a report that Hausmann had “certain traits and attributes which could be attributed to a person involved in the multiple murders of black female prostitutes.” Stokes, the lead investigator in the 25 slayings, says that Hausmann knew some of the women who were killed.

“He admitted that he dated some of the girls. This man was with a lot of prostitutes over a long period of time,” says Stokes, now retired. “Out of all of them [suspects], he was probably the one we looked at the closest or the longest. He preferred younger women, and that kind of fit in with the profile.”

The task force hit a dead end and was disbanded after 10 weeks, with no arrests made in any of the slayings. But as it turns out, the investigation was not complete. Until the late 1990s, police did not routinely test DNA samples. “Now we have to revisit all of the evidence collected at the time to see if we can pull the DNA, ” says Fresno police Sergeant Curt Chastain. “We just started the DNA unit a year ago.”

As for beating the woman with the steam iron, Hausmann pleaded no contest to assault with a deadly weapon and false imprisonment. He spent 29 months in jail and was released in November 1993. According to the Fresno Bee article, Hausmann admitted beating the prostitute and tying her up but claimed self-defense, saying the woman hit him with the steam iron first.

In the jail interview last month, Hausmann says she hit him over the head with a bronze ashtray and stole jewelry from him. He blamed a male friend whom he said knocked her out and tied her up and wanted to roll her body in a carpet and throw it in the lake. Hausmann said he tried to help the woman.

On his left chest is tattooed the name “Stivette” — the mother of Hausmann’s 9-year-old son. In 2003, Stivette Streeter accused Hausmann of kidnapping the boy and taking him to Los Angeles. She also told police that he threatened to kill her. Streeter said that in 1995, Hausmann grabbed her by the throat when he thought she was cheating on him. On another occasion, she said, he beat her head against the wall. One of his former wives told the Weekly that he tried to choke her to death because she refused to have sex with him, and threatened the life of one of her friends.

However, Hausmann denies that he ever hit, strangled or murdered anyone: “I never even slapped one.”

Seated in his auto-sales office in Fresno, Ron Browns can speak for hours about his former employee’s odd nature and skill at repossessing cars.