Felon, 71, a no-show at sentencing
Judges issues two life sentences for man who raped woman in Boca Raton in 1977
She was raped more than 41 years ago by a man holding a gun to her head and wearing a woman’s wig and horn-rimmed glasses as a disguise.
And on Monday, the survivor of that attack in her Boca Raton home said she finally got closure.
John Arthur MacLean, a career criminal who has bragged about his deft burglary skills, received a life sentence in the armed sexual battery case solved based on DNA evidence.
The 71-year-old felon chose not to be in the Palm Beach County courtroom, but the victim watched Circuit Judge Jeffrey Colbath order the punishment.
“I want to thank the police department for following up on these cold cases and giving everybody piece of mind that he’s not able to hurt anybody else,” the woman, now in her late 60s, said after the brief hearing.
The South Florida Sun Sentinel is not identifying her due to the circumstances of the case. At the time of the rape, in early 1977, she was a 26-year-old mother of two young sons, ages 2 and 6.
Finally, in June, she got the chance to testify against MacLean. Prosecutors explained to jurors that MacLean’s DNA was identified on a swab from a hospital rape kit.
The jury rejected the defense’s claim that the DNA was contaminated because the swab was loosely stored in a box with evidence from numerous other cases, and essentially forgotten for decades.
“This is the peanuts at the top of the bar — the more people who put their fingers in it the more contaminated it gets,” Assistant
Public Defender Stephen Arbuzow then insisted.
But there was no time limit for the police to bring charges. And prosecutors argued the evidence wasn’t at all tainted.
MacLean also was convicted in April of raping a 15-year-old babysitter in the fall of 1976, also in Boca Raton. In that armed sexual battery case, MacLean’s DNA was matched to a stain from the victim’s jeans — a small cloth cutting that had been kept in storage.
It all became possible because a decade ago. MacLean was forced to provide samples of his DNA, or genetic fingerprint, after he finished a prison sentence for early 1990s Arizona convictions for attempted sexual exploitation of a minor and burglary.
In 2010, a Boca Raton detective working on unsolved rape cases sent evidence out to a crime lab for testing.
MacLean’s DNA was first matched to a stain on a robe worn by one of two sisters, ages 14 and 18, who were raped in February 1976.
But a statute of limitations on armed sexual batteries was in place, and MacLean couldn’t be charged. The law was changed in July 1976, however, meaning there is no deadline for cops to make arrests for attacks occurring after that date.
MacLean was arrested in 2012, when the sex offender was living with his wife in a Deerfield Beach RV park.
“This was justice long overdue for these women and we couldn’t be happier,” prosecutor Marci Rex said after the sentencing Monday. “Had it not been for [the detective] going through this old evidence and discovering the DNA we would never be here today.”
Rex and prosecutor Brianna Coakley requested two consecutive life sentences, while citing MacLean’s history as a serial burglar. That includes the theft of $1 million in jewelry from the Fort Lauderdale mansion of a Johnson & Johnson heiress. From a prison cell in 1983, wrote a book titled “Secrets of a Superthief,” which he touted as a crime prevention guide.
Assistant Public Defenders Arbuzow and Christopher Fox-Lent asked for MacLean to get time served, or nearly six years in jail.
Judge Colbath settled on two life sentences to run at the same time; he said he could not consider MacLean’s felonious past.
Despite the life term, MacLean will be eligible for parole at some point in the future because of laws that were in place when he committed the crimes.
But he’s not headed for prison just yet. Colbath ordered deputies “to use all reasonable force” to bring MacLean to his courtroom on Thursday to be fingerprinted for a requirement of the sentencing.