DNA and a cold-case mystery

Former South Florida ‘superthief’ awaits trial on 40-year-old rape allegations

John MacLean liked to think of himself as more cunning than most criminals.

He gave himself a comic-book type persona, embraced his crimes, even wrote a book about his exploits called “Secrets of a Superthief.” One of his most not a they ble hauls: $1 million in jewelry from the Fort Lauderdale mansion of a Johnson & Johnson heiress.

But MacLean, 71, draws the line at being called a rapist.

Cops believed he could be the elusive “Gentle Rapist,” who spoke softly to his victims and typically wore disguises while committing hundreds of sexual batteries.

According to a 1982 article in the Fort Lauderdale News, police also called him the Coconut Grove Rapist, the Bicycle Rapist, and a purple tights wearing character called “The Cape.”

But they never managed to prove he tormented women across Florida in the 1970s.

Now, though, prosecutors say believe they are finally able to make the case against MacLean, and hold him accountable for rapes in Boca Raton in 1976 and 1977. There is no statute of limitations on these crimes. The key in seeking convictions now is the use of DNA.

MacLean was forced to provide samples of his genetic fingerprint in 2005, after finishing a prison sentence on an early 1990s Arizona sex offense.

By 2012, authorities say they linked his DNA to evidence from the Boca attacks, in what was hailed as a cold-case breakthrough.

Since then, MacLean and his lawyers have been unable to convince the courts that the armed sexual battery charges must be thrown out, over claims of tainted evidence, destroyed evidence including fingerprints, poor police work, and the age of the cases.

So the first trial is finally set to begin with jury selection Monday, with MacLean seething over what he contends is an “unquestionable criminal conspiracy to convict an

innocent man.”

MacLean faces a possible life sentence if the Palm Beach County jury finds him guilty.

In a series of jailhouse letters attacking the judiciary and calling for national media investigations, MacLean says it’s “laughable” how the DNA evidence to be presented to jurors is so unreliable and obviously fabricated.

But the trial court has ruled there’s no proof police intentionally mishandled or lost evidence, and it will be up to a jury to decide his fate.

“To say there was some bad faith on the part of police in 1977, long before this Defendant ever became a suspect, defies logic and the claim lacks merit,” wrote Chief Circuit Judge Krista Marx, in a May 2016 ruling.

Along with the disputed DNA evidence, prosecutors will be allowed to argue a pattern exists to expose MacLean as the mystery rapist who sexually battered 14 and 18-year-old Boca sisters, a 15-year-old baby sitter, and a 26-year-old mother of two young boys.

The thief

A Massachusetts native with a reportedly high IQ, MacLean moved to Broward after serving his Arizona prison sentence. He has bragged about using his locksmith expertise to pull off some 2,000 burglaries along the East Coast in the 1970s, claiming to have pocketed more than $100 million.

He became one of the more colorful figures in South Florida crime history, thanks to the Johnson & Johnson heiress heist in 1979. He was convicted of that caper, among other burglaries and sentenced to 15 years in state prison.

Also around this time, Miami and Fort Lauderdale police considered MacLean a suspect in numerous sexual battery cases from South Florida to Gainesville in the 1970s, including the 1974 rape of a college student in Miami.

MacLean was charged in 1981 with rapes in Miami and Boca Raton, but the cases were later dismissed because of problems with the evidence and other reasons, records show.

From his prison cell, he wrote the 177-page Superthief book, which he touted as a crime prevention guide. It was distributed in 1983 by a New York publisher.

These criminal adventures were also featured in a 1992 People magazine story. That year, he was convicted of attempted sexual exploitation of a minor and a burglary in Maricopa, Ariz.

After leaving prison out west, MacLean returned to Broward with a sheriff’s deputy escort, records show.

He was reporting monthly to a sex offender unit, and living with his wife in a Deerfield Beach RV park, when his past caught up to him.

The rapes

Back in 2010, Boca Raton Police Detective Mynor Cruz began reviewing unsolved sexual battery cases from decades ago. He sent several items to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office crime lab for testing.

Cruz got a hit. MacLean’s DNA was 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.

And that’s how MacLean, in October 2012, was charged with two rapes.

The first case concerns the assault of a 15-year-old babysitter on Oct. 16, 1976. The attacker slipped into a home on Malaga Drive with pantyhose over his face and pointed a handgun at the girl. Two small kids were in another room.

“Don’t worry,” the intruder said, before proceeding to rape her in a bedroom at 11:30 that night. “I won’t hurt you. Don’t scream.”

On Feb. 28, 1977, a 26-year-old mother was inside her Northeast First Avenue home at 8:30 p.m. while her two young sons slept. She was approached by a man wearing a short, curly brown ladies’ wig. He told her not to scream as he held a pistol to her head.

Thirty-five years later — DNA taken from a sample of semen-stained jeans in the October 1976 rape, and DNA from a vaginal swab from a hospital rape kit in the February 1977 case — matched MacLean, authorities said.

To help eliminate any doubt for the jury, prosecutor Marci Rex has announced plans to introduce the “strikingly similar” evidence from all three crimes to prove MacLean’s “identity as the perpetrator.”

MacLean and his lawyers argue the DNA evidence should be excluded from his upcoming trials, because it wasn’t properly preserved or handled through the years, and there’s “probable tampering” with some of it.

And they say police lost or destroyed evidence that could have been helpful for the defense, such as fingerprints and plaster casts of shoe impressions from the 1976 crime scene. There is no dispute that much of the physical evidence in both cases is long gone.

The defense argues the limited evidence comes from an unsealed box located in a sheriff ’s freezer in 2005, with various items such as microscope slides, cigarette butts and cloth cuttings loosely co-mingled from many cases.

MacLean last year accused police of taking his DNA and smearing it “on the piece of denim” presented as evidence in the 1976 case.

But prosecutors have countered in court filings that the evidence is unquestionably strong, with MacLean’s identity finally discovered thanks to “cutting edge science.”

MacLean