Journal Sentinel NEWS MILWAUKEE After 13 years, a rape arrest
By Derrick Nunnally of the Journal Sentinel Updated Sept. 22, 2007 Six years after a woman was raped in her north side home and locked in the trunk of her car, prosecutors charged a man for the attack with no idea what his name was.
The clock was running out on the statute of limitations, and with little to go on but a vague description, investigators hadn't made an arrest. They had DNA evidence, but the year was 2000 - and Wisconsin's new law requiring felons to give DNA samples had put fewer than 500 profiles into the State Crime Laboratory's files. None of them matched.
So Milwaukee prosecutors took the best shot they had: issuing a no-name warrant, only the fourth of its kind, on whoever possessed the DNA and blindly hoping that the offender would someday turn up.
This summer, after seven years of searching, he did.
A court filing this week attaches the name of Boscobel prison inmate Mackenzie C. Burse to the DNA sample found on the body of the woman after she was raped 13 years ago.
When Burse walks into Milwaukee County's intake court Tuesday to face felony counts of rape and kidnapping, prosecutors will add his name to a growing list they say continues to validate their 1999 decision to charge "John Doe" cases for unsolved crimes that identify the defendant by DNA, not name.
Years before it led to Burse this summer, the method spread to prosecutors nationwide and also prompted a change in Wisconsin law. Now, the statute of limitations for rape includes the calendar year after a DNA sample matches a person, making the "John Doe" charging technique obsolete in most cases.
Yet DNA matches of the old cases continue to trickle in. The new Milwaukee prosecutions of Burse and Rodney Washington, formerly John Doe No. 4 and John Doe No. 5, came into court because of the steadily increasing number of convicted offenders whose DNA samples enter state computers. Where Wisconsin only had 500 DNA profiles in early 2000, the number is now over 100,000, said Milwaukee prosecutor Norman Gahn, the architect of the Milwaukee "John Doe" charging method.
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He's now attached 10 named defendants to the 20 cases he filed against "John Does" - mostly stemming from 1990s sexual assaults.
"I'm surprised at the number of hits we've gotten on these cases," Gahn said. "But I shouldn't be surprised because as the data bank just continues to grow and grow, the chances of finding the person just continue to grow exponentially."
Though the 2002 law change allowed prosecutors greater leeway in sex cases and less need to charge John Does, they still charge other cases that way if they have DNA but no name. Two of the 20 John Doe warrants were filed in burglary cases.
Several of the earlier DNA matches have already led to convictions. Washington is fighting the charges. His attorney has said he'll contest the validity of the DNA evidence matching him to a string of Milwaukee rapes in 1994 and 1995.
Gahn marveled Friday at being able to attach Burse's name to the long-ago attack of a woman on N. 38th St.
"Good Lord, it's now 13 years after the assault," Gahn said. "I shouldn't be surprised."
He had continued to hope that the warrant would eventually find someone, he said.
"We figured that this wasn't the only crime that this person's going to commit. Eventually they'll be caught for something and the DNA sample will match up," Gahn said.
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