NYPD Cracks 1994 Prospect Park Rape Case, Infamously Called A Hoax

Detectives Tuesday said that they have cracked a nearly 25-year-old rape case that a newspaper columnist infamously had claimed to be a hoax. The detectives linked the DNA recovered from the crime scene at Prospect Park in Brooklyn, New York City, to a "career rapist" serving a life sentence in prison.

James Edward Webb, 67, who is already behind bars for a separate sexual assault conviction, was identified as the man who grabbed a 27-year-old Yale graduate on a park footpath on April 26, 1994, pulled her into the bushes and raped her. After a DNA test was conducted on the victim’s clothes, it connected Webb to the crime, the New York Post first reported.

"He’s savage," NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said about Webb who is currently serving a 75-year prison sentence at the Sing Sing Correctional Facility, Ossining, for raping four women in 1995. He is eligible for parole in 2070, however, Boyce said Webb will most likely die while serving his time in prison.

Speaking of the woman who was raped by Webb in 1994, Boyce said: "You can imagine how emotional she was. I think my detectives cried with her."

The incident took place in 1994 when a woman named Jane Doe, 27, as identified by the Daily Beast, was walking home with groceries when she dragged into the bushes and raped at Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. She had provided a detailed description of her attacker to the police, based on which the authorities had gathered DNA evidence, however, no arrests were made at the time.

New York Daily News columnist Mike McAlary, at the time, wrote that according to unnamed police sources, the woman reportedly invented her story about the incident because she wanted to strengthen a speech she was to give at a rally regarding violence against lesbians.

"The woman, who will probably end up being arrested herself, invented the crime, they said, to promote her rally," McAlary wrote in a column called "Rape hoax the real crime."

McAlary wrote three columns about the sexual assault, claiming that the detectives at that time were unable to corroborate the woman’s claims and that she might have fabricated the story in order to promote the rally she was going to be a part of. The columnist called her a hoaxer and suggested that she should be arrested for her actions.

The victim’s attorney Martin Garbus debunked McAlary’s claims and filed a $12 million libel suit against him and the New York Daily News publication. However, a judge ultimately dismissed the suit as McAlary had accurately reported what police sources told him at the time.

"This court finds that Mr. McAlary was given information by the police that was inaccurate, but that he reported that misinformation accurately and drew reasonable inferences from it," Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Charles Ramos said while dismissing the case, CBS News reported. McAlary died in 1998 at the age of 41 years.

In November 2017, detectives took a fresh look at the 1994 rape case, armed with the technology to separate the two DNA samples — one belonging to the victim and the other to the attacker. Back in 1994, when the DNA was recovered as a part of the evidence, it was found that it had been mixed with the victim's DNA and the police at the time lacked the technology to separate it.

"We went back to the victim, asked her for her DNA, which she gave us, redacted it from the sample and ran the (suspect’s) DNA and got a hit."

Garbus said his client deserves an apology from the publication. "The Daily News owes her an apology. I think the police owe her an apology," Garbus said adding, "This is a woman who had to live for 23 years with a false accusation of lying, with threats to the newspaper that she was about to be arrested. It's horrific."