Court system finally gets sex offender

A convicted sex offender with a prolific past was sentenced Tuesday to nearly five years in prison for failing to register with police.

Kurt J. Serzen received the near-maximum punishment for not telling police he was living with a girlfriend in Addison, not with his parents in Elgin where he last registered.

Serzen, 50, faces a much lengthier prison term if convicted of raping a Bensenville woman at knifepoint 11 years ago. That case is pending.

DuPage Circuit Judge Perry Thompson's tough sentence Tuesday marks the latest chapter in a long legal battle.

The Bensenville woman told police a knife-wielding assailant raped her Aug. 7, 1996, after breaking into her apartment. Her attacker wore a condom and covered her face with a pillow. The crime remained unsolved.

A few years later, Serzen provided a DNA sample for the state database of violent offenders after he was convicted of abusing a 16-year-old girl in Woodridge in 1999.

He was arrested Sept. 3, 2003, after prosecutors said the DuPage County sheriff's crime lab found his genetic profile matched saliva from the Bensenville rape.

His case has stalled since then, mostly because of pretrial appeal issues. Serzen also has had several lawyers.

In the most significant pretrial ruling, Thompson earlier barred authorities from using the saliva evidence in the Bensenville case because other items, including the woman's clothing, hospital bed sheets and fingernail scrapings, were destroyed at the police department in 2001 when the evidence room was cleaned.

The case stalled while prosecutors Michael Pawl and Alex McGimpsey appealed to a higher court. In July 2005, the appeals court overruled Thompson, in part allowing prosecutors to use the DNA evidence.

Serzen had been free on a strict monitoring program that required him to notify prosecution investigators of his whereabouts. He was allowed to attend work, church and other functions.

He was taken back into custody in September 2006 when Thompson quadrupled Serzen's bond to $1 million after he repeatedly lied as to his whereabouts while free. He has remained in custody since, awaiting trial.

In the early 1990s, Serzen was acquitted of at least three rapes in Hillsborough County, Fla., where he worked as a night security guard at a local hospital.