Judge rules search of rape suspect's home proper

Police properly searched and seized items from the former Hanover Park apartment of a convicted sex offender while he was in jail facing more rape charges, a judge ruled Tuesday.

Kurt J. Serzen argued authorities should not be allowed to use evidence collected during the 2004 search because police acted without probable cause in violation of his privacy rights.

Serzen, 50, is charged with aggravated criminal sexual assault on suspicion he attacked a woman with a knife early Aug. 7, 1996, as she slept in her George Street apartment in Bensenville.

She could not identify her attacker because she said he covered her face with a pillow. The crime remained unsolved.

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

Police arrested him Sept. 3, 2003, for the Bensenville assault after forensic crime lab experts reported his genetic profile in the database matched saliva evidence collected in the 1996 assault.

As Serzen sat in jail, police executed a search warrant April 20, 2004, at his former apartment on the 1900 block of Elm Court in Hanover Park. The defendant's ex-wife since had taken over the lease and gave police her consent to search items she was storing for Serzen.

The items included several sex toys, hotel receipts, notebooks filled with women's names and phone numbers, recorded phone conversations and tax, work, bank, and other financial records.

It's unclear if any are connected to the 1996 rape, though the woman did tell police she was assaulted with a sex toy and had received a menacing phone call with heavy breathing days before the attack.

Serzen testified Tuesday his ex-wife was supposed to have moved all his belongings out of the apartment. Prosecutor Michael Pawl argued the ex-wife had the right to consent to the search and police had probable cause.

DuPage Circuit Judge Perry Thompson agreed.

The case has stalled in court this past five years because of pretrial appeal issues and defense attorney changes. Meanwhile, prosecutors in 2005 accused the convicted sex offender of failing to notify police of an address change while he was free on bond. Serzen had been living with a girlfriend in Addison back then rather than with his parents in Elgin where he last registered. In January, Thompson sentenced him to nearly five years in prison for the registration violation.

Serzen remains incarcerated in a state prison in Galesburg, Ill.

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 hospital.

He has pleaded not guilty to the Bensenville allegation. He is due back in court Oct. 27 for status.