Official: Kiss led to rape suspect's arrest

A Holbrook man betrayed himself with a kiss that led to his arrest on charges of raping a woman in her Holtsville garage, a Suffolk prosecutor told a jury Wednesday as the man's trial began.

John Kluge, 25, is charged with punching the woman, a 33-year-old teacher leaving her house to go to school, in the side of her head and pushing her back into her garage one morning almost two years ago.

"She was trapped in her own house with a stranger," said Assistant District Attorney Patricia Brosco. "She was violated in her own home. She was degraded in her own home."

He forced her to perform oral sex on him and raped her on the garage floor, Brosco said in an emotional opening statement. As he did so, he taunted her and kissed her on her cheek -- leaving behind his DNA on her face.

"He left a part of himself behind," Brosco said.

It was months before Suffolk detectives could match that DNA to Kluge, described by prosecutors at his arraignment as a "sexual predator."

Earlier this month, Suffolk County Court Judge Barbara Kahn ruled the jury should not hear mention of other uncharged sex attacks linked to Kluge.

Brosco said Kluge was arrested on an unrelated assault case in May 2010, and he gave a DNA sample then. She walked over to the defense table, stood by Kluge and said, "We now know the identity of our rapist."

Kluge's attorney, Gregory Grizopoulos of Westbury, said the case is not so clear.

"It's not going to be that easy," he told jurors. "The stranger that did this to her, it's not John Kluge."

He noted that his client's initial assault arrest was not sexual in nature, and urged the jury to consider all the evidence in the case.

For example, he said that although the woman identified Kluge in a lineup, she could not pick out his voice in a voice lineup.

"It's OK to feel sympathy" for the woman, Grizopoulos said. "Don't let it blind you."

Outside the jury's presence, prosecutors played a tape of the woman's 911 call after the rape. She sobbed so hard she could barely speak.

"I'm so scared," she told the police operator. "Oh my God. . . . I can't breathe."

The call ended shortly after the woman's mother arrived.

"Mommy!" the woman yelled. "Shut the door! Shut the door!"

Kahn ruled the jury could hear the tape.