Torres: No tears shed for death of rapist, murderer Clarence Zacke

Wilton Dedge was riding in a prison van headed to Brevard County for a hearing to seek a new trial for the rape he was wrongly convicted of two years earlier in 1981.

But the van stopped at another prison first to pick up a notorious drug-dealing murderer, who had been whittling time from his long prison sentence by testifying for Brevard County prosecutors. Clarence Zacke, it seemed, had a way of soliciting the most outrageous confessions from just about any prison inmate he came in contact with.

Longtime Brevard defense attorney and former prosecutor Sam Bardwell would later say that "Zacke collected more confessions than a Catholic priest."

Zacke later claimed that Dedge confessed the rape to him during the van ride and offered details of the crime that was only privy to the victim, rapist, police and prosecutors. His testimony against Gerald Stano a few years later would result in Stano's execution, though many believed Stano was a serial confessor with an extremely low IQ. In both cases, Zacke was called upon to testify during the defendant's second trial. His testimony provided that last little oomph the prosecution needed.

The problem was Zacke was a liar and some believe prosecutors knew it and even fed him information.

DNA evidence would later prove Dedge's innocence, but only after he spent more than two decades in prison.

Zacke died last week in prison at the age of 86 and all I can say is good riddance.

"It's a sad day when anybody dies, not so much for this guy," Dedge said. "He used innocent people to pay for the crimes that he committed, with the help from people we're supposed to trust, prosecutors and judges who were looking to crawl up the ladder of success and do it by any means necessary."

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Brevard prosecutors allowed Zacke to testify even though he killed the brother of Assistant State Attorney Michael Hunt. They allowed him to testify even though he attempted to murder State Attorney Doug Cheshire. They allowed him to testify even though they knew he was investigated by a grand jury for raping his adopted daughter.

Former Public Defender James J.R.. Russo had a front row seat to Zacke's outrageous lies and testimony that sent Dedge to prison for something he did not do.

“Clarence Zacke was a murderer, evil manipulator and liar and the world is a better place now that he is gone forever," Russo said.

Zacke was sentenced to 180 years in prison for his crimes before he became a secret weapon for Brevard prosecutions in the 1980s.

"I’m fully aware that they (prosecutors) knew that Clarence Zacke was as evil as they come and they knew about the sexual abuse," Bardwell said during an episode of my Murder on the Space Coast podcast about Zacke. "So you got this idea that they knew what they were dealing with. And they were ignoring this and there was injustice and it was so rampant."

During the same podcast, retired Florida Department of Law Enforcement agent and profiler Tom Davis said: "It's amazing that Clarence Albert Zacke, in my opinion, would even be considered as a potential witness."

In 1997, freelance journalist Art Nash (going by Nash Rosenblatt) earned Zacke's trust and started speaking with him over the phone. He recorded the conversations for a documentary he was working on. In the recordings, Zacke said that Brevard prosecutors Chris White and Dean Moxley fed him case information about Stano and Dedge.

Nash submitted a sworn affidavit to the court while Stano was still alive but it was rejected on the grounds of being inadmissible evidence. Zacke had not agreed to be recorded.

"Florida required two-party consent but my concerns were diluted by a recording that played every time Zacke called, informing him that he was being monitored by the Department of Corrections," Nash told me last week.

Zacke's testimony would see his prison sentence drop from 180 years to 60. Somehow that was reduced even further and he was due to be released from prison in 2005 after serving less than 30 years. I wrote a front page story about this in FLORIDA TODAY on Nov. 26, 2004.

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A few days later I would receive a phone call that altered several lives. It was from a woman, obviously in distress, who told me Clarence Zacke should not be allowed to leave prison. Her response to me asking "why?" floored me.

"Because he raped me everyday starting at the age of six," the woman, Michelle Martin, answered, explaining she was Zacke's adopted daughter.

Unable to write a story based on solely her word, I gave Michelle's information to Julia Lynch, who ran the sex crimes division for the State Attorney's Office. But I asked Michelle to promise to let me have the story first. Michelle was then put in touch with FDLE agents Tom Davis and Ryan Bliss.

"About 30 days later, we transported the young lady to the institution and equipped her with wireless electronic recording devices, and she went in," Davis said.

During the visit, Martin told Zacke that she wanted a normal relationship with him but needed him to acknowledge some awful memories that she had.

"I said, I remember you waking me up in the mornings and making me perform oral sex on you," she said, "and he went into detail, and he told me tons of things that I’ve never remembered. And different things he used to do to me and he confess to everything."

Zacke was charged with child rape and found guilty in a Brevard county courtroom in 2005. Judge Lisa Davidson sentenced him to five life sentences. He would need only one, thank God.

"Zacke was a one-off and for that we should give thanks," Nash said. "He didn't look like much in later mugshots, but most of his eighty-plus years were spent killing, raping, manipulating, and truly believing that nothing and no one fell beyond his reach. Until his sex crime convictions, he was largely proven correct."

I had largely forgotten about Zacke, a good thing perhaps, maybe even a coping mechanism for having read what he had done and having written about him. It all came flooding back when Michelle reached out to me to tell me the news. All I could think of to say was: "finally."

He acted like such a tough guy all his life but died a lonely, hated old pedophile in prison.

"The world is finally safe from him," Michelle said. "He was an evil monster and I am elated that Satan finally called his son, Clarence Albert Zacke, home to hell."

Contact Torres at jtorres@floridatoday.com. You can follow him on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter @johnalbertorres 

This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Notorious murderer, child rapist and informant Clarence Zacke is dead