NEW YORK – A man convicted of murdering a woman during a down-and-out tryst in a Times Square budget hotel was sentenced Monday to 25 years to life behind bars, capping a case that endured for nearly a decade and aired a dispute over the validity of bite-mark evidence.
Clarence Dean already has spent more than nine years in jail, awaiting trial and then sentencing in the August 2007 death of Kristine Yitref, whose battered body was found in a garbage bag underneath a bed in Dean’s room.
Dean was arrested a day after the discovery. But his trial was delayed for years, partly because of the bite-mark debate.
“Clarence Dean committed a merciless and brutal act of violence against a vulnerable woman,” Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. said in a statement announcing Dean’s sentence. “He showed a complete disregard for human life.”
Dean’s lawyer, Sean Maher, did not immediately return a phone call Monday seeking comment. He has said Dean planned to appeal and was hopeful he would be exonerated.