<p>A Georgia man who was convicted earlier this month after DNA evidence identified him as the rapist in a 32-year-old case was sentenced Monday to up to 46 years in prison for what the judge called a "brutal and heinous crime."</p><p>Fletcher Anderson Worrell, 58, of Clarkston, Ga., received eight and one-third to 25 years for first-degree rape, the maximum possible, and seven to 21 years for first-degree robbery, with the sentences to run consecutively. He declined to speak before sentencing.</p><p>Worrell was convicted Nov. 9 for the knifepoint attack and rape of Kathleen Ham on June 26, 1973, during a 5 a.m. invasion of her Manhattan apartment. Ham, 58, now a lawyer who lives in California, allowed her name to be made public to show she is not ashamed.</p><p>State Supreme Court Justice Bonnie Wittner said she is grateful that she is a judge now and not 30 years ago. She said "a woman's testimony was not sufficient in 1973" to convict a rapist; evidence to corroborate the woman's word was needed then.</p><p>Ham, who testified about her 1973 ordeal during Worrell's trial, addressed the court before the defendant was sentenced. She said the rape had been "like murder" because it had killed her sense of self.</p><p>"I stopped knowing who I was," she said. "I became a stranger. Each day I seemed to watch and judge myself. I became two people."</p><p>Outside court, Ham said she had received many "very lovely letters" from other rape victims.</p><p>"They helped me a lot," she said, adding that she planned to call one of those victims later Monday. "They made me know I was not alone."</p><p>Worrell's original trial for raping Ham ended with a hung jury in 1974. He was convicted a year later in Queens in a separate attack, but that conviction was reversed. Prosecutors said Worrell jumped bail while awaiting retrial on the two rape cases.</p><p>Worrell, who had used the alias "Clarence Williams" when arrested in 1973, was found last year in DeKalb County, Ga., after he tried to buy a shotgun, prosecutors say. When store employees gave his personal information to authorities for a background check, the New York bail jump warrants surfaced and he was arrested.</p><p>Ham said she initially was reluctant to testify at Worrell's second trial because "I was beat up on the stand (in the first trial)," when she was 26.</p><p>And after Worrell was not convicted, "I felt as though I had released a monster onto the streets of New York," she said.</p><p>Despite misgivings about testifying, Ham was persuaded to testify a second time after Assistant District Attorney Martha Bashford, the case's lead prosecutor, told her Worrell was wanted in 23 other rapes.</p><p>"I was absolutely astonished," Ham said.</p><p>Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said Worrell is wanted in connection with 21 sex attacks in Maryland and at least two in New Jersey through 1993. He said he obtained orders for DNA samples to be taken from Worrell so those states can do their own matches and prepare their cases.</p>
