Stuns Crowd by Bolting Through 6th-Floor Window : Rapist Hears ‘Guilty’, Jumps to Death

While a jury was returning a guilty verdict for rape, a defendant facing 30 to 60 years in prison bolted toward a closed plate-glass window and plunged six floors to his death.

The 11th member of the 12-member Common Pleas Court jury was being polled about 5:36 p.m. Monday when defendant Robert McPeake, 39, dashed about 15 feet to the window and jumped through it, authorities said.

“I’ve been in court a lot of years,” Common Pleas Judge Lynne M. Abraham said. “Nothing could have prepared me for this.”

McPeake, an unemployed construction worker, had been free on bail, and as a result no special security measures were in place in the courtroom during his six-day trial, she said.

Court stenographer Carl Sokolski said “shocked silence” fell over the courtroom when McPeake jumped. Then, he said, the room erupted in gasps and screams.

The judge said about 30 people, including family members of both the defendant and the victim, were in the courtroom at the time. “Everybody screamed. Everybody broke down in tears,” she said.

McPeake’s wife and sister-in-law reacted with horror, Abraham said. The rape victim, a teen-age girl, “broke down in hysterics.”

“He had been convicted of rape before, and I think he knew that if he was convicted again of rape he was going to go back to prison, and I don’t think he wanted to face all of that,” the judge said.

McPeake, of Philadelphia, was convicted of rape in 1978. He was on parole from a one- to five-year sentence when the offense for which he was convicted Monday occurred, according to records of the district attorney’s office.