Child rapist gets life for 1980s murder of 2 Southern California boys

A convicted child rapist who killed two 6-year-old boys in Southern California in the 1980s was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Kenneth Rasmuson, 59, was sentenced in Los Angeles County Superior Court in Pomona.

Rasmuson abducted and killed 6-year-old Jeffrey Vargo, who disappeared on July 2, 1981, after he left his house in Anaheim Hills in Orange County to look at a fireworks stand.

The boy’s body was found the next day at a construction site in Pomona.

Rasmuson also kidnapped, stabbed and strangled 6-year-old Miguel Antero, who vanished on April 8, 1986, after stepping off a school bus near his Agoura Hills home. His body was found that day in a wash near his home in the northwestern part of Los Angeles County.

Decades later, DNA evidence linked Rasmuson to the slayings, prosecutors said. In 2015, he was arrested at his parents’ home in Sandpoint, Idaho, where he had been living as a registered sex offender.

Rasmuson pleaded guilty in February to two counts of murder with the special circumstance that he committed multiple killings.

The case was marked by conflict over L.A. County Dist. Atty. George Gascon’s reform policies — which in general bar the filling of special-circumstance allegations — and prompted the Orange County district attorney to file his own case against Rasmuson out of concern that he might one day be eligible for parole.

Rasmuson spent 17 years in prison for the 1980s molestation of an 11-year-old boy in Santa Barbara County and a 3-year-old Los Angeles boy. After serving his time, he was committed to a state mental hospital as a dangerous sex offender but was released in 2007.