Convicted Sex Offender Enters Plea in Agoura Hills Case

Photo: Kenneth Kasten Rasmuson, Courtesy of the Santa Barbara Independent

A convicted sex offender already accused of the 1981 killing of a 6-year-old boy pleaded not guilty today to murdering another 6-year-old boy nearly five years later.

Los Angeles County prosecutors added a second capital murder count last week against Kenneth Kasten Rasmuson, 53, charging him with the April 8, 1986, killing of a boy identified in the criminal complaint as “Miguel.”

The boy’s body was found in a wash in Agoura Hills the day he disappeared from outside his home, according to prosecutors.

DNA evidence links Rasmuson to the killing, prosecutors said.

Rasmuson was arrested in March in Sandpoint, Idaho, after a DNA hit allegedly linked him to the July 2, 1981, killing of a boy identified in the criminal complaint as “Jeffrey.” His body was found in Pomona by construction workers a day after he left his Anaheim Hills home to go to a fireworks stand, authorities said.

The murder counts include the special circumstance allegations that the boys were killed during the commission of a lewd or lascivious act on a child and that there were multiple murders.

The District Attorney’s Office will decide later whether to seek the death penalty against Rasmuson, who has a 1981 conviction from Santa Barbara County for sodomy of a person under 14 with 10 years age difference.

Rasmuson -- who is being held without bail -- pleaded not guilty earlier in the 1981 killing.

He is due back in a Pomona courtroom Jan. 14, when a date is scheduled to be set for a hearing to determine if there is enough evidence to require him to stand trial in connection with the two killings.

City News Service