A convicted sex offender already accused of the 1981 killing of a 6-year-old boy was charged Thursday with killing another 6-year-old boy nearly five years later.
Los Angeles County prosecutors added a second capital murder count 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, 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 — is scheduled to be arraigned next Wednesday in a Pomona courtroom on the new murder charge.
He had pleaded not guilty in the 1981 killing and had been awaiting a hearing Nov. 2 to determine if there is enough evidence to require him to stand trial. That hearing is likely to be postponed as a result of the new charge being filed.
— Wire reports