Kenneth Kasten Rasmuson, the first “sexually violent predator” to be released in Santa Barbara County, was arrested this week in Idaho after authorities connected him to the 1981 strangulation death of a 6-year-old Anaheim boy.
Rasmuson, 53, is scheduled to appear before an Idaho judge before he's extradited to California. Authorities had periodically reopened the cold case over the last 34 years and finally scored a hit when they again ran forensic evidence from the murder through a national database of DNA taken from convicted felons. According to media reports, Rasmuson surrendered Saturday without incident. He was living with his parents in the small resort town of Sandpoint.
Just months after Rasmuson allegedly killed young Jeffrey Vargo before dumping his body at a construction site in Pomona, he raped an 11-year-old boy on September 2, 1981, in the City of Santa Barbara. News reports at the time said Rasmuson lured the boy into a gully near Las Positas Road by asking for his help finding a lost dog. The boy, who had been riding his bike on the way to football practice, was attacked and subjected to forcible oral copulation and sodomy. After the boy told his coach what had happened, Rasmuson, 19 at the time and working at Domino’s Pizza, was found lurking near the Youth Football League fields. He served time in prison and in Atascadero State Hospital until April 1985.