Suspect Charged by LASD
By Sergeant Joseph Purcell
On April 8, 1986 at approximately 3:15 p.m. a 6-year-old boy, identified as Miguel Doe, went missing from the Agoura city area. During an extensive search by a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department – Search and Rescue Team, the lifeless body of the 6-year-old boy was located in a remote creek bed just south of his residence. His body exhibited signs of stabbing trauma, strangulation, and sexual assault. At the time of the murder of Miguel Doe, Homicide Bureau detectives identified 53-year-old Kenneth Rasmuson as a potential suspect in the case but were unable to develop sufficient scientific evidence to arrest him and the case went cold.
Several years later, scientists assigned to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Hertzberg – Davis Forensic Science Center examined and analyzed evidence from a Pomona Police Department murder and sexual assault case of young boy which occurred in the Pomona area. Crime Lab personnel developed deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) evidence allegedly linking Kenneth Rasmuson to the Pomona Police Department case. On Sunday, April 5th, 2015, Pomona Police Department detectives arrested Kenneth Rasmuson in the State of Idaho.
When Kenneth Rasmuson was incarcerated for the Pomona Police Department case, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Homicide detectives learned of his arrest from media coverage.
Exhibiting the tenacity for which Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Homicide detectives are known, they initiated interest in re-examining the evidence from Miguel Doe’s cold case. A Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department senior criminalist, who had performed the laboratory work on the Pomona case, utilized the latest scientific techniques and identified DNA evidence which is said to have scientifically connected Kenneth Rasmuson to be the alleged perpetrator in the sexual assault and murder of Miguel Doe.
On Thursday, Oct. 22, 2015, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office filed charges on both cases against Kenneth Rasmuson for capital murder with special circumstances. Kenneth Rasmuson was allegedly convicted in 1981 in Santa Barbara for sodomy of a person under the age of 14 with a ten year difference in age, according to a press release issued by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.
Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office press release can be accessed athttp://da.lacounty.gov/media/news/convicted-sexual-predator-charged-second-murder-young-boy.
Kenneth Rasmuson remains in the custody of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, while he awaits the criminal proceedings for both cases.
Anyone with information about this incident is encouraged to contact the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Homicide Bureau at (323) 890-5500. If you prefer to provide information anonymously, you may call “Crime Stoppers” by dialing (800) 222-TIPS (8477), or texting the letters TIPLA plus your tip to CRIMES (274637), or by using the websitehttp://lacrimestoppers.org.
