Man gets life in prison for kidnapping and raping a little girl and a female jogger in Orange County

By Editor
JAN 30, 2024



SANTA ANA, Calif. – A 58-year-old man has been sentenced to 140 years to life in state prison for the brutal, decades-old kidnapping and rape of a 9-year-old girl in Lake Forest and a rape of a female jogger in Mission Viejo – crimes the man tried to blame on his identical twin brother – along with the molestation of a former girlfriend’s daughter, according to the OCDA. ... Orange County Superior Court Judge Richard M. King imposed the maximum sentence against Kevin Michael Konther of Highland on Friday.

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On October 21, 1995, Konther raped a 9-year-old girl walking home by herself after buying school supplies in Lake Forest. He grabbed the girl, covered her mouth while pulling her down an embankment and into a secluded wooded park. Konther told the girl not to scream and said he had a knife. Despite the victim pleading with Konther not to hurt her and that she was only 9 years old, he forced her to orally copulate him and then raped her. With only her notebooks and pencils she had just bought covering her naked body, the girl ran home naked and told her mom about the rape.

He also raped a 32-year-old woman who was jogging on a trail in Mission Viejo on June 2, 1998. Konther – naked except for wearing a pair of shoes – jumped out of the bushes, grabbed the woman and covered her mouth, telling her not to scream and that he was going to rape her. She was dragged down an embankment where Konther took off her clothing and then forcibly raped her and orally copulated her before running away.

In 2018, Orange County Sheriff’s Department investigators began using investigative genetic genealogy to develop leads on the unknown suspect in the 1995 and 1998 rapes. During the investigation, allegations that the daughter of a former girlfriend had been molested by Kevin Konther were revealed. ... Konther was charged with the two rapes and with molesting his former girlfriend’s daughter while the girl pretended to be asleep. Conversations that were covertly recorded between Konther and his twin brother following their arrests disclosed incriminating statements the defendant made while his brother was shocked by the arrest.

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