Child killer gets life

Man committed 1986 Miguel Antero murder




Miguel

Miguel

At least twice a year for more than 30 years, the mother of a sexually assaulted 6-year-old Agoura Hills boy called the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s homicide bureau to make sure her son’s case was never forgotten.

It wasn’t.

On April 27, convicted child rapist Kenneth Rasmuson, 59, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after pleading no contest to the killing of two Southern California boys during a five-year span in the 1980s.

One of Rasmuson’s victims was little Miguel Antero from Agoura Hills, who disappeared April 8, 1986 after taking the bus home from school. Miguel’s body was found later the same day in a Triunfo Canyon creek bed near his Agoura Hills home, strangled, stabbed and sexually assaulted. Rasmuson was sentenced last week after entering a no contest plea in February.

“That word ‘closure’ that everyone refers to, I can’t relate to it because there really is none,” said Ani Bradshaw, the mother of Miguel who now lives in Griffin, Georgia. “The closure is that this person isn’t going to hurt another child—that’s my closure,” the mother said.

TRAGEDY UNFOLDS—In this 1985 first-grade class photo from White Oak Elementary School in Westlake Village, Miguel Antero is in the middle, wearing stripes, third row back. Samantha Bookman is the girl right behind him in the striped dress. Above, a Rasmuson booking photo.

TRAGEDY UNFOLDS—In this 1985 first-grade class photo from White Oak Elementary School in Westlake Village, Miguel Antero is in the middle, wearing stripes, third row back. Samantha Bookman is the girl right behind him in the striped dress. Above, a Rasmuson booking photo.

Rasmuson was arrested in Idaho in 2015 in connection with the 1981 murder of Jeffrey Vargo, another 6-year-old whose body was discovered in Pomona, California. Deputies with the Los Angeles County Sheriff ’s Department found DNA that linked Rasmuson to the murders of both Miguel and Jeffrey.

“A Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department senior criminalist, who had performed the laboratory work on the Pomona case . . . identified DNA evidence which is said to have scientifically connected Kenneth Rasmuson to be the alleged perpetrator,” the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office said in an earlier statement.

Agoura Hills resident Samantha Bookman grew up next door to Miguel. The two were friends and classmates at White Oak Elementary School in Westlake Village at the time of his murder.

“I’m grateful he’s not out there to hurt anyone else, but on the other hand. . . . there’s nothing about him being put away that did anything for (his victims),” Bookman told The Acorn. “They had missed out on their whole lives.”

 

Rasmuson 

Bookman said Rasmuson’s arrest in 2015 put a name and a face to the killer who had haunted her childhood. Miguel’s murder shook the community and made parents fearful for their children’s safety.

“I’m sure a lot of people in Agoura Hills will remember the case because it was around for many years, and maybe it will ease a lot of minds that this monster is behind bars and is never getting out.”

Bookman said she stopped going to friends’ homes and on school field trips out of fear for her safety.

“A 6-year-old isn’t supposed to be aware that someone can be murdered at any time,” Bookman said.

“Seeing (Rasmuson’s) face, it felt like the rug being pulled out from under me because it was like this amorphous scary shadow chasing me across the field at White Oak Elementary. Seeing him made him real.”

Miguel and Jeffrey were not Rasmuson’s only victims. He was convicted in 1981 of sexually assaulting an 11-year-old boy in Santa Barbara, a crime that occurred two months after Jeffrey’s body was discovered in Anaheim. Rasmuson served five years in prison for the Santa Barbara molestation, and was let go in 1985.

A year after his release, Rasmuson was said to have abducted another boy, age 3, from his home in Los Angeles. The child was found a day later, naked on the side of the road. Rasmuson was convicted of that crime and sentenced to 17 years in prison. He was deemed a sexually violent predator and committed to the Atascadero State Hospital where he was released in 2007.

When Rasmuson was arrested in 2015 for Jeffrey’s murder, investigators found evidence of child pornography in his possession.

Follow Ian Bradley on Twitter @Ian_ reports