LOS ANGELES: A California man has been arrested in connection to rapes committed in the 1990s after his DNA was linked to the crime scenes through commercial genealogy websites, which initially turned up the both the suspect and his twin, police said on Friday.
Kevin Konther, 53, was taken into custody on Thursday at his home in Southern California and booked on suspicion of rape, kidnapping and child sexual abuse, Orange County Sheriff’s spokeswoman Carrie Braun said. One of the victims was nine years old at the time of the attack.
Konther was identified as a suspect by sheriff’s detectives using techniques similar to those used in recent years to help solve a number of older crimes. Last year, a 73-year-old former police officer was arrested over the ‘Golden State Killer’ string of murders and rapes across California in the 1970s and 1980s.
In investigating the 1990s rapes, which were committed in Orange County, investigators working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation compared DNA samples collected at two crime scenes to that found on the websites used by consumers to trace their ancestry, Braun said.
Detectives use the sites to follow the family trees of matches, seeking blood relatives who roughly fit the profile of the suspected criminal.
Both Konther and his twin brother were taken into custody on Thursday before investigators identified Konther as the suspect and released his brother, who has not been publicly identified, Braun said. She declined to name the website used or the family member whose DNA led to the suspect.
Konther was being held in lieu of $1 million bail pending an initial court appearance scheduled for Monday, where he will be arraigned on two counts of felony rape, oral copulation on a child under the age of 14, lewd and lascivious acts on a child under 14 and aggravated sexual assault.
The sheriff’s department asked the public to come forward with any information about the case. It was not immediately clear if Konther had retained an attorney.
The nine-year-old victim was walking home from a Lake Forest, California convenience store on the evening of October 21, 1995, when a man pulled her into a wooded area and raped her, according to the sheriff’s department.
Three years later, a 31-year-old woman jogging on a trail in Mission Viejo, California, was pulled her into the bushes by a man who raped her before fleeing.
Both victims reported the attacks to police but for more than two decades the DNA collected did not match any suspects in an FBI database, Braun said.
California police use genealogy websites to arrest suspect in 1990s rapes
California police use genealogy websites to arrest suspect in 1990s rapes
- The nine-year-old victim was walking home from a Lake Forest, California convenience store on the evening of October 21, 1995, when a man pulled her into a wooded area and raped her
‘No to the war’: Spain digs in as rift with US deepens
- Pedro Sanchez: ‘We will not be complicit in something that is harmful to the world and contrary to our values and interests’
- US forces use the Rota naval base and Moron air base in southern Spain under an agreement signed in 1953 under the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco
MADRID: Spain’s prime minister defiantly posted “No to the war” on Wednesday, deepening a rift with the United States after Madrid refused the use of its bases to attack Iran and Washington threatened trade reprisals.
Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez had already angered US President Donald Trump with a series of other policies.
Sanchez has refused to join NATO allies in a pledge to boost defense spending to five percent of GDP as demanded by Trump, and has fiercely criticized Israel’s war in Gaza.
Trump lashed out at Sanchez’s government on Tuesday, calling Spain a “terrible” ally and threatening to sever all trade with Spain.
Sanchez defended his position on Wednesday, saying his government’s position “can be summed up in four words: no to the war.”
“We will not be complicit in something that is harmful to the world and contrary to our values and interests, simply out of fear of retaliation,” he added in a televised address.
Spain is part of the European Union, which allows goods to move freely between its 27 countries. This would complicate any bid to impose trade restrictions on a single member state.
“Trump’s words don’t always become policy. We will have to see if he follows through, and how,” said Angel Saz Carranza, director of the Esade Center for Global Economy and Geopolitics, a Spanish think tank.
European Council chief Antonio Costa wrote on X that he had called Sanchez to “express the EU’s full solidarity with Spain.”
“The EU will always ensure that the interests of its member states are fully protected,” Costa said.
French President Emmanuel Macron also called to “express France’s European solidarity in response to the recent threats of economic coercion targeting Spain,” his office said.
‘Oppose this disaster’
US forces use the Rota naval base and Moron air base in southern Spain under an agreement signed in 1953 under the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco.
During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Spain, then led by conservative prime minister Jose Maria Aznar, staunchly backed the United States by sending troops.
Spain’s participation in the Iraq war sparked huge street demonstrations and many Spaniards blame it for the March 11, 2004 Madrid train bombings that killed nearly 200 people.
A branch of Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attacks and called for the withdrawal of Spanish forces from Iraq.
Sanchez on Wednesday compared the Iran attacks to the Iraq war, which he said increased terrorism, increased energy prices and led to a less secure world.
“We oppose this disaster,” he said in reference to the Iran war.
In contrast, neighboring Portugal authorized the United States to “conditionally” use an air base on the Azores archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean for the Iran strikes, Prime Minister Luis Montenegro told parliament on Wednesday.
The authorization was granted as long as “these operations are defensive or retaliatory, are necessary and proportionate, and exclusively target military objectives,” Montenegro said.
The conservative leader said those conditions were “aligned with international law,” but he declined to openly support Sanchez or take a stance on the US-Israeli strikes on Iran.
Rally his base
The Spanish prime minister has emerged as a prominent figure for Europe’s disillusioned progressives, who see him as one of the few remaining openly leftist voices in a continent increasingly dominated by right-wing politics.
His opposition to the use of the bases is seen by some analysts as an attempt to rally his supporters around an issue that unites the Spanish left.
Sanchez, in power since 2018, heads a minority coalition government that struggles to pass legislation.
The popularity of his Socialist party has taken a hit from a string of sexual harassment and graft scandals ahead of the next general election due in 2027.
Many on Spain’s right consider Sanchez’s opposition to Trump as motivated more by domestic politics than by a moral compass.
The head of the main opposition conservative Popular Party which tops opinion polls, Alberto Nunez Feijoo, accused Sanchez on X of using foreign policy for “partisan” purposes.
Left-leaning daily newspaper El Pais urged Sanchez in an editorial on Wednesday to “resist the temptation” to “exploit widespread hostility toward Trump in Spanish society to boost his popularity.”
