Connie Vargo keeps the yellowed newspaper clippings neatly tucked away in a photo album, only retrieving them when she is asked to relive a parent’s worst nightmare.
“We never really get them out and look at them,” she told a reporter of the old articles, replete with screaming headlines such as “Worker discovers body of missing boy” and “The cruelty that lasts a lifetime.” “We’ve kept them because the event changed our lives forever.”
It’s been nearly four decades since that dreadful day in July 1981 when Connie and Bob Vargo’s idyllic life was upended by the kidnapping and killing of their happy-go-lucky 6-year-old son, Jeffrey. And it’s been six years since cold-case detectives arrested violent child predator Kenneth Kasten Rasmuson for the slaying.
Rasmuson, 59, remains in the Los Angeles County jail still awaiting trial on two counts of murder for Jeffery’s death as well as the subsequent 1986 slaying of a 6-year-old boy in an Agoura Hills.
Connie Vargo, who lives with her husband in Anaheim Hills, tries to remain hopeful that her son will receive justice even as COVID-19 delays, legal complexities in preparing for a double murder trial, and a change in defense attorneys slows Rasmuson’s case to a snails pace.
But that optimism is riddled with anxiety and outrage over a controversial set of sentencing directives in place from newly elected Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón.
“The new district attorney doesn’t want the death penalty and doesn’t want life in prison without parole,” said Connie Vargo, 73. “If Rasmuson gets credit for the time already served in jail, he could be out in maybe 15 years. I know he is never going to be executed, at least not in my lifetime. I would be happy if he went to prison for the rest of his miserable life and rotted there.”
Gascón is sympathetic to the Vargos’ concerns, said Greg Risling, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.
“There is no more heinous and heart-wrenching crime than the murder of a young child. Families are grief-stricken for life and we try to ensure they have the proper services to help them deal with the pain and sorrow,” he said in an email. “We will seek the appropriate justice in this case and are confident that whatever sentence this 59-year-old defendant receives he will never be free to be in our community again.”
New policies praised, criticized
Making good on a campaign promise to shake up the nation’s largest local prosecutorial office, Gascón has implemented sweeping social justice changes that have roiled deputy district attorneys and angered families of crime victims.
Among Gascón’s most controversial policies are directives prohibiting prosecutors from seeking the death penalty and forbidding them from filing special circumstances allegations that could result in a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
Gov. Gavin Newsom already has placed a moratorium on capital punishment that will last as long as he is in office.
The death penalty is “inextricably intertwined” with racism and is “never an appropriate resolution in any case,” Gascón said in a Dec. 7 directive.
Earlier this month, he told The Appeal, an online news site that focuses on mass incarceration issues, that prison sentences longer than 20 years are “pretty worthless in terms of public safety,” with “very few exceptions.”
Since then, in response to criticism, Gascón has said there may be some exceptions to his policies.
Gascón has further angered prosecutors by telling them they can’t attend parole hearings “unless you have something nice to say” about inmates seeking release. Additionally, a senior prosecutor who asked not to be identified said Gascón encourages a cozy courtroom relationship between the usually adversarial prosecution and defense.
“Under the Gascón theory of justice, prosecutors and defense attorneys work on behalf of the defendant and the victim has to get their own lawyers to fight for them,” the prosecutor said. “I have never seen anything like this. It’s a brave new world.”
Earlier this month, 65 current and former elected prosecutors from across the nation filed a legal brief in support of Gascón and his authority to implement the new directives. However, the Association of Deputy District Attorneys for Los Angeles County, which represents about 850 prosecutors, has filed a civil suit challenging the legality of Gascón’s directives.
Connie Vargo opposes many of Gascón’s policies, especially those that seem to coddle criminals.
She believes if anyone deserves a lifetime behind bars, it’s Rasmuson, whose lengthy criminal history includes not only the pair of murder charges he currently faces but also convictions for sexually assaulting two Southern California boys in 1981 and 1987.
“He doesn’t need to be anywhere in public ever again.” Connie Vargo said. “I could never forgive him.”
Disappearance still haunts family
Connie Vargo has retold the painful story of Jeffrey’s disappearance and death so many times it has become rote.
Late in the afternoon the day before the Fourth of July in 1981, Connie Vargo and her husband were preparing for a family gathering at home while their 10-year-old son, Michael, was watching “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory” on TV.
Meanwhile, Jeffrey, a rambunctious first-grader who recently signed up for a youth soccer team, was riding his Stingray bike around the neighborhood
When dinner was ready, Connie Vargo went outside to call Jeffrey but she didn’t see him and he didn’t respond.
After the meal when Jeffrey failed to turn up, Connie and Bob Vargo began walking toward a fireworks stand at a shopping center near the intersection of Imperial Highway and Santa Ana Canyon Road where they believed he may have gone.
The couple had traveled only a short distance when they found Jeffrey’s bike abandoned next to a dumpster outside a pizza parlor. They immediately contacted Anaheim police, who conducted a house-to-house search of the area with assistance from a helicopter.
Jeffrey’s mysterious disappearance alarmed the Vargos’ tight-knit neighborhood. “All of our neighbors called everyone they knew asking if they had seen Jeffrey,” Connie Vargo recalled. “We canvassed riverbeds and storm drains desperate to find him.”
Body found
The search ended the next day, when two solemn detectives knocked on the Vargos’ door and delivered the tragic news. Jeffrey’s partially clad body had been found about 25 miles away at a construction site in Pomona’s Phillips Ranch neighborhood. He had been strangled but not sexually abused.
“It was dreadful and debilitating,” Connie Vargo said. “We cried for days and weeks.”
Their initial shock soon gave way to fear that swept not only through them but also their neighbors. “We were thinking, ‘Is the killer going to come back and get us?’ ” Connie Vargo recalled. “The whole neighborhood changed after that.”
Slowly, the Vargos began putting their lives back together. Connie Vargo returned to her customer service post at Pacific Bell, Bob Vargo resumed his job as a General Motors engineering department employee and Michael continued his schooling.
“Life went on for 35 years,” Connie Vargo said. “But, of course, we missed Jeff.”
The Vargos’ lives were upended again in 2015 with a ominous phone call from a Pomona police detective. DNA evidence collected from Jeffrey’s shirt had been matched to a suspect. Finally, the alleged killer had a name: Kenneth Rasmuson.
“Hearing that news brought all the horrible emotions back,” Connie Vargo said.
Arrest solves another mystery
Little did anyone know at the time that another murder mystery was about to be solved.
Retired Los Angeles County sheriff’s Sgt. John Laurie was at his Orange County home watching the news when the photo of a familiar face popped up on his TV screen.
Laurie, a former cold-case detective, recognized Rasmuson as the prime suspect in the unsolved 1986 slaying of 6-year-old Miguel Antero, who had been abducted after stepping off a school bus, stabbed multiple times and dumped in an Agoura Hills canyon. Laurie had even interviewed Rasmuson, who denied any involvement in the homicide, and also searched his Santa Barbara home for evidence.
“We had exhausted everything,” Laurie said in a phone interview. “When I saw him on the news and that he had been arrested, I called (the Sheriff’s Department) and told them to resubmit the DNA evidence.”
Laurie was pleased when DNA tests conclusively linked Rasmuson to Miguel’s slaying. “I had expected it was him and now had proved it.”
The only time Connie Vargo has laid eyes on Rasmuson was in 2017, when she testified at his preliminary hearing. He refused to look at her while seated at the defense table, handcuffed and shackled at the waist and ankles. “I had to be focused and concentrated on what the attorneys were asking,” she said. “But I just wanted to scream, “Why did you have to murder him’ “?
Source: Orange County Register
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