California predator who blamed identical twin brother for raping nine-year-old girl and woman in 1990s is sentenced to life in prison: ‘Sexual carnivore’, 58, told sibling ‘I just hate women’

A California rapist has been sentenced to life in prison after DNA testing linked him to rapes in the 1990s, despite attempts to frame his identical twin brother.

Kevin Michael Konther, 58, was sentenced Friday to 140 years in prison after an Orange County Superior Court jury found him guilty of committing multiple rapes last year.

Konther raped a nine-year-old girl in Lake Forest in 1995 and a 31-year-old woman in Mission Viejo in 1998.

Investigators used the same DNA testing used to catch the Golden State Killer and determined that both rapes were committed by the same person.

Testing led investigators to Kevin and Stephen Konther, who – as twins – share DNA, and the brothers were taken into custody.

The suspect was unknown until 2018, when cutting-edge DNA testing technology, which was also used to catch the Golden State Killer, linked Konther and his twin brother Stephen to the crimes.

The twins were secretly taken into a police vehicle as they waited to be booked into jail – during which Kevin admitted to his brother: ‘I’m a criminal in my past. I have serious problems. Now I have to pay for it, and I don’t want that.’

Kevin told his brother, “I just hate women. That’s my problem,” and said he’s been fighting that demon for a long time – also mentioning a “chemical imbalance” in his brain.

Judge Richard M. King described Konther on Friday as a “sexual carnivore” before sentencing him to the longest possible sentence: 140 years without parole and life in prison.

King described the nature of Konther’s attacks as “horrific” and said Konther was a “calculated” rapist and a “sexual carnivore.”

“The defendant committed serial heinous acts against these women. This is a man who does not deserve clemency,” King said.

“This is like a cat, a lion or a cheetah looking for prey,” the judge said in court. ‘Vultures don’t do this to their young, rats don’t do this.’

Konther’s first known attack was on a nine-year-old girl walking home from a store near a heavily wooded community park in Lake Forest.

The young girl was pulled into the bushes and raped. She testified that a man came up to her, put his hand over her mouth and told her he had a knife.

She begged him not to kill her as he forced her to take off her clothes and raped her.

When she told the rapist she was only nine years old, he reportedly laughed.

The victim, now 37, testified in court in January 2023.

“I was terrified, I thought he was going to kill me,” she said. ‘I begged him not to hurt me. I still had quarters in my pocket. I told him he could take it with him. I didn’t know what he wanted.’

Both rapes took place in California: one in Lake Forest (photo: Serrano Creek Park) and the other in Mission Viejo

In 2018, Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes (pictured) announced the significant arrest of Kevin Konther in the two cold case rapes of the 1990s

Konther’s next attack occurred three years later, when a woman was running along a remote bike path in Mission Viejo.

She was attacked and dragged along an embankment, where she was raped.

Another crime Konther was accused of came from a previous girlfriend he lived with in Hunting Beach and Highland.

His then-girlfriend alleged that Konther committed lewd acts against her pre-teen daughter, including entering her room naked at night and standing uncomfortably close to her bed.

It was reported that on several occasions he pulled down her pants and stared at her while she pretended to be asleep.

After cutting-edge DNA technology linked the Konther twins to the previously unknown suspect, Kevin’s lawyer tried to pin the crimes on Stephen.

Deputy Public Defender Jessica Ann Sweeny argued at trial that Kevin took the blame for his brother’s crimes, suggesting he heard details about the assaults and repeated them to save his brother.

Sweeny told jurors that Kevin was the “black sheep” of the twin brothers, but said they had been close all their lives.

“Kevin was not the one who committed these crimes, it was (his brother),” the lawyer said. “Just like he has done all his life, Kevin (his brother) covered and decided he would be the one to take the blame.”