The DNA evidence was uploaded to a genealogical website in 2018.
Orange County sheriff’s cold-case investigators were hoping it would lead them to a rape suspect.
It pointed to identical twins.
One of those men, Kevin Michael Konther, 58, of Highland, was convicted last year, on charges including rape, forcible oral copulation, and lewd acts on a child, and on Jan. 26 was sentenced to 140 years to life for two rapes and a sexual assault that occurred decades ago. Two of the victims were ages 9 and 12.
The convictions stemmed from attacks dating to October 1995, when a 9-year-old Lake Forest girl was grabbed as she was walking home from a Sav-On.
According to an account provided by the Orange County district attorney’s office, the attacker pulled her into a wooded area and threatened to stab her if she screamed. She told him she was only 9, but he forced her into oral copulation, then raped her and fled.
Investigators recovered DNA from her body.
In 1998, a woman jogging in Mission Viejo was grabbed and dragged to a wooded area, where she was raped. Her attacker fled, but DNA was recovered, and it matched the DNA of the 1995 suspect.
But law enforcement officials had no suspects.
In 2018, sheriff’s investigators began using genetic genealogy to generate leads in the two rapes. The evidence initially pointed to cousins of Mr. Konther, but investigators narrowed the field of suspects to Mr. Konther and his twin.
At the same time, allegations surfaced that the daughter of Mr. Konther’s former girlfriend had been molested by him in 1999, when she was 12.
Investigators arrested both twins and determined that Kevin Konther would be charged.
Orange County Superior Court Judge Richard King, who last week rejected Mr. Konther’s motion for a new trial, gave him the maximum punishment.
