An Aguanga man who kidnapped and then sexually assaulted two underage boys at his home for years, and later tried to instruct his stepson to kill the victims, has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office said Friday.
Randy John Morasch, 55, has been convicted of 22 felony counts, including solicitation of murder, kidnapping, assault with a gun, dissuading a victim or witness and a number of sex crimes including sodomy by force or fear as well as oral copulation by force or fear, the DA’s office said.
A Riverside County jury handed down his guilty conviction on Dec. 7 and he was sentenced on Thursday, when he received 64 years in prison, in addition to 360 years in prison and life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Morasch offered jobs, lavish gifts and housing to two underage boys at his home in Aguanga, an area of the Inland Empire just east of Temecula, Deputy District Attorney Marcus Garrett previously told KTLA. The abuse and housing of his victims went on for years, as he started abusing a 16-year-old runaway from 2005 to 2009, and later, a 17-year-old runaway from 2013 to 2014.
He sexually assaulted the boys inside his home, threatening to kill them or out them as homosexuals if they tried to tell authorities, Garrett said.
He met the first victim at a feed store in 2005 and offered him a construction job, Garrett said. He also offered to let the boy shoot guns at his home.
But once the boy was living at Morasch’s home, Garrett said, he was sexually assaulted and forced to do sexual acts. Morasch was accused of firing a gun over the underage boy’s head when he once tried to escape and telling the boy he was part of a biker gang that would kill him.
The boy was at Morasch’s home for four years before finally leaving in 2009, according to Garrett.
Meanwhile, Morasch also offered the second victim a job as well as drugs and gifts like go-karts and motorbikes when he met him in 2013, Garrett said. As with the first victim, Morasch started sexually abusing the boy once he started living with him, once tying the boy up and dragging him through a hallway and onto a bed where he was sexually assaulted.
Morasch once went to the home of the second victim’s girlfriend and forced him out at gunpoint, according to Garrett.
The boy lived with Morasch for nine months before returning to his parents’ home and then reporting the crimes, authorities said.
An investigation by the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department soon followed and authorities tracked Morasch to Sacramento, where he led California Highway Patrol officers on a high-speed chase that ended in crash, officials said. The officers discovered two handguns and disguise supplies such as a fake beard and hair dye inside the car Morasch had rented.
Once in custody, Morasch tried to derail the case against him by attempting to have his stepson kill the boys he abused, prosecutors said. He told his stepson, Dennis James “DJ” Harrison, to poison the boys or watch the TV show “Breaking Bad” to learn how to “get rid of the two victims,” prosecutors said in a news release.
Recorded jail calls and a “detailed letter” written by Morasch explained his instructions for murder and said that killing the boys would help him go free since they wouldn’t be able to testify, prosecutors said in a news release.
Harrison apparently tried following his stepfather’s s instructions, as he then visited the homes of the victims and tried intimidating them, according to Garrett. He was seen wearing night-vision goggles around the homes and tried turning off their power lines. He later pleaded guilty to two counts of dissuading a victim or witness and received a sentence of six years in state prison.
