Released Sex Offender Captured, Charged With Rape

ByABC News via logo
March 17, 2006, 10:44 AM

March 17, 2006 — -- Authorities in South Carolina captured a convicted sex offender who police say raped two teenage girls in an underground "dungeon" behind his house.

Kenneth Hinson, 47, was recaptured near his home in the town of Hartsville, the U.S. Marshal's service told The Associated Press.

Police said Hinson kidnapped the two young women from the mobile home next door where they were sleeping. Authorities said the convicted sex offender dragged them, one at a time, to a wooden underground bunker, which appeared newly built and sat underneath a shed behind his trailer.

He is accused of tying up the girls and sexually assaulting them, and then running into the woods.

Authorities believe the girls shook themselves loose and then flagged down a passing driver. They were taken to a relative's house where they called authorities. Police responded with bloodhounds.

Hinson has already served a long prison sentence for sexual misconduct.

He was convicted in 1991 for sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl. The state tried to put him in a mental institution, but a judge rejected the idea.

"We really don't know that. The judge has to make the decision of whether he thinks there is probable cause that the person will reoffend," said South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster. "But when the evidence got to the judge, the judge decided otherwise."

"Well, of course, what we thought then, the judge made a mistake, and if all this is true that we hear today, of course, it appears that the man should have gone into the system certainly, especially when you see where the two sex attacks took place."

The dungeon was in a rural area where there were lots of dirt roads, trees and mobile homes. A hole had been dug under the shed. It had a wooden ladder with four or five steps, and was 5 feet by 8 feet wide with a wooden floor and about 4 feet high, with one lightbulb, according to McMaster.