DARLINGTON, S.C. – A convicted sex offender insisted on the witness stand Sunday that he was telling the truth and denied raping two teenage girls in an underground room he built behind his home.
Kenneth Glenn Hinson reiterated what he told the jury Saturday – that sex he had with two then 17-year-old girls in March 2006 was consensual and that he hid from police for four days because he thought they wanted him on drug charges.
The two girls have testified that Hinson, 48, took them from a bedroom in their home while they slept and dragged them to a secret underground room. Prosecutors allege he bound them with duct tape, raped them and left them to die because the room had no air supply. The girls managed to free themselves and escape, prosecutors maintain.
Hinson is charged with two counts each of criminal sexual assault, kidnapping and assault and battery with intent to kill. Closing arguments were presented later Sunday.
The underground room built under Hinson’s tool shed was about the dimensions of mid-sized car. Hinson said he built it for packaging marijuana. He said he had about four pounds hidden in the room the night the girls said they were attacked.
A defense witness, Tim Beasley, said that at a house where he had bought drugs, he overheard one of the teens tell a woman the two girls made up the kidnapping story because they had stolen marijuana from Hinson and were afraid he would retaliate.
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