Steven Dean Gordon was convicted in December 2016 of murdering four women in Orange County, California, between October 2013 and March 2014. He and Franc Cano, both registered sex offenders, abducted the women in Santa Ana and Anaheim while each of them was wearing a GPS ankle monitor imposed after earlier crimes. Only one of the women, Jarrae Nykkole Estepp, was ever found. Her death led police to the two men, and the record of where their monitors had been helped prosecutors tie them to all four.
Gordon was 45 when he was arrested in April 2014. He confessed to police, represented himself at trial, and was sentenced to death in February 2017. A forcible rape count for each woman was dropped against him before trial. Cano was tried separately and, in December 2022, pleaded guilty as charged and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The case raised hard questions about electronic monitoring. Both men had cut off their monitors together twice before, in 2010 and 2012. Both were told to keep apart. Yet they lived together, and nothing in either monitoring system was built to notice.
Records from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, as described by OC Weekly in April 2014, show that he was convicted in Los Angeles County in 1992 of an offense involving a child under 14, the conviction that made him a registered sex offender. He was sentenced to three years in prison and paroled in December 1993.
In 2002 he was convicted in Riverside County of kidnapping his estranged wife and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. A CBS Los Angeles report in 2022 described that case as the kidnapping of his wife and daughter. He was discharged from state parole on November 9, 2013, according to the corrections department.
By then Gordon was also under federal supervision for life, the result of a federal case that followed a 2012 trip to Las Vegas. He was homeless, and the Associated Press reported in April 2014 that he had been living in his car. In November 2013 he asked a federal judge to remove his ankle bracelet. Federal prosecutors objected and insisted that he keep it, and a spokesman later said he had been regarded as a threat. In March 2014 Gordon was back in federal court after causing a disturbance at a counseling session. He was moved to a different program and given a court date in November.
Franc Cano was 27 when the two men were arrested. His defense lawyer, Chuck Hasse of the Orange County Public Defender's Office, later described him as the product of a close working class family in Compton whose religious ties had shifted over the years. Cano was convicted in 2008 of an offense involving a child under 14, according to the corrections department and the Associated Press; a 2022 CBS Los Angeles report placed the underlying offense in 2007. He was paroled on October 19, 2009, and was returned to custody for parole violations three times in 2010 and 2011.
At Cano's sentencing in 2022, Hasse said Gordon had protected Cano from bullies, that the two had grown close and had a romantic relationship, and that Cano had been the follower and Gordon the manipulative leader. Gordon told a different story at his own trial.
Police believe the two men had known each other since at least 2010. That year Cano cut off his GPS device and fled to Alabama, and he and Gordon were arrested there together.
In 2012 they did it again. Both men cut off their monitors, took a Greyhound bus to Las Vegas under false names, and stayed at a casino hotel for about two weeks before federal agents arrested them. Federal court documents described by OC Weekly show that both pleaded guilty to failing to register as sex offenders in Nevada and were sentenced to time already served. Both were then placed on supervised release for life, and both went back to wearing GPS monitors: Cano under state parole, Gordon under federal probation.
The Orange County District Attorney's Office names four women in the case. Three were taken from Santa Ana in the fall of 2013, and one from west Anaheim in March 2014.
Kianna Jackson was 20. Prosecutors say she was abducted in Santa Ana on October 6, 2013. At Gordon's sentencing her mother and grandmother told the court that she would never see her younger brother graduate from high school or watch him grow into the young man he was becoming. Her mother said she still had sleepless nights and missed her daughter's text messages.
Josephine Monique Vargas was 34. Prosecutors say she was abducted in Santa Ana on October 24, 2013. At Gordon's sentencing her mother wept as she addressed him. She told him she could not forgive him or forget what he had done, and said she hoped God would forgive him. Her mother and sister spoke again at Cano's sentencing in 2022 and asked for privacy.
Martha Anaya was 28. Prosecutors say she was abducted in Santa Ana on November 12, 2013. Her mother described her to the court as a devoted mother of two children. She said she tells the children their mother is now a star in the sky. She also read a letter from Martha's 12-year-old sister, who wrote that Martha had always told her not to talk to strangers, and that now she understood why.
Jarrae Nykkole Estepp was 21. Police in 2014 described her as a woman from Modesto who had come to Anaheim from Oklahoma City only six days before she died; OC Weekly reported that she had lived in Empire, near Modesto. Her mother called her a beautiful soul and the life of the party. Prosecutors say she was abducted in west Anaheim on March 13, 2014. Her body was found in Anaheim the next day, March 14, 2014.
The bodies of Kianna Jackson, Josephine Vargas and Martha Anaya have never been found.
The two men were transients who camped together in Anaheim, even though, as registered sex offenders, they were barred from associating with each other. According to the District Attorney's Office, they drove through Anaheim and Santa Ana looking for women to abduct, and they took each woman back to the place where they camped, where she was killed. The Associated Press, drawing on grand jury testimony, reported that Gordon was living in a recreational vehicle in an industrial area of Anaheim at the time and that the men brought the women there. Prosecutor Larry Yellin told Gordon's jury that the men gave the women false hope that they would be let go.
Detective Julissa Trapp of the Anaheim Police Department told the grand jury, as reported by the Associated Press, that Gordon said he picked the women up in his car while Cano waited out of sight, that the women were strangled, and that, in Gordon's words as she recounted them, once he started he could not stop. At trial Gordon gave a different account of his own role.
On March 14, 2014, Anaheim police received a call that a woman's body had been found. Detectives identified her as Jarrae Estepp, in part from a tattoo on her neck. Police circulated fliers with her picture, and Lieutenant Tim Schmidt said she had been seen in west Anaheim on March 13 and in the early hours of March 14. "We are hoping someone will recognize her," he said.
Detectives then ran a search of registered sex offenders who were wearing GPS monitors. It showed that Franc Cano had been near the places where all four women disappeared, at about the times they vanished. Police collected Cano's DNA. When they examined his phone records, they found that he had been texting constantly with Steven Gordon, who became the second suspect. On the night Estepp died, according to the Associated Press, a text from Gordon's phone to Cano's read, "This is the best one yet." DNA found on Estepp's body matched both men.
Santa Ana police, who were looking into the disappearances of three local women missing since the fall of 2013, joined the Anaheim homicide investigation. Cellphone records and the men's GPS data placed them where the women had last been seen.
The men were arrested in Anaheim on a Friday in mid-April 2014. The Associated Press reported that as police closed in on the Anaheim business where Gordon worked, he cut off his tracker and rode away on a bicycle; officers caught him about a quarter mile away. The shop's owner said that nobody was going to get very far with a SWAT team in the parking lot.
The next day, investigators concluded that the two men were responsible for the deaths of all three missing Santa Ana women. Anaheim and Santa Ana police declined to give details, and the homicide detectives asked law enforcement agencies across the country to review their missing persons cases for any link to the two men. Anaheim police also asked the public for help identifying a possible fifth victim, a woman in her early 20s who had gone missing in February.
At a first court appearance in April 2014, a judge appointed public defenders for both men and postponed their arraignment to May 19. Each faced four felony counts of special-circumstances murder and four felony counts of rape, and both were held without bail. Senior Deputy District Attorney Larry Yellin said the absence of three of the women's bodies was "just a hurdle," not a bar to proving the case.
Jarrae Estepp's mother spoke to reporters outside the courthouse. "If they were monitored correctly, then maybe none of this would have happened," she told the Associated Press, calling it "complete negligence all around." She said it appalled her that the state had tracking devices on two men and could give her no reason why they had been able to be together long enough to kill.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation answered that GPS monitoring cannot always deter crime: it shows where an offender has been but cannot detect a crime in progress. The department also said its monitors were not designed to alert staff when one sex offender comes into contact with another. Officials told the Associated Press that such alerts would be unworkable because offenders often attend the same programs or live close to one another, and that the devices already produce several alerts a day for overworked agents to sort through. State and federal officials declined to explain how they had tracked the two men, citing the open investigation.
The supervision was split between two systems. Cano was tracked by state parole agents; Gordon, by federal probation officers. On April 16, 2014, a spokesman for Darrell Steinberg, the president pro tem of the California Senate, said Steinberg wanted the corrections inspector general to review how parole agents had monitored Cano, and perhaps to address the broader question of whether GPS prevents crime at all. A spokeswoman for the federal courts' administrative office said she did not know whether the federal probation officers who supervised Gordon would be reviewed.
Gordon himself would later make the agencies part of his trial.
Gordon talked to Detective Trapp for 13 and a half hours. The grand jury transcript, unsealed in November 2014, recorded her account of the interview. Gordon insisted on discussing the women in the order in which they had died; when she showed him photographs in a different order, he became agitated and rearranged them himself. He told her about a woman she did not know about, and he referred to a newspaper article about missing women, several of whom, he said, were his victims. That fifth woman has never been identified. The detective also testified that Gordon became enraged when one of the women noticed his ankle monitor.
Gordon told Trapp that he had not wanted to kill Jarrae Estepp, but that when she would not stay with the two men he decided she had to die as well. Police searched two landfills extensively for the other women but did not find them.
An Orange County grand jury indicted both men on October 2, 2014. Each was charged with four counts of special-circumstances murder and four counts of forcible rape. In Cano's case the special circumstances alleged were murder during a rape, multiple murders, lying in wait and kidnapping. Both pleaded not guilty. In November 2014 the Associated Press named Denise Gragg as Gordon's lawyer and Houman Fakhimi as Cano's.
The District Attorney's Office announced on December 11, 2015, that it would seek the death penalty against Gordon, and on March 15, 2016, that it would seek it against Cano. Under the office's procedure, a committee of senior prosecutors weighed the crimes, the vulnerability of the victims, the defendant's criminal record and the defense's mitigation arguments before each decision.
The rape charges against Gordon were later dropped. The Associated Press reported that prosecutors did not explain why. The two men were to be tried separately, and Gordon's case went first.
Gordon's trial opened in Santa Ana in November 2016, and he chose to act as his own lawyer from the opening statements on. Larry Yellin prosecuted. Yellin compared the two men to the shark in the film "Jaws," then told the jury in his closing argument that the comparison was an insult to sharks. He described the abductions as a chance for the men to assault the women.
The prosecution's evidence included the GPS data from both men's monitors and the women's own cellphone records, which placed the men with the women. Before the trial the Associated Press reported that Yellin had said Gordon's confession could not be used, because the judge had excluded it on the ground that Gordon had said he did not want to talk before he gave his account. At the verdict, however, the Associated Press reported that Gordon had confessed in an interview that was played for the jurors.
State parole and federal probation agents also took the stand. Gordon used the trial to attack them. He told the court he had no defense, and that the people he had called as witnesses were as responsible as he and Cano were, because they had not done their jobs.
He placed most of the blame on Cano. "In no way am I a saint, but I have a conscience," he told the jury, calling Cano a predator. He claimed that Cano had used both men's phones to make up the messages about planning the crimes, and he said he believed Cano had killed more than four women. About Jarrae Estepp he said that he had changed his mind about killing her, "but that doesn't change the fact she's not alive."
On Thursday, December 15, 2016, the jury deliberated for about an hour before finding Gordon guilty of four counts of first degree murder. It found true the special circumstances of murder during a kidnapping and multiple murders, which made him eligible for the death penalty. Relatives of the four women held hands and closed their eyes as the verdicts were read; some trembled and some cried. Gordon showed no emotion.
Jarrae Estepp's mother said the verdict brought her not justice but some peace. Her daughter's death had not been in vain, she said, because her body had led to the men's capture. "I just wish they would have let her go," she said.
The penalty phase began the following week. On December 21, 2016, minutes before the jury announced its decision, Judge Patrick Donahue considered removing a juror who had said she could not vote for death. After questioning her, the judge said he believed she was not honoring her promise to weigh the evidence.
Gordon, still acting as his own lawyer, asked that she be removed. "I think if she stayed and with the other 11 voted death, the case is going to be overturned, and I don't want that," he said. "I think you need to remove her." Minutes later the jury announced that it had reached a decision, and it recommended a sentence of death.
Gordon was sentenced to death on February 3, 2017, in Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana. He was 48. He smiled as he came into a courtroom full of the women's families. He appeared tearful as he apologized. "I am sorry for everything," he said, adding that the words were empty next to what the women had gone through. "I truly am sorry." He wiped away tears as the relatives spoke.
Under Marsy's Law, family members of each woman, including each of the four mothers, addressed the court. A relative of one woman told him the family had no forgiveness for him. Jarrae Estepp's mother told him how hard it had been to watch him through the trial. "I'm so glad that you cannot do this to another woman ever again," she said. Kianna Jackson's mother and grandmother both said death was the right sentence.
Gordon told the court that people who kill in cold blood deserve to die and that he believed it. He admitted taking part in most of the abductions and killings but maintained that Cano had been the one who hunted down and killed the women. Reporting in 2022 summed up his position at trial: representing himself, he had in effect conceded that he deserved execution.
At the time of the sentence, California had the largest death row in the country but had not carried out an execution since 2006, the Associated Press noted.
Cano's case moved slowly. He pleaded not guilty in 2014 and was still awaiting trial when Gordon was sentenced. By February 2017 the District Attorney's Office listed Yellin as a former senior deputy and Matt Murphy of its Homicide Unit as the prosecutor on Cano's case; Senior Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Walker handled it at the end.
In 2022, Cano's lawyer asked the District Attorney's Office to review its decision to seek death, citing what he called new mitigation. On December 7, 2022, prosecutors wrote to him that the death penalty was off the table. District Attorney Todd Spitzer said he had reviewed the case, met with each victim's family and heard the defense's mitigation presentation, and that the families agreed with his decision. The office's special circumstances committee supported it unanimously, as did the lead Anaheim detective, Julissa Trapp. CBS Los Angeles reported that Spitzer cited, among other factors, the families' acceptance of a life sentence and Gordon's ongoing appeal. Hasse said there had been no deal and that Cano's remorse had been central to his argument.
On December 15, 2022, Cano, then 36, pleaded guilty as charged to the special-circumstances murders of all four women, with counts that included kidnapping and forcible rape, and was sentenced at once to life in prison without the possibility of parole. "Today, I, Franc Cano, take full responsibility for my own previous actions," he told the court, and he said he was deeply remorseful for the wounds he had caused. Spitzer said the mothers would no longer have to wonder about the fate of the man who took their daughters.
The families spoke again. Kianna Jackson's mother said life without parole was right because it spared the family another trial. Jarrae Estepp's mother said she was not crying because she had wanted justice and had received it. Martha Anaya's daughter said much of her anger came from losing her mother, and that the women had not deserved what was done to them. An aunt of Jarrae Estepp said she could not forgive him.
The fifth woman. Gordon told Detective Trapp in 2014 that there had been a fifth victim, but she was not identified, and he was never charged with a fifth killing. In 2014 Anaheim police asked for help identifying a possible fifth victim who had gone missing in February. In December 2022, CBS Los Angeles reported that Anaheim police had identified a fifth woman, Sable Pickett, 19, of Compton, as a victim of the pair. Neither man was charged in her death, and no court has ruled on it. Whether she is the woman Gordon described is not known.
Who led. Gordon's two accounts of his own part differ. In his interview with police, as described to the grand jury, he said he picked the women up in his car while Cano waited out of sight. At trial and at sentencing he said Cano was the main actor. Cano's lawyer described Gordon as the leader and Cano as the follower. Both men stand convicted of all four murders.
Dates and details in the record. Some reports from the Associated Press in December 2016 placed the killings in 2012 and 2013; the District Attorney's Office gives October 2013 to March 2014. In April 2014 one woman's family said police had told them her body had been found; later reports from the District Attorney and the press all say that only Jarrae Estepp was found. Some news reports also describe Gordon as convicted of rape; the District Attorney's releases and the Associated Press say his convictions were for special-circumstances murder and that the rape counts against him were dropped.
Gordon's death sentence carries an automatic appeal to the California Supreme Court. In December 2022 the Orange County District Attorney described that appeal as ongoing. At that time he remained under sentence of death.
1992: Gordon convicted in Los Angeles County of an offense involving a child under 14; paroled December 1993.
2002: Gordon convicted in Riverside County of kidnapping his estranged wife; sentenced to 10 years.
2008: Cano convicted of an offense involving a child under 14; paroled October 19, 2009.
2010: Cano cuts off his GPS device and flees to Alabama, where he and Gordon are arrested together.
2012: Both men cut off their monitors and travel to Las Vegas under false names; arrested by federal agents about two weeks later; later placed on lifetime federal supervision.
October 6, 2013: Kianna Jackson, 20, abducted in Santa Ana.
October 24, 2013: Josephine Monique Vargas, 34, abducted in Santa Ana.
November 9, 2013: Gordon discharged from state parole; federal GPS supervision continues.
November 12, 2013: Martha Anaya, 28, abducted in Santa Ana.
March 13, 2014: Jarrae Nykkole Estepp, 21, abducted in west Anaheim.
March 14, 2014: Estepp's body found in Anaheim.
Mid-April 2014: Gordon and Cano arrested in Anaheim.
April 16, 2014: State Senate leader Darrell Steinberg seeks an inspector general review of Cano's monitoring.
October 2, 2014: Grand jury indicts both men.
November 2014: Grand jury transcript unsealed; Gordon's 13 and a half hour confession described.
December 11, 2015: Prosecutors announce they will seek death against Gordon.
March 15, 2016: Prosecutors announce they will seek death against Cano.
November 2016: Gordon's trial opens; he represents himself.
December 15, 2016: Gordon convicted of four special-circumstances murders.
December 21, 2016: Jury recommends death.
February 3, 2017: Gordon sentenced to death.
December 15, 2022: Cano pleads guilty as charged and is sentenced to life without parole.