Sex Offender Charged to a Life Imprisonment After Abducting, molesting, and killing Four Women in California

A life sentence was handed down to a California sex offender who kidnapped, raped, and killed four women, while wearing GPS trackers.

Franc Cano and Steven Dean Gordon, both 53, were listed as registered sex offenders and transients who “camped in the back of a paint and body shop in Anaheim,” according to a news release from the Orange County District Attorney’s Office via Edds (2022). However, they were not allowed to be in contact with one another.

Their status as sex offenders, however, bans them from having any connections with one another. The two allegedly prowled Orange County’s streets looking to kidnap sex workers according to an article published by True Crime Daily (2022).

Gordon and Cano allegedly kidnapped Kianna Jackson, 20, on October 6, 2013, raped her, and then killed her at the paint and body shop where they were residing.

On October 24, 2013, the District Attorney’s Office reported that the suspects kidnapped 34-year-old Josephine Vargas and took her to the same paint and body shop, where they sexually assaulted and killed her.

Martha Anaya, a 28-year-old girl was kidnap, raped, and killed on November 12, 2013. The same situation happens to 21-year-old Jarrae Nykkole Estepp on March 13, 2014.

According to reports, on March 14, 2014, a recycling facility discovered Estepp’s body on a conveyor belt. No bodies have been found for the other three victims.

The District Attorney’s Office reported that on October 2, 2014, a grand jury indicted Cano on four felony counts of special circumstances murder, four felony counts of forcible rape, and special circumstances murder during the commission of rape, multiple murders, lying in wait, and kidnapping.

Cano entered a guilty plea on Thursday, December 15, almost eight years later, and was given a life sentence without the chance of parole. He had also been sentenced to death, but Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer decided life in prison without the possibility of parole was the “appropriate punishment.”