Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
Along with his accomplice, Frank Cano, Steven Dean Gordon murdered at least four sex workers in California between 2012 and 2013. The body of Gordon’s fourth victim was found in a pile of trash on a conveyor belt at a recycling center.
On March the 14th , 2014 , workers at a recycling plant in Anaheim California were aghast when they discovered something that stopped them in their tracks.
They thought they saw a mannequin on one of the conveyor belts,and upon closer insepction.
they realized this was a human body.
The victim was identifed as 21 year old Jarrea Estepp , a sex worker from Modesto, California.
As police linked the killing to the disappearance of another three missing women .Steven Dean Gordon , a convicted pedophile, was named as the prime suspect.
Steven Gordon is one dangerous individual,he’s molested children, he’s an abductor,he’s an all – round predator.
Gordon had formed a dangerous friendship with another offender, and the pair had been on a deadly rampage.
Steven Dean Gordon had been unveiled as one of the world’s most evil killers.
In Fbruary 2017 , Steven Dean Gordon was sentenced to death for the murder of four sex workers in California.
His crimes had begun 25 years earlier, When Gordon had been working at a family amusement park.
But benethe the facade , he was hiding a ghstly secret, it was his own sister who wnet to the police, accusing the 23 year old of molesting her son .
His convicted , he’s given 15 months in jail and he’s a registred child molester.
Over two decades on from his initial conviction , detectives investigating the murder of 21 year old sex worker Jarrea Estepp had linked Gordon to her death.
Officers needed to act fast to prevent any more women being murdered at the hands of Steven Dean Gordon.
This killer’s story begins on the 3rd of February 1969 on the West Coast of the United States of America.
Steven Dean Gordon was born in 1969 in Lynwood ,California and moved when he was a small child with his family to Norwalk, California , both in Southern California.
It was a pretty itinerant childhood, originally , they were in one county and then moved to another.
Santa Fe is a very suburban area, South of Los Angeles, very middle- class, working -class area, he went to high school there.
It seems that he was quite a sickly child, he seemed to have a lot of health problems.
It’s said that he was bullied at school because of that.
Dosen’t sound like he’s ever really made any real conncections, never really had a good circle of friends who he could count on for support, and just really had low self- esteem as a result.
Gordon’s ongoing health issues also had a detrimental effect on his academic life, he missed an entire year of school due to Ilness.
And when he graduated from high school, he choose not to go any further in terms of education.
When Gordon finished high school, he went to work as a handyman at a large amusement park in the area.
While Gordon was working at this amusement park, he developed a relationship with one of his co-workers.
The park was a world- famous attraction and a popular destination for families with children.
Gordon had been working there for four years before he faced a wun- in with the law, in the early 90s ,
His sister accused him of sexually assaulting her child.
At first , Gordon admitted to the crime against his own nephew, but then he went on to say he was actually innocent.
He claimed that his girlfriend had been the one to force him to actually even plead guilty when he didn’t do anything at all.
After that, he threatened his sister’s life for filing those charges against him.
Gordon was 23 years old at the time.
It was a strange thing to do, but if he was sexually attracted to children , it may have been difficult for him to get access to any children other than members of his own family.
So maby he had a report, you know , the child knew him, he was able to maybe threaten the child to keep quiet.
Gordon was convicted and sentence to 15 months in prison,the 23 year old was also registred as a child molester.,when he was released,he tried to live a somewhat normal or law -abiding life.
Despite blaming his girlfriend for making him admit to the crime , in 1995, the couple went on to get married.
By 1997 ,they have a daughter, and two years leater , in the late 90’s they moved to Riverside, California.
there were a lot of problems in their marriage and just in his life in general he was becoming more and more irritable as the days went on because of variety of financial and domestic issues.
His wife is trying to keep him going, he ‘s threatening to kill himself or hire a hitman , of all unlikely things to kill him , so that she get the insurance money, it’s, slightly bizarre.
this shows how out of control he felt in life, how powerless to influence things certainly to his own advantage.
Everything was adrama or a catastrophe for him, things slowly started to unravel in their marriage.
His wife noticed that he had a terrible problem with anger, the smallest thing would get him upset, and she’d had enough.
By 2001 , she took their daughter, she left him and filed for divorce.
When the divorce proceedings started , there was an order in place that he was not to have contact with his wife or daughter.
Gordon violated that order in August 2001 by turning up where he knew they would be,when they go to church , he tempts the daughter into his car, which is repainted and put new false number plates on.
And essentially ,he abducts them, fairly terrifying in every way.Gordon lured his daughter in with sweets, then threatened his ex witha stung gun forcing her to get into his car.
He ties the wife up and subjected at some kind of ordeal,he let his guard down at one point, and he allowed his wife to make a call. she called her parents and they of course ,called police.
It doesn’t take long for the police to arrive, and indeed ,Gordon is charged with two counts of kidnapping, wife and daughter,Steven Dean Gordon was found guilty and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
He would go on to spend eight of those years behind bars, and in February 2010, he was released.
The 41 year old headed to Orange County , California , an area with high rates of homelessness and poverty.Anaheim and Santa Ana are the two most populated cities in Orange County.
In 2013 , three women completely disappear off the streets of Santa Ana.
The first one disappears, about 20 days later , another woman disappears about 20 days after that , another woman disapears.
They all from Santa Ana , They all worked as prostitutes.
No one’s certain that anything has happened to them ,they could just decided to give up or go to another state or do something different.
The first woman to be reported missing was 20 year old Kianna Jackson, she was originally from Willits ,California, in the Northern California area.
She did go to college after high school,but after one semester , she decided she wanted something a little moreexciting and she moved to Las Vegas.
Whilst livng in Las Vegas , Kianna had started earning money by becoming a sex worker,in October 2013, Kianna Jackson took a bus from Las Vegas to Anaheim area , so that she could attend a court date for a previous prostitution charge, she checks into a hotel on her way to court, she never gets to court, she disappears litterally into thin air.
Her mom, at the time, said she didn’t know her daughter was working as a prostitute, she filed a missing person report with police, but police said to her that she’s an adult.
“So really, our hands are tied, theres not much wthat we can do”
The lifestyle of a sex worker is transient by nature.
They often move around and they don’t have any records, and they don’t sign a lease for an apartment ,they often live on the street
and it’s very difficult to know whether one of these missing women has just gone on the run or whether some harm has come to them.
17 days after Kianna Jackson went missing, on October the 23rd, 2013, another sex worker disappeared from the streets of Santa Ana .
34 year old mother of three Josephine “Monique” Vargas.
She had just attended a birthday party of a family member and then said she was going to walk to the store to puck up some items, but they never saw her again.
Initially , her husband thought that she was still with her family, and her family thought she was with her husband,so there was a little bit of a delay before reporting that she was missing.
She dissappeared, they realize and police acknowledge that there’s been no activity on her credit card , she’s just gone.
Fellow sex worker , 27 year old Martha Anaya had seemingly known the missing woman.
22 days after Josephine went missing.
On the 12th of November 2013.her family were unaware of what Martha was doing for work.
Harbor Boulevard in Santa Ana was where many sex workers would wait for bvusiness, Martha Anaya was one of these women and felt safe being on the streets there at night.
When Martha didn’t turn up the day after she’d messages her boyfriend about going to work, her family knew somethin was wrong.
Martha would message her mother Linda regularly throughout the day.
Martha was last seen in Santa Ana as well, Martha’Anaya’s family started starting posting fliers around the area.
In the space of five weeks, three sex workers had disappeared from the streets of Santa Ana.
None of them had been found.
On March the 14th ,2014 in Anaheim,the neighboring City to Santa Anna, workers at a recycling plant were shocked to discover something unusual on one of the conveyor belts.
I’ts an extraordinary thing to happen, but it’s clearly a body, it’s clearly a woman, and she’s clearly met an untimely end.
Investigators struggled to identify who the woman was.
The body didn’t belong to any of the three missing sex workers.
A tatoo on her neck was checked against a database held by police.
It wasn’t until the detectives started investigating and doing really good police work to make that connection and identify the body as being that of Jarrae Estepp.
Jarrea Estepp ,21, originally from Modeto ,california, was living in Anaheim, and she had a previous prostituion arrest in Oklahoma.
Jarrea was somebody who also frequented the southern California area and was knwon for her sex crimes and was actually well known to the police for his reason .
Jarrea Estepp ws now the fourth sex worker known have gone missing from the area in five months.
The four cases were now thought to be linked.
Now , the police are looking at something more than simply isolated incidents in this area, although only one body was found, the fate of the other three women seemed clear.
It wasn’t long after, that police were piecing together that there was a serial killer involved.
So,now that the police think they have a murderer of sex workers,the natural investigative avenue is to go back and look at other male sex offenders .that are living or frequenting or working in those areas where these sex workers have gone missing.
With the exact locations the women were picked up unknown,
officers would struggle to narrow down whether any particular sex offender were involved.
A breakthrough in the investigation gave them a much – needed lead.
Police examined some of the rubbish that was found around Jarrea’s body on that conveyor belt.
Investigators also found a tube of caulking with fingerprints on it ,they ran the fingerprints, it came back belonging to a window installer.
They brought them in for questioning, and he said , after finishing a job he would often throw the waste in a t rash bin in Anaheim, right next to a paint and auto body shop.
When police looked at which registered sex offenders had frequented that location , a name immediately came up , Franc Cano.
Franc Cano was born in 1986 in California ,he had ecxema and asthma as a cild ,rather sickly, the family are not rich, they moved to a trailer park in 1994,they’re not cnvenonal suburban.
Franc Cano was also a convicted child predator, a convicted pedophile.
Something is going on in Cano’s mind, and believe it or not, in 2006 , at the age of 20, he molests his nine year old niece.
When police arrived , Cano told police that he molested his niece because he was sexually frustrated, he was a virgin and he was unpopular with girls.
Franc Cano had pleaded guilty to one count of child sexual abuse and received a two year sentence.
After being in prison for 16 months, Cano was released on parole in October 2009, Now in April 2014,4,and 1/2 year after his release for the child abuse conviction .
Cano had been linked to the body found on the conveyor belt at the recycling plant.
He had been in the area of the trash bin, and he had also been in the area where Jasrrea Estepps’ cell phon last pinged, the last call that she made.
Investigators wanted more evidence that Cano was involved before they could bring him in for questioning.
They have Cano undersurveillance, and they also get the permission to wiretape hiscell phone, so they can listen to the calls, they can look at his text messages, and what the police say they discover is just chilling.
The text messages found on Franc Cano’s phone showed thet he hadn’t been acting along, in the 4 1/2 years since his release from prison, Cano had struck a bond with another sex offender.
And what they had done together in that time was truly horrific.
They realixed that Franc Cano was in the same ara as each of the four missing women when they went missing.
Text messages uncovered on Cano’s phone reveal that, if he was the killer, he wasn’t acting alone.
The conversations between him and another man, many conversation texts and the text messages detail their hunt,their hunt for women.
Investigators were able to identify the second man , he was another convicted sex offender, 45 year old Steven Dean Gordon.
Steven Grdon is one dangerous individual.
He’s not even like single – offense predator,he’s molested children.he’s an abductor, he’s an all – rund – predator.
But how had these two sex offenders become friends?
12 years before Jarrea Estepp’s body was found and Cano had been identified as a suspect,Steven Dean Gordon had been sent to jail for kidnapping his wife and daughter.
After serving eight years of his sentence, Gordon was released from prison.
In February of 2010 , Gordon is released from prison on parole with several restrictions.
One , that he can’t go near his family, two, that he must wear an ankle monitoring bracelet and three , that he can’t be present anywhere where children gather.
And also , he had to register as an official sex offender.
He was on the sexual predators registry, he had to wear GPS tracker,he clearly had to check in multiple times with his parole officer a month.
It’s very hard for registered sex offenders to find a place to live, to find work because they’re very limitied on where they can be.
So, he manages to gt odd jobs at this paint and auto body shop in Anaheim.
He lived as a transient , really, he had no place to live, the people at that paint and auto body shop allowed him to sleep in his vehicle out in the back of the business.
It was while working at the auto shop that Steven Dean Gordon met 23 year old Franc Cano, Cano was also a registered child molester, and he too had to wear a GPS ankle monitor.
Here you have two men, one much older , one 17 years older than the other.
They strike up what will become an absolutely extraodinary friendship, they bonded a lot over their childhood difficulties.c
Cano also suffered from multiple health issues as a child and was also extensively bullied , they were both outsiders, they both didn’t feel like they were part of a community, and even more so than their possibly shared perversion for sexual predator behaviors.
Gordon was living in a car at the back of the auto shop where he worked.
And with Cano struggling to find accomodation , Gordon invited him to live in the vehicle with him .
Cano and Gordon lived in a car toghether for quite a bit of time, their close relationship led them to make a risky decision together.
Gordon and Cano are so close,and they obviously identify with one another with their given their track records.
But they also want freedom, and in 2010, they both cut off their GPS tracking devices and leave for Alabama,those ankle bracelets give almost an immediate notficifation when they’re cut off.
And so they didn’t last long on the run and ultimately were apprehended by federal agenst in Alabama,they were got caught , of course, they were broguht back,they did some time.
Gordon and Cano were both sent back to prison for five months for breaking the terms of their parole.
but that didn’t make them change their ways,and in 2012, two years after fleeing Alabama, they repeated the same technique.
Gordon and Cano do the same thing,they do it again.
They remove their ankle bracelets and they take off,This time ,they escaped to a very family – themed hotel in Vegas and badially parited it up there.
They were ultimately found at a Casino in Las Vegas that kind of specializes in attracting families and children,unlike most of the other hotels and casinos in Vegas.
It’s not a coincidence that these two sex offenders ended up at the one hotel in Vegas that’s known to have a bunch of children running around.
Being that they both have a history of molesting and being a prediator to children, i twas probably a place that they both felt very stimulated by.
Because there were so many children around and families around.
And this is another person for each of them, that could share that perversion with and could understand you and wouldn’t judge you.
It was two weeks before authorities finally tracked the two sex offenders down on this occasion.
On the 8 th of May 2012 both Gordon and Cano were arrested for breaking the conditions of their paroles,They’re both sentenced to periods in jail.Cano gets 10 months,and Gordon gets eight , one in state prison, one in fedreal.
Cano and Gordon were back on the street in early 2013, and the criminal pair were quickly reunited.
They hook up and start spending much more time together ,and they start traveling around together, they’re back out ,they’re still wearing GPS ankle bracelets to be monitored.
In Gordon’s case , he was being monitored by federal probation, and in Cano’s case, he was being monitored by state parole agents.
As part of their parole restrictions, both men were ordered to stay away from other sex offenders, including each other.
But as their GPS devices were being monitored by different agencies, Gordon and Cano, constantly being in the same location as each other wasn’t flagged.
Now , after the discovery of Jarrea Estepp’s body , Cano’s text conversations with Gordon provided the police with an insight into the relationship between the two predators.
They examine the phone records between the two men .
And in particular, they come up with the chilling remark that Gordon sends to Cano in the wake of the Estepp killing.
” this is the best one yet.”
In the text messages ,Gordon and Cano referred to the women as “cats” or “kitties.”
Gordon thought Jarrea was beautiful, he said;
“cat is beautiful,” in one of his texts , he didn’t want to kill her.
The text messages between the two are just chilling as they decide whether she’s going to live or die.
In some ways,Cano and Gordon referring to the women that they hunted and killed as ” kitties,” it was that sort of feeling of predator and prey, so a kitty being an innocent prey.
And again , that feeling of establishing dominance and power over these women also just points again to the fact that they very much did not reaqlly view these women as human beings.
They did not have any respect for them,so almost treated them like animals.
It was clear the two men may have been preying on women together before raping and murdering them.
Police needed to act fast, they apprehended Franc Cano and then tried to find Steve Dean Gordon.
But Gordon seemed to know they were coming for him.
Police are closing in on the body shop where Gordon works,Gordon senses this ,removes his ankle bracelet,hops on his bike.
And take off , fleeing from the police, a dangerous sex predator was on the run from the law.
Steven Dean Gordon had a history of removing his GPS ankle monitor and fleeing to other states,the police needed to locate their suspect before he disappeared for good.
The police catch up with him less than a quarter mile away, where he tries to jump off the bike,he flies over the handlebars, and they arrest him.
Gordon was taken to the station for questioning, fellow suspect Franc Cano was waiting for a lawyer and therefore not talking to the police.
Investigators may have expected thesame reluctance to answer questions from Gordon.
After initially saying ” i don’t want to talk” he embarks on what amounts to the most extraodinary confesion ,13 and 1/2 hours of conversation.
In which he goes into the most elaborate detail of what he and Cano have don to their victims.
They started to hunt down women, in particular prostitutes.
They would be cruising up and down beach boulevard in Orang County and looking for the victims.
Gordon tells police how he would pick up the woman in his car while Cano was hidden in the back seat.
Once they were in the car, Cano would come up from the back seat and overpower the women.
They would then take the car and drive the women in the car behind the auto body shop, where they were kind of camping out, where the women would then be raped by the two of them.
Gordon described how Cano would strangle the women,
and he would punch them in the stomach to make sure the air got out quicker so they would die quicker.
They kdnapped them, they raped them, they killed them and they threw the bodies out.
Gordon seemed to revel in sharing the details of the four murders.
There were times where he would get frustrated with the police for asking him questions about the victims out of order.
And he would actually physically rearrange the photographs of the women that they laid out for him so that they were in the order in which he abducted and murdered them.
He was actually showing almost a sick pride in what he had done by correcting them and getting it right because he knew ,
he wanted them to get it right.
There was another shock in store for investigators when Gordon revealed some unexpected information.
He also ,during that time, brought up a fifth victim.
Everyone was shocked because they didn’t know that there was another person missing.
No one knows who that was or where it was, there’s no evidence.
And again , there’s no body, Only one body had been found.
But with Gordon’s confessions, investigators were sure that all four missing women had been killed,Franc Cano and Steven Dean Gordon were both charge with four counts of murder.
Gordon‘s trial commenced on November the 16th 2016,the 47 year old decided to represent himself in court.
But this time, his story changes.
He says ” no,no, Cano was responsible for planning this “
During his trial,Gordon blamed his probation officers for not keeping a closer eye on him and tracking him, for him to confess to having murdered all these women and then try to blame all these other people for it is a little disingenuous.
On December the 15 th 2016, the jury returned their verdict .
It took jurors just about an hour before coming back with a decision on Steven Gordon, before the jurors came in , he laughed a little.
The jury don’t hesitate in confirming Gordon’s guilt, and in a most remarkable outburst, he then says to the court, and i quote;
” If you kill people like this in cold blood, you deserve to die , my actions are evil and horrible, and you’re going to get your justice very shortly.”
On February the 3rd, 2017, Steven Dean Gordon was sentenced to death,
He doesn’t complain at all,when he’s sentenced to death.
in fact he accepteds it,he’s sent to death row in San Quentin in California.
Franc Cano was tried separately.
And in 2022 , he was handed his punishment.
Cano finally pleads guilty to the four rapes and murders, but he’s done a deal with the districct attorney, that if he confesses and pleads guilty, they wont ask for the death penalty.
So he’s effectively saying,whole life in prison.
Justice may have been served in the eyes of the law, but the families were left with unanswered questions.
The only body that was ever found was Jarrea’s.
Bodies of the three other women were never found, they are believed to be in the Olinda landfill.
And in fact, Martha Anaya’s family, that’s where they held a memorial for her, was at the landfill.
That’s was the last known place where they believe she is.
During his police interview, Gordon had confessed to an additional murder.
The fifth victim was identified as Sable Alexandria Pickett , 19 years old from Compton which is located in Los Angeles County.
Her body was never found either.
Five women lost their lives at the hands of Steven Dean Gordon.
If he hadn’t been caught when he was, there may have been more victims.
Steven Dean Gordon sexually molested a child and then formed a bond with another child predator.
Working together , they acted out their sick perversions, resulting in abduction, rape, and the murder of five innocent women.