A convicted sex offender, accused of carrying out the serial killings of four Orange County women with his best friend nearly a decade ago, pleaded guilty on Thursday, Dec. 15.
Franc Cano, with the help of co-defendant Steven Gordon, kidnapped, raped and murdered four women in 2013 and 2014, authorities said — a trail of crimes that a prosecutor has called the work of a “very efficient killing-and-evidence-hiding machine” that targeted vulnerable victims they found in prostitution hubs in Santa Ana and Anaheim.
Now, more than seven years after getting charged with the killings — and five years after Gordon was convicted of them — Cano pleaded guilty in a Santa Ana courtroom after years of being accused of the abductions, sexual assaults and killings of Kianna Jackson, 20; Josephine Vargas, 34; Martha Anaya, 28; and Jarrae Estepp, 21.
District Attorney Todd Spitzer said after the guilty pleas that Cano won’t face the death penalty and will instead receive a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.
Later today, loved ones of the victims are expected to tell the court the pain they have suffered.
Cano and Gordon were also accused of also killing a fifth woman, 19-year-old Sable Pickett, but never charged with that crime. Only Estepp’s body has been recovered, found naked on a conveyor belt at a recycling plant in Anaheim. All five women are believed to have had ties to prostitution or escort services.
A poster for the funeral services of Sable Pickett rests on the table of the family home in Compton next to the family Bible. (Photo by Sam Gangwer, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Cano, now 36, has been in jail since his 2014 arrest.
Gordon, once Cano’s best friend, served as his own attorney during his 2016 trial and admitted he played a roll in five killings. Several months after Gordon’s trial, police named Pickett as the suspected fifth victim.
In 2017, Gordon — who at one point told jurors that “if you kill four people like this in cold blood you deserve to die” — was sentenced to death.
He described how he and Cano picked up the women in Santa Ana and Anaheim and forcibly took them back to have sex with them in an RV in an Anaheim business park where Gordon worked. The men slept in a nearby, threadbare Toyota 4Runner.
Gordon accused Cano of strangling the women, but acknowledged that he helped dispose of their bodies in trash bins.
“He is a coward,” Gordon said of Cano during his 2017 sentencing. “That doesn’t make me any better.”
Steven Gordon, one of two accused serial killers, made closing arguments in his capital murder trial in Orange County Superior Court on December 15, 2016. (File photo by Sam Gangwer Orange County Register/SCNG)
Gordon implied during his trial that Cano could have been tied to at least one other killing, though he provided no evidence and authorities have not publicly linked Cano to another death.
“This is not about the murder of four women,” Gordon told jurors during his trial. “This is the murder of five, maybe six. Five for sure. Six — you’d have to ask (Cano).”
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The police investigation began with the disappearances, over several months, of Jackson, Vargas and Anaya. It accelerated with the discovery of Estepp’s body at the recycling facility.
GPS data from ankle monitors worn by Gordon and Cano — both convicted sex offenders — combined with tracking data from the victims’ cell phones helped Anaheim investigators tie the pair to the slayings. DNA found on a tampon in Estepp’s body was also matched with Gordon’s and Cano’s, prosecutors said during Gordon’s trial.
The men met as ex-cons, Gordon on federal probation having served time for molesting his nephew, and Cano on state parole after getting convicted of molesting a 9-year-old niece. Their child-molestation convictions helped keep them both homeless, with Gordon working odd jobs while Cano was unemployed.
During an interview with police about the killings, Gordon said he was driven by anger toward law enforcement and his ex-wife, who he had previously been convicted of kidnapping. But neither Gordon nor prosecutors have ever publicly suggested a motive for Cano.
Cano himself had never testified about the killings, invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to avoid taking the stand during Gordon’s trial.
During his trial, Gordon repeatedly criticized the state parole and federal probation officers who were supposed to be monitoring the pair, contending that if they had done a better job they could have stopped the killings. The two men were together constantly at the time of the killings, despite restrictions on sex offenders hanging around each other.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.