Sex offender confessed to killing a fifth woman
SANTA ANA, Calif. - One of two registered sex offenders charged with raping and killing four California women confessed to a police detective after his arrest earlier this year, testimony from a grand jury transcript unsealed Monday revealed.
SANTA ANA, Calif. - One of two registered sex offenders charged with raping and killing four California women confessed to a police detective after his arrest earlier this year, testimony from a grand jury transcript unsealed Monday revealed.
Steven Dean Gordon, 45, also told police that he and codefendant Frank Cano killed a fifth woman who has never been identified.
Both men were wearing electronic monitoring devices during the time period when authorities say they attacked the women, although the transcript reveals that Gordon was not being monitored for a roughly nine-day period during which he said he and Cano killed one of the victims.
Gordon's state electronic anklet had been removed and he had yet to be fitted with a federal anklet, he told Trapp.
The confession by Gordon came during an interview that lasted more than 13 hours the day after Gordon's arrest, Anaheim Police Detective Julissa Trapp told the grand jury.
The transcript contains little new information about the 28-year-old Cano.
Both defendants have pleaded not guilty. Phone and e-mail messages left for Cano's attorney, Houman Fakhimi, and Gordon's attorney, Denise Gragg, were not immediately returned.
Trapp reported that Gordon first said Cano didn't know of Gordon's plans to strangle the women. But by the end of the interview, Gordon said Cano had strangled each woman while Gordon punched them in the stomach to "get the air out faster." The women were then stripped of their clothes, washed, and placed in a Dumpster.
The body of the final woman killed, 21-year-old Jarrae Nykkole Estepp of Oklahoma, was found on a conveyor belt at a trash-recycling plant in Anaheim, but the bodies of the other three have never been found.
