They were best friends, police say, with the worst intentions.
Steven Gordon and Franc Cano did nearly everything together. They slept together in the back of Gordon’s beat-up white Toyota 4Runner, keeping a black Labrador. They hung out near the dumpsters at the Anaheim industrial complex where Gordon worked washing cars, sometimes huddling quietly, sometimes arguing, Gordon with his hands in his pockets, Cano with his head down.
While both were registered child molesters and wore GPS bracelets – Gordon was on federal probation and Cano on state parole – they became such a common sight at the complex that neighboring workers took them for granted.
But one cold morning a few weeks ago, workers at a nearby window shop said they noticed Gordon and Cano stuffing something into a blue dumpster. It seemed strange, but they brushed it off – until police arrested Gordon, 45, and Cano, 27, and told workers that they believed the body of a 21-year-old woman had been dumped in one of the trash bins.
On March 14 two miles away, a worker at a recycling plant spotted the nude body of Jarrae Estepp on a conveyer belt.
Shop employee Dan Gutierrez said he’s not sure what they saw Gordon and Cano pushing into that dumpster. But the memory gives him chills.
“A lot of the guys are freaked out,” Gutierrez said.
Cano and Gordon are charged in the death of Estepp as well as three women who vanished from the streets of Santa Ana: Kianna Rae Jackson, a baby-faced 20-year-old from Las Vegas; Martha Anaya, 28, who was raising a young daughter; and Josephine Monique Vargas, 34, known to her friends as “Giggles.”
Authorities suspect there is a fifth victim, an unidentified African-American woman with ties to Compton. Estepp is the only victim whose body has been recovered. Investigators said they believe all five women had ties to prostitution or escort services.
‘THE PERSON (I WAS) IS GONE’
Gordon was the veteran ex-con ready to fight against the smallest of slights. Cano was the sickly loner embarrassed by his conviction.
Child molestation convictions kept Gordon and Cano homeless. They couldn’t live near schools or around children. Would-be employers were leery.
Both men were small in stature, Gordon 5-feet-6, Cano 5-feet-2. Co-workers say Gordon had a “Napoleon complex,” quick to react to perceived insults.
Gordon cleaned offices and washed cars for minimum wage at a paint and body shop. Cano, an asthmatic with stomach problems, was unemployed. His last address was an Anaheim motel paid for by his parents with credit cards.
In a jailhouse interview, Gordon wouldn’t talk about the case or his relationship with Cano. He blamed law enforcement for stealing his humanity.
Speaking by phone through a glass window, Gordon didn’t say exactly how he had been mistreated. He wiped tears and complained that he hadn’t seen his teenage daughter in years, motioning with his right hand how little she was when he last held her.
“The human side (of me) left when parole, police and probation screwed us over, “Gordon said at the Orange County jail. “The person (I was) is gone. … It’s been building up for years.”
Gordon wouldn’t elaborate. Cano also declined to speak to a Register reporter who visited him at the Orange County Jail.
His hair disheveled, his eyes bloodshot, Cano said: “I don’t want to talk. With all due respect, sir, I’d like to terminate this visit.”
THE BEGINNING
Born Feb. 3, 1969, in Lynwood, Gordon grew up in Norwalk. He graduated in 1988 from Santa Fe High, two years after Cano was born in nearby Compton.
But it would be years before the pair met.
Right after graduation, Gordon landed a job working in the restaurants along Disneyland’s Main Street. He played for the company softball team and met his future wife, Lanai Lewis, another Disneyland employee.
Everything changed in 1992 when his sister accused Gordon of molesting his nephew. Gordon reluctantly pleaded guilty. He said in the jailhouse interview that he wanted to keep from dragging his then-16-year-old, live-in girlfriend through an embarrassing trial.
“I had 100 percent proof of my innocence,” Gordon said, without offering details. Over the years, Gordon remained so vehement about his innocence, according to court documents, that he threatened to kill his sister for filing the molestation report.
Gordon served a 15-month prison term and was released in 1993. The following year, Cano, age 8, moved with his family to a mobile home park in Garden Grove.
Gordon, trying to piece his life back together, married Lanai Lewis on Feb. 25, 1995. He delivered the Orange County Register before dawn and washed cars at an Anaheim paint and body shop in the afternoon.
“When we got married, it was my heart and soul, it would be forever,” Gordon would later write in a letter to his wife included in court documents.
The couple initially lived with Lanai’s parents in Anaheim Hills and then moved into a condo in the same area. Later, they got a bigger place in Riverside to make room for their daughter and two dogs.
“I worked my butt off for me and my family, I never went more than a month without a job,” Gordon wrote in a letter to a judge. Though hard-working, Gordon reportedly had a temper, marked by the patched walls at his family home. He talked of suicide, his ex-wife said in court documents, and toyed with the idea of hiring a hit man to kill him so his family could collect the insurance.
In 2001, Lanai had enough. She took the couple’s 4-year-old daughter, Kayla, and filed for divorce. She also obtained a restraining order.
Gordon retaliated by kidnapping his wife and child, later explaining he thought he could talk Lanai into reconciling once he got her alone. He lured his daughter into his truck with candy, pushed his wife into the cab with his hand over her mouth and whisked them to Nevada.
Later, Gordon allowed his wife to call her parents, who in turn called police. Gordon was arrested and sent back to prison for eight years on two kidnapping charges.
The jury, however, acquitted Gordon of charges that he raped his estranged wife during the trip.
NEVER HAD A GIRLFRIEND
While Gordon was trying to survive on the prison grounds, Cano had his hands full on the playground.
Children teased Cano about his chronic asthma and the eczema that dried patches of his skin, said a police report. They teased that he had HIV.
At 20, Cano confessed to detectives that he had never had a girlfriend during an interview in his bedroom to investigate the molestation of his 9-year-old niece, according to the police report. In 2007, Cano pleaded guilty to molesting the girl while playing video games at the family’s home.
Cano was so embarrassed, according to the police report, he asked officers to take him out a side door so he wouldn’t have to face relatives.
Cano served 16 months in state prison and was forbidden after his release in October 2009 from living with his family.
His parents and relatives declined to comment for this story.
Gordon was released from prison four months after Cano was set free. Gordon returned to the paint and body shop, seeking another chance. Ian Pummell gave it to him.
“We were trying to do the Christian thing and give him a break,” explained Pummell, in an office marked by cleaning materials and snack food.
Soon, Cano started showing up at the body shop. Pummell said Gordon and Cano shared lunches brought by Cano’s parents. Sometimes, the pair appeared so close that workers joked they were boyfriends.
“He’s my best friend,” shot back Gordon, who owned the SUV where they slept as well as a light brown Ford RV parked around the corner from the shop.
In 2012, the men – on state parole – cut off their GPS bracelets and hopped a Greyhound bus to Las Vegas. They stayed for two weeks at Circus Circus, a carnival themed casino billed as a great place for minors. Sporting an indoor theme park – complete with carousel – the casino charges as little as $21 a night for rooms.
Police caught up with the duo and sent Cano to federal prison for 10 months and Gordon for eight months.
Pummell offered, “Neither one of the guys I would call rocket scientists.”
STREET PREY
Investigators said they suspect Gordon and Cano sought their victims along Beach Boulevard in Anaheim and First Street in Santa Ana in areas known for prostitution and drug dealing.
Retracing Cano’s GPS data, police said they found that he’d driven up and down Beach Boulevard and Ball Road around the same time Estepp was last seen alive.
Along Beach Boulevard, strip malls feature discount pizza and liquor; motels advertise cheap rates on faded signs. On First Street, homeless people huddle in doorways, and discount motels offer cheap lodging. Police say it is on First Street where Estepp, Jackson, Anaya and Vargas are believed to have been taken.
Now, Gordon and Cano sit in separate jail cells but remain linked by the same charges – four counts of murder and four counts of rape. The charges make them eligible for the death penalty if convicted.
Staff writers Denisse Salazar, Scott Schwebke, John Asbury and Keegan Kyle contributed to this report.
Contact the writer: tsaavedra@ocregister.com or shernandez@ocregister.com or vjolly@ocregister.com
