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发帖数: 26623 | 1 ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) — Two parolees raped and killed at least four women
while wearing GPS trackers, and there may be more victims, a California
police chief alleged Monday.
Franc Cano and Steven Dean Gordon, both registered sex offenders, were both
wearing ankle bracelets when the women were assaulted and killed last fall
and earlier this year, Anaheim police Chief Raul Quezada said at a news
conference.
Authorities at the news conference did not explain how Cano and Gordon
allegedly managed to carry out the killings while under supervision, but
Quezada said data from the GPS devices "was one of the investigative tools
we used to put the case together."
Anaheim police Lt. Bob Dunn earlier said the two were complying with a
requirement to check in monthly with authorities and police had no reason to
watch them more closely and hadn't received any such request from other
agencies.
The discovery of one woman's body on a conveyor belt at an Anaheim trash-
sorting plant last month was the key to breaking the case, Quezada said.
Investigators were seeking the other bodies.
"They put a stop to a serial killing that would likely have continued beyond
this point," District Attorney Tony Rackauckas said at the news conference.
Quezada said authorities were confident that there was at least a fifth
victim and perhaps more.
The department has contacted other places with missing-persons cases across
the country, Dunn said earlier.
Police believe the men killed a woman in Anaheim this year and three in
Santa Ana last October and November while on parole.
Cano, 27, and Gordon, 45, were arrested by investigators on Friday. Each man
was charged Monday with four felony counts of special circumstances murder
and four felony counts of rape.
If convicted, they could face a minimum sentence of life without parole or
the death penalty. They were being held without bail and expected to be
arraigned Tuesday.
Police at first didn't link the disappearances of the four women to the
suspects, considering them missing persons rather than murder victims.
"These individuals were not on our radar whatsoever," Santa Ana Police Chief
Carlos Rojas said of the suspects. "Our three missing in Santa Ana just
completely went off the grid and we were trying to follow up as much as we
could."
Santa Ana police searched a canyon, examined the women's cellphone records,
alerted hospitals, put the word out on social media and even checked motels
they were known to frequent but without success in finding them.
Then the naked body of Jarrae Nykkole Estepp, 21, was found March 14 on a
conveyor belt at an Anaheim trash-sorting plant.
Once investigators concluded that Estepp was killed and that she had "a
similar profile to our victims, we were able to ... move forward," Rojas
said.
Police believe Cano and Gordon have known each other since cutting their
ankle bracelets in 2012 and boarding a Greyhound bus to Las Vegas using fake
names. The men were arrested by federal agents on May 8, 2012, after a two-
week stay at Circus Circus Hotel & Casino, according to documents filed in U
.S. District Court in Nevada.
Both were wanted fugitives: Gordon traveled using the alias Dexter McCoy and
Cano chose Joseph Madrid, authorities said.
Cano and Gordon were previously ordered to register as sex offenders after
being convicted in separate cases of lewd and lascivious acts with a child
under 14.
Gordon was convicted in 1992 and also has a 2002 kidnapping conviction,
according to the Orange County district attorney's office. Cano's conviction
dates back to 2008, prosecutors said.
After fleeing Los Angeles in 2012, the two were rearrested and both pleaded
guilty to failure to register as a sex offender. They were ordered to
provide DNA samples and have their computers monitored by federal agents,
according to the federal documents, which were first obtained by the Los
Angeles Times.
The men also checked in with Anaheim police every 30 days, as required, and
provided updated photos, fingerprints and addresses, Dunn said.
In fact, both men checked in earlier this month, Dunn said.
Cano was wearing a state-issued ankle bracelet and Gordon was wearing a
federal GPS device, he said.
The string of disappearances in Santa Ana began in October after Kianna
Jackson, 20, of Las Vegas, arrived in the city for a court hearing on four
misdemeanor charges of prostitution and loitering to commit prostitution.
Her mother said she stopped responding to her text messages soon after she
arrived in Santa Ana.
Josephine Monique Vargas, 34, was last seen Oct. 24 after leaving a family
birthday party to go to a store. The Times said Vargas had a rough past that
at times involved drug use and prostitution, but her mother said she had
been trying to better her life.
Martha Anaya, 28, asked her boyfriend to pick up their 5-year-old daughter
so she could work on Nov. 12, then stopped responding to his messages later
that night. Police said she also had a history of prostitution.
In the weeks before she was found dead at the trash-sorting plant, Estepp,
had become a regular on a strip of Beach Boulevard in Anaheim long known for
prostitution. |
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