Good & Evil

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Speaker 7 She was on a commer belt. Only her feet were exposed.
The workers thought it was a mannequin. Her last hours on Earth were not pleasant.

Speaker 9 Young women murdered or missing.

Speaker 10 Families in anguish.

Speaker 11 I would text her, and she would text right back. But this time, nothing.

Speaker 12 When they killed her, they killed me.

Speaker 14 A serial killer at work.

Speaker 15 And maybe he had a friend.

Speaker 16 That's crazy.

Speaker 17 They don't work together.

Speaker 18 Serial killers are loners.

Speaker 3 Very rare.

Speaker 14 Two suspected killers on the hunt. Hunting them, a detective devoted to justice, and more.

Speaker 16 It's almost like you've adopted these young women.

Speaker 7 There's a lot of visits to my local church saying, please don't let me screw this up.

Speaker 10 Here's Keith Morrison with Good and Evil.

Speaker 20 How do you measure a mother's love or gauge the ferocity of her impulse to protect?

Speaker 11 Love her as much as I could. It was about the only thing.

Speaker 3 How to measure love as visceral as the beating heart in her own body.

Speaker 22 She was my firstborn.

Speaker 22 She was my best friend.

Speaker 26 How to understand the four mothers you'll meet tonight and their connection, one that not one of them would ever have thought possible, not in a million years.

Speaker 28 Any more than they would have expected to meet her, their guardian angel.

Speaker 7 If I don't bring her home, who will?

Speaker 3 It's a rare mystery that's truly a confrontation of good and evil.

Speaker 7 We have to go to the dark places in order to find answers.

Speaker 25 A rare mystery that needed an urgent answer before the evil struck again.

Speaker 26 It was March 14th, 2014, early morning.

Speaker 8 An army of garbage trucks made their growling, clanking way around the thousands of trash bins and dumpsters in Anaheim, California.

Speaker 9 Their destination, a landfill that is also a literal mountain of garbage, 500 feet high.

Speaker 31 And then, mid-morning, an attendant separating debris on the conveyor belt saw something.

Speaker 21 Was that a human foot protruding from the pile of trash?

Speaker 19 Surely not.

Speaker 7 She was on a conveyor belt, only her feet were exposed, and initially the workers there thought it was a mannequin.

Speaker 31 But it wasn't a mannequin, as the responding homicide detective Julissa Trapp could plainly see.

Speaker 33 It was,

Speaker 36 or had been, a woman, her body wrapped in a blue plastic tarp.

Speaker 7 We had no idea who she was.

Speaker 7 We had no idea where she came from. How did she end up there?

Speaker 17 Something about the dead girl got to Detective Trapp, ending up this way, an anonymous child of God in a garbage dump.

Speaker 34 And so the detective did what she always does.

Speaker 16 She bought a rosary.

Speaker 7 It's a way for me to kind of connect to my victims.

Speaker 26 Unusual, maybe, that a detective should lean on her profound Catholic faith to help solve crimes.

Speaker 16 But Julissa Trapp does.

Speaker 7 Cases don't always get solved in 48 hours, you know.

Speaker 16 Surprise, surprise.

Speaker 7 They take time and they take work.

Speaker 38 And that little rosary helps you.

Speaker 7 It does.

Speaker 33 If she could solve this case, she'd give that rosary to the dead woman's family.

Speaker 21 But first, she had to figure out who she was.

Speaker 27 From just one identifying mark on her neck, a tattoo.

Speaker 30 Jodi.

Speaker 28 Was that her name?

Speaker 25 Reaching now, Detective Trapp pulled up the Anaheim Police Department's database of tattoos.

Speaker 3 Yes, they have one.

Speaker 25 Descriptions of tattoos collected from anyone they encounter.

Speaker 3 And what do you know? There was a match.

Speaker 31 But her name was not Jodi.

Speaker 4 It was Jirae.

Speaker 9 Jirae Eastep.

Speaker 31 She was 21 years old.

Speaker 7 She had been contacted the year prior here in Anaheim on Beach Boulevard.

Speaker 40 Beach Boulevard?

Speaker 19 Suddenly, Detective Trapp's case took on a whole new complexion.

Speaker 7 If you want to buy drugs, Beach Boulevard's where you come. If you are looking for a girl, Beach Boulevard's where you come.

Speaker 7 A lot of them came from good, stable families that just happened to run in to the wrong wrong guy who somehow got them into the job.

Speaker 7 I mean, these pimps are really good about breaking down the women and getting control over them.

Speaker 3 Making them a prime target for predators.

Speaker 7 A lot of predators will start with prostitutes because they think that people won't miss them.

Speaker 12 Somebody does.

Speaker 7 Yes, somebody does.

Speaker 42 Somebody did.

Speaker 41 Like Jerae's mother, who, records revealed, lived in a tiny town in Oklahoma, that tattoo on Jirae's neck, this is Jodi.

Speaker 16 And even before the detective got the words out.

Speaker 22 I felt it that

Speaker 7 she was gone.

Speaker 31 Her daughter had been so happy, so charming, outgoing.

Speaker 6 But then, said Jodi, a boyfriend convinced Jirae that to please him, She'd have to turn tricks.

Speaker 9 This is Jirae.

Speaker 26 He just honked trying to get her her attention, but she didn't.

Speaker 45 John TV, a self-proclaimed video vigilante group in Oklahoma City, caught her on camera back in 2012.

Speaker 32 But Jirae left the boyfriend, turned her life around, so Jody thought. And then that awful phone call from Detective Trapp.

Speaker 46 I was screaming, like screaming.

Speaker 6 The detective made a promise to that mother.

Speaker 19 Didn't matter what choices Jirae may have made, she, the detective,

Speaker 24 would work this case as hard as any she ever had.

Speaker 7 We literally went from each

Speaker 7 little motel to each little motel, showing her picture and having the clerk run her name to see if she had stayed there.

Speaker 23 And eventually she found the room where Jirai had been staying, in which were $700 in cash and mascara, lipstick, contact lens solution.

Speaker 9 But nothing whatever to lead her to a suspect.

Speaker 3 Not here, anyway.

Speaker 4 From the disposal company, she got a list of the dumpsters those garbage trucks had serviced that morning.

Speaker 35 And then she and other officers went dumpster diving.

Speaker 3 Hundreds of dumpsters.

Speaker 18 What would you be looking for?

Speaker 7 They were all given pictures of what the trash looked like that was around her. If it looks similar, take pictures of what's inside.

Speaker 9 No luck.

Speaker 12 Waste of time.

Speaker 19 Then, back on the conveyor belt, an odd thing turned up in the trash collected near Jirae's body.

Speaker 7 We got a print hit.

Speaker 19 Talking about a fingerprint here.

Speaker 7 A fingerprint, yes.

Speaker 36 It was on a caulking tube, and it matched someone, a window installer who worked for a company called Hardy Windows.

Speaker 7 He tells us we never throw trash out at customers' homes. We always bring it back to Hardy Windows.

Speaker 36 Where they found?

Speaker 26 One dumpster no one had checked.

Speaker 47 The trash company, inadvertent, had left it off the list they gave the police.

Speaker 34 Detective Trapp looked inside.

Speaker 7 It's that same blue plastic wrapping. And it was almost like I was looking at the same trash I had seen on the Camaribo.

Speaker 26 Bingo.

Speaker 24 And if not for that lucky fingerprint, they'd have missed it.

Speaker 9 What was that like?

Speaker 7 It was

Speaker 7 a combination of frustration, but okay.

Speaker 27 All right, we're...

Speaker 7 We're moving somewhere.

Speaker 23 So, DeRay was dumped here sometime before the morning of March 14th.

Speaker 31 miles and miles from the spot where, according to cell phone records, she placed her very last outgoing call at 7 p.m.

Speaker 24 the night before.

Speaker 19 How far away would it have been?

Speaker 7 20 miles.

Speaker 19 But that's all the detective knew.

Speaker 36 A week gone by.

Speaker 3 Everyone at Hardy Windows was cleared.

Speaker 25 So no suspects at all.

Speaker 45 Detective Trapp went to church, said her rosary, worried, prayed, and wondered.

Speaker 7 I I had heard a story on the news that there was three missing prostitutes in the city of Santa Ana.

Speaker 31 Which is right next door, basically.

Speaker 7 Right next door, yes.

Speaker 23 What if this wasn't the killer's first time?

Speaker 20 Or last?

Speaker 51 Coming up.

Speaker 10 Four young women in two neighboring towns now missing or dead.

Speaker 9 Was there a link?

Speaker 7 We were like, well, you know, what are the odds that they're related?

Speaker 10 And mothers united by love and loss.

Speaker 22 We made thousands of flyers. Me and her were on our mission to find our daughters.

Speaker 31 Detective Jalissa Trapp couldn't sleep, kept awake by the puzzle of the girl someone threw away in the trash.

Speaker 35 That's when something jogged her restless mind.

Speaker 26 Hadn't some young women vanished in the town next door, Santa Ana?

Speaker 7 We were like, well, you know, what are the odds that they're related?

Speaker 31 So she looked them up and learned about Kiana Jackson, just 20 years old when she disappeared five months before Jarae's death.

Speaker 26 Her mom is Kathy Menzies.

Speaker 11 She was just a very fun-loving child. Always made you laugh.

Speaker 35 Just look at her childhood photos.

Speaker 4 That silly grin.

Speaker 29 She loved her dog, her little brother, playing softball.

Speaker 35 And then it started happening, said Kathy, eighth grade or so.

Speaker 11 She was kind of getting, you know, difficult teenage, you know, mouthy. And then, you know, high school came, getting around the older kids, she kind of got a little, you know, worse.

Speaker 13 How'd you cope with that?

Speaker 11 It was just one day at a time. Love her as much as I could.
It was about the only thing.

Speaker 35 After high school, Kiana went to college, about a three-hour drive from home.

Speaker 31 A year later, she moved to Las Vegas.

Speaker 41 But though far from home now, she got closer and closer to her mom.

Speaker 11 She would call me every day, talk to me every day, you know, text message.

Speaker 29 Just a loving daughter.

Speaker 11 Yeah, I didn't think anything bad was happening.

Speaker 16 No idea.

Speaker 31 Even in October 2013, when Kiana called to say...

Speaker 11 She was on the bus towards Santa Ana.

Speaker 36 I mean, did she tell you why?

Speaker 11 Visiting friends is what she told me.

Speaker 8 But then, the girl who called her mother almost daily stopped calling.

Speaker 11 Anything over a day or two, I would start going, wait a second, this isn't right, something's not right. I would text her, and she would text right back.
But this time, nothing, nothing.

Speaker 27 Gone.

Speaker 6 Not a peep to her mom, to her friends, to her boyfriend.

Speaker 31 Kathy went to the police.

Speaker 11 When I called to file a missing persons report, they said she's an adult and there's nothing we can do for you.

Speaker 11 But you knew that there was a problem yeah so Kathy started doing her own digging tracked her daughter down to a motel in Orange County where the trail ended her clothes were there but she wasn't again she called the police and they said well that happens sometimes prostitutes just work circuits prostitute first I was like no what okay no that can't be but then the truth came crashing down undeniable Kiana had missed a scheduled court date in Santa Ana for a prostitution charge.

Speaker 36 But wait a minute, you talked to her every day.

Speaker 32 You texted with her all the time.

Speaker 11 Exactly. And she.

Speaker 31 And she knew nothing of this secret life of yours.

Speaker 11 Nope, nothing.

Speaker 13 What does it feel like as a mother to hear that?

Speaker 27 It's been going on all that time.

Speaker 42 And you didn't know. Heartbreaking.

Speaker 26 When she heard Kathy's story, Detective Trapp began to think she was on to something.

Speaker 35 And then she discovered that just two and a half weeks after Kiana disappeared, there was another one, Josephine Monique Vargas.

Speaker 22 She had a beautiful personality. They used to call her giggles because she always made people laugh.

Speaker 6 Josephine's mother, Priscilla, had been on the local news searching for answers for months, ever since her daughter left a family barbecue, telling them she was walking to buy groceries.

Speaker 22 That's the last time any of us heard of her or saw her.

Speaker 34 Priscilla went to the Santa Ana Police Department, filled out a report.

Speaker 22 But they didn't really do anything to look for her.

Speaker 9 So she did.

Speaker 46 Nothing was going to stop me from looking for my daughter.

Speaker 27 Nothing or no one.

Speaker 36 And it was pure chance when Priscilla ran into another mother, desperate to find her daughter.

Speaker 3 Martha, 28 years old and a mother herself, who just vanished one day.

Speaker 42 There's no way she would have left. To just say, I'm going and I'm leaving everything behind.

Speaker 36 So Martha's mother, Helinda, and Priscilla went together up and down the boulevard.

Speaker 22 We made thousands of flyers. Me and her were on our mission to find our daughters.

Speaker 41 But no sign of their daughters anywhere.

Speaker 35 Detective Trapp collected their portraits, hung them on her office wall, and she stayed awake and prayed in her Catholic way.

Speaker 17 Do you ever wonder why God would allow this to happen?

Speaker 7 I do. There's been plenty of times that I've been angry with our maker because you have to wonder, why does this happen? I mean, I wish he would talk back to me and tell me that would be very helpful.

Speaker 7 But I just have to figure out what happened. Just read the clues, collect the puzzle pieces, and the more you can kind of keep a neutral mind, the easier the puzzle pieces fit together.

Speaker 8 No getting around it.

Speaker 44 The pieces pointed to a chilling conclusion.

Speaker 34 Those three missing women, just like Jirai, may have been murdered. And if that was true, it would mean there was a serial killer out there in the night.

Speaker 19 Had to be.

Speaker 36 More deaths would be coming.

Speaker 28 Unless.

Speaker 3 One idea.

Speaker 43 It was grasping its straws, yes, but you know what?

Speaker 7 It might work now. Why not? It's a Hail Mary, but let's try it.

Speaker 51 Coming up.

Speaker 53 All sex offenders on parole, they will have an anklet, a GPS monitor.

Speaker 31 Tracking a killer, victim by victim.

Speaker 47 Or is it two killers?

Speaker 38 They were in the same car.

Speaker 10 They they're in the same vehicle when dateline continues

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Speaker 17 The autopsy came in.

Speaker 39 The one for Jare Eastep, the girl on the conveyor belt.

Speaker 54 It's bad. It was bad.

Speaker 54 It was bad.

Speaker 4 Strangled, beaten, sexually assaulted viciously, according to Deputy DA Larry Yellen.

Speaker 54 Should have been a college girl. Should be worrying about grades and boyfriends and football games and those things.

Speaker 3 One wrong turn.

Speaker 16 You never know. Yeah.

Speaker 35 But almost three weeks in, Detective Jalissa Trapp seemed stuck.

Speaker 54 I think she got a little frustrated and got a little desperate and came up with the idea of using the computer database.

Speaker 35 That is, the computer database of sex offenders.

Speaker 24 If they had a serial killer on their hands, there was at least a chance he'd already run afoul of the law at some point.

Speaker 24 It was a bit like just poking a finger into the haystack, frankly, and hoping to encounter a needle.

Speaker 39 But worth a try.

Speaker 6 So Trapp called this woman, sexual assault detective Laura Lomelli.

Speaker 53 All sex offenders on parole, they will have an anklet, a GPS monitor.

Speaker 39 Trapp asked Lomelli, were any of those gps monitors here where jarae placed her last phone call or here

Speaker 12 where she wound up in a dumpster and if you find the same guy at both locations you're getting somewhere

Speaker 21 lamelli ran the search and what were the chances she got a hit in both locations she called detective trapp there's only one person She said, I know him.

Speaker 7 I said,

Speaker 7 who?

Speaker 7 And she said, oh, his name's Frank Cannell. He's a registered sex offender.

Speaker 24 In 2007, Frank Cannell pleaded guilty to committing a lewd act on a minor.

Speaker 25 He was now on parole wearing a GPS monitor.

Speaker 21 But now, next question.

Speaker 9 Did Frank Cano's monitor put him near the places those other three women, according to phone records, made their last calls?

Speaker 25 Keana, Josephine, and Martha.

Speaker 21 One by one, The detective edited the coordinates.

Speaker 53 And every intersection for that date and time that they gave me, Frank Connell came up.

Speaker 7 Wow.

Speaker 53 For every single intersection, it was, it was, I was shocked.

Speaker 27 But

Speaker 29 something about that man, Frank Cano.

Speaker 24 He had a buddy, and Lamelli had run into them both.

Speaker 53 I mentioned, you know, I do know that he has a friend that's Stephen Gordon.

Speaker 31 Stephen Gordon, he'd done time for molesting a minor and later for kidnapping.

Speaker 8 He and Kano were inseparable, apparently.

Speaker 31 Once again, Detective Lomelli pulled up the GPS coordinates.

Speaker 23 She checked the place Martha was last seen in Santa Ana and

Speaker 32 no Gordon, not there.

Speaker 33 But when she checked locations for Kiana and Josephine, sure enough, there he was.

Speaker 33 So why not at the first location?

Speaker 34 She checked the record.

Speaker 25 and discovered at that particular moment Gordon wasn't on a GPS monitor, but he was wearing one at the other three places, and so was Cano.

Speaker 39 The electronics made it absolutely obvious.

Speaker 12 Here they were, Kano and Gordon, driving together up and down Beach Boulevard and all around Santa Ana and Anaheim.

Speaker 53 I mean, even when they're on the freeway,

Speaker 53 they were in the same vehicle.

Speaker 29 Jalissa Trapp had prayed for a Hail Mary, but she never expected anything like this.

Speaker 7 I soon realized I'm not just dealing with

Speaker 32 one.

Speaker 7 We're dealing with two.

Speaker 7 Two sex offenders wearing GPS bracelets.

Speaker 24 But for all the electronic cross-referencing, the case against Cano and Gordon was purely circumstantial.

Speaker 21 Detective Trapp could not arrest them.

Speaker 27 Not without more evidence.

Speaker 28 And that was terrifying.

Speaker 38 I mean, there were young women who were at real risk here. Yes.

Speaker 21 And if you waited too long,

Speaker 13 how would you feel if somebody else was attacked?

Speaker 7 Let me just say, there was a lot of rosaries that were being prayed, for sure.

Speaker 3 She set up a surveillance team to watch Kano and Gordon around the clock and got authorizations for wiretaps and pulled cell phone records.

Speaker 7 When we started reading the text messages and started seeing how prolific they were at hunting.

Speaker 16 Hunting.

Speaker 7 Hunting. On almost...
a daily basis and how

Speaker 7 nonchalant they were about it. It was almost like ordering takeout.
When you start reading, what do you feel like today? Asian or Mexican?

Speaker 27 Oh boy.

Speaker 13 What would they call these girls?

Speaker 7 That was the other thing.

Speaker 32 Cats. Cats? Cats.

Speaker 7 Be careful. When the cat knows it isn't getting away, it's going to fight.

Speaker 31 The next victim couldn't be far away because Gordon texted Kanno, Kitty cat later, yes?

Speaker 24 To which Kanno responded, okay.

Speaker 31 And then a sudden change.

Speaker 4 Had they spotted the surveillance?

Speaker 31 As Trapp listened to the wiretap,

Speaker 48 she heard Gordon talk to Kanno about skipping town.

Speaker 7 I could hear the desperation in Frank Kano's voice. That desperation just kind of sent a hair on the back of my neck, and I said, no, I'm not waiting anymore.

Speaker 3 They're going to run.

Speaker 7 They're going to run.

Speaker 28 Time to move.

Speaker 3 Fast.

Speaker 48 They caught up to Frank Kano as he was boarding a bus.

Speaker 24 And Stephen Gordon, they found him where he worked, an auto body shop next door to Hardy Windows.

Speaker 7 But he made a run for it.

Speaker 19 Ran out the door.

Speaker 7 On a bicycle. Yes, he had a little collision with one of our

Speaker 7 surveillance units and a little flying over the handlebars and he was taken into custody.

Speaker 6 Both men were charged with four counts each of first-degree murder and forcible rape.

Speaker 6 Hi, Stephen.

Speaker 12 And Detective Trapp prepared to confront a suspected serial killer.

Speaker 51 Coming up.

Speaker 7 I knew this was going to be a lot different than any other interview I had done.

Speaker 13 Takeout with a killer.

Speaker 18 It is spicy.

Speaker 48 I told you.

Speaker 7 I told you to be careful.

Speaker 31 For six months, Kathy Menzies waited for news about her daughter, Kiana.

Speaker 40 Still woke up every day, hoping she'd call or text and dreading a knock at the door.

Speaker 6 Which, in April 2014, is what happened.

Speaker 11 My heart sunk when they came because I knew right away that it wasn't going to be good news.

Speaker 27 No,

Speaker 25 not good news at all.

Speaker 36 Anaheim police told her that two men, Frank Cano and Stephen Gordon, were now under arrest for the murder of her daughter and three other young women in Orange County.

Speaker 45 What were you like that night?

Speaker 11 I just wanted to sleep. I wanted to like go to sleep and wake up and pinch myself.

Speaker 3 And make it a different world. Exactly.
Detective Jalissa Trapp wanted to speak with both men, of course.

Speaker 28 But Kano lawyered up.

Speaker 43 So she tried Gordon, still in a wheelchair after his bike accident.

Speaker 7 Hi, Stephen. Hi.

Speaker 7 How are you?

Speaker 7 And I knew this was going to be

Speaker 7 a lot different than any other interview I had done. He's cunning, manipulative.

Speaker 17 He didn't have to talk to you.

Speaker 7 He did not have to talk to me. Are you cold? Do you want a blanket?

Speaker 48 Yeah, you don't mind. No, no, no, no.

Speaker 29 But Detective Trapp has a way, as they say.

Speaker 17 You're actually compassionate.

Speaker 56 Thank you. You're welcome.

Speaker 16 You were kind to him.

Speaker 28 You brought him a blanket.

Speaker 3 Alrighty.

Speaker 7 Food. Here is our chip.

Speaker 7 Yes, we actually shared two meals together.

Speaker 42 It is spicy.

Speaker 7 I told you. I told you to be careful.

Speaker 24 Even so, Gordon was reluctant at first.

Speaker 56 I got dodging.

Speaker 7 Would you rather talk to somebody else?

Speaker 56 I don't want to talk to anybody.

Speaker 7 He watched me very carefully. If I swallowed too hard, if I looked at him differently, you know, he would say, what's wrong?

Speaker 56 You had a weird look on your face when I said, where? Why?

Speaker 7 When I said, where.

Speaker 7 So it was

Speaker 7 constantly trying to keep a poker face

Speaker 7 to

Speaker 7 continue to elicit information from him.

Speaker 4 Did he try to play you? It's sort of...

Speaker 7 Oh, I think he definitely thinks he did, for sure.

Speaker 25 Bit by bit, she pulled out answers for herself.

Speaker 36 And for those four mothers.

Speaker 56 Does she go by the name Kayla?

Speaker 7 It starts with with a K, Kiana.

Speaker 56 No, she told me her name was Kayla.

Speaker 49 Detective Trapp presented him with photographs.

Speaker 8 He identified all four women.

Speaker 33 So her,

Speaker 57 her,

Speaker 57 her,

Speaker 57 right?

Speaker 25 Each murder went the same way, he said. He and Canna picked them up in his SUV, drove them back to the auto body shop where Gordon worked.

Speaker 24 They took turns having their way.

Speaker 25 And then, just as each woman prepared to leave.

Speaker 56 He strangled her with my hands.

Speaker 56 You strangled her.

Speaker 24 Some of the details in that 13-hour interview were almost more than even a seasoned detective could stand to hear.

Speaker 7 As he was hurting Martha,

Speaker 7 she told him,

Speaker 7 I didn't believe in God, but I do now.

Speaker 7 There's a part of me that's grateful that she found God at the end. It's disturbing to me that in response he said, you picked a hell of a time to start believing in God.

Speaker 7 I'll never forget that.

Speaker 25 But she had it.

Speaker 24 A full confession.

Speaker 31 She called Jeray's mother, Jodi.

Speaker 24 I dropped to my niece.

Speaker 46 Detective Trapp gave me her word.

Speaker 11 that she would find

Speaker 12 who killed my daughter.

Speaker 50 Detective Trapp had kept her word.

Speaker 36 Now she bought three more rosaries and wondered, could she bring those women home?

Speaker 25 Gordon had told her all of them had been left in the same dumpster, the contents of which were brought here, Orange County's Brea Olinda landfill, where except for DeRay,

Speaker 36 they all still were in there somewhere.

Speaker 7 We did a lot of research and we had every intention to try to dig for them.

Speaker 21 But the bodies had to be 40 feet deep by now.

Speaker 25 Digging for them would cost millions.

Speaker 3 They might never be found.

Speaker 19 And the county couldn't afford that.

Speaker 45 And they're just over there somewhere, you know?

Speaker 37 40 feet down.

Speaker 37 What's that like?

Speaker 34 What's that feel like?

Speaker 7 It's frustrating.

Speaker 7 It's frustrating knowing that

Speaker 7 they're here and we can't bring them home. That

Speaker 7 it's like the one thing that the mothers want, and I get it, and to not be able to do that, it feels

Speaker 7 incomplete.

Speaker 13 Does it drive you crazy?

Speaker 11 Yes, it does.

Speaker 39 Kathy Menzies knows, logically, her daughter Kiana must be dead.

Speaker 50 But how to truly accept it without her body?

Speaker 11 I would go there today and start digging if they would let me.

Speaker 30 Matters, doesn't it?

Speaker 11 It does matter. Bringing her back.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 17 You give birth to him, you gotta see him right through to the end.

Speaker 11 Yep, exactly. Exactly.

Speaker 55 Streets don't bother me.

Speaker 24 In an attempt to make sense of it all, Kathy asked Detective Trapp and her partner Bruce Lynn to drive her to the place where the killers had picked up Kiana.

Speaker 7 She wanted to go

Speaker 7 to this last spot.

Speaker 46 Why?

Speaker 7 May I ask why?

Speaker 11 Kind of because it was like the last known spot that she was at.

Speaker 11 That I was told she was alive at that spot. So, kind of a closure, you know, just to see where she was at when, before they took her, you know.

Speaker 37 About broke her heart to do it.

Speaker 49 Take this tour of her daughter's last hours.

Speaker 58 I think this is the dead end street that Gordon Cano entered and turned around.

Speaker 58 And

Speaker 58 somewhere in this little intersection right here is

Speaker 15 where she was at.

Speaker 37 Just an ordinary place, but so painful.

Speaker 7 It was hard.

Speaker 38 It's difficult to see.

Speaker 11 I mean, it's not what I expected, the area. I mean, you know, of course, what she was doing is

Speaker 11 no mother's wish, but just to see this area, to know that it wasn't... what I envisioned.
It wasn't a dirty, dark, nasty, gross

Speaker 32 area.

Speaker 36 Kathy found some peace in that, the knowing, the seeing.

Speaker 37 But why Kiana's life was taken?

Speaker 24 So much harder to comprehend.

Speaker 11 I don't think I'll ever be able to accept it.

Speaker 7 It's hard.

Speaker 4 It's hard.

Speaker 8 Criminal trials are one way the grieving find answers.

Speaker 25 And with a confession on tape, the trial of Stephen Gordon looked like a formality.

Speaker 39 Or so the prosecutor might have hoped.

Speaker 24 And then the judge made that ruling.

Speaker 20 Oh boy.

Speaker 51 Coming up,

Speaker 14 a suspected serial killer acting as his own attorney turns the case against him upside down.

Speaker 54 It's the piece that brings everything together. And now it's gone.

Speaker 10 When dateline continues.

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Speaker 25 Orange County Deputy DA Larry Yellen liked his chances against accused serial killer Stephen Gordon, especially when Gordon decided to act as his own defense attorney.

Speaker 54 He's very bright.

Speaker 13 Very bright.

Speaker 16 Smart enough to know he shouldn't know how to be doing that sort of thing.

Speaker 13 Definitely.

Speaker 54 Smart enough to know that he shouldn't be representing himself.

Speaker 32 But

Speaker 36 expectation can be a dangerous thing.

Speaker 49 Before the trial even began, Gordon struck the prosecutor's case a major blow.

Speaker 31 Remember that moment early in his interview when he seemed to reject Detective Trapp's questioning?

Speaker 27 Yeah.

Speaker 56 I can't talk to you.

Speaker 7 Would you rather talk to somebody else?

Speaker 56 I don't want to talk to anybody.

Speaker 24 Gordon argued that continuing the interview at that point was a Miranda violation.

Speaker 7 Anything you say may be.

Speaker 24 Even though Detective Trapp had read him his rights at the outset.

Speaker 37 You have the right to the president.

Speaker 25 The judge agreed,

Speaker 24 ruled that the jury could not see a frame of Gordon's confession.

Speaker 54 When he makes the ruling, then it's out. It's a punch in the stomach.

Speaker 17 Oh man, because what are you missing then?

Speaker 44 Everything. Well, a confession.

Speaker 54 It's the piece that brings everything together and focuses on the four girls. And now it's gone.

Speaker 7 All of these women have a special meaning for me. And when it got thrown out,

Speaker 7 I had a really hard time.

Speaker 24 But then Gordon asked for a meeting and sprang another surprise.

Speaker 37 He wanted Yellen to drop the rape charges.

Speaker 34 And what would he give you in return?

Speaker 54 He said, I'll give you a statement that you can use against me in this case.

Speaker 7 Okay, Mr. Gordon, we're going to start by reading you.

Speaker 24 And so on the eve of trial, Detective Trapp once again sat face to face with Stephen Gordon.

Speaker 25 And he, once again, took her through each crime.

Speaker 7 Fair to say that your intention was to pick up a prostitute and ultimately kill her.

Speaker 56 Yes. Okay.

Speaker 47 That was played for the jury.

Speaker 45 And then?

Speaker 35 How bizarre was this?

Speaker 31 Gordon suddenly decided he wanted the jury to hear his first confession, too.

Speaker 37 Which meant that the mothers had to hear every graphic detail of their daughter's murders.

Speaker 7 And then I thought, maybe I prayed that rosary a little too hard because now we've got two statements in.

Speaker 9 The jury

Speaker 36 wasted no time convicting Gordon of four counts of murder.

Speaker 11 Guilty of the crime of felony to which they recommended the death penalty.

Speaker 59 I'll order that

Speaker 29 the verdicts be recorded

Speaker 3 for four mothers, a measure of justice.

Speaker 42 Thank you.

Speaker 16 Kathy Menzies had sat through the entire trial, as brutal as it was.

Speaker 26 What has it done to your understanding of human beings?

Speaker 11 They're evil.

Speaker 11 There's lots of evil in this world. Lots of it.

Speaker 41 The mothers would not have to sit through another trial.

Speaker 59 Murder in the first degree, how do you plead to that? Guilty or not guilty?

Speaker 7 Yes.

Speaker 3 In 2022, Frank Kenno pleaded guilty to four counts of rape and murder.

Speaker 31 He was sentenced to life without parole.

Speaker 21 For Detective Trapp, there was a measure of relief.

Speaker 45 And finally, she gave those rosaries to four grieving mothers.

Speaker 16 It's interesting to discover in this line of work that homicide detectives are actually softies.

Speaker 7 I think that

Speaker 7 the more you allow yourself to feel, the better you're going to be as a detective. And we have to go to the dark places in order to find answers.

Speaker 7 The quicker we can get in and out, you know, the better it is for all of us.

Speaker 24 Answers from dark places. We went to the jail where Gordon was kept before his transfer to Death Row.

Speaker 31 Here he was, a man who claimed to know the nature of his evil acts.

Speaker 43 But did he, we wondered.

Speaker 18 I screwed up.

Speaker 16 Is screwed up the right expression to use?

Speaker 60 Probably not.

Speaker 60 I just didn't want to say it what I really think.

Speaker 32 Well, why don't you?

Speaker 60 It's beyond evil.

Speaker 17 What happened?

Speaker 60 What me and him did was beyond evil.

Speaker 24 But then came, sure enough, the excuse. He's worked it out in his head that the parole system is somehow to blame for his crimes.

Speaker 24 After all, as sex offenders, he and Frank Cano shouldn't shouldn't have been permitted to be together.

Speaker 39 That was a parole violation.

Speaker 16 And the fact that their parole officers didn't prevent that violation, he said, means the state is responsible.

Speaker 60 We chose to be together when we were allowed. There's a difference.

Speaker 45 But no, no, I mean,

Speaker 44 are you three?

Speaker 60 What do you mean?

Speaker 13 That's what little kids say to their parents, you let me do a bad thing.

Speaker 30 It's your fault.

Speaker 60 No, I didn't say they let us do a bad thing. I said they let us sleep and hang out at the same spot, and they did.

Speaker 60 Beside what anybody believes

Speaker 60 until the day I die, because I know for a fact it's true.

Speaker 17 What I want to know is, because that's on you,

Speaker 16 what was going on in your head to make you want to do it?

Speaker 44 To participate in whatever way you participated,

Speaker 13 to get whatever thrill you.

Speaker 9 What was the thrill?

Speaker 27 What was it?

Speaker 60 I don't think there was a thrill.

Speaker 31 Well, if there's no thrill, why'd you do it?

Speaker 60 There's no thrill in

Speaker 60 watching women die like that.

Speaker 60 But I'm going to go back to it again and again.

Speaker 60 It was my anger issues that I have from everything that happened while we were on parole and probation.

Speaker 34 We may never know exactly why Jerae was killed, or Martha, or Josephine, or Kiana, but there's one more mystery hiding somewhere in this mountain.

Speaker 16 The final mystery.

Speaker 51 Coming up.

Speaker 20 To me,

Speaker 22 she's an angel in disguise. An angel that carries a badge and a gun.

Speaker 14 An angel whose job isn't done.

Speaker 7 He looks at me and he goes, you're missing one.

Speaker 25 Four mothers, four dead daughters.

Speaker 8 There's sorrow, of course.

Speaker 46 When they killed her,

Speaker 13 they killed me.

Speaker 29 And a measure of solidarity to have each other, especially Priscilla and Herlinda.

Speaker 46 Now that we know what's happened to our daughters, I know we will still be friends until the end because she's walking in the same shoes I am.

Speaker 3 We asked them about Julissa Trapp.

Speaker 42 This case was solved because of her.

Speaker 22 To me,

Speaker 22 she's an angel in disguise.

Speaker 22 An angel that carries a badge and a gun.

Speaker 3 Their own guardian angel who brought all of the mansers.

Speaker 36 But how, the moms wonder, did two men who were supposed to be under supervision by parole officers, who were being tracked in real time via GPS ankle bracelets, how could they have committed the terrible crimes they were charged with?

Speaker 33 How could this happen?

Speaker 7 How can this happen? Why were they not being monitored?

Speaker 7 But it was definitely a hard question to get from the mothers themselves as well. Why wasn't it caught sooner? Sure.

Speaker 7 Can we actually look at the 14th?

Speaker 35 As for Detective Track, there was one last mystery to solve.

Speaker 7 Yes.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 31 Because when she first talked to Stephen Gordon, he revealed something she wasn't expecting.

Speaker 7 He looks at me and he goes, you're missing one.

Speaker 7 Which caught me off guard and I tried not to

Speaker 7 show too much emotion.

Speaker 7 And I said, okay.

Speaker 7 And that was the first time I learned about Jane Doe

Speaker 7 was from him.

Speaker 30 Okay. Jane Doe.

Speaker 34 According to Gordon, there was a fifth victim.

Speaker 7 Did she say where she was from?

Speaker 56 She said she was from Compton, but...

Speaker 7 I feel a responsibility because Jane Doe is not a missing person.

Speaker 7 She's an unknown and I feel like if I don't look for her, who will? I know there is a family out there wondering where she is.

Speaker 25 And so she looked.

Speaker 6 She combed through missing persons reports. She put up flyers, searched, prayed, and yes, bought another rosary.

Speaker 16 Why is it so important to give Jane Doe a name?

Speaker 17 To you, personally?

Speaker 7 I just think because she's so helpless. You're on the street, you're working as a prostitute, and you run into Steve Gordon and Frank Kano, and your last hours on this earth are

Speaker 7 horrific.

Speaker 7 And then they discard you like trash.

Speaker 20 Trash.

Speaker 35 Detective Trapp is still haunted by trash.

Speaker 24 That keeps bringing her mind back here.

Speaker 7 Even though it is a landfill, I mean, it is quite peaceful when it's quiet.

Speaker 25 Somewhere under here, in addition to Kiana, Josephine, and Martha, there was victim number five.

Speaker 37 And so Detective Trapp worked her sources until she had a name.

Speaker 45 It would be reasonable to say, okay, that's her.

Speaker 32 She's here. Absolutely.

Speaker 7 Logically, yes, absolutely.

Speaker 25 And yet, when we first spoke with her, she couldn't quite bring herself to tell yet another mother her suspicions.

Speaker 27 I

Speaker 7 not only have to go tell her she's dead, I have to tell her that

Speaker 7 she's one of these girls.

Speaker 27 So that's going to be hard, I think.

Speaker 49 And then a couple of months later, she let us know she'd called on the fifth mother and delivered the news.

Speaker 36 that Sable Pickett, just 19 years old, crossed paths with Gordon and Cano on the streets of Orange County and did not survive.

Speaker 8 No charges are pending for her murder, but another family can finally stop wondering.

Speaker 25 Homicide detectives often tell us they work for the dead. Up here on Landfield Mountain, we understood that a little better.

Speaker 45 As Detective Julissa Trapp gripped her rosary, the one for Sable,

Speaker 19 we walked away and gave her time.

Speaker 27 And our microphone picked up something.

Speaker 27 Blessed is the fruit of thy energy.

Speaker 34 Mountains of trash, things we use and cast away.

Speaker 19 But for Detective Julissa Trapp, this will always be hallowed ground.

Speaker 7 It's hard to look at that. No, that's

Speaker 57 where you ended up, but I know you guys are all in a better place. And I know that you're together and you're helping each other.

Speaker 57 You can rest now.

Speaker 7 I can take it from here.

Speaker 2 That's all for now.

Speaker 24 I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 10 Thanks for joining us.

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