California sex offender is sentenced to death

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Steven Dean Gordon was convicted last year of killing 4 women in 2013 and 2014
Authorities say Gordon and another sex offender, Franc Cano, had sex with victims before killing them
Pair would pick the women up from prostitution sites in Santa Ana and Anaheim
Gordon represented self at trial and from day one had asked for death penalty
He was sentenced to death on Friday for kidnapping and murdering the women
Cano's trial has not yet been scheduled

By Associated Press and Forrest Hanson For Dailymail.com

Published: 23:30 EST, 3 February 2017 | Updated: 23:32 EST, 3 February 2017

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A California sex offender was sentenced to death on Friday for kidnapping and murdering four women during a six-month span in Orange County.

Steven Dean Gordon, who was convicted last year of killing the women in 2013 and 2014, was sentenced in Superior Court in Santa Ana.

Some of the killings took place while the now-48-year-old was being tracked via a GPS monitoring device he wore on his ankle due to previous sex crime convictions.

Authorities say Gordon and another sex offender, Franc Cano, abducted four women with ties to prostitution and had sex with their victims before killing them.

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Steven Dean Gordon was sentenced to death on Friday for kidnapping and murdering four women during a six-month span in Orange County

Gordon was convicted last year of killing the women in 2013 and 2014. Franc Cano, right, participated in the killings and his trial has not yet been scheduled

Some of the killings took place while the now-48-year-old was being tracked via a GPS monitoring device he wore on his ankle due to previous sex crime convictions

He said the pair would pick the women up from prostitution sites in Santa Ana and Anaheim, the Orange County Register reported.

Gordon represented himself at trial and alleged that Cano, who is being tried separately, strangled the women.

Gordon acknowledged helping dispose of their bodies.

Authorities tied the death of 21-year-old Jarrae Estepp, left, to the earlier disappearance of three other women including 20-year-old Kianna Jackson, right

The bodies of Kianna Jackson, 34-year-old Josephine Vargas, left, and 28-year-old Martha Anaya, right, were never found

The naked body of Jarrae Estepp, left, was found on a moving conveyor belt inside an Anaheim, California recycling facility in March 2014

Jarrae Estepp's naked body was found on a moving conveyor belt inside an Anaheim, California recycling facility in March 2014.

Investigators said they then began looking into the pair, who were both registered sex offenders and homeless.

Authorities later tied the 21-year-old's death to the earlier disappearance of three other women, whose bodies were never found, by analyzing GPS data from their ankle bracelets.

The other victims were Kianna Jackson, 20; Josephine Vargas, 34 and Martha Anaya, 28.

Kathy Menzies, mother of victim Kianna Jackson, said she still has sleepless nights. 'There will always be a part of the family missing,' Menzies told the Register.

'I'm sorry for everything, but those are hollow words compared to what those women went through,' Gordon told the court.

Police believed Estepp, a mother of one, was killed and left in a dumpster before she was unknowingly picked up by a garbage truck and taken to the recycling center

The trial for Franc Cano, who Gordon alleges strangled the women, has yet be scheduled

During the penalty phase of his trial, Gordon told jurors they were right to convict him, the newspaper reported. 'If you kill four people like this in cold blood, you deserve to die' he said.

Gordon, representing himself, had requested the death penalty and testified that part of his motive was anger toward law enforcement.

Cano's trial has not yet been scheduled.

California has hundreds of inmates on the nation's largest death row, but the state hasn't executed anyone since 2006.

Voters last year approved a proposition aimed at expediting appeals so killers are put to death, but a lawsuit challenging the measure has placed its implementation on hold.