forceable rape. and detective julissa trapp was about to go face to face with steven gordon in the interrogation room. they would go to dark places, and she hoped to come out with information for the victims families. here again is keith morrison. . reporter: for six months, kathy menze serks waited for news about her daughter, kianna, woke up every day hoping she s call or text and dreading a knock at the door, which in april 2014 is what happened. my heart sunk when they came because i knew right away that it wasn t going to be good news. reporter: no, not good news at all. anaheim police told her that two men, frank cano and steven gordon, were now under arrest for the murder of her daughter and three other young women in orange county. what were you like that night? i just wanted to sleep. i wanted to, like, go to sleep and wake up and pinch myself.
the area. i mean, of course what she was doing is 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 area. kathy found some peace in that, the knowing, the seeing. but why kianna s life was taken, so much harder to comprehend. i don t think i ll ever be able to accept it. it s hard. it s hard. reporter: criminal trials are one way the grieving find answers, and with a confession on tape, the trial of steven gordon looked like a formality, or so the prosecutor might have hoped. and then the judge made that ruling. oh, boy. a suspected serial killer turns the case against him upside down. coming up it s the piece that brings
before jarrae s death. her mom is kathy menzes. a very fun loving child, always made you laugh. reporter: just look at her childhood photos, that silly grin. she loved her dog, her little brother, playing softball. and then it started happening, said kathy. eighth grade or so. she was kind of getting, you know, typical teenage, you know, mouthy. and then high school came, getting around the older kids, she kind of got a little worse. how did you cope with that? it was just one day at a time. love her as much as i could was about the only thing. reporter: after high school, kianna went to college about a three-hour drive from home. a year later, she moved to las vegas. but though far from home now, she got closer and closer to her mom. she would call me every day, talk to me every day, you know, text message. just a loving daughter? yeah. i didn t think anything bad was happening.
circuits. prostitute? at first i was like, no, that can t be. reporter: but then the truth came crashing down. undeniable. kianna had missed a scheduled court date in santa ana for a prostitution charge. but wait a minute. you talked to her every day, texted with her all the time. exactly. and you knew nothing of this secret life of hers? no, nothing. what does it feel like as a mother to hear that s been going on all that time and you didn t know it? heartbreaking. reporter: when she heard kathy s story, detective trapp began to think she was on to something. then she discovered just 2 1/2 weeks after kianna had disappeared, there was another one. josephine monique vargas. she had a beautiful personality. they used to call her giggles because she always made people laugh. reporter: 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
mm-hmm. 40 feet down. mm-hmm. what s that like? what does that feel like? it s frustrating. it s frustrating knowing that they re here and we can t bring them home. it s like the one thing that the mothers want, and i get it. and to not be able to do that, it feels it s incomplete. does it drive you crazy? yes, it does. kathy menzys knows logically her daughter, kianna, must be dead. but how to truly accept it without her body? i would go there today and start digging if they would let me. it matters, doesn t it? it does matter. bringing her back? yeah. you give birth to them. you ve got to see them right through to the end. yep, exactly. exactly. reporter: in an attempt to make sense of it all, kathy asked detective trapp and her partner to drive her to the place where the killers had picked up kianna.