Killers are loners. Very rare. Two suspected killers on the hunt. Hunting them a detective devoted to justice and more. Its almost like you adopted these young women . There was a lot of visits to my local church saying, please dont let me screw this up. Hello, welcome to dateline, they were young women with their whole lives ahead of them. Then one by one, they started to vanish. It would take a determined detective willing to go into dark places to uncover the diabolical plot behind the disappearances. Heres Keith Morrison with good and evil. Reporter how do you measure a mothers love or gauge the for ross ferocity of her impulse to protect . I loved her as much as i could. Reporter how to measure love as visceral as the beating heart in her own body . She was my first born. She was my best friend. Reporter how to understand the four mothers you will meet tonight and their connection, one that not one of them would ever have thought possible, not in a million years. Anymore they would have expected to meet her, their Guardian Angel. If i dont bring her home, who will . Reporter its a rare mystery thats truly a confrontation of good and evil. You have to go to the dark places in order to find answers. Reporter a rare mystery that needed an urgent answer before the evil struck again. It was march 14th, 2014, early morning. An army of garbage trucks made their growling clanking way in a anaheim, california. Their destination a landfill that is also a literal mown dane of garbage, 500 feet high. Then midmorning, an attendant separating debris on a conveyer belt saw something. Is that a human foot protrieding from the pile of trash . Surely not. She was on the conveyer belt, only her feet were exposed, initially the workers thought it was a mannequin. Reporter but it wasnt a mannequin, as the responding homicide detective could plainly see. It was or had been a woman. Her body wrapped in a blue plastic tarp. We had no idea who she was, we had no idea where she came from. Howd she end up there . Reporter something about the dead girl got to the detective, ending up this way. An anonymous child of god in a garbage dump. So the detective did what she always does, she bought a rosary. Its a way for me to kind of connect to my victim. Reporter unusual . Maybe. But the detective should lean on her profound catholic faith to help solve crimes . But Julissa Trapp does. Cases dont always get solved in 48 hours. Reporter surprise, surprise. They take time and they need work. Reporter and that little rosary helps you . It does. Reporter if she can solve this case, shed give that rosary to the dead womans family. But first she had to figure out who she was. From just one identifying mark on her neck, a tattoo. Jodi. Was that her name . Reaching out, detective trapp pulled up the Anaheim Police departments database of tattoos. Yes, they have one. Descriptions of tattoos collected from anyone they encounter. And what do you know . There was a match. But her name was not jodi. It was jerree. Jerree estep, she was 21yearsold. She had been contacted a year prior in anaheim on beach boulevard. Reporter beach boulevard . Suddenly detective trapps case took on a whole new connection. If you want to buy drugs, beach boulevard is where you come. If you are looking for a girl, beach boulevard is where you come. A lot of them came from good, stable families that just happened to run into the wrong guy who somehow got them into the job. These pimps are really good about breaking down the women and getting control over them. Reporter making them a prime target for predators. A lot of predators will start with prostitutes because they think that people wont miss them. Reporter somebody does . Yes, somebody does. Somebody did. Reporter like jerrees mother who lived in a tiny town in oklahoma. That tattoo on jerrees neck, this is jodi. Even before the detective got the words out i felt it that she was gone. Reporter her daughter had been so happy, so charming, outgoing, but then, said jodi, a boyfriend convinced jerree to please him, shed have to turn tricks. This is jerree. On tv a self proclaimed video Vigilante Group in Oklahoma City caught her on camera back in 2012. But jerree left the boyfriend, turned her life around, so jodi thought. And then that awful phone call from detective trapp. I was screaming like, screaming. Reporter the detective made promise to that mother, it didnt matter what choices jerree may have made, she the detective, would work this case as hard as any she had ever had motel showing her picture and having the clerk run her name to see if she had stayed there. Reporter eventually, she found the room where jerree had been staying, which with 700 in cash, lipstick, constant lens solution, but nothing whatever to lead her to a suspect. Not here, anyway. From the disposal companies, she got a list of the dumpsters the garbage trucks serviced that morning. She and other officers went dumpster diving, hundreds of dumpsters. What would you be looking for . They were all given pictures of the trash that looked like around her. If it looks similar, take pictures of whats inside. Reporter no luck. A waste of time. Then back on the conveyer belt an odd thing turned up in the trash collected near jerrees body. We got a print hit. Reporter you are talking about a finger print . Yeah. Reporter it was on a caulking tube. It matched someone, a window installer who worked for a Company Called hardy windows. He told me we never throw trash out at customers homes, we always bring it back to hardy windows. Reporter where they found one dumpster no one had checked. The trash company inadvertently left it off the list they gave to police. Detective trapp looked inside. That same blue plastic wrapping. It was almost like i was looking at the same trash i had seen on the conveyer belt. Reporter bingo. If not for that lucky finger print, theyd have missed it. What was that like . It was a combination of frustration but, okay, all right, were moving somewhere. Reporter so jerree was dumped here some time before the morning of march 14th, miles and miles from the spot where, according to cell phone records, she placed her very last outgoing call at 7 00 p. M. The night before. How far away would it have been . 20 miles. Reporter but thats all the detective knew. A week had gone by, everyone at hardy windows was cleared. So no suspects at all. Detective trapp went to church, said her rosary, worried, prayed, and wondered. I heard a story on the news that there was three missing prostitutes in the city of santa ana. Reporter just next door, basically. Right next door, yes. Reporter what if this wasnt the killers first time or last . Coming up four young women in two neighboring towns now missing or dead. Was there a living . Link. We were like what if an odd fact that theyre relate . When dateline continues. Yae block this spring at lowes. With savings on craftsman, scotts and honda. So, you stay ahead of the pack. To switch to jackson hewitt. 100 reasons for you say goodbye to your old tax service and get 100 when you file with jackson hewitt. Plus, youll get our lifetime accuracy guarantee. So maybe its more like 101 reasons. Get your coupon code at jacksonhewitt. Com and get 100 today. When the murrays go to work. Michelangelo goes to work, too. Good thing they use new gain ultra flings with two times the oxi boost, and febreze. Fresh again. Daily security updates. Daily . I dont know. The only thing. Im struggling with this. Some providers you have to manually download updates to each device. 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She loved her dog, her little brother, playing softball. Then it started happening. Eighth grade or so. She was kind of getting typical you know teenage and mouthy. High school came getting around the older kids she kind of got a little worse. Reporter howd you cope with that . Just one day at a time. I loved her as much as i could. It was about the only thing. Reporter after high school, quinna went to high school about a threehour ride 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, text message. Reporter just a fun, loving daughter. Yeah. I didnt think anything was happening. Reporter no idea. Even in october, 2013, when she called to say she was on the bus towards santa ana. Reporter did she tell you why . Visiting friends is what she told me. Reporter but then the girl who called her mother almost daily stopped calming. Anything over a day or two, id go, wait a second, this is not right. I would tekt her, he would text right back. But this time, nothing. Nothing. Reporter gone, not a peep to her mom to her friends, to her boyfriend. Kathy went to the police. When i called to file a missing persons report. They said, shes an adult. There is nothing we can do for you. Reporter but you knew there was a problem in. Yeah. Reporter she did her own digging, tracked her down to a hotel in Orange County, where the trail ended. Her clothes were there but she wasnt. Again, she called the police. And they said, oh, that happens, sometimes prostitutes work circuits. Reporter prostitutes . First i was, okay, no, that cant be. Reporter then the truth came crashing down, undeniable. Quinna had missed a scheduled court date in santa ana for a prostitution charge. Wait a minute, you talked with her every day, texted her all the time in. Exactly. Reporter and you knew nothing of this secret life . No, nothing. Reporter what does it feel like to hear that in. Heart breaking. Reporter when she heard kathys story, detective trapp began to think she was on to something. Then she discovered that just twoandahalf weeks after quinna 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 josephines mother priscilla had been on the local news searching for her daughter for months, after she left a family barbque telling them she was walking to buy groceries. That was the last time any of us ever saw her. Reporter she went to the Santa Anna Police department, filled out a report. They didnt really do anything to look for her. Reporter so she did. Nothing was going to stop me looking for my daughter, nothing, or no one. Reporter it was pure chance when priscilla ran into another mother, desperate to find her daughter, martha, 28yearsold and a mother herself who vanished one day. Translator theres no way she would have left. To just say im going and leaving everything behind. R and priscilla went together up and down the boulevard. We make thousands of flyers. Me and her were on a mission to find our daughters. Reporter but no sign of their daughters anywhere. Detective trapp collected their portraits, hung them on her office wall and she stayed away and prayed in her catholic way. Do you ever wonder why god would allow this to happen . I do. There are plenty of times i have 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. But i just have to figure out what happened. Read the clues, collect the puzzle pieces. The more you can kind of keep a neutral mind the easier the puzzle pieces fit together. Reporter no getting around it. The pieces pointed to a chilling conclusion, those three missing women, just like jerree, may have been murdered. If that was true, it would mean there was a serial killer out there in the night, had to be, more deaths would be coming, unless one idea, it was grasping at straws, yes, but. You know what, it might work now. Why not . Its a hail mary, but lets try it. Coming up all sex offenders on parole, they will have an anklet, a gps monitor. Tracking the killer victim by victim when dateline continues. What makes you, you . Your cells. Trillions of them. Thats why centrum contains 24 key nutrients to feed your cells, supporting your energy so you can take care of what matters most. Centrum. Feed your cells. Fuel your life. A rush of green apple aloe. Hibiscus. An explosion of mandarin ginger lily. Add excitement to your cleaning routine with lysol wipes. The smell of clean reimagined in three energizing scents. Lysol. What it takes to protect. ® the autopsy came in. The one for jerree estep, the girl on the conveyer belt. Its bad. It was bad. It was bad. Reporter strangled, beaten, sexually assaulted, viciously, according to deputy da larry yellin. Should be a college girl and worried about grades and games and those things. Reporter one wrong turn and you never know . Yeah. Reporter but almost three weeks in, detective Julissa Trapp seemed stuck. I think she got a little frustrated and a little desperate and came up with the idea of using the computer database. Reporter that is the computer database of sex offenders, if they had a serial killer on their hands, there was at least a chance hed already run afoul of the law at some point. It was a bit like just poking a finger into the haystack frankly and hoping to encounter a needle. Worth a try. So trapp called this woman. Sexual assault detective laura lamelli. All sex offenders on parole will have an anklet, a gps monitor. Reporter she asked were any of those here where jerree placed her last phone call or here where she wound up in a dumpster. You find the same locations, you are getting somewhere . Mmhmm. Reporter she ran the search. What were the chances she got a hit in both locations . She called detective trapp. Theres only one person. She says, i know him. I says, who . His name is frank canno, hes a registered sex offender. Reporter in 2000, frank canno pleaded guilty to committing a lewd act on a minor. Now, did his monitor put him near the places those other three women, according to phone records, made their last calls . Quinna, josephine and martha . One by one the detective got the coordinates. And every intersection for that date and time that they gave me, frank canno came up. Reporter wow. For every single intersection. I was shocked. Reporter but something about that man, frank canno. He had a buddy. And lamelli had run into them both. I mentioned, i do know he has a friend, stephen gordon. Reporter Steven Gordon, hes done time for molesting a minor and later kidnapping. He and canno were inseparable, apparently. Once again, detective pulled up the gps coordinates to check the place martha was last seen in santa ana, and no gordon. Not there. When she checked locations for quinna and josephine, there he was. So why not at the first location . She checked the record and discovered at that particular moment gordon wasnt on a gps monitor, but he was wearing one at the other three places, and so was canno the electronics made it absolutely obvious. Here they were. Canno and gordon driving together up and down beach boulevard and all around santa ana and anaheim. I mean, even when theyre on the freeway. Reporter they were in the same car . They were in the same vehicle. Reporter Julissa Trapp prayed for a hail mary and never expected anything like this. I soon realized im not just dealing with one, were dealing with two. Two sex offenders wearing gps bracelets . Reporter but for all the electronic cross referencing the case was purely circumstantial. The detective could not arrest them. Not without more evidence and that was terrifying. I mean, there were young women who were at real risk here . Yeah. Reporter and if you waited too long. Yeah. Reporter how would you feel if somebody else was attacked . Lets just say there were a lot of rosaries being prayed for sure. Reporter she set up a Surveillance Team to watch the two around the clock and got authorizations for wiretaps and pulled cell phone records. We started reading Text Messages and seeing, you know, how they were hunting on almost a daily basis and how nonchalant they were about it. It was almost like ordering takeout. You start reading, what do you feel like today . Asian or mexican . Reporter oh boy. What would they call these girls . That was the other thing, cats. Reporter cats . Cats. Be careful, when the cat knows it isnt getting away, its going to fight. Reporter the next victim couldnt be far away because gordon texted canno, kitty cat later . Yes . To which canno responded. Okay. Then a sudden change. Had they spotted the surveillance . As trapp listened to the wiretap, she heard gordon talk to canno about skipping town. I could hear the desperation in frank cannos voice. That desperation just kind of set up the hair on the back of my neck. I said, no, im not waiting anymore. Reporter theyre going to run . Theyre going to run. Reporter time to move fast. They caught one frank canno as he was boarding a bus and Steven Gordon, they found him where he worked, an auto body shop next door to hardy windows, but he made a run for it. Reporter ran out the door . On a bicycle. Yes. He had a little collision with one of our surveillance units and a little flying over the handle bars and he was taken into custody. Reporter both men were charged with four counts each of first degree murder and forcible rape. And detective trapp prepared to confront the suspected serial killer. Coming up you think this is going to be a lot different than any other interview i had ever done. Takeout with a killer. I told you, i told you be careful. When dateline continues. With this one little nexgard chew comes power, confidence, reassurance youre doing whats right, to protect your dog from fleas and ticks for a full month. This one little nexgard chew is the 1 vet recommended protection. And its the only chew, fda approved to prevent infections that cause lyme disease. Plus, its safe for puppies. Theres a lot of power in this one little nexgard chew. Nexgard. What one little chew can do. Downtheredownthere. Ttonelle. cause youre all over your overall wellness so treatyourself with the cleaningripples of cottonelle toilet paper and flushable wipes, t