By C1 Staff
SANTA ANA, Calif. — The family of a young woman raped and murdered by two sex offenders are placing blame on the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, alleging that GPS ankle monitors didn’t work.
Courthouse News reports that the family of Jarrae Nikole Estepp is suing the state, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Satellite Tracking of People (STOP), 3M Company and five parole officers.
Estepp was raped and murdered on March 14, 2014, by Franc Cano and Dean Gordon. Her body was found at a trash sorting site in Anaheim.
Cano and Gordon are charged with raping and murdering four women and could be sentenced to death if convicted.
The Estepp family claims that if the state’s monitoring services had worked correctly, and if the CDCR had arrested the offenders for parole violations, “Ms. Estepp would not have been raped and murdered and her son left without a mother.”
A spokesperson for 3M states that their contract with the CDCR ended on June 30, 2012; as of Nov. 1, 2012, no offenders in the CDCR were using 3M Electronic Monitoring’s devices.
Estepp was the last victim before the offenders were arrested, the family says.
Previous studies by the National Institute of Justice indicated that the devices were ineffective due to short-lived batteries, being easily removed by parolees, or simply using tinfoil to jam signals, the family states in their suit.
The family continued to say that the CDCR is seriously understaffed and its parole officers are overworked and undertrained. Each parole officer defendant named in the suit was assigned up to 120 violent criminals to monitor in a 40-hour work week.
DOC spokeswoman Terry Thornton said that the CDCR has not yet been served with the suit and does not comment on pending litigation.