On June 24, 1993, two teenage best friends attended a friend’s pool party & never came home. Their parents told them they loved them as they parted ways, expecting to see them later that night, never fathoming it would be the last time they would see their daughters alive again.
Elizabeth Christine Pena was born on June 21, 1977 in Houston, Texas to parents Adolph & Melissa. She had a younger brother & sister, Michael & Rachael. Elizabeth was described as an extremely sweet girl who was always smiling. She was a typical teenager who loved to get her nails done, hang out with her friends & chat on the phone with them when they weren’t together. Elizabeth met her best friend Jennifer at Waltrip High School.
Jennifer Lee Ertman was born on August 15, 1978 in Houston to parents Randy & Sarah. She was their only child & the apple of her father’s eye, the two were extremely close. She was described as a funny person who people loved to be around & she absolutely adored New Kids on the Block, her room was full of posters of the group. She was a rule follower & a good student; her parents were strict with their rules but they absolutely trusted Jennifer. When Elizabeth & Jennifer met, they were a year apart in age, but both sets of families approved of the friendship. Elizabeth’s father, Adolph saw Jennifer as a modest girl & a positive influence to his daughter. Shortly after they met, Elizabeth’s behavior started to improve after a brief streak of teenage rebellion before her 1992 enrollment into the school.
When the girls were invited to the pool party on the hot summer night of Thursday, June 24, 1993, 14-year-old Jennifer’s dad, Randy, drove his daughter to 16-year-old Elizabeth’s house at 4:15 pm. Elizabeth had only celebrated her sixteenth birthday three days earlier. At approximately 8 pm, Elizabeth’s mom & dad drove the girls to the home of their friend, Gina Escamilla, who was hosting a gathering at her Spring Hill Apartment complex. At this point, Jennifer & Elizabeth had been friends for about two to three years & their lives were just beginning.
As the girls were stepping out of the car, Elizabeth assured her parents that she & Jennifer would be home by their agreed time of 11:30 pm. The apartment where the pool party was held was close enough to Elizabeth’s home so the girls planned to walk back.
Elizabeth had recently gotten back from a family vacation in Florida & was excited to catch up with her friends as she showed them what she’d bought with the money she was given for her sixteenth birthday. She’d gotten a new pager & some clothes. As the party went on, the girls were having so much fun that they lost track of time & realized that if they didn’t hurry, they risked being late by curfew.
Rather than taking their planned route home on the well-lit streets, they decided to take a short-cut which would save them ten minutes by following the railroad tracks, passing through TC Jester Park which was one mile from Elizabeth’s home in Oak Forest. During the day, the park served as a hot spot for cyclists & runners, but by this time of night, it was deserted.
When Elizabeth & Jennifer didn’t make it home that night, their parents immediately began calling around to their friends to see if they knew where the girls could be. After they were told that the girls left the party in order to make it home in time for curfew, they contacted the Houston Police Department & reported them missing. Because law enforcement was inundated with hundreds of homicide cases in the Houston area at the time, the search for Elizabeth & Jennifer was delayed.
Relatives & friends began frantically searching for the girls, but it wasn’t until June 28, 1993, four days after they left the party, that an anonymous male called Crime Stoppers & identified himself as ‘Gonzalez’ & informed them of where they could locate Elizabeth & Jennifer’s bodies.
Investigators began searching the area as a helicopter flew overhead though their bodies were not found. This prompted the caller to phone 911 & directed the searchers to the other side of the bayou. At this time, his identity was discovered after the call was able to be traced. The information provided on second contact was correct & the girls’ bodies were tragically found in TC Jester Park, in a wooded area near the railroad tracks. Both were partially nude & because of the extremely hot weather conditions, decomposition was extensive enough that they needed to be identified with the use of dental records. At the time of the discovery, Randy Ertman was preparing to give an interview about the missing girls when the call came through the police scanner that two bodies had been found.
Randy began to scream at police officers, demanding to know if one of the girls had blond hair. Police officers had to hold him back, preventing him from witnessing the site of his daughter’s brutalized body.
Both victims had been sexually assaulted & strangled to death. Police, who were accustomed to grisly findings, were shell-shocked by brutality that the girls were subjected to, unable to fathom that someone could do such a thing, let alone what they would soon learn, was a group of teenage boys.
Police turned their attention to the previously anonymous caller, Joe Cantu, a Houston Heights resident. Joe told police that he & his wife were at home the night that Elizabeth & Jennifer disappeared, they were watching TV when Joe’s 18-year-old brother, Peter Cantu, who lived with them, came home with a group of male friends. Joe said he made the first call after his wife, Christina Cantu, urged him to do so because she felt sorry for the victim’s families & wanted them to be able to recover their bodies & lay their daughters to rest.
When the group of boys came back to Joe’s house, they were laughing & bragging about what they’d done to the girls & they also had their jewelry in their possession. Peter Cantu was the group’s leader of their self-proclaimed “Black & White Gang.” The other members included 18-year-old Jose Ernesto Medellin, Jose’s brother, 14-year-old Venancio Medallin, 17-year-old Efrain Perez, 18-year-old Derrick Sean O’Brien & 17-year-old Raul Omar Villarreal. The group of six were also with another pair of brothers, Roman & Frank Sandoval, but they took off when they began attacking the girls. They never reported what happened to authorities, but testified at the trials.
After Joe made the phone calls to police, they arrived at all of the suspects’ homes simultaneously on June 29, 1993, five days after the murders, which ensured that they didn’t have time to alert one another. Derrick O’Brien’s house was within walking distance to the crime scene, police found a torn red belt that matched the partial piece that was found near the girl’s bodies.
They also learned O’Brien had later returned to the scene of the crime; they had taken a photo of the group of onlookers who had gathered after learning that two bodies had been found in the park. There, they saw O’Brien standing amongst the group. When Peter Cantu was arrested, police found him in his bed & on his dresser, in plain sight was the girls’ jewelry. A pair of steel-toe boots lay on the floor.
14-year-old Venancio was charged as a juvenile, but the rest were charged as adults with capital murder. Upon questioning, the group began to crack & police soon learned the fates of the girls on the night they were sexually assaulted & murdered.
As Jennifer & Elizabeth walked along the White Oak Bayou trail, they came upon the members of the “Black & White” gang who happened to be holding a gang initiation ceremony for 17-year-old Raul Villarreal. During the ceremony, Raul was to fight each member of the gang in order to be accepted as a member himself. Testimony indicated that he was able to get through fighting three members before he lost consciousness.
As he lay on the ground, writhing in pain, the gang members went off to the side to discuss if he should be accepted as a member. Minutes later, leader, Peter Cantu, told Raul that he was officially welcome to be part of the gang. About forty minutes later, they sat around drinking & this was when Jennifer & Elizabeth walked past the group.
Jose Medellin tried to grope & pinch Elizabeth’s breasts, but she pushed his hand aside & continued on. In response, he put his arm around her neck, threw her to the ground & dragged her down a gravel hill toward the other gang members as she screamed for help. He forced her to remove her underwear. The other gang members indicated that at this point, Jennifer could have easily ran away & escaped but she chose to run back & help her friend.
As Jennifer approached to group, Peter Cantu & Derrick O’Brien threw her to the ground & for the next hour, both girls were subjected to a brutal gang rape. It was one of the most horrific gang rapes that the investigating officers had ever seen.
Their confessions were used during the trial & indicated that there were never less than two men on each of the girls at any given time during the attack. During the entire hour of attack, they were being brutally sexually assaulted. They had no remorse about what they had done to these two innocent girls & one member even boasted of having ‘virgin blood’ on him.
14-year-old Venancio Medellin later testified that he had gone back & forth between his brother & Peter Cantu since they were the only members of the group that he really knew & kept urging them to leave. Instead, Peter was urging him to “get some” so Venancio went on to rape Jennifer.
After an hour that the girls sustained being brutally raped by six men, their horror was not yet over. Knowing the girls would be able to identify them, Peter Cantu ordered them to be killed. The girls were taken from the clearing to a wooded area, leaving Venancio behind because they felt he was “too little to watch.”
Raul ordered the girls to their knees & Jennifer was strangled first using Derrick O’Brien’s belt. Raul & Derrick each held an end of the belt & pulled with such force that it snapped. They finished the job using Jennifer’s own shoelaces from her purple Converse high tops as well as strangling her with their hands. Jose Medellin later complained that “the b!tch wouldn’t die” & said it would have been easier if they’d had a gun.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth was sobbing & begging the group to spare their lives, bargaining, offering to give them her phone number so they could get together again. The medical examiner later testified that Elizabeth’s two front teeth had been knocked out by Peter’s steel toe work boots before she was also strangled to death with her shoelaces. She suffered fractured ribs when she tried to escape while Jennifer was being strangled. Two of Jennifer’s ribs had also been fractured & testimony indicated that after they were strangled, the gang members continued to kick their bodies & stomp on their necks to be “sure that they were really dead.”
As they walked away from the crime scene, Peter handed Venancio a cartoon Goofy watch he’d taken from Jennifer’s body, saying, “Take this, I don’t want it.” This was a present she had been given only months earlier by her family at Christmas & is symbolic of her youth & innocence.
After the attack & murder, Peter dropped Jose, Efrain & Raul off at his brother & sister-in-law’s house. Christina asked Raul why he was bleeding & why Efrain’s shirt had blood on it. This prompted Jose to tell her that they’d had “fun” & they also elaborated that they had raped both girls. Soon, Joe & Christina saw the faces of the missing girls on the news.
When Peter came back to the house, the group divided up the items they had stolen from the girls. Jose took a ring with an “E” so he could give it to his girlfriend, Esther. When the group left the Cantu home, Christina urged her husband to call the police.
The elected District Attorney opted to have five separate trials, one for each suspect charged as an adult which required five different judges. This was something that they had never dealt with before; the same witnesses over & over again, the same police, the same medical examiner. The trials for Jose, Efrain & Raul were held in three separate courtrooms in the same courthouse at the same time with different judges & jurors so that witnesses wouldn’t have to keep coming back & drawing out the process for the victims’ family members.
Gang leader Peter Cantu’s trial began on January 31, 1994, six months after Elizabeth & Jennifer were murdered. The trials gained massive media attention that gave the court a “circus-like atmosphere.” Peter’s brother Joe was one of the witnesses to take the stand. Jurors were able to see the crime scene photos & prosecutor Marie Munier said that she’d never seen anything so disturbing & remembers seeing the images in her sleep.
It was learned that Peter’s life of crime began when he was only in elementary school; he had assaulted a female teacher & then bullied her, resulting in him being kicked out of school. Throughout the trial, he was often seen smiling in the courtroom & his own lawyers worried about his behavior. During his arrest, as he was led away in handcuffs, he violently kicked at members of the media. It was never a question if he would be found guilty, but rather, if he would be sentenced to death. Before his sentencing, both sets of parents were given the opportunity to address Peter & Randy, Jennifer’s father, agreed. With a booming voice, he demanded that Peter look at him while he spoke, “you are not even an animal, you’ve destroyed our lives & I hope to God you rot in hell.” This paved the way for future victim impact statements in Texas; Randy’s was the first.
During the trial, it came out that both girls had tried to unsuccessfully fight for their lives, glancing at each other in despair while they were being attacked, biting & kicking the monsters. As Elizabeth glanced over & saw her best friend being raped by Efrain Perez, she wept with grief.
Peter Cantu, Jose Medellin, Derrick O’Brien, Efrain Perez & Raul Villarreal each received a death sentence for capital murder; this was the most death penalties ever in a single incident. 14-year-old Venancio Medellin, Jose’s brother, testified against four of the gang members (all except his brother) & he received a 40 year prison sentence, the maximum for a juvenile, for the sexual assault of Jennifer Ertman. Within sixteen months of the horrid murders, justice had been served to all six monsters.
In 2005, the Supreme Court banned executions for those who committed crimes while under age 18, therefore, the death sentences for Efrain Perez & Raul Villarreal were automatically changed to life in prison with the possibility of parole. Life without parole didn’t become an option in Texas until later that year. Efrain will be eligible for parole on October 10, 2029 while Raul will be eligible on September 20, 2029.
Derrick O’Brien & Jose Medellin were later implicated in the January 4, 1993 murder of 27-year-old Patricia Lopez, six months before Jennifer & Elizabeth were murdered. The mother of two’s partially nude body had been found in Melrose Park & Derrick attempted to rape Patricia before he stabbed her in the abdomen, neck & back. He gave a taped confession that he was there when Patricia was murdered but he was “too drunk to know who did what.” Jose’s DNA was a match for what was found on Patricia’s body & Derrick’s fingerprint was found on a beer can at the scene.They were never charged with Patricia’s murder, but her case was factored in the sentencing phase of the trial.
Elizabeth & Jennifer’s parents successfully advocated for the State of Texas to allow the victims’ relatives to be present at the time of the executions. Derrick O’Brien, who was a 9th grade drop-out with a criminal history, was the first to be executed on July 11, 2006 by lethal injection. He apologized profusely before his execution, saying, “I am so sorry. I have always been sorry. It was the worst mistake that I ever made in my whole life. Not because I am here but because of what I did & I hurt a lot of people, you & my family.” He spoke to the victim’s families before being given the injection & was pronounced dead at 6:19 pm, seven minutes later.
Elizabeth’s father noted that Derrick’s death happened peacefully & in “twenty seconds” versus the suffering his daughter was subjected to before she died. “I wish to God that my daughter could have died that easily. Put a needle in her arm & just go to sleep. I wish to hell he could have died the way she died.”
Jose Medellin appealed his execution, saying that he was a Mexican citizen & had been unable to confer with Mexican consular officials. The prosecutors said he never informed authorities that he was a Mexican citizen. On August 5, 2008, his last-minute appeals were rejected by the Supreme Court & he was executed at 9:57 pm.
Seventeen years after Elizabeth & Jennifer’s murders, Peter Cantu was executed on August 17, 2010. When asked if he wanted to make a final statement, he looked up & said, “nah.” He was given the injection at 6:09 pm & died at 6:17 pm. He ended up being on death row longer than Elizabeth & Jennifer had a chance to live. Jennifer’s family said that they were looking forward to his execution so Peter never had the opportunity to hurt anyone ever again. Randy rejected an invitation from Peter’s lawyer to come to his office & read a letter of apology, saying, “It’s a little too late. I told him to stick it. Hell, no.”
In the end, six members were sentenced, three were executed & three remain in prison.
Venancio, who was 14 at the time of the murders, has been denied parole on several occasions, most recently in 2020 & he has a scheduled release date of 2033. He spoke with the media from prison in June 2023, nearly thirty years to the day of the murders. He said that night had been the first time he had ever hung out with his brother & his friends. When asked why he didn’t leave to get help, he said that he just wanted to be accepted by the group as well as fears that the group would turn on him. He said when he saw the belt go around one of the girl’s necks as she was led away, he was frozen in fear. Looking back, he realizes that anything he’s felt since that night, is nothing in comparison to what the two girls went through. He expresses his sorrow for what happened & wishes he could take it back.
Jennifer’s parents relocated to the peaceful countryside of Lyons, eager to escape the constant reminders of the brutality of how their daughter’s life as well as her best friend’s life ended. Sadly, Jennifer’s father, Randy, passed away from lung cancer on August 18, 2014 at age 61.
A memorial plaque is displayed at Waltrip High School where both Jennifer & Elizabeth went to school & another is displayed in TC Jester Park where two granite benches sit with each girl’s name inscribed, close to where the girls’ lives ended. Both girls are buried at Woodlawn Garden of Memories Cemetery. Each year on the anniversary of their deaths, friends & family gather at the park where they lost their lives for a balloon release to honor them.
References:
- Medium: Teen best friends murdered on their way home from a pool party
- Oxygen True Crime: Kelly Siegler revisits 1993 case of friends raped, murdered by “evil” pack of teens
- Casetext: Cantu v. Quarterman
- CBS News: Peter Anthony Cantu Execution: Mastermind of Jennifer Ertman & Elizabeth Pena murders to die tonight
- Yahoo finance: Pure Evil: The Ertman-Pena Murders
- Murderpedia: Sean Derrick O’Brien
