Skip to comments. The Murders of Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena (Warning: Brutal Descriptions) Murder Victims ^ | unknown | Charlene Hall Posted on 10/09/2007 7:44:26 AM PDT by beaversmom. What happened... Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena were 14 and 16 years old, respectively.
Peter Anthony Cantu Execution: Mastermind of Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena Murders to Die Tonight. HUNTSVILLE, Texas (CBS/AP/KHOU) Tonight, Peter Anthony Cantu will be executed for two of the most notorious deaths in Houston history, the 1993 rapes and murders of 16-year-old Elizabeth Pena and 14-year-old Jennifer Ertman. ...
In August 2008, Ertman again climbed the steps to the red-bricked Huntsville Unit prison. Mexican-born Jose Medellin, 33, with needles in his arms, also apologized. Nine minutes later, he was dead.
Authorities later linked him and O'Brien to a killing six months before the attack on Ertman and Pena. In that case, a 27-year-old woman was found at a Houston park with her throat cut. She'd been raped and eviscerated. On death row, Cantu, now 35, was classified among the best-behaving inmates.
Of the six people convicted for the heinous crimes, five were sentenced to death. Two who were 17 when the girls were killed were spared the death penalty when the U.S. Supreme Court barred execution of people who were under 18 when they committed their crimes.
HUNTSVILLE, Texas (CBS/AP/KHOU) Tonight, Peter Anthony Cantu will be executed for two of the most notorious deaths in Houston history, the 1993 rapes and murders of 16-year-old Elizabeth Pena and 14-year-old Jennifer Ertman. Of the six people convicted for the heinous crimes, five were sentenced to death. Two who were 17 when the girls were killed ...
On a June night, the two girls were hoping to beat an 11:30 p.m. curfew by taking a shortcut home to Pena's northwest Houston neighborhood. They were crossing a railroad bridge when the gang, drinking beer and initiating a new member, spotted them. One of the gang members grabbed Pena. She screamed.
Ertman will stand a few feet away, watching again through the window.
Peter Anthony Cantu Executed for Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena Murders. HUNTSVILLE, Texas (CBS/KHOU) Murderer Peter Anthony Cantu was executed by the state of Texas Tuesday evening. He was the ringleader in a crime that struck a raw nerve for its sheer brutality: the repeated gang rape, torture and murder of 14-year-old Jennifer Ertman ...
Three of the Pena and Ertman killers have been executed. Three others have long prison terms. Two of them will come up for parole in 2028. The Ertmans and Penas are videotaping their protest for the parole board, in case they are not here in 18 years to protest in person.
No one came to witness on Cantu's behalf when he received his lethal injection. The girls' families came to witness the execution and were met by supporters and applause when they walked out of the Walls Unit. "Why do I watch? For justice. For justice for my little girl," Elizabeth's father, Adolph Pena, said.
The murders of Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena have had an impact on victim's rights in Texas still felt 25 years after their deaths. Ertman and Pena were headed home from a party, and took a shortcut to make it home by their 11 p.m. curfew the night they were killed.
Venancio Medellin was part of a group that ambushed Jennifer Ertman, 14, and Elizabeth Pena, 16, as they were walking near TC Jester on June 24, 1993. Medellin was 14 at the time of the killings and has served 27 years of his 40-year sentence, the maximum punishment allowed for a juvenile.
Ertman and Pena were headed home from a party, and took a shortcut to make it home by their 11 p.m. curfew the night they were killed.
Man convicted of murdering 2 teens in 1993 denied parole. HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- A former gang member convicted for his role in the brutal murder of two Houston teens has been denied parole, according to the Harris County District Attorney's Office.
Kahan, who had become close to the families, said Ertman's bellicose rebuke was an inevitable culmination of eight exhausting months and five trials filled with gruesome details of his daughter's death. "No one who was there will forget it," Kahan said.
By the end of Cantu's trial, jurors had been burdened with a load of disturbing details, not just about the crime itself, which prosecutor Donna Goode likened to the work of a "pack of wild dogs," but about the young man who made it happen. Cantu had been troubled and violent since his early youth.
Over the last couple of days, we've been getting flooded with new submissions regarding the missing persons cases of Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie. We understand that it's an ongoing case with new information coming up daily. I'm making this post as a sticky for all discussion on this case, as a place to centralize all discussion on the case.
If there isn't an article attached to your bologna then keep it off of here. This is an active investigation that all of you could be hindering because you think that the FBI and local police doesn't know how to dig through social media. Like that isn't probably the easiest part of their day.
Peter Anthony Cantu Execution: Mastermind of Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena Murders to Die Tonight. HUNTSVILLE, Texas (CBS/AP/KHOU) Tonight, Peter Anthony Cantu will be executed for two of the most notorious deaths in Houston history, the 1993 rapes and murders of 16-year-old Elizabeth Pena and 14-year-old Jennifer Ertman. ...
In August 2008, Ertman again climbed the steps to the red-bricked Huntsville Unit prison. Mexican-born Jose Medellin, 33, with needles in his arms, also apologized. Nine minutes later, he was dead.
Authorities later linked him and O'Brien to a killing six months before the attack on Ertman and Pena. In that case, a 27-year-old woman was found at a Houston park with her throat cut. She'd been raped and eviscerated. On death row, Cantu, now 35, was classified among the best-behaving inmates.
Of the six people convicted for the heinous crimes, five were sentenced to death. Two who were 17 when the girls were killed were spared the death penalty when the U.S. Supreme Court barred execution of people who were under 18 when they committed their crimes.
HUNTSVILLE, Texas (CBS/AP/KHOU) Tonight, Peter Anthony Cantu will be executed for two of the most notorious deaths in Houston history, the 1993 rapes and murders of 16-year-old Elizabeth Pena and 14-year-old Jennifer Ertman. Of the six people convicted for the heinous crimes, five were sentenced to death. Two who were 17 when the girls were killed ...
On a June night, the two girls were hoping to beat an 11:30 p.m. curfew by taking a shortcut home to Pena's northwest Houston neighborhood. They were crossing a railroad bridge when the gang, drinking beer and initiating a new member, spotted them. One of the gang members grabbed Pena. She screamed.
Ertman will stand a few feet away, watching again through the window.
The rapes and murders of Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Peña, two teenage girls from Houston, Texas, aged 14 and 16, respectively, occurred on June 24, 1993. The murder of the two girls made headlines in Texas newspapers due to the nature of the crime and the new law resulting from the murder that allows families of the victims to view the execution of the murderers. The case was al…
Elizabeth Christine Peña (June 21, 1977 – June 24, 1993) and Jennifer Lee Ertman (August 15, 1978 – June 24, 1993) were close friends who both attended Waltrip High School.
Although the girls were just over one year in age difference, both sets of parents approved of their friendship, with Peña's father viewing Ertman—a modest girl who had only recently begun experimenting with makeup—as a "positive influence" on his daughter, later recollecting that, sho…
Realizing that the girls would be capable of identifying them, Peter Cantu, the leader of the gang, ordered the members to kill the girls. Both girls were strangled to death. Following Cantu's initial instruction, Villarreal first shouted, "Get on your knees, bitch!" to Ertman. O'Brien (the only non-Hispanic, Black person in the gang) and Villarreal strangle Ertman with a red nylon belt before breaking the belt. Both completed the act by strangling the girl with a shoelace in Peña's presen…
Four days after the murders, the girls' bodies were found in the park during hot weather conditions. Both victims were badly decaying, and dental records were used for identification. The medical examiner corroborated that the cause of death was strangulation. All those believed responsible were ultimately arrested. Medellín gave both written and taped confessions.
At sentencing, the offenders were remanded to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) system. Peter Anthony Cantu, José Ernesto Medellín, Derrick Sean O'Brien, Efrain Pérez, and Raul Omar Villarreal received death sentences. Venancio Medellín, the brother of José Medellín, was 14 at the time of the murder, the same age as Jennifer Ertman. Venancio received a 40-year …
Derrick O'Brien was the first to be executed on July 11, 2006. O'Brien was buried in the Captain Joe Byrd Cemetery in Huntsville, Texas.
Before his execution, O'Brien expressed his regrets for his actions to the families of Peña and Ertman. He then apologized to his family before being executed by lethal injection. In response to accusations from anti-death penalty advocates …
The parents of the murder victims successfully advocated for the State of Texas to allow victims' relatives to have permission to witness executions. Before the murders, Houston officials had stated that gangs were not a significant issue in the city. C.E. Anderson, a Houston Police Department officer who worked on the murder case, described the murder as "part of the impetus for the antigang programs in Houston." Jennifer Latson of the Houston Chronicle said that the de…
• Capital punishment in Texas
• List of people executed in Texas, 2000–2009
• List of people executed in Texas, 2010–2019
• List of people executed in the United States in 2006