Joe Cantu walked into the living room. Perez and Joe Medellin gave him a “wassup” head nod, which Joe Cantu returned.
Joe Medellin looked up at Christina, and as he looked at Villarreal, he said, “Christina, this is Raul. He’s a new member of Black and White.” He then glanced over at Villarreal and said, “This is Christina, Joe’s wife. She’s the one who cooks for us.”
Villarreal and Christina exchanged nods.
Joe Medellin turned to Joe Cantu and introduced Villarreal to him as well.
Joe Cantu knew something was up. He could tell they seemed a bit too jacked-up. “What happened?” he asked, motioning toward the blood on Perez’s shirt. “Who’d you squab with now?” meaning whom did they get into a fight with.
Joe Medellin responded, “Let’s just say we had a lot of fun,” the same thing he had told Christina. All three of the boys started to crack up again. Medellin then added, “You’ll hear about it on the news.” This caused the boys to burst out in laughter yet again.
Joe Cantu stood in silence. He thought the guys were full of shit.
When Christina heard Joe Medellin’s boast, she only had one thought: she was standing in front of three murderers.
Joe Cantu asked Joe Medellin again, “Dude, what happened?”
Joe Medellin could not stop laughing. Finally he said to Joe Cantu, “I’ll tell you in a minute, as soon as [Perez] goes and takes a bath.”
Perez looked over to Christina and asked, “Can I take a bath?”
“Hold on a minute. I gotta go to the restroom first,” she declared.
Perez untucked his undershirt and pulled it off and over his head. He tossed the shirt at Christina, hitting her in the face.
“Get rid of it,” Perez ordered Christina.
She was pissed. She jerked the shirt off her face and was about to throw it to the ground when she noticed even more blood. She wadded the shirt into a ball and tossed it into the trash can. She ignored Perez and headed to the bathroom.
After Christina finished up in the bathroom, she took the trash can outside and dumped Perez’s bloody T-shirt. Her husband followed her, grabbed the shirt, and lit it on fire with his lighter. He made sure the entire shirt burned to a crisp.
When Christina walked back into the house, Perez had already gone into the bathroom to take a bath. He said he needed to wash the blood off his body.
Christina and Joe Cantu knew something bad had happened. They headed toward the living room and sat down on the couch next to one another. Joe Medellin began to tell them about their night. He talked about the drinking and the initiation. He talked about how they continued drinking on the railroad tracks and how they stumbled across a little surprise.
“We met these two bitches,” Joe Medellin recalled as he smiled at Villarreal, “and we had a fun time with them.” Villarreal nodded and smiled back at Joe Medellin.
Joe Cantu and Christina believed Joe Medellin was holding back. He would not get into any specifics. Eventually, however, his tongue began to loosen. As he relived the moment, he began to get excited. He and Villarreal laughed as they recalled the events. The more they talked about it, the more they continued to giggle, like a couple of schoolgirls.
Christina later stated they appeared as if “they were proud of what they did.” She added they were “laughing and giggling and bragging about it.”
Joe Medellin talked about how one of the girls begged him to spare her life. “Yeah, that one fat white bitch started begging, ‘Please don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me’ in a little whiny-white-bitch-ass voice!” he stated in a shrill, mocking tone. All three of the boys started to laugh again at the memory.
“Then we started doing those white bitches,” Joe Medellin added, and slapped a high five with Villarreal. “I did that one bitch in the pussy,” he bragged. “Peter was doing that other white bitch.” Joe Medellin looked amazed as he continued to tell his story to Christina and Joe Cantu. “I couldn’t believe it. That fat bitch that I was doing was a goddamned virgin! Dude, she bled all over me. I can’t believe she was a virgin.” He continued his boasting. “Man, I opened that bitch up.”
Joe Medellin was on a roll. “Dude, then we all started fucking those bitches. Then I turned one of them over and started doing her in her ass. Shit was tight.”
Villarreal chimed in, “Man, that skinny bitch had a nice, tight ass.”
“Yeah, I made that bitch give me head,” Joe Medellin countered.
“Aw, hell yeah,” Villarreal hooted, and began to laugh again at the memory.
As the two teenagers recalled their exploits, Perez walked out of the bathroom. He was clean and dressed. He also seemed quieter than usual.
Joe Medellin saw Perez walk out of the bathroom, so he got up and proudly announced, “I’m gonna go take a bath ’cause I got virgin blood all on my underwear.” He looked over to Perez and asked, “You got blood on your underwear?”
“Nah, man, I can’t see none,” Perez replied.
“Check it out, man,” Joe Medellin said as he reached his hand into his pants. He pulled out the top of his underwear so everyone in the room could see. It was covered in blood. Joe was so proud, he looked like a fisherman showing off his biggest catch. “It’s from that slut.”
Christina glanced toward Joe Medellin. She saw the blood on his underwear, then turned away. She was appalled by his casual attitude, but she made sure he was unaware of her disgust. They had no idea she, too, had been raped by several guys just one year earlier.
Joe shoved his underwear back into his pants and headed toward the bathroom to take a shower. He looked back at Perez and declared, “Yo, Peter better give us some of that money and jewelry he got off them hos.”
“I heard that,” Perez stated.
“I want some of that money, too,” Villarreal added.
Joe Medellin plodded off to the bathroom, his head held high. He went in and washed the girls’ blood off his body. As he finished and stepped out of the shower, back into the living room, Peter Cantu finally arrived home. It was more than a half hour after the others had arrived. Peter walked into the living room and spotted Villarreal and Perez laughing it up while they kept talking to his brother Joe and sister-in-law Christina about the night’s events. As he walked past them, Joe Medellin shouted, “Yo, where’s my fuckin’ money?”
Peter reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a wad of green bills. He had around $40 on him. He reached in again and pulled out some rings and jewelry, including a heart-shaped gold ring with the letter E on it, a gold inverted V-shaped ring, and a gold rope chain with two rings on it, a gold bracelet, and a second gold rope necklace with an S charm on it. He walked over to Efrain Perez, handed him a $10 bill, and said, “This is for gas.” He handed some cash to Raul Villarreal and Joe Medellin as well. He pulled a ring out of his pocket and handed it to Christina. He placed the rest of the jewelry on the coffee table. Perez and Villarreal scrambled for the rings.
“Man, I want that,” Perez declared, looking at one of the rings.
“Don’t take it all, dick,” Villarreal interjected as he pushed Perez aside. “I want some of that shit, too.”
Peter gave the E ring to Joe Medellin because he knew his girlfriend’s name was Esther. “Man, I dropped off Yuni,” Peter informed Medellin, in reference to Joe’s little brother. “We had to talk. He’s cool.”
Peter sat down on the couch next to Perez. He nodded toward Medellin and listened to the two other boys as they continued to talk about the massacre. He simply nodded his head in agreement. He did not add much to the conversation other than to back up what they were already saying.
Christina suddenly hightailed it out of the living room. She did not want to be around this group of young men anymore. She walked into her bedroom, but then reconsidered. She worried that they might get pissed at her, so she shook it off, composed herself, and returned to the living room. She sat quietly next to her husband as they continued to brag about their exploits.
Perez looked up at Joe Cantu and said, “Dude, you should have been there, man. You missed out.”
Joe Cantu merely nodded his head.
Joe Medellin and Raul Villarreal started again to talk about what they did to the girls.
Finally Perez interrupted them and blurted out, “Man, y’all made her bite me! That white bitch was sucking my cock and you, fucker,” he said to Joe Medellin, “you smacked that bitch on the top of her head so hard that she bit down on my cock. I had to smack the shit out of her for that one!”
Joe Medellin couldn’t contain his laughter. He thought it was the funniest thing in the world.
Perez was on a roll. Through tears of laughter, he recalled that he was “doing one of the girls on the ground and I lost my balance. I think I broke my arm.”
“I remember that,” Peter Cantu recalled.
Medellin piped in that he, too, had “lost his balance while he was fucking one of the girls and scratched his knee.” Indeed, he had white powder marks on his knees and a few scratches on them as well.
Perez, Medellin, Villarreal, and Peter Cantu were all cracking up. They were having the time of their life recalling the events. All four of the boys recounted the ways in which they violated the girls: “I did her pussy,” “she sucked my dick,” “I did that bitch in the ass” were some of the refrains Christina and Joe Cantu heard. After each time someone bragged about a violation, Peter Cantu would simply grin and say, “Yeah, I remember I did that, too.”
Joe Medellin added, “I can’t believe that bitch scratched me. I had to smack her up for that one.” The boys continued cracking up until they exhausted themselves.
When the laughter subsided, Joe Cantu asked, “Well, what happened to them?” in reference to the girls.
Almost in unison, the boys said, “We had to kill them.”
Christina held her breath. She also held her ground.
“Yeah, man, we had to kill those bitches,” Peter declared. “We didn’t want them identifying us and getting us in trouble with the cops.” The others all agreed and murmured their assent.
“Yeah, we had to do it,” Medellin seconded.
“Yeah, we did,” Perez added, “otherwise our asses were gonna be thrown in jail. We couldn’t let those sluts turn us in.”
“Yeah, man,” Peter offered. “You got it, daddy.”
Joe Cantu asked the group, “How’d y’all do it?”
Medellin and Villarreal began to describe how they murdered the girls.
“I took a shoelace and I pulled it around that bitch’s neck,” Joe Medellin said. “[Perez] grabbed the other side of the shoelace while I was tightening it around her neck. I started strangling that bitch.” Medellin continued, “That bitch looked dead so I checked her pulse to see if she was breathin’, and shit. I couldn’t feel no pulse. That bitch was dead!”
Villarreal talked about how he and O’Brien used a red belt to strangle Jennifer. “I took that belt and wrapped it around her throat, and me and Sean pulled like a mother. We squeezed it so hard that the damn belt busted on us.”
“I couldn’t believe that happened.” Peter Cantu cracked up.
“It would have been a hell of a lot easier if we had a gun,” interjected Joe Medellin.
“After it broke,” Villarreal continued, “I got on top of her neck. I started slamming her throat with my leg. Jumping on it with my feet. I wanted to kill that bitch.”
Peter broke in, “We had to make sure those bitches were dead, so I kicked one of them right in the mouth.” He emphasized this with a swift kick of a steel-toed boot.
“I had to do it because one of them bitches didn’t want to die,” Villarreal added.
“Dude, you had to do it,” added Joe Medellin.
Christina and Joe Cantu continued to listen as the boys described how they took turns kicking the girls in the face and stomping on their necks. Each one of the boys did this to the girls.
“What’d y’all do with their bodies?” Joe Cantu asked.
“Once we knew they were dead,” Perez answered, “we just left. They’re out in the woods, man.”
“Ha!” exclaimed Villarreal. “Remember, one of them bitches gave us her phone number? That’s hilarious.” Villarreal continued to giggle as the others joined in the laughter. “I’m gonna call it”—which elicited roars of laughter from the others—“see if they found the bodies yet.” Villarreal added, “I remember when that bitch gave me her phone number, I told her, ‘Yeah, this is fun. We’ll have to do this again. Call me. We’ll do it again.’” He burst out into even more laughter. The other three boys joined him.
The conversation lasted nearly two hours.
Christina had a difficult time listening. She would walk in and out of the room, oftentimes to go into her bedroom and cry. Finally she convinced her husband to come to bed. Once in the bedroom, she couldn’t even look him in the eye. She was terrified. Joe Cantu tried to touch his wife, but she recoiled in horror, even though he had nothing to do with the rapes and murders. “I just couldn’t let him touch me,” Christina recalled.
She crawled into bed, worried because she was sleeping in a house with four murderers. She ignored her husband, who tried to comfort her. The couple did not say a word to one another. Christina could barely fall asleep.
Chapter 21
Friday, June 25, 1993—2:00 A.M.
O’Brien residence
Clearbrook Apartments
West Thirty-fourth Street
Houston, Texas
Sean O’Brien was restless. He had not been able to fall asleep since he returned to his apartment.
At approximately 2:00 A.M., O’Brien picked up his telephone and nervously dialed Peter Cantu’s phone number. He needed to talk to somebody about what they had done.
“Hello?” said a tired voice on the other end of the line. It was Joe Cantu.
“Joe, it’s Sean. Let me talk to Pete.”
“Hold on, man,” Joe stated in an agitated tone. He laid the phone down on the nightstand and rose out of bed to track down his brother.
After a couple of minutes, someone picked up the phone. “He doesn’t want to wake up,” Joe Cantu informed O’Brien.
“Did you tell him it’s me?”
“Yeah, dude. He said he wanted to go back to sleep. He also said he didn’t want to be bothered.”
“Joe,” O’Brien pleaded, “man, I think I hear one of those girls, man. I think I hear her crying.” He had reached the brink and was not sure if he could come back down or if the abyss was calling him. It was eerily reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-tale Heart.”
And now at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror. Yet, for some minutes longer I refrained and stood still. But the beating grew louder, louder! I thought the heart must burst.
Joe Cantu could tell O’Brien did not sound right. “Hold on just a second, Sean.” Joe returned to his younger brother’s bedroom and told him that O’Brien wasn’t in good shape. “Tell him to go back there and pick up those beer bottles we might have left behind and get rid of ’em.” Joe went back to the phone and passed along Peter’s message.
“Okay. I guess so,” O’Brien replied, not thrilled with the order. The last thing he wanted to do was go back out where the girls’ corpses lay. He had no idea what tricks his mind would continue to play on him.
O’Brien pulled on his pants, threw on a T-shirt and tennis shoes, and snuck out of the house one more time. He was much quieter this time as he scooted through the playground and the hole in the fence. He made his way up the trail that led to the trestle and to the area where they beat up Villarreal. The only light came from the moon, which appeared much more ominous to O’Brien now. He scanned the area for beer bottles, but he could barely see three feet in front of him.
Suddenly O’Brien heard someone call his name— Sean—but it was barely audible as a whisper. He looked toward the woods wher
e the two girls’ mangled corpses lay.
Sean.
He heard it again. Without missing a beat, O’Brien took off in a mad dash, nearly busting an ankle as he scrambled up the gravel berm and over the railroad tracks.
O’Brien was scared to death.
He feared the girls were not dead, someone would discover them, and they would rat him out. The other side of his brain told him that, of course, they were dead.
But how did that explain the whispers?
He was not sure if he believed in ghosts.
He thought he was losing his mind.
As soon as he snuck back inside his apartment, O’Brien picked up the phone and dialed Cantu’s number. Joe Cantu answered the phone. An excited and nervous O’Brien told him what had just happened.
“Dude, I heard them!” O’Brien said, wincing.
“What are you talking about?” Joe Cantu asked.
“I went back to get the beer bottles and I heard the girls say my name or something, man!”
Joe handed the phone to Peter, who told O’Brien to go back to sleep.
O’Brien was unable to rest, so he hung up and dialed the Sandoval brothers. Ramon picked up the phone fast, as it was nearly 3:00 A.M. and he did not want his parents to be woken up. Over the next ten minutes, O’Brien told Ramon what happened after the brothers took off.
Chapter 22
Friday, June 25, 1993—4:00 A.M.
Ertman residence
East Twenty-fifth Street
The Heights
Houston, Texas
Sandra Ertman stirred in her bed. She was too restless to fall back asleep. As she lay on the right side of the bed, she looked at her husband, who was still asleep. She then peered out their bedroom door and to the side of the hallway into Jennifer’s room. Their bedrooms were only six feet apart. Sandra always left the light on in Jennifer’s bedroom, which her daughter would turn off when she got home.
The light was still shining brightly.
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