They would never see their daughter again.
The Ertmans were overwhelmed with the love and affection on display for their daughter. “I remember more people kissing me and hugging me than I ever thought possible.”
After the relatively brisk service for Jennifer, the flock of attendees sauntered into their vehicles and headed three miles over to the Pat H. Foley Funeral Home on West Thirty-fourth Street for a prayer vigil for Elizabeth Pena. As the procession pulled up into the gravel parking lot of the funeral home, the mood seemed even more downcast than earlier.
One of Elizabeth’s friends, fifteen-year-old Gillian Hemphill, seemed dumbstruck. “I won’t have anyone to talk to anymore,” she said to no one in particular. “I lost my best friend.” Many around her nodded in agreement. They understood her anguish and pain. “I just wish she was back, that’s all,” the teenager wept.
Thursday, July 1, 1993
Harris County Jail—cell 6B 2-V
Sixth floor B
San Jacinto Street
Houston, Texas
Just two days after Joe Medellin’s arrest, Deputy Edward Martin conducted a routine search for contraband in his one-man lockdown cell. Martin’s search led to the discovery of a weapon made from a disposable Bic razor. The one-and-a-half-inch razorblade had been removed and inserted into the handle so that it was very obviously sticking out—in effect, the razor had been turned into a knife.
Upon discovery of the weapon, Medellin claimed he used it to trim his fingernails, since fingernail clippers were not allowed in Harris County Jail.
Medellin would be written up for a violation of jail rules.
Friday, July 2, 1993—10:00 A.M.
St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church
3600 Brinkman Street
Houston, Texas
Another one of Elizabeth Pena’s good friends remained in shock the following morning when funeral services were held for the sixteen-year-old at the St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church. Vanessa Rivera and Elizabeth had been best friends for over a year and had made an explicit agreement to maintain their relationship for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, Vanessa knew the agreement ceased with Elizabeth’s murder.
“We were the best of friends,” Vanessa declared as she dabbed at a tear running down her cheek. “On her birthday, she said her wish was that we stay friends forever.”
As with the night before, many of the same people showed up for Elizabeth’s funeral. Again, the church overflowed with more than one thousand well-wishers, and those who still could not fathom the destruction wrought on the two young girls.
At the front of the church stood Rev. Steve Laliberte. The Penas thought very highly of the young priest and were pleased he would be giving the sermon. “I used to love to listen to him preach,” Adolph Pena reminisced.
The reverend attempted to assuage the congregation’s pain by telling the story of Jesus’ crucifixion and how Mary bowed before the Cross, where her son had been executed. As she did so, Jesus’ disciples ran away in fear, the reverend continued. Mary stayed.
“A mother’s love for a child can only be understood by a mother,” the priest explained. “Today we witness the same crucifixion over again.” Laliberte paused and heard the soft whimpers. “Today we are saddened because Elizabeth Christine has gone from us,” he stated, and looked at Melissa Pena, who sat next to her husband and their two surviving children. They were joined by Randy and Sandra Ertman. “But we also rejoice, because we know that she has gone with the Almighty God and we know one day we’ll be reunited with her in the Kingdom of the Father.”
For some, the words provided comfort. For others, they simply brought on more tears.
After Reverend Laliberte ended his sermon, Dallas Young graced the podium. She spoke of her love for her dear departed friend, but in a different tack from the night before, she also vented her anger over Elizabeth’s murder. She concluded telling the friends and families, “Don’t cry. She has gone on and she’ll forever be our beautiful guardian angel.” The room was silent except for an epidemic of sniffles.
Aware of the irony of his statement, Adolph took comfort in the fact “it was one of the best funerals I ever went to. It was just beautiful. The singers, the attendance, it was beautiful. Of course, it was the one funeral I never wanted to be at.”
After the service, the mass of people headed toward their vehicles to make their way to the Woodlawn Garden of Memories Cemetery, on the west side of downtown Houston at the 1100 block of Antoine Drive. One of the members of the press stated he stopped counting cars in the procession to the cemetery after he reached three hundred. Reports indicated that the line of vehicles stretched for five miles.
The Penas were driven to the cemetery in a limousine. “They held us in the car for about thirty minutes because it took them that long to get all of the people parked and up to the grave site. We sat in that limousine for about thirty minutes and we got out and the media was everywhere.” The murders of the girls had become the cause célèbre amongst the local media, and the vultures were out circling their prey.
“All my buddies were over there,” Pena recalled, “blocking the cameras. Standing up on chairs and on their shoulders, making sure the press would not shoot photos of us. So we could mourn in relative peace.”
Jennifer Ertman’s grave can be found in the mausoleum in the center of the cemetery. Elizabeth Pena’s grave is located approximately one hundred yards away. Neither family knew the other planned on burying their daughters in Woodlawn Garden of Memories.
Elizabeth is located diagonally across from Jennifer.
A sundial compass leads the way for Elizabeth, toward a giant cross.
Tuesday, July 6, 1993—evening
T. C. Jester Park
T. C. Jester Boulevard and West Thirty-fourth Street
Houston, Texas
The following week, the Penas and Ertmans gathered together with more than 125 friends and family members directly across the bayou from where their daughters had been slaughtered. As the summer evening made the transition from sweltering to bearable, the Penas and Ertmans graciously accepted the gestures of comfort from their loved ones.
The gatherers carried votive candles, which lit up the gazebo across from the murder scene. As the sun settled, the candles provided a flickering, shimmering mise-en-scène at which the parents would speak about their daughters.
Among those who came to show their support for the families were several Houston police officers who worked on the case. Adolph purposely walked toward Officer Ray Zaragoza, grasped his hands in his own palms, bowed his head slightly, and simply thanked the officer. The normally steely policeman could barely return Pena’s gaze.
But Adolph was there to do more than simply grieve for his daughter in public. He wanted his neighbors to take action. He realized the ever-escalating violence in his city must be halted before it spun out of control.
“We must band together,” he addressed the rapt audience, “to make our neighborhood a safer place for all.” Unfortunately, he could barely get through any more of his statement as he broke down in tears. He looked toward his wife, Melissa, who stepped up and took over.
“We want everyone to know,” Melissa calmly spoke, “that if any of you make any donations to the memorial fund for Elizabeth, that we are donating all of the money for the Heidi Search Center in San Antonio.”
Melissa looked toward her husband and extended her hand to him. He grasped it gently and pulled toward his wife. With tears in his eyes, he nodded toward her, and she continued. “The last thing we would like to say is we hope and pray the justice system will not fail us now.” Many in attendance nodded their heads in agreement; others murmured in accordance.
The seemingly docile-looking Melissa then ratcheted up the rhetoric. “We also pray that those who have deprived us of these two beautiful children,” she warned as the crowd listened to her every word, “will be punished to the full extent of the law, although there is no pu
nishment that can help with the pain we all have to live with.”
Many people continued to weep; however, several felt a sense of comfort knowing the families were not going to give up on the fight they were about to embark on.
“I felt like I owed something to those kids,” Adolph stated in regard to Elizabeth’s friends. “I’ve got to do something for these kids. These poor kids are devastated. They don’t know what to do.”
Pena approached Elizabeth’s friends and told them, “Okay, once, twice a week, whatever you want to do, I want you to come over to my house. We’ll talk. We can talk about Elizabeth or we can talk about Jennifer. We can talk about your mom or your dad, whatever you want to talk about.”
A few days later, Adolph and Melissa were shocked to see “all those kids had come over.” The gatherings took place frequently at first and were filled to capacity. “I think I helped them out a bit, having them over for those talks. I didn’t know what I was doing, but apparently it worked.”
As is usual during stages of mourning, attendance began to drop. “After a while, not so many of them would come over. But I think I helped them out somewhat. They helped me out a whole lot. That’s why I did it in the first place.”
Once Elizabeth’s friends stopped coming by, Adolph, Melissa, Michael, and Rachael would attend grief support group meetings. “We went to counseling through the Heights hospital. That helped me out a bunch. Just going there and knowing that the other people that are there have also lost a daughter or a little boy made me realize I was not alone. Man, it definitely helped me. It helped Melissa a bunch. Just being able to discuss your loss with other people who know what you are feeling, and have been there before, made a world of difference.”
Chapter 30
The previous Friday, the same day as Elizabeth Pena’s funeral, prosecutor Elizabeth Godwin spoke about her desire to appear before a grand jury in regard to the case of fourteen-year-old Yuni Medellin. Godwin’s plan was to ask the grand jury to go along with her intention of sentencing Medellin to a forty-year sentence.
Godwin argued before state district judge Eric Andell that Yuni Medellin should be sent to a maximum-security facility known as the Giddings State School in Giddings, Texas. Under the determinate sentencing program, Medellin would spend at least the next four years in the facility. If he stayed clean during those four years, Judge Andell could conceivably free the young boy with probation. If Medellin were to find himself in trouble, or if the judge simply decided he should not receive probation, an eighteen-year-old Yuni Medellin could be transferred to an adult prison and be forced to mete out the remainder of his sentence, or thirty-six more years.
Venancio “Yuni” Medellin was officially charged with the capital murders of Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena later that same day.
One week later, the other five boys were not faring as well. Though he did not explicitly state as much, the general consensus amongst the legal minds in Texas was that Harris County district attorney John B. Holmes Jr., the rough-and-tumble cowboy with the cotton white handlebar mustache, had every intention of charging all five boys with capital murder and would seek the death penalty for each one of them.
Five death penalty charges for one case in Texas was unprecedented.
There were a myriad of permutations that Holmes could choose from. Including Yuni Medellin into the mix was out of the question, as he was a minor at the time of the murders and was therefore ineligible for the death penalty—despite the heinousness of the crime.
Another option would be to have one of the remaining five young men testify against the other four in return for a plea bargain. That individual could get lucky and escape lethal injection. That option turned out not to be necessary, since it seemed that Yuni Medellin would end up being the state’s key witness.
The final option was to charge all five boys—each of whom was either seventeen or eighteen years old—with two capital murders and go for executions.
While the choice seemed obvious to the Penas, Holmes had to mull over these various scenarios, as well as the possibility that a jury might find one or more of the killers would pose no future threat to society and not convict them. There was also the possibility that not all the boys participated in the actual killings. The boys could blame each other and it might be impossible to determine who was specifically responsible for the girls’ deaths.
“I don’t have the foggiest idea what call I’ll make on this one,” Holmes informed the media.
Chapter 31
The brutal nature of the crime, as well as the age of the perpetrators, caught the eye of the national media. Conservative syndicated editorialist William F. Buckley Jr. offered an interesting spin on the murders. In his July 9, 1993, column entitled “Brutal Urban Frontier Terrifying as the Old West,” Buckley opined that the girls would not have died had they been armed with revolvers. The conservative columnist blamed the murders on liberals who allegedly softened gun control laws and made acquisition of firearms more difficult for the average citizen.
Buckley briefly mentioned that the city of Houston had been paralyzed by crime. He wrote: “The answer to this reaches down to the marrow of Houston’s depression. It is that nobody knows what to do about crime.” Buckley asked Houstonians what exactly they were going to do about it: “Accordingly, people who live in Houston need to decide how they will comport themselves. What, as individuals, will they do?”
The reality, however, was that homicide rates in Houston had decreased dramatically in the preceding thirteen years. Despite the fact that Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena were Houston homicide victims numbers 250 and 251, at only the halfway point through the year, the overall number had dipped drastically during recent times.
Less than two weeks later, two more national media outlets stepped into the fray. The first was Newsweek magazine, which featured a one-page article and one-page full-sized photograph of one defendant, Sean O’Brien.
The second outlet was the NBC News national team, which came to Houston to conduct a lengthy interview with O’Brien. State district judge Donald K. Shipley, however, was having none of it. He slapped a gag order on O’Brien and his appointed counsel, Lon Harper, which prevented the news crew from conducting or airing such an interview.
According to Harris County ADA Jeannine Barr, Harper spoke very openly with the local press about his client and his case. Allegedly, Harper had been making offers to the local media for an interview, but had never committed. That is until NBC News came calling. Barr claimed she asked Harper to halt the interview. She feared the attorney was attempting to set himself up to get out of the representation by means of ineffective assistance of counsel.
Harper claimed his motives were altruistic. “A TV interview would show he’s just a scared little kid,” the attorney declared of his client. Harper asserted that the Newsweek article and the coverage by the Houston-based media had already tainted the jury pool by painting his client as a “cold-blooded killer.” Harper reasoned such treatment would bias the jury pool against his client before he ever stepped foot in a Harris County courthouse.
Harper failed to mention that O’Brien had already been interviewed the day before the murders, where he clearly stated: “Life means nothing.” The interview appeared on the news in the days immediately following his arrest.
The loss of life meant everything to the families of Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena. It also meant everything to President Bill Clinton, who sent personal letters to both families of the victims.
“I was deeply saddened by the news of Jennifer’s death,” the compassionate Arkansan wrote to the Ertmans in a letter dated July 14, 1993. “The death of a young person is especially tragic, and my heart goes out to you.”
President Clinton wrote that he felt . . . “strongly that we must make America’s streets safer for our children.” The president suggested a proactive tact when dealing with youth violence: “Working together, as parents, neighbors, and law enforcement officials, we m
ust dedicate ourselves to preventing senseless violence in our communities.”
The president expressed his sympathies and let the Ertmans know they were in his prayers.
“This helps a lot,” Randy Ertman noted, referring to the president’s kindness. “I used to be a Republican,” the father stated. “Now, I’m a Democrat.” Randy also stated that he planned to get involved with victims’ rights advocacy.
President Clinton sent a similar letter to the Penas.
“It was pretty moving,” stated Adolph Pena. Even though he was excited to receive a letter from the president, he wished it were under different circumstances.
He was able to joke about the letter several years later. “I remember we got this big ol’ envelope that says, ‘the White House.’ I said to Melissa, ‘Oh, shit, something’s wrong, baby. Something’s gonna go all wrong with the trial. Fucking Bill Clinton sent us a letter.’
“To affect someone that high up”—Adolph Pena shook his head in disbelief—“that’s pretty devastating.”
Adolph also marveled at the fact that so many people around the world were moved by the deaths of Elizabeth and Jennifer. “I remember talking to my wife while opening up the mail for the day and saying, ‘We got a letter from Japan,’” back in the days before widespread e-mail. “This girl is sending us condolences for losing our daughter—from a different country.” Adolph looked up at his wife in amazement and said, “This has got to be a screwup. We got a letter from Japan.” He turned the letter over and said, “Nope, it says ‘Pena’ on there bigger than shit. That just blew me away.”
Pure Murder Page 19