Carlson was determined, though. “Killing anybody ain’t gonna bring your daughter back, sir,” Carlson said to the three fathers. “It ain’t gonna bring my sister back.”
The three fathers kept their composure and chose to ignore Carlson. Eventually he slithered out from behind the impromptu grieving-father prison and joined up with Jimmy Dunne.
In a scene reminiscent to the one from the day before, Dunne was again surrounded by nearly two dozen grieving family members who lost loved ones to killers. Dunne, dressed in a white sweatshirt with DON’T KILL FOR ME printed on the front, stood before Bob Carreiro, who once again moved over to the scene of the fracas.
“All I know is that we are against the death penalty in all cases,” Dunne barked out at the hostile crowd. “We don’t think it helps things.” The murmurs of the family members and pro–death penalty supporters began to rise. They were tolerating Dunne’s speech, but their patience was being tested.
“It makes things worse,” Dunne continued as he placed his left hand on Carreiro’s right shoulder. “It continues a cycle of violence.” Carreiro showed great restraint as Dunne condescendingly addressed the crowd.
Suddenly the mood changed.
Dunne prattled on. “If my daughter was murdered,” he said to Carreiro, “I’d feel the same way.”
A roar from the crowd rose above the din. They were no longer willing to tolerate this man’s insensitivity.
“If your daughter were murdered?” one woman asked incredulously.
Finally the composed Bob Carreiro began to lash out at Dunne. He stepped closer to the much taller Dunne and put the fear of God into the man with a stare that spoke volumes. “You! Don’t! Know!” Carreiro snapped back at him. “Why don’t you go back to where you came from, because you don’t know!” He was joined by a chorus of yelling and screaming.
Once again, however, the assembly was broken up without any physical incidents—though no one would have blamed Carreiro had he taken out his frustrations on Dunne. Many, in fact, would have applauded such behavior.
“My wife would sit in one, I’d sit in another,” Adolph Pena recalled of the triple trials. “My sister-in-law Patti Zapalac would sit in one, and my brother, Carlos, and his wife would sit in one. My cousin Joe, the guy with the dark sunglasses. He would sit in one.” In other words, there was a Pena family representative in each courtroom during the three simultaneous trials. Adolph was also grateful for the people who ran interference for his family.
Andy Kahan was arm in arm with the Penas and the Ertmans. He was there to make sure they were able to get to the separate courtrooms and had someone in each trial at all times. He also ran interference between the families and the media. Any question directed to the families was redirected to Kahan. Not once did they have to stand in front of the hot klieg lights and cameras with microphones shoved in their faces to answer questions about the murders of their daughters or the “how they felt?” level of questions, which are normally associated with local television news reporting.
Pam Lychner, from the crime victims’ advocate group Justice for All, also helped the families out with the coordination of the chaos in the courtrooms. She would come early each day, gather the families of the victims together, and inform them of the day’s activities in the court. She presented an additional calm face for the families and helped Kahan with keeping the media away from them.
Every member of the girls’ families considered Kahan and Lychner to be invaluable resources. They allowed the families the opportunity to sit and watch the trials in peace.
As far as the crimes that the three defendants committed before they killed Elizabeth and Jennifer, Adolph was not surprised in the least. “It was just the norm for those guys, because they were the most evil thing I ever thought would be on the face of this earth. I wouldn’t put nothing past them.”
Omar and Louisa Villarreal testified on behalf of their son, Raul. For Adolph, these were moments of sheer “frustration. You didn’t want to share the air that they were breathing. Your son is just as evil as the other ones. Why would you try to find any innocence in this guy who just killed innocent little girls?”
Thursday, September 22, 1994
Harris County Courthouse Annex
Preston Street
Houston, Texas
Joe Medellin, Efrain Perez, and Raul Villarreal—all three went through the punishment phase. They had some people testify on their behalf, but the majority of witnesses were against them. So were the juries.
All three young men were sentenced to death.
It only took the jury ten minutes to deliberate Perez’s fate.
Chapter 41
Tuesday, October 11, 1994
Harris County Courthouse
177th District Court
Houston, Texas
Nearly three weeks later, all three defendants—Joe Medellin, Efrain Perez, and Raul Villarreal—were shackled together and escorted to the courthouse. The judges agreed to wait such a long period of time so tempers would lessen.
Instead of wearing their Sunday finest, as they had throughout their respective trials, the three defendants were now dressed in Harris County–issued orange jumpsuits. They took their places around a long rectangular table right next to the gallery and several feet below the elevated riser where the judges hovered overhead.
The three judges—Caprice Cosper, Ruben Guerrero, and Doug Shaver—gathered together at the head of the giant makeshift judge’s bench. The purpose of the gathering was to read out the sentences that had been handed down to the boys.
The standing-room-only crowd in one of the largest courtrooms in the county listened intently as each judge read off each sentence for each defendant.
Three death sentences.
After all three death punishments were handed down, the judges turned to the families of the girls. Once again, they would be allowed their Victim Impact Statements. Many in the much larger auditorium-sized courtroom were nervous. They remembered how Randy Ertman blew up and seemingly wanted to strangle Peter Cantu back in February during the first-ever Victim Impact Statement in Texas. This time, however, he kept his cool.
Randy stood up behind the wooden railing that separated him and the three defendants by less than ten feet. This time, he was joined by his wife, Sandra, who placed a reassuring hand on his lower back. Randy pulled out a piece of paper, unfolded it, and began to speak.
“Thank you, Your Honor, for allowing me to speak. I appreciate it, sir.” Randy addressed the defendants. “You have no excuse and you have no remorse. Ever. In sixteen months, I have never seen any of you show any remorse whatsoever. You’re worse than spit!”
At that point, one of Joe Medellin’s attorneys stood up to object.
Joe Medellin looked bored. He never once looked toward Randy Ertman and he never smiled, grimaced, or cared.
“I hope you rot in hell. I honest to God mean that, sir,” Randy closed. He remained calm throughout the entire ordeal.
Unlike in the Cantu trial, this time around, Adolph Pena was allowed to give a statement as well.
Adolph remembered, “They had three of those sons of bitches in one court and they wouldn’t let us say anything to them directly. They brought us all in there together and we could address the court then, but not the defendants. So I thought I would write something down. Well, by the time I got in there, I just decided I was going to say something from the heart. Then I started addressing the individual, I don’t remember who, and the court immediately stopped me. They told me I could give the impact statement, but that I couldn’t address them.”
Adolph spoke passionately about how the three boys not only murdered his daughter, but also his two other children, his wife, and himself.
“The way they are going to be executed,” Adolph lamented, “is not fair to us. It’s gonna be real simple for them to get a needle in their arm. Just lie there and die.
“I wish these guys would get executed the way my daughter did. An
d just be left there on the ground to die.” He started getting angry.
“And they don’t even have the nerve to look at me when I’m talking to you,” he addressed the three defendants directly. “Yeah! I’m talking about you!” he said as he pointed at Perez, “and you!” at Medellin, “and you!” to Villarreal.
“You didn’t even know these girls,” he yelled at the defendants. This time, it was one of Villarreal’s defense attorneys who stood up to object.
After the statements were completed, the judges informed the defendants they were to be removed to holding before being transferred to prison. Joe Medellin was the first person at the defense table to jump out of his seat and head for the exit. He could not get out of there soon enough.
The families of Elizabeth and Jennifer were relieved. All five murderers had received the death penalty. The trials were finally over and they could resume grieving for their daughters. They all stepped out of the courtroom and into the hallway to make their way outside.
Like proverbial sardines in a can, the hallway was packed with courtroom spectators, reporters, cameramen, victims’ rights advocates, family members and friends of the girls, and some family members of the convicted defendants.
A member of the media who spoke Spanish walked up to Adolph and whispered in his ear, “Perez’s dad just said that it was your fault that the girls were killed.”
Adolph looked at the reporter and said, “You guys are just looking for a story.” Adolph seemed as if he would not take the bait, but the tempers were flaring after the impact statements in the courtroom.
“I’m not making it up, Mr. Pena. He really said that.”
“Where’s that son of a bitch at?” Adolph sternly asked the reporter.
The reporter dutifully pointed out a man who was actually Efrain Perez’s stepfather, Ismael Castillo.
Adolph looked back at the reporter and said, “You’re going to get your story, right now!” He thrust his way through the overcrowded hallway in Castillo’s direction. Television cameras whipped around in a frenzy toward the maelstrom. Lights flashed on, like someone just restored the power during a blackout.
Once Adolph spotted the man, he glared at him and inched his way toward him.
“Es culpa tuya!” Castillo yelled at Adolph, which means, “It’s your fault!”
Adolph was livid. He went ballistic and charged after the smaller man. The cameras were trained on the two fathers, waiting for fists to fly and spit to spew.
“How in the hell do you figure it’s my fault that your son killed my daughter?” Adolph screamed at Castillo as someone amidst the throng held him back by his jacket. “She didn’t do nothing to him. What makes you think you have the right to tell me it’s my fault?”
Castillo responded by thrusting a finger in Adolph’s face and repeating it was his fault for not raising his daughter properly. A middle-aged woman wearing a bright red dress, who was a member of the Perez family, grabbed Castillo’s finger as he defiantly thrust it toward Pena. She was trying to scoot Castillo away from the conversation.
The very short Castillo, however, who apparently suffered from an overdose of Napoleonic machismo, kept at it. He began cursing in Spanish at Adolph.
Adolph responded by simply telling him, “That’s your son!”
Castillo seemed even more enraged.
At that point, Randy Ertman had heard enough. The 245-pound grieving father maintained his composure throughout the triple trials, and even during the Victim Impact Statement. He had finally had enough.
Randy charged through the crowd, past Adolph, in Castillo’s direction. Castillo looked like a deer caught in headlights, scared out of his wits. Once he saw several of Randy’s friends and family members were restraining the angry father, however, he got up his nerve and started cussing and wagging his finger at Randy.
The throng turned into a melee that looked like a rugby scrum, with bodies pushing and people screaming at each other.
Adolph scooted in front of Randy and placed his hand on the bigger man’s chest to push him away from Castillo. “C’mon, Randy. Don’t listen to the guy,” Adolph begged his friend. Randy backed up, all the while glaring at Perez’s stepfather.
Castillo kept screaming and the small woman in red continued to try to get him out of the way. Another woman, holding a toddler less than ten inches away from Castillo, tried to move, but he continued cursing and taunting Randy, regardless of the safety of the child. Cameramen swarmed in on Randy, trying once more to snap a “furious dad” photo they so relished from the Cantu trial.
Patti Zapalac placed herself directly in the line of fire. She wedged herself in between Randy and the cameramen. She began screaming at the cameramen just as much as she was screaming at Castillo: “Get out of here! Get out of here! Leave them alone!” At that point, she grabbed one of the media member’s cameras and shoved it out of the way. Suddenly several cops swooped in and bulldogged the cameraman through the crowd and up against the wall.
At the same time, several of Perez’s entourage finally snatched Castillo by the shirt and dragged him away from the fracas.
Adolph recalled, “Somebody grabbed his ass and drug him out of there. I remember it was a Hispanic guy, because he knew exactly what he said to me.” He added, “The only reason he said it in Spanish is because about eighty-five percent of the people there were white and they wouldn’t have known what he was saying.”
When asked if Castillo’s reaction was unintentional, Adolph knew better. “He knew exactly who I was and he said it just loud enough so that I could hear it. And it was his stepdad, of all people.”
Once the feuding families were separated, the police attempted to restore order in the courthouse. “Court is still going on here,” a young police officer pleaded. “So lower your voices, please.”
Andy Kahan surmised that Castillo’s actions were revealing. “Efrain Perez is where he is today because of parents who don’t hold him accountable for his actions. And that was certainly proved here today.”
Sandra Ertman later commented on the fury that she witnessed in her husband at Castillo’s insensitivity. “I saw the rage come out in him,” she stated.
“In life and in death, he will protect Jen.”
Unfortunately, the outrage would not end anytime soon. Immediately after Perez’s stepfather was escorted out of the building, Perez’s defense attorney, Ricardo Rodriguez, stepped into the hallway. The attorney, with his overgrown Snidely Whiplash handlebar mustache, enjoyed being in front of the cameras. Beside him stood Andy Kahan.
When asked what he thought about his client’s stepfather’s statement, Rodriguez opined, “I know that they’re upset and they have every right to be upset, but I’ll say this—and you may not like it—but the parents bear some responsibility, too.” The lawyer started to walk away.
Kahan and the reporters standing around Rodriguez were stunned.
A reporter shouted out, “Whose parents?”
Rodriguez returned to the cameras and microphones to clarify: “The parents of the victims.” Then he darted off.
Andy Kahan was stunned by Rodriguez’s comment. “I’ll never forget because I was standing right there by him. I said, ‘What?’
“The reporter went, ‘Did you just hear what he just said?’”
Rodriguez immediately turned tail, but he would not be alone for long. Kahan took off after the defense attorney. “I ended up chasing him. We ended up in a foot chase into another courtroom. I think he realized that Oops! I said something I shouldn’t have said, and I started running after him down the hallway, and he ran into a courtroom and ran all the way into the back room. That’s the first time I’ve ever run after anybody in the courthouse.”
Kahan continued on, “Of course, the media reported it, and the next day, we all had a protest at Rodriguez’s office. Pam Lychner and I were out there demanding an apology. He finally ended up saying that he’d only meet with the families.”
There were at least fi
fty protestors outside Rodriguez’s office expressing their displeasure with the mustachioed one.
“That son of a bitch, what did my wife call him? One day, she went up to the courthouse and she got into the elevator with that son of a bitch, and he knew exactly who she was and just liked freaked out when he saw her. Melissa doesn’t say much or yell too much at anybody, but it just so happened that this guy pushed the right button and she got off all over his ass for saying what he said about us and our daughter,” Adolph Pena remarked.
“Years later, we get in that same damn elevator in that courthouse and he sees Melissa again. You know what he did? He starts pushing buttons so he can get the hell out of there on the next floor, once he saw Melissa get on there.
“She said, ‘You chickenshit son of a bitch!’ to him.
“My wife won’t get pissed too much, but he said just the right thing to set her off and she got pissed that day. That’s for sure.”
Adolph added, “I still see that little son of a bitch downtown. He’s got that long handlebar mustache. Probably four or five or six years ago, I seen him down there. He’s got his little briefcase.
“I was driving my car and I saw him. I rolled down my window, honked my horn at him. He looks over at me and I go”—Adolph slowly lifted his middle finger—“I said, ‘Fuck you!’ He takes off and runs inside. I know he knew who I was.” Adolph laughed.
Adolph Pena recalled the day after the death penalty sentences came down. “I opened up the Houston Chronicle and it said something like FIVE DEATH SENTENCES, in big bold letters on the front page.” Adolph marveled at the headline; however, he had a bad feeling. “I said, ‘You know what? This is too good to be true. I won’t believe it until I see it.’”
Pure Murder Page 27