Peter Anthony Cantu: Crime, Trial, Execution, and Legacy

Peter Anthony Cantu was the Houston street gang leader who orchestrated the June 1993 abduction, gang rape, and murder of 14-year-old Jennifer Ertman and 16-year-old Elizabeth Peña near T.C. Jester Park. Convicted of capital murder in February 1994, he was executed by lethal injection in Huntsville, Texas, on August 17, 2010, at age 35.¹

The Murders of Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Peña

On the night of June 24, 1993, Cantu and five associates gathered near railroad tracks over White Oak Bayou in northwest Houston. They were conducting an initiation beating for Raul Villarreal, a prospective member of the gang Cantu led, the “Black and White.” The others present included Jose Medellin, Efrain Perez, Derrick Sean O’Brien, and Cantu’s 14-year-old brother-figure Venancio Medellin. Two more associates left before the violence began.²

Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Peña were walking home along the tracks, taking a shortcut so Peña could meet her curfew. Jose Medellin grabbed Peña and dragged her down a hill toward the group. When Ertman ran to help, Cantu seized her and pulled her down as well.² The gang members then subjected both girls to more than an hour of sexual assault.

After the assaults, Cantu told the group they would have to kill the girls. The victims were taken into nearby woods and strangled. Cantu kicked Peña in the face with steel-toed boots, knocking out her teeth, and stepped on Ertman’s neck. Multiple gang members stomped on both victims’ necks to make sure they were dead.² The medical examiner later determined both girls died from trauma to the neck consistent with strangulation. Ertman also sustained three fractured ribs.³

The bodies were found four days later, so decomposed that dental records were needed for identification.²

Cantu’s Background Before the Crime

Cantu was born on May 27, 1975, and was 18 at the time of the murders. He later earned a GED and had worked as a laborer. His behavioral problems started early. He was caught stealing a bicycle at age 11 and was placed in an alternative school starting in sixth grade after assaulting fellow students and a teacher.¹

By 1993 he had installed himself as the self-appointed leader of the “Black and White.” At the time of the Ertman-Peña killings he was already on probation for an aggravated assault committed in January 1993, in which he threatened a youth with a knife in an Astrodome parking lot.¹ Authorities later linked Cantu and co-defendant Derrick O’Brien to the earlier unsolved murder of Patricia Lopez, a 27-year-old woman who was raped and killed in a Houston park roughly six months before the Ertman-Peña killings.⁴

How Cantu Was Caught

The break in the case came from inside Cantu’s own family. After the murders, Cantu and several of the others went back to his home and bragged in graphic detail to his brother Joe and sister-in-law Christina. Cantu displayed jewelry and money taken from the victims.⁵

Joe Cantu, who had no part in the crime, phoned an anonymous tip to Houston Crime Stoppers. He and his wife then met with investigators and described how the suspects had come home covered in blood, bearing scratches from the victims fighting back, and carrying personal items belonging to the girls. Retired homicide detective Todd Miller later called Joe Cantu “a very valuable witness.” All six suspects were arrested nearly simultaneously on June 29, 1993. Several, including Cantu, gave confessions.⁵

Trial, Conviction, and Death Sentence

Cantu was indicted on September 23, 1993, for the capital murder of Jennifer Ertman, committed during the course of robbery, kidnapping, and aggravated sexual assault.¹ His trial took place in early 1994 in Harris County.

Joe and Christina Cantu testified that the defendants had returned to the Cantu home on the night of the crime and recounted the rapes and murders in detail, with Peter Cantu “readily agreeing” with those accounts. Prosecutors introduced Cantu’s two written confessions to police along with jewelry recovered from his bedroom. The defense did not challenge the sufficiency of the evidence of guilt, focusing instead on the punishment phase and arguing that the Texas death penalty scheme was unconstitutional because jurors were not told Cantu would serve at least 35 years before parole eligibility on a life sentence. The trial court denied the defense’s related requests.²

The jury convicted Cantu of capital murder on February 3, 1994. After jurors answered the special sentencing questions required by Texas law, finding that Cantu posed a continuing threat and that insufficient mitigating circumstances existed to warrant a life sentence, the trial judge imposed the death penalty on February 9, 1994.¹

During sentencing, state District Judge Bill Harmon allowed Jennifer Ertman’s father, Randy Ertman, to deliver what became the first victim impact statement permitted in a Texas courtroom. Ertman addressed Cantu directly, telling him, “You’re not even an animal.”⁶

Appeals and Execution

Cantu raised forty-five points of error on direct appeal. On January 29, 1997, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed his conviction and sentence, overruling every challenge.² The U.S. Supreme Court denied his first petition for certiorari on December 1, 1997.¹

His federal habeas petition, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas on September 19, 2007, was denied on February 4, 2009. The Fifth Circuit then denied a certificate of appealability on all five constitutional claims he raised, including challenges to the parole-eligibility instruction, the mitigation instructions, and two ineffective-assistance claims.⁷ The Supreme Court denied a second certiorari petition on April 19, 2010.¹

With his appeals exhausted, Cantu asked the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to commute his sentence to life imprisonment. On August 13, 2010, the board rejected the petition in a unanimous 7-0 vote.⁸

Cantu was executed by lethal injection on August 17, 2010, at the Walls Unit in Huntsville. When the warden asked at 6:09 p.m. whether he wished to make a final statement, Cantu replied, “No!” A witness described him as defiant, staring at the ceiling. He was pronounced dead at 6:17 p.m.⁹ His last meal consisted of enchiladas, fajitas, and a cinnamon bun.¹

What Happened to the Other Gang Members

Six people were convicted for the Ertman-Peña murders. Their fates diverged sharply, shaped by their ages at the time of the crime and by the 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roper v. Simmons, which barred the execution of offenders who were under 18 when they committed their crimes.

Derrick Sean O’Brien, 18 at the time, was sentenced to death and executed on July 11, 2006.¹⁰
Jose Medellin, 18 at the time, was sentenced to death and executed in August 2008 after a legal fight that reached the U.S. Supreme Court over his rights as a Mexican national under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.¹¹
Efrain Perez, 17 at the time, had his death sentence commuted to life after Roper. He is eligible for parole in 2029.¹²
Raul Omar Villarreal, 17 at the time, likewise had his death sentence commuted to life after Roper. He remains at the TDCJ Beto Unit with a parole eligibility date of September 20, 2029.¹³
Venancio Medellin, 14 at the time, was not eligible for the death penalty. He pleaded guilty to aggravated sexual assault and received a 40-year sentence after agreeing to testify against the others. He was denied parole in 2020 and underwent a second parole review in late 2025.¹⁴

The Families and Their Legacy in Texas Law

The Ertman and Peña families became central figures in the Texas victims’ rights movement. Randy Ertman’s 1994 courtroom statement at Cantu’s sentencing set a precedent, and Judge Harmon’s decision to allow it led to a change in Texas law permitting crime victims’ families to address convicted offenders directly in open court.⁶

Working with crime victims’ advocate Andy Kahan and the organization Justice for All, the families also successfully lobbied the Texas Board of Criminal Justice to grant victims’ families the right to witness the execution of the person convicted of killing their loved one. Both policies have since become standard practice in Texas.⁶

Randy Ertman died of lung cancer on August 18, 2014, at age 61, one day after the anniversary of Cantu’s execution.¹⁵ Before his death he asked Kahan to keep representing the families whenever any of the surviving defendants came up for parole, and Kahan has continued to do so. Elizabeth Peña’s father, Adolph Peña, has continued to speak out against release, telling reporters, “She can’t defend herself anymore. I’m the only one here who can do that.”¹⁴ A memorial marker for Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Peña stands at Waltrip High School in Houston.¹⁶

1
Clark County Prosecutor. Peter Anthony Cantu
2
Justia Law. Cantu v. State, 939 S.W.2d 627
3
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. O’Brien v. Dretke
4
CBS News. Peter Anthony Cantu Execution
5
KHOU / Click2Houston. The Evidence Room – Episode 18: The Devil in Them
6
Houston Chronicle. Randy Ertman, Father of Slain Teen, Has Died
7
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Cantu v. Quarterman
8
Beaumont Enterprise. Houston Gangster Denied Clemency for Rape Murder
9
ABC7. Peter Anthony Cantu Execution
10
Clark County Prosecutor. Derrick Sean O’Brien
11
Justia U.S. Supreme Court. Medellín v. Texas, 552 U.S. 491
12
ABC13. Victims Advocate Urges Parole Board to Deny Release
13
TDCJ. Inmate Detail – Raul Omar Villarreal
14
ABC13. Man Involved in 1993 Murders of Teenage Girls Denied Parole
15
Houston Chronicle. Father of Brutally Murdered Teen, Victims’ Rights Advocate
16
Houston Public Media. Execution Moratorium Called