Advocate for victims helped alter state law
Randy Ertman, a house painter who became a blunt-spoken, combative advocate for crime victims’ rights after his daughter and another teen were raped and murdered in a northwest Houston park, died Monday of lung cancer.
In the early 1990s, Ertman became a familiar figure to Houstonians as he appeared in news photos confronting relatives of his daughter’s killers, who had suggested the victims’ families bore some responsibility for the girls’ deaths. Ertman’s advocacy led to changes in state law, allowing crime victims’ families to direct comments to convicted offenders in the courtroom and permitting relatives of homicide victims to witness executions.
“He was bigger than life,” Houston pro-death penalty blogger Dudley Sharp said. “He had a big
heart. No one will ever forget him.”
Added city crime victims’ advocate Andy Kahan, “This is a tremendous loss to all of us. Randy was a stalwart beacon for victims’ rights … He turned a tragedy into a positive action.”
Ertman was catapulted into his advocacy role by the June 24, 1993, murders of his 14-yearold daughter, Jennifer, and her 16-year-old friend, Elizabeth Peña. The teens were killed in T.C. Jester Park after they blundered into a nighttime gang initiation rite as they made their way home from a nearby party.
Six gang members were convicted in the crime — an episode so horrendous that it deeply shocked a city that routinely shrugged off acts of violence.
Three of the killers — Derrick O’Brien, 31; Jose Medellín, 33; and Peter Cantu, 35 — have been executed. Two others are serving life sentences; a sixth was given a 40-year sentence.
Ertman, 61, died one day after the anniversary of Cantu’s 2010 execution.
‘Randy was Randy’
Ertman and his wife, Sandy, were unabashedly frank in their calls for vengeance in the murder of their only child.
When the scheduled 2008 execution of Medellin, a Mexican national, brought Texas into conflict with the United Nations and U.S. State Department officials over apparent Vienna Convention violations, Ertman snarled, “It’s just a last-ditch effort to keep the scumbag breathing. He never should have been breath- ing in the first place. I don’t care. I really don’t care what anyone thinks about this except Texas. I love Texas. Texas is in my blood.”
“Randy was Randy, what can you say?” said Melissa Peña, Elizabeth Peña’s mother. “Unless you are parents and have been through this, you don’t understand the turmoil and the pain and the anger. It never has ended. We’ve been through the executions, and we still have to fight to keep the last three from being paroled. It’s a continuing battle. It made us all angry people for quite a long time.”
Ertman admitted that he sought refuge from his emotional pain in alcohol. He later abandoned drink, and, to distance himself from the tragedy, moved to a Somerville lake home where he and his wife fished and gardened.
Kahan, who remained close to the family, said Ertman gained a degree of peace as his life approached its end.
“I think he finally came to terms with everything when he knew he was dying,” Kahan said. “He discussed forgiveness, but he also made clear to me that he wanted justice.”
Kahan said Ertman authorized him to act in his place to work to keep the remaining three killers from being paroled.
The death sentences of gang members Raul Villarreal and Efrain Perez were commuted to life sentences; both will be considered for parole in 2028. Venacio Medellín, serving a 40year sentence, will be eligible for parole consideration next year. “Randy asked me to continue to carry the torch,” Kahan said.
Savage slayings
The attack on the Ertman and Peña girls was shocking in its brutality.
The fatal events were set in motion as the teens, attending a party not far from their homes, decided to take a shortcut through the park in order to get home before their parent-mandated midnight curfew. As they followed a railroad track through the park, they were intercepted by gang members. The sexual assault, lasting an hour, ended when gang leader Cantu flatly advised his accomplices: “We’re going to have to kill them.”
Two of the assailants forced Jennifer Ertman to her knees and wrapped a belt around her neck. The belt was tightened with such force that it broke. Elizabeth Peña also was strangled. Then the killers stomped on their throats to make sure they were dead.
The girls’ bodies were found four days later.
Now-retired Houston police homicide investigator Ramon Zaragoza said decomposition obliterated the victims’ facial features. As officers worked the crime scene, an agitated Ertman demanded to be allowed to view the bodies.
“I went to try to inform him that he couldn’t,” Zaragoza said Tuesday. “He was really upset, and he had his back to me. I tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around, and I thought he was getting ready to punch me. I calmed him down. I told him we needed the dental records. That kind of gave him an idea.”
Later, as trials took place, Zaragoza again was called to calm the distraught Ertman after members of the Cantu family remarked that the victims’ families bore a degree of blame for the deaths.
A photograph of the officer standing between the quarelling parties appeared in Houston newspapers.
‘Anguish … beyond words’
At another time during the trials, Ertman angrily confronted death penalty opponent David Atwood as Atwood stood outside the courthouse with a member of a killer’s family.
Atwood said he understood Ertman’s anger.
“The anguish and pain of losing a child is beyond words, beyond comprehension for most people,” Atwood said. “I know he was extremely angry at what happened. That’s a very natural reaction of any parent. He wanted the death penalty for the killers. I think that’s very understandable. I understand his anger toward me for not wanting those boys executed, and I’ve never had any animosity toward him. It was a horrific crime.”
In the days before his death, Ertman reached out to family and friends. He even called Zaragoza. “He told me he had cancer and would be dying,” Zaragoza said, his voice choking with emotion. “He just wanted to thank me for everything I did.”