Cantu executed for 1993 deaths of Houston teensGlad to know, like his victims, he died alone.
HUNTSVILLE – The legal saga that began several days after the horrifying murder of two teenage Houston girls in 1993 came to an end Tuesday night with the execution of Peter Anthony Cantu, a former gang leader who all but ordered the execution of Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena.
Cantu did not make a final statement. He was pronounced dead at 6:17 p.m. ...he had no personal witnesses attending the execution.
Cantu’s execution was the third connected with the case. Two of the six assailants had their death sentences commuted to life in prison when the U.S. Supreme Court barred capital punishment for those who commit crimes under the age of 18. A 14-year-old attacker was given a 40-year sentence.
...Cantu was described as the leader of small gang known as the Black and Whites. On June 24, 1993, the group was conducting a fight-filled initiation ceremony for a prospective member across from T.C. Jester Park when Ertman, 14, and Pena, 16, crossed their paths while taking a shortcut home. The girls were hurrying along railroad tracks in the dark in order to get home by their curfew. They were spotted by the group, pulled off the tracks and taken into nearby woods where they were sexually assaulted. When the attackers were finished, the girls were taken deeper into the woods where, at Cantu’s urging, they were beaten, strangled and stomped to death.
The bodies were found six days later after Cantu’s brother, using an alias, phoned police. Joe Cantu had watched the group divide the girls’ small amount of cash and meager possessions and listened to them laugh and brag about the assaults. ...
The attackers confessed and at times seemed indifferent to the charges against them. Cantu showed little emotion at his conviction and death sentence and had no reaction when Randy Ertman, Jennifer’s father, was allowed to make a victim impact statement at the end of the trial. When Cantu looked away, Ertman yelled at him, "Look at me … look at me good!"
...Cantu was the 16th person to be put to death by the state of Texas this year. Two other inmates have 2010 execution dates.
The Ertman and Pena killings led to five death sentences, at the time the most of any crime in modern American history. Cantu and Derrick O’Brien were tried before their fellow gang members. The trials of Efrain Perez, Raul Villarreal and Jose Medellin were held simultaneously, with common witnesses shuttling from one courtroom to the other. The 14-year-old, Venancio Medellin, was handled in juvenile court and given the maximum sentence, split between juvenile and adult prison facilities...
O’Brien was executed in 2006 and Medellin in 2008. Both expressed regret for their role in the killings. Perez and Villarreal will not be eligible for parole consideration for more than two decades....
Good riddance to bad garbage. My only regrets is it took so long and it was so nicely done. A more appropriate method would be hanging. I hope for your sake you made your peace...you won't play a game with your next judge.
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