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  Boys capable of murder . . .

  “We gotta kill ’em. They know what we look like,” Peter Cantu repeated. It seemed as important to him as cleaning the cat box. Just something that had to be done, no matter how unpleasant it may get. Cantu turned away from Yuni and grabbed Elizabeth Pena. Joe Medellin and Efrain Perez walked up to Cantu and the bedraggled Elizabeth. Cantu grabbed her by the arms while the other boys grabbed her long legs. She barely struggled.

  The three boys ambled down the not-so-steep hill and headed toward the nearby woods just north of the bayou. A footpath had been beaten down toward a large copse of towering pine trees. They looked like a bunch of delivery men schlepping a large dog-food-sized bag filled with wet cotton. Elizabeth’s body put up minimal resistance. She just undulated in an awkward motion as they carried her to the woods.

  Just ahead of the foursome were Derrick Sean O’Brien, Raul Villarreal, and Jennifer Ertman. They were leading the teenager on foot past the bald spot in the dirt where Villarreal’s initiation had taken place almost an hour earlier, past the open forty-ounce bottle of Schlitz Malt Liquor Bull that one of the boys had dropped during the scuffle. Jennifer, unlike Elizabeth, struggled. She resisted O’Brien and Villarreal, who were much larger, stronger, and faster, but it was to no avail. They forcefully pushed her into the copse.

  Other books by Corey Mitchell

  Strangler

  Evil Eyes

  Murdered Innocents

  Dead and Buried

  PURE MURDER

  COREY MITCHELL

  PINNACLE BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Boys capable of murder . . .

  Also by

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  PART I - PURE HELL

  JENNIFER ERTMAN - Chapter 1

  ELIZABETH PENA - Chapter 2

  RAUL VILLARREAL - Chapter 3

  EFRAIN PEREZ JR. - Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  PETER CANTU - Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  JOSE “JOE” ERNESTO MEDELLIN - Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  DERRICK SEAN O’BRIEN - Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  PART II

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  In Memoriam

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright Page

  For Kyle and Darrin Mitchell

  You know what they say about brothers . . .

  Prologue

  Monday, June 28, 1993—5:00 P.M.

  T. C. Jester Park

  T. C. Jester Boulevard

  Houston, Texas

  “Where are the kids at?” the large man, with shoulder-length blond hair, asked the Texas state trooper as he walked along the side of the railroad tracks.

  “Sir, you can’t go over there,” the trooper informed the man, who had already bounded over the side down a steep gravel incline.

  “I came for my daughter, goddamn it!” the man screamed, barely glancing back over his shoulder as he quickly scooted toward the trodden circle in the grass where several Houston police officers had gathered. “No, man. Fuck you!” he screamed. The trooper slowly took off after the man, but he did not press the issue.

  The large man picked up his pace as he darted toward the cluster of officers. “Does she have blond hair?” the livid father screamed at the top of his lungs. The sound carried through T. C. Jester Park like the crack of a shotgun blast.

  “Is she blond? Is one of them blond?”

  Randy Ertman had been looking for his fourteen-year-old daughter, Jennifer, since the previous Friday. Jennifer had gone with her best friend, sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Pena, and other friends to an apartment located on the northwest side of Houston.

  Two officers stepped forward to cut Ertman off. One officer placed his hand up to prevent the angry man from advancing. The other officer told him he could not go any farther.

  “I want to know if that’s my daughter, goddamn it!” he screamed at the police officers.

  “Sir, I’m sorry, but you cannot go any farther,” one of the officers informed him again. “This is a crime scene and you cannot be here.”

  “I want to know if that’s my goddamned daughter in there!” he screamed again, but to no avail. The officers were not budging. They would not let him through.

  Ertman stared over the shoulder of one of the officers into the gaping maw of the nearby green forest. Towering pine trees hovered over the enclosed area, where even more police officers were located.

  Word had leaked out that the bodies of two teenage girls were discovered in that enclosed space. Randy Ertman believed his daughter, Jennifer Ertman, may have been one of the two girls.

  Randy Ertman had exerted a lot of effort to find his daughter over the prior four days. He contacted all of Jennifer’s friends to see if they had any clue where she might be. He printed up thousands of flyers and posted them from Galveston to Cypress-Fairbanks. He attended an anti–death penalty rally for convicted killer Gary Graham in hopes of getting the media’s attention to focus on his little girl.

  When the call came in that there were two bodies found in the brush near the end of the tree line of T. C. Jester Park, Randy was speaking with newspaper and television reporters at his home in the Heights. He overheard the call on one of the reporters’ walkie-talkies. The semihysterical father looked at a cameraman from the local ABC-affiliate channel 13 news division, grabbed his news van keys, and shouted out, “C’mon! Let’s go.” Randy jumped into the van and made the cameraman drive. They tore out of there like a scorpion shuttling over scorching asphalt.

  The news van pulled up to the scene, skidded to a halt in the asphalt, and Randy leapt out of the passenger door. He noticed a large crowd of onlookers had gathered behind the invisible barrier. He was disgusted by the people. They reminded him of hungry, circling vultures eyeing rotted carrion on a deserted highway.

  Randy ran from the van, jumped over the police barrier, and made a mad dash for the cluster of police officers.

  “Is it my daughter?” he screamed. “Is my daughter back there?” he yelled as he advanced forward.

  Sean O’Brien, an eighteen-year-old African-American male, watched the insanity unfold. He saw the van pull up to the scene and witnessed the hysterical father jump out and practically tackle one of the police officers. When O’Brien heard the man ask if one of the victims was blond, he realized it had to be one of the girls’ fathers.

  O’Brien sheepishly grinned. He slowly turned around and walked away.

  PART I

  PURE HELL


  JENNIFER ERTMAN

  Chapter 1

  Jennifer Ertman was born on August 15, 1978, to Sandra and Randy Ertman. The Ertmans were ecstatic at the birth of their child because they were not sure if they would ever be able to conceive, since Sandra was on the wrong side of thirty-five.

  Baby Jennifer was the Ertmans’ own personal little miracle.

  Sandra described her only child as “real sensitive, modest, funny.” To her mother, Jennifer was “more child than teenager.” She still seemed to act more like a young girl than a budding teenager. “She liked to play. She had a baseball card collection.” Her father also said she developed a good sense of humor at an early age and that she had “the best laugh.”

  Her mother spoke about how Jennifer tended to act younger with the kids in her neighborhood than with her friends at school. “She would ride her go-kart or bicycle down the street. She used to pull her wagons down the street with Ishmael, a boy down the block that she grew up with, and his family.”

  As Jennifer got older, she kept her more childlike side out of view from her high-school friends. “When she went to school, she didn’t let her friends know that she did that at home. She tried to act more like a teenager.”

  The Ertmans added that she was always a good kid. “We were firm with her when she was growing up,” Randy recalled. “We taught her to never lie, cheat, or steal, and to treat everyone with respect.” Randy added, “As long as she never lied to me, I didn’t have to worry. She never lied to me, so I never had to worry.”

  The couple refrained from spanking her. Randy recalled yelling at her only three times in her entire life. He felt he never really had to raise his voice to her. “We only had one child and we spoiled her, but she had rules and she had to live by them.”

  Jennifer was always a very modest girl. She loved to swim; however, she was not thrilled about displaying her body in front of others. Her mother remembered, “In the summertime when she went swimming, I bought her big, baggy cover-ups to put on over her bathing suit when she got out of the swimming pool.” Jennifer loved to swim, but she did not like to prance around in front of the other poolgoers. Her mother said she would even wear the cover-ups in the swimming pool.

  Jennifer also wore long, baggy denim shorts that came down to her knees whenever she lay out by the swimming pool. She stayed away from short shorts. She also never wore a sleeveless shirt. “She dressed for comfort,” her mother declared, “and she dressed baggy because she didn’t like anything tight.”

  Jennifer was also not too big on boyfriends. “She had friends that were boys,” her mother clarified, “but she did not have any boyfriends.” Jennifer still seemed to retain some of her younger-child mentality when it came to boys and girls. “She didn’t like boys to touch her at all.”

  Jennifer was proud to be a virgin. Indeed, it was her intention not to surrender her virtue until she met the right man and married him. Her virginity was her badge of honor and something she was determined to keep until the moment was perfect.

  Sandra had noticed certain changes in her daughter in the previous months. To her, it seemed as if Jennifer were slowly breaking out of her little-girl phase and beginning to grow into being a teenager.

  Jennifer used to wear barrettes in her hair all the time; however, she had begun taking them out so she could mimic the hairstyles worn by some of the actresses on the popular nighttime soap opera Beverly Hills, 90210. It’s what all the girls at Waltrip High School were doing and she had decided it was time to fit in.

  Jennifer also began to wear more jewelry. She had her ears double-pierced, and on top of one ear she had tiny diamond studs. She wore tiny dime-sized hoop earrings on the bottom. She also wore two long gold rope chains, one with the letter J on the end. The young girl also wore a total of eight rings on her fingers, including two J rings and one E ring.

  Jennifer also began to put on makeup, even though her parents assured her she was beautiful without it.

  Despite her newer leanings toward more mature decorations, Jennifer also wore a Walt Disney Goofy watch, which was a gift from her parents from the previous Christmas.

  She was not entirely ready to give up her childhood.

  There was another overt sign that the Ertmans’ baby daughter was growing up. When she turned thirteen, she asked her parents for her own set of house keys. It was not for sneaky ulterior motives. The Ertmans had two doors in the back of their home. One was the regular door and the other was a door made of metal burglar bars, which were necessary because they lived on a nice street in one of the lower-quality areas of the Heights.

  Jennifer wisely said, “Mom, can I have my own keys so I don’t have to keep bothering you?” Sandra believed her daughter had proven she was responsible enough, so she had an extra set of keys made for her.

  The Ertmans also purchased a unique gift for their daughter that showed she was quickly growing up: a pager.

  Jennifer received a Southwestern Bell pager for Christmas in 1992. Sandra was reluctant to give it to her at first. During the ’90s, pagers had a stereotypical connotation as a tool for drug dealers. Jennifer insisted she wanted one because it was a way to keep in touch with her friends. This was before the mass proliferation of cell phones. Sandra and Randy discussed the issue with Jennifer, and the couple decided that because Jennifer was now attending Waltrip High School, she would not be in the Heights area, where they lived, as much. The family agreed it would be a smart purchase, so they bought her one. Sandra actually felt better about it because now she knew she could get in touch with her daughter much quicker in the event of an emergency.

  Thursday, June 24, 1993—4:00 P.M.

  Ertman residence

  East Twenty-fifth Street

  Houston, Texas

  Sandra walked into her daughter’s bedroom. Jennifer was getting ready to visit her best friend, Elizabeth Pena. Sandra glanced at her daughter, who was standing next to a mirror, brushing her hair. She was amazed at how much her daughter had grown, and she was proud of what a wonderful person she was turning out to be. Jennifer made straight A’s in school, had nice friends, never got into trouble, and loved her parents.

  “Dad’s taking you over to Elizabeth’s,” Sandra informed her daughter. It was usually her mother who drove Jennifer everywhere. “I’m going to go over to Apple Tree to pick up some groceries.”

  “Okay, Mom,” Jennifer acknowledged while continuing to brush her hair.

  “I love you, honey.” Sandra walked toward her daughter. “I’ll talk to you later.” The mother leaned over and gave her daughter a peck on the cheek.

  “I love you, too, Mom.” Jennifer smiled as her mom exited her bedroom.

  Sandra felt safe about letting her daughter go out for the night with friends. Jennifer had her pager and also cash in her purse. Her mother always left $35 on Jennifer’s dresser every Thursday for allowance. Jennifer also received the same amount on Sundays and she always kept a $10 bill in her pants pocket in case of emergency or if she needed to call a taxicab. Sandra made sure her daughter knew that if she ever needed a ride home, all she had to do was get to a pay phone and call her parents. They would come get her—no matter the situation.

  Sandra left her home feeling upbeat. She knew her daughter was a good girl and knew how to stay out of trouble. Randy marveled at how close the two ladies in his life were. He watched as Sandy and Jenny communicated more “I love you’s” without verbalizing them. They shared a unique and special bond that only a mother and daughter could experience.

  Jennifer and her dad left fifteen minutes later.

  Randy dropped Jennifer off at Elizabeth Pena’s house on Lamonte Lane, approximately four-and-a-half miles away from their home. Jennifer did not lean over to give her father a kiss good-bye. She had recently gotten out of the habit due to embarrassment, being a teenager and all.

  “Be home by midnight,” her father reminded her.

  “I will, Dad. I love you.” Jennifer said good-bye.
r />   “I love you, too, honey,” Randy responded as he drove off. The self-described overprotective father did not like to leave his daughter on her own; however, he knew she was growing up.

  ELIZABETH PENA

  Chapter 2

  Elizabeth Christine Pena was born on June 21, 1977, at Memorial Hermann Northwest Hospital, in Houston, Texas, to her parents, Melissa and Adolpho “Adolph” Pena. Melissa was eighteen years old at the time and Adolph was twenty-one.

  Melissa’s water broke the night before and Adolph rushed her to the hospital. At 2:00 A.M., after several hours of waiting, the nurses informed Adolph he could go home and get some sleep. Sure enough, less than two hours later, he received a call that his first child had been born with no complications.

  “That was one of the most precious times of my life,” Adolph recalled. “That firstborn child. There’s nothing like the first one.” He described his immediate attachment to his daughter as “pretty special.”

  Adolph and Melissa used a baby-name book to select “Elizabeth.” They were an ecstatic young couple looking forward to sharing their lives and love with their baby daughter.

  The Penas had met just over two years before. Adolph, whose parents and grandparents grew up in San Antonio, Texas, moved to Houston with his parents in 1975 after his dad received a better job offer. He was the only child left in the house and the three of them packed up and moved southeast to Houston.

  Soon thereafter, Adolph went to a Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young concert at Jeppesen Stadium, the former home of the Houston Oilers football team and also the University of Houston Cougar college football team. There he met an attractive white girl named Melissa Moore. The two hit it off as friends and promised to get together after the concert. One thing eventually led to another and they found themselves in love, married, and with child.