A killer must die!

On May 16th, Sean O’Brien’s execution was stopped, pending an appeal that Texas’ use of lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment. Please read below the accounts of that night and tell me if you think lethal injection (which first numbs so that the killer feels no pain, then paralyzes, then stops the heart) is cruel and unusual.



Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena were 14 and 16 years old, respectively. They were friends who attended the same high school in Houston, Texas, Waltrip High School. On June 24, 1993, the girls spent the day together and then died together. They were last seen by friends about 11:15 at night, when they left a friend's apartment to head home, to beat summer curfew at 11:30. They knew they would be late if they took the normal path home, down W. 34th Street to T.C. Jester, both busy streets. They also knew they would have to pass a sexually-oriented business on that route and so decided to take a well-known shortcut down a railroad track and through a city park to Elizabeth's neighborhood.

The next morning, the girls parents began to frantically look for them, paging them on their pagers, calling their friends to see if they knew where they were, to no avail. The families filed missing persons reports with the Houston Police Department and continued to look for the girls on their own. The Ertmans and Penas gathered friends and neighbors to help them pass out a huge stack of fliers with the girls' pictures all over the Houston area, even giving them to newspaper vendors on the roadside. Four days after the girls disappeared, a person identifying himself as 'Gonzalez' called the Crimestoppers Tips number. He told the call taker that the missing girls' bodies could be found near T.C. Jester Park at White Oak bayou. The police were sent to the scene and searched the park without finding anything. The police helicopter was flying over the park and this apparently prompted Mr. 'Gonzalez' to make a 911 call, directing the search to move to the other side of the bayou. When the police followed this suggestion, they found the badly decaying bodies of Jenny and Elizabeth. Jennifer Ertman's dad, Randy Ertman, was about to give an interview regarding the missing girls to a local television reporter when the call came over a cameraman's police scanner that two bodies had been found. Randy commandeered the news van and went to the scene that was now bustling with police activity. Randy Ertman appeared on the local news that evening, screaming at the police officers who were struggling to hold him back, "Does she have blond hair?Does she have blond hair?!!?" Fortunately, they did manage to keep Randy from entering the woods and seeing his daughter's brutalized body and that of her friend Elizabeth.

The bodies were very badly decomposed, even for four days in Houston's brutal summer heat and humidity, particularly in the head, neck and genital areas. The medical examiner later testified that this is how she could be sure as to the horrible brutality of the rapes, beatings and murders. The break in solving the case came from, of course, the 911 call. It was traced to the home of the brother of one of the men later sentenced to death for these murders. When the police questioned 'Gonzalez', he said that he had made the original call at his 16 year-old wife's urging. She felt sorry for the families and wanted them to be able to put their daughters' bodies to rest. 'Gonzalez' said that his brother was one of the six people involved in killing the girls, and gave police the names of all but one, the new recruit, whom he did not know. His knowledge of the crimes came from the killers themselves, most of whom came to his home after the murders, bragging and swapping the jewelry they had stolen from the girls.

While Jenny and Elizabeth were living the last few hours of their lives, Peter Cantu, Efrain Perez, Derrick Sean O'Brien, Joe Medellin and Joe's 14 year old brother were initiating a new member, Raul Villareal, into their gang, known as the Black and Whites. Raul was an acquaintance of Efrain and was not known to the other gang members. They had spent the evening drinking beer and then "jumping in" Raul. This means that the new member was required to fight every member of the gang until he passed out and then he would be accepted as a member. Testimony showed that Raul lasted through three of the members before briefly losing consciousness. The gang continued drinking and 'shooting the breeze' for some time and then decided to leave. Two brothers who had been with them but testified that they were not in the gang left first and passed Jenny and Elizabeth, who were unknowingly walking towards their deaths. When Peter Cantu saw Jenny and Elizabeth, he thought it was a man and a woman and told the other gang members that he wanted to jump him and beat him up. He was frustrated that he had been the one who was unable to fight Raul. The gang members ran and grabbed Elizabeth and pulled her down the incline, off of the tracks. Testimony showed that Jenny had gotten free and could have run away but returned to Elizabeth when she cried out for Jenny to help her. For the next hour or so, these beautiful, innocent young girls were subjected to the most brutal gang rapes that most of the investigating officers had ever encountered.

The confessions of the gang members that were used at trial indicated that there was never less than 2 men on each of the girls at any one time and that the girls were repeatedly raped orally, anally and vaginally for the entire hour. One of the gang members later said during the brag session that by the time he got to one of the girls, "she was loose and sloppy." One of the boys boasted of having 'virgin blood' on him. The 14-year-old juvenile later testified that he had gone back and forth between his brother and Peter Cantu since they were the only ones there that he really knew and kept urging them to leave. He said he was told repeatedly by Peter Cantu to "get some". He raped Jennifer and was later sentenced to 40 years for aggravated sexual assault, which was the maximum sentence for a juvenile.

When the rapes finally ended, the horror was not over. The gang members took Jenny and Elizabeth from the clearing into a wooded area, leaving the juvenile behind, saying he was "too little to watch". Jenny was strangled with the belt of Sean O'Brien, with two murderers pulling, one on each side, until the belt broke. Part of the belt was left at the murder scene, the rest was found in O'Brien's home. After the belt broke, the killers used her own shoelaces to finish their job. Medellin later complained that "the bitch wouldn't die" and that it would have been "easier with a gun". Elizabeth was also strangled with her shoelaces, after crying and begging the gang members not to kill them; bargaining, offering to give them her phone number so they could get together again. The medical examiner testified that Elizabeth's two front teeth were knocked out of her brutalized mouth before she died and that two of Jennifer's ribs were broken after she had died. Testimony showed that the girls' bodies were kicked and their necks were stomped on after the strangulations in order to "make sure that they were really dead." The juvenile, Venancio Medellin, pled guilty to his charge and his sentence was reviewed when he turned 18, at which time he was sent to serve the remainder of the sentence in prison. The five killers were tried for capital murder in Harris County, Texas, convicted and sentenced to death.

Where is the service?

Customer service is dead. The referee has counted to 10 and the bell had rung. The upper cut of our “all about me” society has landed squarely on the chin of customer service. I have no idea what happened - but very few people seem inclined to offer more than a “thanks for shopping” motto that they try and pass off as “going the extra mile for the customer”. To make a long story short - I will no longer be shopping at Home Depot and I would recommend to anyone considering having them install wood floors – don’t do it!

Ok, just when I thought the world was made up of people and businesses who didn’t give a darn about me I go off and eat at Hard Eight in Stephenville and buy some furniture at Rooms to Go in Grapevine. If you are looking for some of the best BBQ in Texas or if you want to be treated like you are the only customer in world interested in furniture then you should drive down to Stephenville for lunch and drive up to Grapevine for furniture. Both places no how to offer a good product and great service.

But back to Home Depot for a second...I realize most of my problems revolve around the wood floor installers who do not officially work for Home Depot, but are contracted. That doesn’t matter – I purchased the floors at Home Depot (to the tune of $7,500), I paid with my Home Depot card and when there is a problem (or series of problems) I expect Home Depot to take care of things. I certainly don’t expect to have to leave 10 voicemails before anyone will return my call – or have a customer service person tell me they are handling everything and will have a solution by 4pm on Friday – just to find out said employee left for the weekend without even calling me! Did I mention that I’m finished with them?

May Day Madness

Here is what makes no sense to me. Leaving work yesterday around 6 in downtown Dallas, I can hear the loudspeakers from the illegal immigration rally blaring Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to an American” song, the one played around July 4th every year. I’m thinking to myself, “Ok, well maybe they are starting to get this idea of being an American. Maybe there is hope that they will see the importance of learning the English language and assimilating – which doesn’t mean forgetting your own culture – and maybe we can find a good solution to this issue – one that protects our borders and ensures that legal immigration is sufficient to support the demand for their labor”. But then, I get in my car, turn on the radio and hear sound bites from rallies all across the nation yesterday and I hear stuff like, “…if anyone needs deporting it is the white man in Los Angeles”, and “this is our land…it was stolen…and we are going to take it back…”. I even heard one clip of someone calling for an “Intifada”! Just what we need, angry white-hating Mexicans joining forces with Islamo-fascists’.

So now I am both mad (at the violent threats being thrown my way by La Raza and the like) and confused. Are they really “proud to be an American” or do they despise us for demanding that they follow our immigration laws? Why do Mexicans feel they are so much more important than the Indian, Chinese or Irish person (the Irish, by the way, have extremely long wait times to legal citizenship) who has been waiting in the immigration line for 2 years or more? They tell me that this was their land in the first place and they have a “right’ to skip ahead. Uh, I think the Apache, and other native tribes may have something to say about that. Not only did the United States “win” Texas in a war (more than one), but we also PAID for it! I got news for you, this land wasn’t stolen!

And another thing – where do you get off calling me a gringo in my country? Gringo means foreigner, typically a derogatory term for Americans in Mexico. I will give these racist hate mongers a few more weeks to slither back in to obscurity, but if by June or so, they are still calling for my death and deportation, well, its about time I take that concealed handgun class and make sure my family is safe from their anti-white, anti-American hatred. And to think, previously my worst fear was being the victim of Osama Bin Laden’s next terrorist attack, when all along, it was Jesse Diaz of LULAC that I needed to fear – fear he might put me on a boat and “deport me back to England”. As if my ancestors even came from England! Ignorance is bliss.