Pure Murder

by Corey Mitchell

  The intense crowds made traveling to and from each courtroom physically difficult for the families; however, it all went off without a hitch.

  Inside Judge Cosper’s courtroom, Joe Medellin looked pensive and stoic. He was dressed in black slacks and a dark blue sweater pulled over his long-sleeved white oxford. He rarely looked back into the gallery. He knew he would not have anyone there to support him, and it appeared as if he had no interest in making eye contact with Randy Ertman or Adolph Pena. Instead, he looked forward at the judge and fiddled with a yellow legal pad.

  Though it was expected the vast majority of witnesses who testified in the Cantu and O’Brien trials would be testifying in the three remaining defendants’ trials, there were a few new twists on the horizon.

  The first involved Joe Cantu’s testimony against Efrain Perez. First, Cantu testified when Perez and the rest of the boys came over to his house on the night of the murders, he witnessed their disheveled appearance and knew something bad had gone down. Cantu asked Perez, “Who’d y’all kill now?”

  The implication was they were involved in a previous killing that Joe Cantu was allegedly aware of, and they were capable of participating in similar behavior again.

  Joe Cantu also testified that he witnessed Perez shooting Gary Ford so he could steal his leather Raiders jacket.

  Perez became visibly upset as he listened to Joe Cantu’s testimony. He kept his head bowed down and actually began to cry.

  In the courthouse hallway during a break from Perez’s trial, Andy Kahan spoke with the press about Joe Cantu’s surprise testimony.

  “This was really a twist right here,” Kahan stated on behalf of the families. “We are all stunned. The family members never heard this from previous testimony from Mr. Cantu. This certainly was a revelation.” Kahan added, “This shows that this was not onetime behavior.”

  Testimony continued in both courtrooms as coordinators Joseph DeBruyn and Joan Taliaferro worked beyond the call of duty, shuffling witnesses back and forth between the two courtrooms. The testimony inside was as grim as it was in the Cantu and O’Brien trials; however, the families of the girls were becoming slightly more numb to the descriptions of what had happened to their daughters. Not that the testimony wasn’t heartbreaking, they just understood they had to keep it together to make it through three simultaneous trials. Dwelling on the details of their daughters’ deaths yet again was going to make it near impossible.

  “It’s really a Catch-22 for them,” Kahan declared, “because this is the last chapter of their daughters’ lives that will be visible to them.”

  Despite all the medication and the self-perpetuated wall of numbness, Adolph Pena was not completely invulnerable. When he listened to one of the police officers describe how Perez smiled at him while confessing to Elizabeth’s murder, Adolph excused himself from the courtroom and stepped out into the hallway.

  Adolph walked down the hall, until he came to rest against a nearby wall. His arm raised up against the wall, he buried his head in the crook of his arm and began to sob. His weeping was controlled at first, but it became more violent. Suddenly his sister-in-law Patti Zapalac came up to him and placed a reassuring hand on his back. The sobbing lessened and Adolph regained his composure. Eventually Adolph made it back into the courtroom.

  He was glad he did, because he got to see Yuni Medellin, Joe Medellin’s brother, testify against Perez. Yuni wore the prototypical slacker grunge outfit that was worn by several Seattle-based rock groups such as the Melvins, Screaming Trees, and Nirvana. It was a long-sleeved blue flannel shirt over a white T-shirt.

  As in the previous trials, Yuni Medellin was flanked to his left by his own attorney, Esmerelda Pena-Garcia. The short, hefty Hispanic woman, with dark unkempt hair, wore a lime green dress and sat next to her client. She was prepared to represent his best interests.

  Yuni Medellin had no problem going over the details of the rapes and murders of the girls and of his and Perez’s participation in the tragic events.

  He would, however, have a problem telling the same story in the 339th District courtroom. Yuni Medellin had no intention of ratting out his brother, Joe—despite a threat of contempt of court from Judge Caprice Cosper. The prosecution went through their entire list of questions for Yuni, but he pleaded the Fifth with every single one. The judge warned him there would be severe consequences in regard to his own sentence if he refused to answer the district attorney’s questions, but he held true to his word. Despite the fact that Yuni Medellin had no Fifth Amendment privilege to invoke, he refused to speak.

  Prosecutor Mark Vinson was not pleased with the developments in the courtroom. Vinson had made an earlier agreement with Yuni Medellin that Yuni would testify in court—as long as the prosecution did not ask him any questions in regard to his brother.

  Yuni Medellin reneged on his promise.

  “Do you understand that if you continue to not answer my questions,” Vinson asked, “I’m going to ask the judge to hold you in contempt and that may result in a citation or a sentence of up to six months and a fine not to exceed five hundred dollars? And that I will also request that [your refusal] be considered by the juvenile court in determining whether or not you shall have to fulfill the forty-year determinate sentence that has been assessed in your case?”

  “I understand, sir,” Yuni Medellin responded.

  “So you realize you’re playing with your future life?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Vinson continued to ask the youth more questions, but he refused to answer.

  “I would ask the court to require him to answer those questions,” Vinson asked Judge Cosper.

  “Mr. Medellin,” Cosper addressed the young boy, “the court is specifically ordering you to answer the questions posed to you by Mr. Vinson.”

  “With respect, Your Honor,” Yuni addressed the judge, “I refuse to answer the questions.”

  “Do you understand the possible consequences of failing and refusal to answer Mr. Vinson’s questions, now that I have ordered you to?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Vinson asked the judge to rule that Yuni Medellin violated a direct court order by his refusal to answer any questions and that he should be found in contempt.

  Yuni’s attorney, Pena-Garcia, claimed her client struck a deal with another district attorney that in exchange for testifying before the grand jury against the other four defendants, he would not have to testify against his brother.

  “Not only did we not make such a deal,” countered Vinson, “the record of his testimony before the grand jury reflects he did testify before that body against this defendant, Joe Medellin.”

  “The court has heard nothing that speaks to an agreement,” Judge Cosper ruled, “concerning not testifying in the criminal courts against [his brother]. As a result, the court finds that you, Venancio Medellin, are guilty of misbehavior in the immediate view and presence of this court.”

  The judge fined Yuni Medellin $500 and added six months’ jail time to his sentence as punishment.

  After Yuni Medellin’s testimony, Pena-Garcia spoke about her client’s refusal to testify against his own brother. “They can’t force words out of anyone’s mouth, but the judge can say you have no Fifth Amendment right,” Pena-Garcia explained. The judge could hold Pena-Garcia’s client in contempt, but “What is contempt when you are already serving forty years in TYC?”

  After the first day of testimony ended, Andy Kahan again spoke on behalf of the families. He let the press know that the courtroom-hopping was difficult for the families, “and it’s hard for them not to be with each other” through each trial.

  Kahan also alluded to the earlier complaint about the number of death row cases being tried in Harris County at the same time. After hearing the medical examiner describe how Elizabeth Pena’s head was almost decapitated, Kahan declared, “They committed offenses that are worthy of death penalty punishment.”

  Tuesday, September 13, 1994—9:00 A.M.


  Harris County Courthouse Annex—courtroom 5

  262nd District Court

  Preston Street

  Houston, Texas

  The following morning, Raul Villarreal was brought into the courtroom of Judge Doug Shaver. It was similar in its makeup to Judge Guerrero’s courtroom, where Efrain Perez was being tried. The main difference was that the defense team for Villarreal had their table set up parallel to the gallery and placed directly in front of Judge Shaver’s perch, and the jury was located on the opposite side of the defense table and to the judge’s left.

  Villarreal came into the room looking extremely well-kempt. His previous long-haired mullet was gone. The hair on the sides of his temples was shorn and stylishly long on the top of his head. He was dressed in a blue suit with a white oxford and blue tie. He sat down at the far end of the defense table in the direct line of sight of the jury.

  All three trials were now running simultaneously. The courtroom coordinators had one day under their belts and felt more confident about the logistics—despite having the additional trial to contend with. The families were all evenly dispersed throughout the various courtrooms. Each courtroom was packed with spectators, and the victims’ rights advocates were there to shield the victims’ families and to handle the press.

  Most of the trial witnesses who passed through the doors of the Medellin and Perez trials from the previous day were now testifying in the Villarreal case. As with the other two defendants, the prosecution read Villarreal’s confession, which attempted to exonerate himself.

  After the day’s testimony ended, Andy Kahan spoke about the defendants’ confessions. He said they were “textbook-style confessions where they absolve themselves and claim they were just hanging around and not doing anything. All of the others were the ones who were sexually assaulting and murdering the girls.” Kahan sneered as he added, “Then you go into the other trials and you hear the reverse from the other defendants.”

  Thankfully, the trials ran smoothly and there were no major disruptions in any of the courtrooms or inside the courthouse.

  That was about to change.

  After only a few days of testimony in each trial, everyone was just about ready to wrap up their cases. Attorneys in the Perez and Villarreal courtrooms were prepared to give closing arguments, while the Medellin trial looked as if it would probably go on for one more day.

  In Judge Shaver’s courtroom, an unwelcome guest made his way inside. Jimmy Dunne, an advocate from the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, was somehow allowed into the courtroom with a box of flyers promoting an anti–death penalty rally the following day. When word got out that Dunne was passing around flyers to members of the gallery, he was quietly escorted from Judge Shaver’s courtroom.

  Once out in the hallway, the local television crews pounced on Dunne to find out what he was up to. “We don’t believe the state should be trying to execute boys that commit their crimes under the age of eighteen, for one thing,” Dunne declared. “This is like an assembly-line death machine down here.”

  Andy Kahan got wind of Dunne’s misplaced civil disobedience. “I am just incensed that they would have the chutzpah to do something like that,” Kahan castigated Dunne and the two or three supporters he had in tow. “It is just unbelievable that they can come up here and do that and cause these families more pain and misery. This is the wrong place for him to be picking his fights for this type of issue.”

  Kahan returned to the courtroom to hear closing arguments. The judge sent the jury members off to deliberate the fate of Raul Villarreal. In Judge Guerrero’s courtroom, he did the same thing with the jury members for Efrain Perez.

  Less than three hours later, the jury members for the Villarreal case returned with a verdict. Even though Villarreal’s trial was the last of the final three to start, it was the first one completed. Just like with Sean O’Brien and Peter Cantu, the jury wasted little time in reaching a guilty verdict. Villarreal showed absolutely no emotion as the verdict was read.

  One hour later, the jury returned on behalf of the trial for Efrain Perez. The end result was the same: guilty.

  Unlike Villarreal, Perez openly sobbed in court at the reading of the verdict. He bowed his head down in his hand and laid it on the defense table. The tears flowed down his face and he had one lone droplet trickle to the end of his nose, and the tear hung there the entire time.

  Adolph was rather disgusted by the display of tears from Perez.

  “That damn Perez. He was always wanting to cry. I said, ‘Bite the bullet, you piece of shit. You’re up there. You killed someone. You gonna have to be tougher than that.’”

  Adolph began to mock Perez’s sobbing. “Just shut the you-know-what up and take it like a man.

  “Now, if you are a tough guy and you can go out there and kill somebody, then you better stand up there like you got a pair. Man up, dude.”

  The families also had tears in their eyes as they left the courtroom. They had kept their emotions under wraps during the two trials—unlike the Cantu trial.

  Unfortunately for them, the ordeal was not quite over. Joe Medellin still had to go through closing arguments, and deliberations would not take place until the next day.

  “Two down, one to go,” Andy Kahan summarized the day. “Three more death sentences on the way, shortly.” He added, “Hopefully.”

  But even before that last stressful situation, the families found unrest outside the courtroom. A handful of anti–death penalty protestors lined the sidewalks outside the courthouse holding placards and yelling at the victims’ families as they walked out of the courthouse.

  The Penas and Ertmans kept their distance. Randy Ertman’s friend Bob Carreiro, however, decided to take a closer look. The gray-haired ponytailed father of a murdered daughter walked directly up to the loudest protestor, a gray-haired woman in her mid-to-late fifties, who literally had spit dripping off her lips as she hollered invectives.

  “Don’t kill for me!” she chanted. “Don’t kill for me!”

  The woman was armed with two signs—one that repeated DON’T KILL FOR ME! while the other was a juvenile drawing of a bloody knife, a gun, and a bullet, with splashes of blood across the canvas. It said DON’T EXECUTE—DEATH IS NO WAY TO TEACH SOMEBODY A LESSON!!! GET THE PICTURE!

  The protestor brandished her placards and yelled at Carreiro that what was happening inside the courthouse was a travesty. He just stood inches away listening and not letting her get under his skin.

  Several minutes later, on another portion of the sidewalk, Jimmy Dunne, the man tossed out of the Perez trial for distributing anti–death penalty flyers in the courtroom, was surrounded by an angry mob of at least fifteen to twenty people, most of them family members of the girls. Bob Carreiro made his way over to Dunne as well and stood directly in front of him. Elizabeth’s aunt Patti Zapalac stood behind and to the left of Carreiro, and just to the right in front of Dunne.

  “We’re for the maximum,” Dunne stated rather hesitantly, knowing he faced the toughest crowd possible. Nonetheless, he forged on, some would say rather foolishly. “We like the way the law is now, where it has a forty-year minimum sentence for anybody that—”

  “How many years does my niece have?” screamed Zapalac in Dunne’s face. She thrust the index finger on her left hand in Dunne’s direction. The protestor seemed visibly shaken. There was no doubt Zapalac was shaken. “She turned sixteen three days before they brutally murdered her. You tell me, how many years does she have left?”

  Dunne continued to talk, oblivious to the pain he was causing the throng gathered around him. Eventually he was encouraged to remove himself from the family members without incident.

  The following morning, Joe Medellin’s defense team and the prosecution presented their final arguments. Judge Cosper sent the jury on its way to deliberate the young man’s fate.

  Several people in the gallery decided to leave the courtroom to stretch their legs, grab a cigarette, and to simply mill a
bout.

  Only thirteen minutes later, they would all come rushing back into the courthouse. The jury had already made its decision. Like all the other defendants, Joe Medellin was found guilty. He showed no emotion throughout the reading of the verdict, just as he had shown no emotion throughout his entire trial.

  Outside the courtroom in the packed hallway, Andy Kahan spoke with the press about the decision and the expediency with which the jury returned a guilty verdict. “I think that probably startled everybody, but that shows how strong the case was against the defendant. That shows that we have jurors in Harris County that believe in swift and extreme justice.”

  Unfortunately, the families of the girls were not able to relax and contemplate what a fifth jury had just done on behalf of their daughters. Instead, the Penas and Ertmans once again walked outside into the sunshine, only to be berated by a small group of anti–death penalty protestors.

  The most insistent person was a man, slightly younger than the two fathers, by the name of Ronald Carlson. His sister, Deborah Thornton, was brutally murdered with a pickax several years earlier by Karla Faye Tucker.

  Carlson was there to spread the word that he did not believe in executions. Apparently, he was a little too vocal for Randy Ertman and Adolph Pena. Having had enough of his demonstration, the two fathers hooked themselves together, arm in arm, and were joined by Bob Carreiro. Together, the three men turned their backs away from Carlson and moved slowly back toward him until they literally had him pinned up against the redbrick wall of the Harris County Courthouse building. They were not being forceful or violent. They had merely created a human barrier against Carlson, who was unable to escape.