HUNTSVILLE, TEXAS — Nearly two decades after one of the most horrifying crimes in Texas history shocked the nation, convicted murderer Peter Anthony Cantu was executed Tuesday evening inside the notorious Walls Unit prison in Huntsville. Cantu, identified as the ringleader in the brutal gang rape, torture, and murder of teenagers Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena, faced death by lethal injection without offering a single word of remorse.
The execution began at 6:09 p.m. and by 6:17 p.m., Cantu was pronounced dead. He was 35 years old — older than both victims ever had the chance to become. No friends, relatives, or supporters came to witness his final moments. On the other side of the glass, however, sat the families of the two girls whose lives were stolen in a crime so savage it continues to haunt Houston decades later.
“Why do I watch? For justice. For justice for my little girl,” Elizabeth Pena’s father, Adolph Pena, said quietly after the execution.
Outside the prison walls, supporters applauded as the victims’ families walked out into the night — a moment many had waited years to see.
The case dates back to June 1993, when 14-year-old Jennifer Ertman and 16-year-old Elizabeth Pena accidentally crossed paths with a gang initiation near Houston’s White Oak Bayou. Prosecutors said six gang members dragged the girls into a nightmare of unimaginable violence. Over several hours, the teenagers were repeatedly raped, beaten, and tortured before being murdered. The attack was so brutal that authorities said the victims’ bodies were left almost unrecognizable.
Investigators later described Peter Anthony Cantu as the driving force behind the attack — a violent gang leader whose arrest stunned the city of Houston. Even after being captured, Cantu showed little sign of remorse. Television cameras famously caught him in handcuffs attempting to kick photographers as officers escorted him away.
At trial, the grief and rage inside the courtroom were impossible to ignore. Jennifer Ertman’s father, Randy Ertman, delivered a chilling statement directly to the killers.
“We live for the day you die,” he told them. “I hope you rot in hell.”
But when that day finally arrived Tuesday night, there were no fiery speeches left. Time had changed everything. Randy Ertman’s once bright red hair had turned gray. The families who spent years reliving the nightmare through appeals, hearings, and parole fears simply walked silently out of the prison after witnessing Cantu’s death.
Despite the execution, the families say the fight for justice is not over. Three of the six attackers involved in the murders have now been executed, while the remaining three continue serving lengthy prison sentences. Two of those surviving gang members are expected to become eligible for parole in 2028.
Knowing they may not still be alive when those hearings happen, the Ertman and Pena families have already begun recording video statements for future parole boards — ensuring their voices, and the memories of Jennifer and Elizabeth, will continue to be heard long after they are gone.
For the families, justice may have finally arrived for Peter Anthony Cantu. But the pain of that summer night in 1993 never truly ended.
