Innocence Lost: The Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena Case
The Making of this YouTube Video Series
It was back during the late fall of 2021, that I happened to randomly stumble across this case while watching a video on YouTube.
The video that I saw didn’t mention the graphic details of what happened to the girls in the park.
Just that they had been murdered.
I’m not really one for violent crime cases.
Typically speaking, I will stay away from that type of material.
But there was something about this particular case, that really intrigued me.
Seeing the pictures of the girls with their ‘90s perm hair styles, reminded me of the people that I knew back during my early childhood.
Later, when I would look up their bios, I saw that the girls were almost the same exact age as my older cousin.
There’s also something that’s very eerie about the school pictures.
Sometimes from looking at them, I almost feel as though they’re still alive.
They are both so filled with life in those moments when the pictures were taken.
I think it’s also very difficult to accept what happened to these girls on the evening of June 24th 1993.
Wrapping your head around everything that unfolded on this evening is perhaps…even harder.
At the time of the incident, the girls were living in the suburbs of Oak Forest, a community that is located in the northwestern part of Houston, Texas.
There wasn’t really anything in the background of either Jennifer or Elizabeth to indicate that they would be the victims of a seemingly random attack.
Except for one thing.
The girls had a tendency to walk to places around downtown Houston.
The reason that I know this is because of what was reported in Pure Murder.
Before writing this book, Corey Mitchell had sat down with the families of both girls and was able to interview them.
The information that he received from the parents, gives the implication that the girls might have had a bit more of a troubled past, than was previously reported.
According to Sandra Ertman, Jennifer had requested a key to the family house when she was 13 years old.
The parents claimed that seeing as how Jennifer was a very responsible young lady, they felt comfortable with entrusting her with a spare key to the family home.
We should also keep in mind that the Ertman’s lived in one of the lower quality parts of the heights.
Also, just to reiterate this important statistic, there were 249 murder cases in Houston, Texas from January 1st 1993 - June 24th 1993.
On average more than one killing per day.
Yet the parents, did not see this as being a significant deterrent from allowing Jennifer to walk around the surrounding area, as she pleased.
This implies that Jennifer was frequently off on her own, presumably walking around to different places, and would have to let herself in and out of the house.
When Randy Ertman dropped Jennifer off at Elizabeth Pena’s house, he told her that she needed to “Be back by midnight.”
Please keep in mind that Jennifer Ertman was only 14 years old and her father is telling her to be back at their house (nearly five miles away) by midnight.
Sadly, it was decisions like the one mentioned here, that created the opportunity for the girls to have been in the park on that night.
I’m sorry to say that it had absolutely nothing to do with their curfew.
They were miles away from home and had seemingly no way of getting back other than to walk the 1.5 miles back to Elizabeth Pena’s home.
It was a situation that these two girls should have never had to deal with.
One has to ask, why did their parents put them in this position?
C -
Dark Secrets Revealed