The Whitaker Family Murder

Oxygen - https://www.oxygen.com/final-moments/crime-news/texas-bart-whitaker-hired-friends-murder-family

CBS News - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bart-whitaker-sugar-land-texas-murders-father-fights-to-save-son-from-execution/

ABC News - https://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=7470379&page=1

Texas District & County Attorneys Association - https://www.tdcaa.com/journal/a-most-unusual-suspect-3/

The Oprah Winfrey Network - https://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/the-gift-of-forgiveness_1/all

People - https://people.com/crime/people-magazine-investigates-whitaker-family-murders/

You're listening to an Oh No Media podcast.

Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murderwith My Husband. I'm Payton Moreland.

And I'm Garrett Moreland.

And he's the husband.

And I'm the husband.

We don't really have any announcements besides thanks forlistening, thanks for watching. We appreciate it. We have our Patreon and Applesubscriptions if you want some ad-free content.

Alright, you got your 10 seconds?

I don't really have my 10 seconds ready, but I do have a hottake ready.

Oh, woo! Well, well.

I'm going to say it anyways. I don't think it's too big of ahot take. I told Payton about this before so she's going to know what it is,but that doesn't make me... I'm sorry, I don't want to offend anyone. If you'reoffended, I'm sorry. But also, I still love you.

Hey, I like those shoes.

Thank you, got some new shoes. If you're watching onYouTube, they're cute.

I think what has become my pet peeve is when I'm driving andI see a Dodge Charger or I see a Ford Explorer driving, and it's either blackor white. If it's red, green, pink, yellow, blue, or orange, it doesn't phaseme. I don't care. But if you have a black or white Dodge Charger or FordExplorer, it's annoying.

It's annoying because we know those are the same cars thatcops drive. So anytime I see those cars—and I know it's not just me becauseeveryone does it on the road—we're all like, "Is that a cop? Is that acop? Do we know if that's a cop?" It's really hard to tell, especiallywhen they're white and there's nothing really on them.

Why do we get those cars? Some people think they're cool. Iget that. I understand that. But so do the police, which is the issue. Anyways,I guess it's not that big of a deal. It's just something that bothers me.Figured I'd throw it in my 10 seconds.

I have some other options for you. I can send some otheroptions if you drive a Ford Explorer or Dodge Charger. I've got some goodoptions lined up. Maybe I'll post on my social media. Around the same pricerange, still pretty cool cars.

I think we should just make a universal rule that nobodydrives Ford Explorers or Dodge Chargers except cops. Then we always know thatif we see one, it's a cop, and we know what to do. I think I'll make that my 10seconds too because that was a little long. Again, I hope I didn't make anyonemad. I still love your car. You can still drive it, and I'll still be yourfriend.

But he's cursing at you when he passes you, just so youknow.

But I am cursing at you when I'm passing you.

Let's hop into today's case. For anyone watching on YouTubeand anyone listening, Daisy is very confused and thinks this is OnlyFans today.I'm trying to block it out, but she's comfy so we're just going to let her sitspread eagle to the camera as she should. Yes, ma'am.

Alright, our sources for this episode are Oxygen, CBS News,ABC News, Texas District and County Attorneys Association, Oprah WinfreyNetwork, and People.

One of the hardest things that anyone can do is forgive thepeople who hurt them, especially when we're talking about behavior that isincredibly harmful. It's hard to let go of all that pain and heartache, and itcan be tempting to want to hold a grudge. In fairness, some people have linesthat cannot be crossed. They'll say, "If you do this particular thing, itis unforgivable to me." For example, I cannot imagine that anybody couldreally forgive someone who killed their entire family or tried to kill them.But that's what's going to happen in today's story.

Okay, so let's get into it.

It all began on the night of December 10, 2003. You know, wealways talk about different years on this show, but I remember being in schoolin 2003 and thinking, "This is a good year." I don't know what it wasabout 2003, but that year really sticks out to me. Writing my little date on mypage, just thinking, "2003 felt really good to me as a number." Idon't remember anything specific about 2003; I just needed to throw that outthere. I just remember every day being like, "Yes, 2003, we appreciateit."

So, it's December 10, 2003, when a college student namedBart Whitaker called his family and invited them out to a celebratory dinnerwith him. They all knew that he had been working hard at Sam Houston StateUniversity, and on the phone that day, Bart said he had just finished takinghis last final. He was about to graduate and wanted to do something specialthat night with his family.

His parents, Trisha and Kent, and his brother, Kevin, allheaded to a restaurant to meet up with him. Trisha and Kent, his mom and dad,were incredibly proud of their son. Not that there had ever been any questionin their minds that Bart was going to graduate. He always got really goodgrades in high school, he was super smart and witty, always coming up withthese great zingers on the spot. Bart's parents were completely supportive ofhim and his brother, Kevin. Trisha, in particular, loved being a mom more thanalmost anything else. The younger brother, Kevin, was the sort of person whoalways wanted to make sure that everything was fair. He wouldn't relax or enjoyanything for himself until he was sure that everyone around him was also takencare of.

So, basically, all this to say, the Whitakers were kind ofthis picture of a happy, healthy family.

They had a good time at the restaurant celebrating Bart'sgraduation. Then Kent and Trisha, his parents, decided to give Bart a reallyspecial graduation gift that night: a Rolex watch that was worth $4,000. Dang!

After they finished their meal, they all drove hometogether. Kent, Trisha, and Kevin lived in a nice house in Sugar Land, Texas,and while Bart had his own apartment, he actually went back to the family housewith them too. They parked in the driveway and walked up to the house, butbefore they could open the front door, Bart told his parents that he'd left hiscell phone in the car, so he had to run back and grab it. He said everyone elseshould just go inside without him. Since he was only going to be a few seconds,Kevin, the youngest, pulled the door open and stepped inside.

He literally didn't have a chance to take his shoes or hisjacket off before a loud crack echoed down the street. Someone inside thefamily's home had just shot Kevin as he opened the door. I want to be clear:this happened very quickly. His mother, Trisha, didn't even have time torealize what had happened before she went through the door and was shot too. Ohmy.

She is shot dead and drops to the ground. The father, Kent,witnesses both of these things and he's like, "Okay, I'm not going to goinside," but he also needs to check on his wife and son to make surethey're okay. So he stays on the porch but looks through the open doorway tosee what's going on. He just peeks through.

The gunman must have been a pretty good shot because thatpeeking through was all it took for Kent to take a bullet to the chest too.This left Bart, our graduate, still in the driveway getting his phone. Now,reportedly, he saw the rest of his family drop to the ground. He heard theshots and runs towards the house. Somehow, he makes it through the front doorwithout getting hit. He sees the shooter, a man in dark clothing and a blackski mask. Bart couldn't see the intruder's facial features, but he could seesome skin around the eye holes. He knew it was a white man but couldn't figureanything else out.

According to a statement later given to the police, Barttackled the man and they began to struggle with one another. So this guy has agun and has just shot three of his family members, and Bart barges through thisdoor and tackles the shooter. During this scuffle, the shooter's gun goes offand hits Bart in the shoulder. It wasn't a life-threatening injury, but it didhurt Bart badly enough for him to let go and stop fighting. According to him,that's when the home invader took his opportunity to run away. He made a cleanescape.

Bart managed to remain conscious long enough to call 911 andreport the shooting. He wasn't the only one who was calling the police by thistime. The neighborhood had heard the shots; neighbors were calling too. Aspecific neighbor named Cliff Stanley, who lived with his parents right nextdoor, called the police. He'd been on his computer when he heard the guns gooff and called the police right away, then grabbed his father, Brandon, and thetwo of them ran over to the Whitakers' house to see what was going on.

That decision would actually end up being a lifesaverbecause you'll remember that Kent, the father, never actually made it insidethe house. He got shot while standing by the door looking inside, so he wasstill lying right in front of the entrance, bleeding from his chest wound. Assoon as Brandon saw him, he did what he could to treat the wounds. Cliff, theson of the neighbor, went inside and saw that Trisha was also still alive butbadly hurt. When Cliff asked her what had happened, all she could get out werethe words, "He shot us."

For Kevin, sadly, he was already beyond help. He was only 19years old and died before any first responders could arrive. Horrible, man.When the police and EMTs got there, they tried to identify which family memberscould still be saved. Trisha, the mother, was in bad enough condition that shehad to be life-flighted to the hospital in a helicopter, but sadly, she wouldnot survive the trip. She passed away while she was in the air.

So that left Bart and Kent, both of whom eventuallyrecovered from their injuries.

Can't believe Kent survived; he got shot in the chest.

Yep, so now we have two family members dead, two who arealive, and the police are on the case. This is like your worst nightmare.

Yeah, this is, I'm saying, yours as in everybody listening.This is just horrible.

Oh, yeah. So the police had to solve two murders and twoattempted murders. There was one thing they were sure of right away: this wasnot a robbery gone wrong.

To all appearances, the killer had tried to make it looklike that's what had happened. Throughout the house, drawers had been pulledopen, but they were only open about two inches. That's not far enough foranyone to see what's inside, let alone take anything. They were all very neat,like someone had gently nudged them open in a systematic way but hadn'tactually rummaged through them.

If the intruder had been trying to steal from the Whitakerfamily, you'd expect the drawers to be messy, maybe uneven. On top of that, theWhitaker family was well off and had plenty of valuables lying out in theopen—computers, jewelry, televisions, speakers—all of which had been untouched.The shooter did not take anything of value from the scene.

Then there was the matter of the murder weapon. It was a gunthat belonged to the younger son, Kevin. His older brother, Bart, had given itto him as a gift. Kevin kept it in a safe in his bedroom. It's not like thissafe was sitting on top of a bookshelf or out in the open. Basically, to get toit, you'd have to climb into this hidden crawl space that Kevin had built intohis room.

Interesting, and I would assume put in a code or something.

So there was no way a stranger would even know this crawlspace existed unless someone had told them about it. Weirdly, even though Kevinalso had ammunition in the safe, the shooter didn't use that ammunition. Thegun was loaded with a different brand of bullets that, to all appearances,Kevin had never used.

So basically, the killer came into the house with bulletsbut no gun, then opened a bunch of drawers but didn't actually go through themor take anything. The one exception was that they went into Kevin's bedroom,found his hidden crawl space, pried open the safe, and got the gun. Red flagsare going up all over the place right now.

Then the intruder ignored the bullets that were also in thesafe and loaded it with bullets that they had brought. Afterward, they shot theentire Whitaker family, killing Trisha and Kevin. This is all just completelybizarre.

It is chaos, complete chaos.

The police's assumption was that the killer must have brokeninto the Whitaker home specifically because they wanted to kill this family.Someone must have described the home's layout to them, maybe told them where tofind this gun. Then the killer opened all of those drawers but didn't takeanything in the hopes that this would throw police off their trail.

I still don't understand how he got into the safe. He broke into it, pried itopen. Oh, okay, well, I'm going to keep that in mind. Next safe that you own,you can't just pry open.

So, the big question was: who wanted this entire familydead? The detectives did a lot of digging into the family members, trying tofigure out if anyone had any enemies, if anyone had any secrets that might beworth killing over. On December 12th, just two days after the shooting, theyuncovered something surprising about Bart's history.

Remember, Bart is the oldest son, the one that tackled theshooter. A tipster contacted them and said that Bart was not enrolled at SamHouston State University. Remember, this entire case started because he invitedhis parents and brother out that night to celebrate his college graduation.But, according to this tipster, Bart had flunked out way back during hisfreshman year, so three years ago. Apparently, since then, he'd been lying tohis parents about attending college.

Man, this is kind of like that other case we did where shewas lying to her family. But how do you lie to them for three years?

Well, according to this person, he was acting like he wastaking classes and doing well, when in reality, who knew how he'd been spendingall of his time? This was a wild allegation, and of course, the police did notjust trust this person. They reached out to the school and asked to see Bart'stranscripts. The school administrators confirmed that this story was partiallytrue.

You can flunk out of college? I didn't know you could flunkout of college.

Well, I guess I figured like if you paid, you could justretake the classes as many times as you want.

I guess it also means that I never flunked out of college,so it's a good thing. But you know what I'm saying.

I mean, I think that you probably could. I also think itdepends on the university.

That's true, probably does. I didn't go to a high enoughuniversity where I guess I could flunk out. I don't think at Harvard you couldjust keep failing and keep going.

That's true. Utah Valley University, do whatever you want.

Maybe you can.

So, he had been expelled for bad grades during his freshmanyear. At this point, the police go back to Bart and ask him, "Why'd youlie? What's this about? We get this tip. Apparently, you've been lying to yourfamily. You told us that you guys were all celebrating your graduation. Youclearly weren't, so what's going on?"

Bart said, "Okay, yes, I had lied, but actually, I hadbeen honest with my mom." He said that he told her about his difficultiesin school and she'd been helping him keep this a secret from his father andbrother. It's unclear why the two of them would choose to keep something likethis to themselves for three years, and of course, with Trisha being dead,there's no way for police to ask for her side of the story. Everything aboutthis was definitely a little strange, but it wasn't clear how it was related tothe murders, if at all.

That is, until another tipster came forward. There's alwaystips, man.

I know. So, this was on the 15th, another three days afterthe police learned that Bart had been lying about going to college. A man namedAdam Hip walked into the police department and said he had information aboutTrisha and Kevin Whitaker's murders. Adam hadn't even been on the detectives'radar prior to this point. Nobody had asked him to come in or give a statement.He did this all on his own.

Adam told the investigators that he had gone to high schoolwith Bart. They had stayed in contact for several years after graduating highschool. According to Adam, in the spring of 2001, about two and a half yearsbefore the murders, Bart had said something about how he just really wanted hisparents to die.

Oh.

He said if they both passed away, Bart would inherit theirconstruction business, which was worth a lot of money. Bart wasn't just sayingthis in an idle way, like "Here's something that might happen oneday," but he actually said to his friend Adam that he eventually had aplan to murder his mom and dad.

He said, "I've got it all worked out."

If anyone ever said that to me, I'd probably call them outon the podcast.

Well, get this—it gets worse. Not only did Bart say he wasgoing to murder his mom and dad, but he had this whole plan. He told Adam oneday he was going to take his parents out to dinner. While they were out of thehouse, Adam should break in. It wouldn't be hard to do because Bart would leaveone of the doors open for him. Adam could just let himself inside and then stayin the house waiting. When Bart and his parents came back, Adam could shoot allthree of them, aiming to kill Trisha and Kent but only hitting Bart in the arm.

I cannot believe that Adam is in on this.

So, Bart's like, "Hey, if you shoot me, I look like avictim and nobody would suspect me of being in on it."

This testimony was especially creepy because Bart's allegedplan with Adam was so similar to what happened the night Kevin and Trisha werekilled. It was similar enough, in fact, that at first, the police thought maybeAdam was telling this story to implicate Bart and throw suspicion off himself.They thought, "Maybe he was the one who'd shot Bart's whole family and nowhe's trying to frame Bart." But Adam had an alibi. He was at work at thetime of the murder and had the time sheets to prove it.

Okay.

This meant Adam really might have been telling the truth andhe wasn't the real killer. The police still did not know who that could be, butAdam was willing to point them in the right direction. So Adam comes in, hesays, "Hey, this is what's happened," and he says when Bart told metwo and a half years ago about this, there was someone else involved in theplot, of course, and it was Bart's former college roommate, a man named JustinPeters.

So police obviously bring Justin in at this point, and hecooperated with everything Adam had said. Bart had tried to recruit him tocommit the murders sometime back in the spring of 2001, but that wasn't thefirst time Justin and Bart had talked about doing something like this.According to Justin, months earlier in December of 2000, Justin had actuallytried to kill Bart's family.

So he comes in and he's like, "Oh, um, what?What?" He's like, "Yeah, so this is true. Like what you know is true.Bart tried to recruit me, and I actually did attempt to do it back in 2000, butit didn't work out, obviously." As we know, on an evening in December,Bart took his parents out to dinner while the Whitakers were out at the house.Justin and an accomplice drove up to their place. I'm not going to say theaccomplice's name because there's a lot of names to keep track of in thisstory. I don't want to overload you, and nothing ever comes of it. I feel likeI want the name because I want to start calling people out, but yeah, it'sfine.

So the home was locked up when they arrived, and I'm notsure if Bart just forgot to leave one door open or if some of the details ofthe plot kind of had to evolve over time. Either way, Justin and the other manknew the only way to get in was to go through a window. But as soon as theytouched the glass, the security alarm on the house went off, and it spookedthem enough that they ran away, and the whole entire murder plot fell apart.Okay, so Bart comes home expecting his family to be shot, and nothing happens.But then Bart tries again.

The second attempt was the one that Adam had talked about tothe police. He, Bart, and Justin were going to attempt another break-in thenight of April 5th, 2001. But someone overheard Bart and the others talkingabout their plan, and they tipped off Kent and Trisha that they were in danger.

Wait a second.

Yes, you heard me right.

So you're telling me they knew about this? Kent and Trishaknew that their son had been talking to two other boys about killing them? Idon't even know. That, I don't know. I have a lot.

Well, let me... let me... let me answer your question, okay?

You go first. You go first.

So mother and father go to Bart, their son, who's in collegebut not actually in college because, I don't... obviously I'm not trying to...victim blame at all, but that's... it's just insane that they knew about it.They say, "Hey, someone came to us and said that you were talking withthese other boys about killing us."

And Bart was like, "What? No, no, no, no. It was just abad joke." He's like, "No, you know, sometimes... you're just likejoking around, you know, shooting the breeze with your friends. You might startspeculating on how to get away with murder." He's like, "I wasn'tplanning on seriously hurting you or anyone." But he also said, you know,"I was drinking, we were drunk." And apparently, this was good enoughfor his parents. They believed him.

He is evil.

They believed him. They were like, "He doesn't reallywant to hurt us." And this was after he had already had a failed attemptto do it once. But this was now the second time that one of these plans fellthrough. Apparently, at this point, Bart thought it was too risky to try again.

So he, Justin, and Adam dropped the issue there. But giventhe similarity between this plan from years ago, the two failed attempts, andthe actual murder that just happened in 2003, the police are now looking atBart as their number one suspect, 100%.

And so they are finding evidence to implicate him, like howhe tried to bribe Adam to lie to the police about their plan. He literally toldAdam he'd give him $20,000 to pretend that he never had anything to do withthis plot, like Adam and Justin had come up with everything on their ownwithout Bart's involvement.

Well, Adam immediately told the police about the offer, andthey encouraged him to play along. So they are like, "Hey, if you'retalking to Bart and you guys are discussing this entire thing, go withit." I'd be like, "I can play along, but it's going to costyou." Yeah, so he told Bart he's like, "Well, he's paying me $20, sowhat are you paying me?"

So he told Bart he was willing to take him up on the offerand give him an address of where to send the check. The address actually wasfor a PO Box that the detectives were monitoring. Unfortunately, the firstpayment that came through was in cash, and the return address was fake. It saidit was from "Keyser Söze," a character from one of Bart's favoritemovies.

So the police couldn't prove that Bart had sent it. Butthere's obviously this still doesn't look good. Like $20,000 still showed up.They knew if they wanted to find a real smoking gun, they had to find Bart'sactual co-conspirator. They needed to figure out who he had now brought on tokill his family this time.

So the police got Adam to have a bunch of phone calls withBart where they talk about the murders and Adam coaxed Bart to talk about howhe'd done it. So he's like, "Hey, I know like we had these failed attemptslast time, but like how'd you do it? How'd you go through with it this time?And more importantly, who had planned everything with?"

But Bart never really came right out and said who hiscollaborators were. He was very careful also not to incriminate himself. Butthere was one man who he mentioned quite a bit in these phone calls, and it washis roommate who also worked at the same company as him, a man named ChrisBrasher.

I know there's already a lot of names to keep track of, soI'm just going to recap very quickly.

I'm trying to figure out how one person knows so many peoplethat are willing to kill his family.

Money.

Because maybe I'm completely naive, but I feel like if Iwere to walk up to 50 of my friends and offer them $50,000 to kill my family, Iwould hope every single one of them would say no.

Yeah, so Bart Whitaker tried to have his whole familykilled, but his father Kent had survived. The successful murders came afterseveral failed plots with Adam and Justin, his friend now, who was also aco-worker and a roommate, may have helped him with the actual killing thistime, and his name is Chris.

So the police questioned Chris, and of course, he deniedeverything. He had an alibi on the night of the murder; he was at a restaurantwith a friend, Steven Champagne.

The police, though, they don't believe Chris's story when hecomes in and he's like, "Ah, I was, you know, at dinner with my friendSteven." They're like, "No, you weren't." They managed to getsome kind of sample from him and gave it to their dogs so they could get hisscent. And when the dog searched the Whitaker home again, they signaled thatChris had touched the drawers, the gun safe, and some other evidence.

Okay, it was pretty clear that Chris probably was thegunman. So next, the detectives went back to that friend who'd cooperated withChris's alibi, Steven. They're like, "Okay, we're pretty sure there'sprobably three people involved 'cause the other two attempts had three peopleinvolved. So we know that Chris was involved, and now Chris is saying he has analibi and it's with Steven. So if there's another person that we think isinvolved, it's probably the alibi, Steven."

So he was the one who said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'dbeen at the restaurant that night." Well, right away, Steven cracks underpressure to police, and he tells police that Bart and Chris had asked him todrive a getaway car on the night of the murders when Bart had this entire plotto kill his family.

Of course, he's like, "He didn't know what they weredoing inside that night." He's like, "I was just driving around. Iwas just cluelessly taking Chris to and from the crime scene." And whenthe police tested that by giving Steven a polygraph test, he fails. And afterhe fails, they're like, "Hey, buddy, you gotta tell us the truth."And he's like, "Okay, I'm going to give you a full confession."

Steven admitted that he, Chris, and Bart were all in on thisfrom the beginning. They had all helped Bart commit the murders. So finally,this was the information that the police needed to arrest Bart, and the oddslooked good in terms of getting a conviction. The officials got Adam, Justin,and Justin's other collaborator to agree to testify against Bart in court.

What's the dad doing this entire time?

We'll get there.

Like, he's got to be freaking out. He's got to be pissedoff. I can't even imagine the emotions that are going through his head.

Well, I think what's even crazier is that I just said theprosecution brings in three other men, yeah, who have basically attempted toalso help kill this family and says, "Hey, um, if you guys testify andsay, 'Hey, this was like a continuous pattern, he had tried, we have alreadytried to do this once,' none of them would be charged with attempted murderbecause they want Bart so bad. Chris and Steven as well, the people whoactually committed the murders.

And as for Chris who actually pulled the trigger and Steven,the getaway driver, both were charged with capital murder, but the police wouldnot pursue the death penalty for either of them. Again, this was in exchangefor their cooperation and an agreement to testify against Bart. Be completelyhonest at trial.

And now it's just a matter of bringing Bart in. But beforethey could catch him, some detectives located his car, which was abandoned alittle ways away from where he worked his day job.

So as crap starts to hit the fan, Bart is like, "Girl,I got to get out of here."

It was still running, the car was, when officers found it,but the police had no idea what had happened to Bart. He was clearly on therun, and no one knew where he'd gone. So the police offered a large reward forany information that might lead to his arrest, and another one of Bart's collaboratorscame forward to collect the money.

So there's another man, another friend who had helped Bart.Again, I'm not going to bother saying his name; it doesn't really have anythingto do with the story. The guy didn't have anything to do with the murder; hehad just agreed to let Bart steal his identity in exchange for $3,000.

So this is how Bart got away. Bart gave the guy the $3,000and then used his name and information to cross the border into Mexico. Wow,okay. Now that police knew what identity Bart was using, though, they were ableto figure out where he was living. He was unemployed, so Mexican policeofficers set up a trap.

Bart had been applying for a bunch of jobs in Mexico, andthe detectives lied and said they were from one of the companies that he'dapplied to and they needed to come in for a job interview. And when Bart showedup in Mexico to talk about his resume and his experience, they handcuffed himand extradited him back to America.

He's probably like, "Wait, I'm in Mexico; you can't dothis."

Yeah, so Bart was charged with capital murder, and his trialbegan on March 3rd, 2007, four years after the murders.

Now, even Bart's lawyers realized right away that they wouldnot have a strong case. He pleaded not guilty, but the evidence against him wasoverwhelming. So they adopted a very risky strategy. They didn't try to arguethat Bart was innocent or that he didn't do it. Self-defense, well, they alsodidn't try to argue that he was legally insane or anything like that. Instead,they fully acknowledged that Bart was responsible for the murders andcompletely at fault. But they argued that the court should go easy on himbecause he had changed while he was on the run in Mexico.

Oh, that's got to be one of the worst offenses I've everheard in my life.

So according to them, during his time in Mexico, Bart hadbegun attending church. He worked a humble job at a furniture store where hedid thankless tasks with a smile and an upbeat attitude. He actually had asteady girlfriend. He was generally well-liked. I can't, everyone in Mexico,according to the defense attorneys, agreed that Bart was nice and treatedpeople well, and this was evidence that he had reformed already.

I wonder how many defense attorneys, if any, listen to thispodcast. I'm not saying I hate you; I like you. But sometimes, I hate you. Ijust... I get it's your job. Someone's got to. I mean, I get it. Someone has todo it. But it's just... I don't know. I don't know. It does get a little crazy.I feel like lines are so um, foggy when it comes to being a defense attorneyand situations. I think it gets a little crazy when you start lying. That'swhat I mean because I don't know. I don't know. I don't know where that lineis. I know they would say they're not lying, but come on, man. I know you and Iboth know you're lying, and that's okay. I mean, I get it; that's your job. ButI know you're lying.

So after only 2 hours in deliberation, they ruled that Bartwas guilty of the murders, and given the seriousness of the charges, Bart wasnow facing the death penalty.

Yeah, so during his sentencing hearing, Bart tried to makethe same kinds of arguments that hadn't worked during his trial – that hechanged, he just... he wasn't the violent, murderous person that he'd beenbefore. Bart said while he was in Mexico, he'd found God. His family had alwaysbeen religious; they all went to church every Sunday, and he said he neverreally believed in it growing up, but now he did.

Now, at this point, I want to come back to Kent, the father.You asked about him earlier, and this is where I want to bring him in becauseyou would think if there was anyone who could see through Bart's lies andrecognize that he was manipulating people – I mean, he manipulated all of hisfriends into getting involved; he's now trying to manipulate people – also, Ijust thought, why would he kill his own sibling?

I don't think he cares.

I think he's evil, dude. What a freaking psycho. I'm sorry,but that's insane to me.

So Kent is the lone survivor of the murder attempt; he losthis wife and his only other son to Bart. But when Kent got a chance to speak athis son's sentencing hearing, he said he forgave Bart. Like I said, this wholefamily was very devout, and Christianity teaches that you're supposed toforgive your enemies, so it was a principle that Kent took very seriously. Andon top of that, Kent told the judge that Bart was the only family member he hadleft. Sure, Bart had created that situation by killing the rest of the family,but Kent still wanted his son to live.

So this is a very sticky situation. Bart seemed like a majorthreat to society; he clearly killed two other people, tried to kill a third,and possibly threatened an assistant DA and his family during trial. He waslike, "I'm going to kill." I mean, he didn't really come out and sayit, but he kind of alluded to it.

Kent's a better man than I am.

So depending on what you believed about his testimony, hemight not have even felt bad about any of this. But on the other hand, his onesurviving victim was begging for mercy. So no one could really predict wherethe judge would come down with all of that.

But after deliberating for 10 hours, the judge sentencedBart to be executed.

So as for Bart's collaborators, Chris the shooter got lifein prison, and Steven the getaway driver got 15 years. Bart was the onlyconspirator to head to death row.

Now, when Bart's father Kent had testified that he didn'twant to lose his last son, he really meant it. He fought hard to get Bart'sdeath penalty sentence overturned; he reached out to government officials,filed for every appeal he could, he gave countless interviews to the press, andso did Bart, presumably in the hope that people would hear his story and bemoved to advocate for him. But it was like nobody was listening or nobodycared.

What a surprise, Bart. What a freaking surprise.

Bart was supposed to be executed via lethal injection onFebruary 22nd, 2018, and with less than 24 hours to go, it was not lookinggood. The night before Bart was supposed to die, Kent visited him in prison.They couldn't even sit in the same room; Kent pressed a palm against a glasspartition, and Bart put his hand up on the other side. It was the closest thingthey'd get to touching.

Kent told Bart all the things he'd never get to say to himagain. They were both emotional, probably as you can imagine.

I can't. This is just hard. This is just... weird. Yeah.

So the next day, Bart stepped out of his cell and gotstrapped down on a gurney. They transported him to the chamber where he wouldlose his life. And then just 40 minutes before Bart was scheduled to die in2018, they heard from Texas's Governor Greg Abbott.

I feel like I remember this.

He'd waited practically for the last second.

I remember this.

But he'd decided to commute Bart's sentence to life inprison. Apparently, he was moved by Kent's pleas. It's unclear why he waited solong to make the call, but either way, Bart's life was spared as he wasliterally sitting in the room he was about to die in.

So he was transferred off of death row and into solitaryconfinement. So even though Bart gets to live, he wasn't having a great time inprison. For almost a year, Bart didn't have the legal right to see his fatheror speak to him on the phone. He couldn't be around any other inmates, hecouldn't make friends. The prison said this was all just a safety matter, givenBart's history of manipulating other people to commit horrific crimes. Hecouldn't be trusted; they didn't want to see him talking to anybody else.

But Bart's quality of life was still pretty poor, and onceagain, his father tried advocating for a change. And it's hard to tell how itall worked out, as there wasn't much press coverage on the case after Bart'sexecution was cancelled.

Now, I did find an interview that Kent did with the Oprahnetwork, and in it, Kent said that forgiving Bart was a necessary first step onthe road to healing. He presented it as this beautiful, emotional thing that alot of people aren't capable of doing, but Kent found meaning and purpose inletting go of any grudges he might hold against his son.

And that's one way of interpreting this story, that Kent hadan almost superhuman ability to let go of his pain and heartache. I know whatyou're going to say next, and that his reconciliation with Bart was a touching,wonderful development.

I know exactly what you're going to say next.

Alternatively, maybe this just speaks of how talented Bartwas at manipulation.

Oh yeah, I knew that.

You didn't know where I was going.

I didn't know where you were going.

That's crazy, G. That's crazy where your head was.

You don't know what I was thinking. I do know; you have noidea.

No one knows what I was thinking.

I plead the fifth.

Other people think that maybe Bart even had his own victimfooled into thinking that he wasn't that bad of a person, which could be. It'shard to say for sure; nobody really knows what the dynamic looks like betweenKent and Bart; even they might not totally understand what it is. But I thinkit's safe to end by saying forgiveness can be a beautiful thing. It justshouldn't come at the expense of anyone's safety or life. And that is the storyof Kevin and Trisha Whitaker.

Insane.

Absolutely.

Probably one of the craziest cases we've covered.

I just don't know how there's been two attempts on theirlife. I know, I'm not... I refuse, and maybe I'm a bad person. I'm not, like,if someone does that to my family, I'm... I'm not forgiving you. And I feellike I understand people talk about healing in different ways. I mean, good forhim if that's what helped him. That's fantastic. But I think what would help meis not forgiving. I think every person is different, and every person'sdifferent, but I just, dude, someone killed you.

I will say, I did listen to a podcast called "TheLetter" once, season one. "The Letter."

I'm too mean.

Listen, it's about a family whose daughter was murdered, andyears later, they become friends with her murderer and forgive him, and have arelationship with him. But they interview, uh... they interview the family, andyou hear this mother... It might have been the guy killed her son, not herdaughter, I... I... I can't remember the details. Either way, they killed herchild, and it's just astonishing. It's astonishing to hear someone talk abouttheir child's murderer, talk to their child's murderer. It... It wasdefinitely... this has got me all riled up. This... It was a podcast that...that I really, really appreciated, just the dichotomy between it. I could...

You could... you could forgive someone,

I don't think so. I don't think so.

I... I can barely... I can barely forgive people for doingnothing, like, I'm just not capable of that. I just don't know. I don't know.

But also, babe, grief is weird, and sometimes people have todo what they have to do to grieve. I think that... you... you don't know untilyou're in the situation.

Yeah, I don't think there's any right or wrong way.

I know. I know exactly what I would do. You know what I'msaying? Wink. Wink.

All right, you guys, that was our episode for this week, andwe will see you next time with another one.

I love it.

I hate it.

Goodbye.

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