Savage Son (22 page)

Bartlett stated that he and Kevin, along with his own son and daughter, would go out hunting or fishing at least once or twice a year. Bartlett described his nephew as only an “average” hunter, but he said it with a sense of wistful remorse. He then added that he himself was a “below average” hunter. The people in the gallery, many of them family friends, released a collective chuckle at Bartlett’s self-deprecating sense of humor.

Bartlett then spoke of Kevin and his attachment to Texas A&M University, and how his nephew had dreamed of becoming an Aggie.

Strange mentioned that Kevin struggled a bit his first year at Texas A&M. “Had a little bit of trouble with grades—and was looking forward to going back—when he was killed?”

“That’s what makes a great Aggie.” Bartlett nodded.

“Perseverance?” Strange wondered.

“Yep,” he answered succinctly.

Bartlett then spoke about how he and Kevin had gotten closer in the last year of his nephew’s life, mainly while up in their place in the country. “I don’t think at that time he knew what he wanted to do, like most any eighteen- or nineteen-year-old. He was just a typical kid.”

Bart’s uncle then talked about how his kids got along with Kevin, and Bart as well. “There were many times where we gathered as a family at the lake house and had great times together as a family.”

“How often would y’all get together at the lake house?” Strange asked.

“Before we got the ranch, we used to spend all the holidays at the lake house—Labor Day, July Fourth—or, at least, all of the summer holidays.”

Strange wanted to know about Kevin’s relationship with his mother. He merely reiterated that the boys were her life, and that she would have done anything for them. He also spoke of how she had spent extra time with Kevin, because he had struggled in grade school.

“He inherited that from the Bartlett side of the family.” Bo chuckled.

Strange wanted to know how Tricia’s relationship with Bart compared to her relationship with Kevin. “Tricia and Bart and Kevin,” Bartlett recalled, “they all had the same relationship. I don’t think there was the golden child. Neither Kevin nor Bart was the golden child in her eyes. They were both equal, as far as Tricia was concerned. I think she equally loved those boys.” He added, “She took care of those boys, and she took care of them equally. There was no animosity among the boys. They had a great childhood.”

Bo Bartlett believed his brother-in-law could not have been a better parent. “Kent is a role-model parent. He’s a role-model husband. He’s a role-model citizen.”

“So you agree that the defendant grew up in a good home, and that he had good parents?” Strange continued.

“He had great parents,” Bartlett willingly conceded.

Strange wanted to know what Bart’s parents had purchased for their oldest son: things such as his tuitions for Baylor University and Sam Houston State University, every car he had ever owned, including a Ford Explorer, a Contour, and his Yukon, his townhome in Willis, and an extensive, expensive wardrobe.

Bartlett also answered Strange’s questions in regard to possible abuse in the Whitaker household, which Bart’s uncle vehemently denied. Indeed, Bartlett insisted, Tricia tended to coddle her boys. “She could smother them pretty good.” He laughed.

“With love?” Strange asked the obvious question.

“Oh yes, with love.”

“Did Tricia show Bart the type of love that would enhance someone’s self-esteem?”

“It should have,” Bartlett reasoned.

Strange wanted to talk about Bart. “You indicated that you were a private family, and I understand and respect that. Would you agree with me, though, that the murders of Kevin and your sister are a community concern?”

“Oh, very much so,” Bartlett responded while nodding.

“You understand that when the district attorney’s office has to make some of the decisions that we make, we have to also address the concerns of the community?”

“I understand the concerns of the community,” Bartlett agreed, “but I also would like to think that the victims’ concerns are just as equally or more important than the community’s.”

“You also understand that the criminal justice system has to have a deterrent effect on crime, and it has nothing to do with your family, correct?”

“Correct.”

“And you also understand that the criminal justice system also has a responsibility to make the public have confidence in it, and that has nothing to do with your family, correct?”

Bartlett paused for a long duration before he resumed speaking. “Let me tell you what, Jeff. This is such a unique case that I doubt you’ve seen many similar to it. You know, where the family members are the victims here, and it’s been self-inflicted.” Despite decades of research that indicate most murders are committed by either loved ones or friends, Strange let the grieving brother/brother-in-law/uncle continue. “I’m sure y’all don’t have cases like this coming through all the time. I don’t know how in the world you can figure what the community of Sugar Land needs, or what deterrent to crime there might be. I feel sorry for the community of Sugar Land, but I feel sorrier for my family and for the Whitakers.”

“Without a doubt, Mr. Bartlett,” Strange calmly responded, “everybody does. You also understand, though, that if we, as prosecutors, are going to make a decision on whether or not to seek the death penalty, it is vitally important that we be absolutely consistent.”

“I don’t know how you can use this case as being consistent,” Bartlett countered, “because it is such an unusual case. There are no other cases that you can compare this one to.”

“You still don’t know all the facts to this case, do you?” Strange asked.

“And you don’t know how I feel as a family for being brought into this situation,” an apparently miffed Bartlett responded.

“Would you agree with me that when the decision was made to seek the death penalty, we knew more about this case than you did?”

“Well, you probably did.”

“You would agree with me that absolutely no parent would want their son on death row?”

“Absolutely, no parent,” Bartlett replied.

“You’ve said to me, ‘Give me fifteen minutes alone with him and I’ll save you the trouble.’”

“I have gone through all different emotions for the past three-plus years, and you can’t imagine the things that have gone through my mind,” Bartlett agreed. “But I can tell you, as of today, I am steadfast, no matter what statement I made prior to this one, that what I’m telling you today is three years of being able to process all this information, to talk and discuss with family members, to tell you that what I’m telling you today is exactly how our family feels.”

“The point I’m making,” Strange continued, “is that you don’t care about Bart Whitaker. That’s not why you’re down here.”

“I
do
care about Bart Whitaker,” Bartlett disagreed with the prosecutor. “I
do
feel sorry for Bart Whitaker. I know that he’s done something incomprehensible. He’s wasted his life from the chance that he could have had. I don’t forgive him, but I do feel sorry for him.”

“And you would agree with me that this is all his fault. One hundred percent of it?”

“I don’t know if I would say it’s all his fault,” Bartlett answered to the surprise of many in the gallery. “Somewhere along the road, if we could have seen something as a parent, as an uncle…” His voice trailed off. “If we’d have seen something a long time ago that would have helped us out, hopefully, we would have said, ‘Let’s stop here and do something different.’”

“But you just saw the face that he wanted to show you, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” Bartlett nodded.

“You have expressed concern about future murder plots, haven’t you?” Strange queried.

“Yes, we have.”

Strange then began to read from an earlier victim impact statement made by Bartlett. “Let me just read it,” the attorney stated as he pulled out the document. “You wrote,
We do not ever want our children to have to worry about whether or not they are safe in their own home and safe from future murder plots again, even if it’s 40 years from now, and they have children and grandchildren of their own.
You, at least, expressed that concern to us?”

“Correct,” Bartlett assented.

“Mr. Bartlett, I thank you. I’m not going to ask you any more questions.”

Despite the seeming end of the questioning, Bartlett was determined to make his family’s point heard, loud and clear. “Do we feel threatened once Bart gets to prison for the rest of his life?” Bartlett asked Strange, but he also seemed to be pleading with the judge and jury. “No, we don’t feel threatened anymore.”

Strange decided he was not done, after all. “You understand that if he gets a life sentence, he goes in general population?” Strange was referring to Bart being among hardened criminals, including murderers and rapists while inside prison. The prosecutor was hoping to appeal to Bartlett’s strong sense of family, assuming the uncle would not want his nephew raped, assaulted, or murdered while behind bars.

“You know, Jeff, our family feels that if he goes into the general population, we feel comfortable with that. And we feel like there’s not a problem with the safety of our family. We know what general population is about, and he has a chance to interact with other people. We’re very, very comfortable with that.”

“Thank you, sir,” Strange was definitely done this time.

Bartlett did not respond.

Randy McDonald, however, was not finished. The defense attorney approached the witness stand one more time. He wanted to make sure the jurors were aware that the prosecution was open to deal making, if necessary. “Did you know the prosecution made the decision not to seek the death penalty for the shooter?” he asked in regard to Chris Brashear.

“Correct,” Bartlett replied.

“Do you think someone has to be a little bit different to actually pull a trigger on somebody?”

“What I understand is that the shooter knew my nephew.” He pondered and shook his head in disbelief. “And to take a nine-millimeter Glock, with hollow-point shells, that is one horrible person.”

“And in your opinion, the DA’s office should give the same consideration to Bart that they’ve given to that person?”

“Absolutely.” Bartlett nodded.

McDonald switched gears to Bart’s rearing. “Do you think that your sister and Kent, in providing all those things like the cars and the townhome, were expecting Bart to be successful and step up to the plate?”

“I don’t think they were expecting him to be successful,” Bartlett disagreed. “I think they were just expecting him to have things so that he could go to college and not have to worry about that. It’s a lot of pressure. When we give them all that, you expect something in return. It’s an investment.”

“If they’re not able to pay back the investment,” McDonald proffered, “that’s a problem, isn’t it?”

“It’s a problem,” Bartlett replied in a quiet voice.

“Thank you,” McDonald stated in closing.

Judge Vacek excused the witness.

March 6, 2007
Fort Bend County Courthouse
Richmond, Texas

The members of the gallery had invested much emotional capital during the testimony of Bo Bartlett. They seemed slightly drained by the heart-wrenching declarations made by Bart Whitaker’s uncle. They would not get a reprieve, though. The next person up to the witness stand was none other than Bart’s father, Kent Whitaker.

For the penalty phase, Kent’s return to the stand was a bit muted. His demeanor was noticeably downcast. The guilty verdict for his son seemed to drain the father of what little hope he still might cling to. He was, however, determined to salvage what was left of his family by making the case that Bart should not be executed.

Randy McDonald respectfully approached the father, who appeared smaller on the stand than he had during the trial phase. “Would you reintroduce yourself to the ladies and gentlemen of the jury?”

“I’m Kent Whitaker,” he declared. Some of the jury members nodded back toward the witness, as if they had become friends with the grieving family man during this torturous ordeal.

“Mr. Whitaker,” McDonald asked as he moved toward the witness, “this trial is about your son Bart Whitaker, and you know that the jury has found him guilty of capital murder?”

“Yes, sir.” Kent nodded, not in anger, but almost with pity for the jury members. He knew that theirs was not an easy decision to make, and he almost felt sorry that they were forced to be put in such a position by his son’s actions.

“And you are, of course, a victim in this case?”

Kent merely nodded again.

“I think you should be allowed to tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury how devastating this has been to your life.”

Kent paused momentarily. Some members of the jury appeared to lean forward to hear the quiet voice coming from the somber man. The entire gallery held its breath, almost as if the spectators were one collective entity.

“Thank you,” he stated, easing into the conversation. “Everything in my life has changed, as you can imagine. My wife, and best friend, is gone. My son is dead. My other son is charged with murder.” He shook his head as if the absurdity of the entire matter had hit him square in the face for the very first time.

Kent then began to tick off the numerous ways the murders forever altered his life. “Tricia was our family historian,” he said, slightly smiling. “There are parts of my life that I’ll never even remember. I can be looking at pictures and I won’t recall who people are. I will not have grandchildren of my own. My career has changed. I no longer am employed where I was for thirty-one years. My home is still my home, but it’s not the place it was before December 10, 2003.”

Kent went on to talk about the manifestations of his anguish, both physical and mental. “It has affected me medically. My mental recall of things has deteriorated as a result of the trauma and the grief. I have trouble remembering friends’ names.” Apparently, his doctors assured him that he would recapture his memory when the traumatic events had run their course. “Unfortunately, that has not been the case for me, because we’ve had these criminal proceedings hanging over my head for so long.”

He next spoke of how the events had affected his other surviving family members. “It has affected my family. It has aged my parents considerably. I fear that it has affected Tricia’s mom’s health as well. All of our families—everything—everything has changed.”

McDonald attempted to console the grief-stricken father. “You recognize that this is not your fault?”

“I agree,” Kent responded.

“And the only one who can be blamed for this, and punished for it, of course, is Bart Whitaker?”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“Mr. Whitaker, you’re a very religious man, are you not?”

“I do have faith in my Lord,” he replied.

“And has that been of some comfort to you during these trying times?”

“I honestly cannot imagine trying to go through a major loss without the Lord giving me strength to get through this. I just can’t imagine this.”

“And as part of your religious beliefs, do they have anything to do with forgiveness?”

“They’re centered around it. There’s no way you can view my actions without filtering it through my Christian faith. The underlying tenet of the entire Christian faith is that everyone sins. Everyone does things that are wrong, and that affects our immortal soul, the part of us that will live on when our bodies die. There’s going to be a part of us that lives on forever and ever and ever. There’s only two places where that soul can be—with God in Heaven or away from God for eternity, by themselves, with their thoughts in a place we call Hell.”

Bart Whitaker shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

“And the problem,” Kent asserted, continuing the theology lesson, “is that we all have this sin in us, and the Christian faith tells us there is a way, and only one way, to get that sin out of us. And that is to rely on the work of God’s son, Jesus Christ. To wash that sin off, so that in his eyes, we’d be viewed as clean.”

McDonald stepped in. “You’re speaking of the New Testament, as opposed to the Old Testament, where we have the ‘eye for an eye,’ ‘you reap what you sow,’ and things like that?”

In regard to the New Testament, Kent explained, “You might look at it like the caterpillar who spins a cocoon, and the butterfly that emerges. The seeds of God’s forgiveness and his plan were what the Old Testament is all about, and God chose to hide it in several ways, but it’s there. Christ came into the world to not remove all the Old Testament, but to prove to everyone that the Old Testament laws are not a way to achieve salvation. You actually have to have those sins removed by someone who is perfect. So, in one respect, the Old Testament was an improvement over the then-current conditions, was much better than what it used to be, which was ‘Somebody faults you, you kill them if you got a chance.’ But the New Testament is a completion of what the Old Testament was hinting at.”

McDonald steered Kent out of the religious discussion and back to the actual crime. “Of all the people that are the victims of this, you are the greatest victim, because you lost, not only your wife and your son, but it was your other son that caused all the problems?”

“Yeah. I think everyone will agree that I was the center.”

“And the bottom line is that you are here today to talk to this jury about justice for this situation?”

“Absolutely.” Kent perked up. “Justice is important. I don’t think anyone could have misunderstood us from the start, thinking that we were trying to go through some legal proceedings that would absolve Bart of his responsibilities for this, or him to have to pay a debt to society for this.”

“Would Tricia feel the same way?” McDonald wondered aloud.

“I promise you, yes,” Kent offered. “She would have been appalled at that”—he was referring to Bart’s potential punishment—“that the state chose to pursue the death penalty in this case.”

“Now, you understand that the state, in their discretion, can choose [in] which cases to seek the death penalty?”

“I do, yes.”

“You don’t actually fault Mr. Felcman or Mr. Strange for doing their job that Mr. Healey decided was the proper way to go about this?”

“I do not,” Kent firmly replied. “Someone asked me if I felt like I was the victim of the fact that the state has chosen to pursue the death penalty, and I told them no, I don’t feel like a victim at all. The state is given the responsibility of protecting society, and there are laws on the books that they operate from, and they made this decision. I think it is the
wrong
decision,” he added, “I think there’s a lot of collateral damage to the family as a result of having to go through this trial.

“It’s been a long time since Bart was arrested,” Kent continued. “I would like to have an opportunity to have resumed our relationship through the court systems, with him being remanded to the state for the rest of his life.”

“You agree that that would be an appropriate sentence for Bart? That he be sentenced to life in the penitentiary?”

“I agree, yes. I believe that would be an appropriate answer.”

McDonald again steered the conversation into a different direction, focusing on the night of the murder, and Kent’s hospital night of forgiveness. “As you were laying there in that hospital room, you didn’t know what had happened, or who had done this to your family—is that correct?”

“That’s correct. We had no idea.”

“What was your reaction in the hospital with regard to the person, unknown to you at the time, that actually did the shooting?”

“The night of the shootings, after the nurses had left from hooking me up to some IVs, and cleaning me up the best they could, after they left—and I was there by myself for the first time—I tried to wrap my mind around all the changes that I knew had happened to me.” Kent began to describe the painful, immediate aftereffects of the worst night in his entire life. “I was having a hard time with all of it, but one thing that kept coming into my mind was that I had told many people, for many years, that faith was an act of willpower. That faith wasn’t, or isn’t, a feeling. Because your feelings will lie to you, and if you rely on your judgments, on just emotions, then you will make mistakes. But if you have faith in the word of God, and you read in the Bible that it tells you to do something, even though it doesn’t feel like it makes much sense to you, the Bible tells you what faith is. And I realized that this was the granddaddy of all situations.” Kent faintly smiled at the absurdity of the situation.

“I was faced with a situation that changed my life,” he continued as the audience sat, enraptured. “I had spent the last two hours since the shooting bouncing back and forth from being numb, from extreme anger, from a desire for deep revenge—even revenge with my own hands—to shock. There were all these different feelings that I had been experiencing, and I knew that if I chose one of them, my life would be different as a result of making that decision.”

Kent Whitaker continued to talk about the internal struggle that he was forced to confront. “I came to the inescapable conclusion that, even though I could not understand how it could possibly be true, I believed.” He paused. “There’s one verse in the Bible that says the Lord will take all things and work them for good for those who love him and are called to his service. I made the conscious willpower decision that ‘all things’ included the murder of my wife and my son, and that I was going to trust him to work good from it.” A few patrons in the courthouse nodded their heads silently. Others looked dumbfounded.

“At the moment that I made that decision, another question popped into my mind, and it was kind of a strange one, which was ‘What about the shooter?’ And immediately I knew what my response was going to be. I thought, ‘I want whoever is responsible for this to stand next to Tricia, Kevin, and me in Paradise and sing the praises of the Lord.’ And I haven’t wavered from that. I looked in my heart, and that’s what I really wanted.”

The silence in the courtroom was marred only by the nearly imperceptible sound of someone crying.

Kent straightened up in his chair and continued. “I had no idea at the time that one of those I was praying for was my son,” he stated as he looked up at Bart.

“I think what happened that night was that God knew what was coming, and he knew that people are redeemable, and he knew Bart was going to need someone to stand with him and show him what my faith was all about, so he could see, firsthand, the forgiveness of the Lord, who has forgiveness for all of us who repent. And he gave me the power, the strength beyond what is reasonable to expect, to forgive someone for an awful crime without knowing who they were, because he knew that only if I was able to get past that forgiveness, for real, when it didn’t mean anything, when there was nothing I could gain from it, that I would be able to truly spend time with my son when he came under suspicion, and then later ran, and after he was arrested.” Kent took a deep breath. “It was only by truly forgiving everyone involved, including the real shooter, that I would be able to stand up to what was coming.”

Defense attorney McDonald stepped in. “Based on your beliefs, now that you know your son was involved in this, you haven’t wavered in your position?”

“No, I have not,” Kent responded. He also added that he came to the decision of his own accord—with God. “It was a decision between myself and the Lord. This was my heart speaking.”

McDonald steered the questioning toward the conversation between Kent and Bart that occurred in prison, on the second anniversary of the murders of Tricia and Kevin. The men had spoken about Bart’s potential sentencing, and how they both hoped he could serve a sentence of life in prison instead of facing execution.

“Have we ever proposed anything other than pleading to a life sentence for capital murder for Bart?” McDonald wondered aloud.

“No. That is the only thing we’ve ever sought. It is what I begged the district attorney’s office to take when we met, before you came on the scene,” Kent acknowledged.

“And we have even tried to do it in such a way that they could stack life sentences, if they wanted to?”

“Yes. As I understand it, that was really the first and only offer we’ve ever made. Bart was willing to accept stacked sentences, which, as I understand, means that the sentence for the first murder has to be completed in its entirety before the second one can even begin.”

McDonald asked Kent about the jury members. “Is it your desire that they assess a life sentence in this case?”

“It has been from the start,” Kent stated, then gave a knowing glance toward the jury box “and it still is. I would ask that they would determine the appropriate punishment in this case is to give him life in prison, so that he would never be released to the public again, but that I would have the chance to rebuild the relationship he and I had before this, and allow everybody in the family to say, ‘All right, this awful nightmare has passed from one stage to the next, and we don’t have to go through the state of Texas–required series of appeals that will take years and years to play out,’ which is going to happen if the death penalty is assessed.”