Savage Son (4 page)

Kent and Tricia Whitaker’s first encounter was on a blind date. “I walked into her house and I didn’t know what I was expecting, but she came down [the stairs] and I thought, ‘I’ve never been on a blind date like this before,’” Kent joyfully recalled. “We hit it off very well right from the start.” Indeed, he was smitten by the beauty with long blond hair that draped below her shoulders. He realized within a matter of months that he had fallen deeply in love with her, and she had reciprocated his feelings.

Tricia and her younger brother, William “Bo” Bartlett, grew up near the South Loop in Houston. When she turned fifteen, the family moved over to the west side of Houston. Tricia and Bo attended Westchester High School. Tricia participated in the group Young Life, a Christian ministry that reached out to middle-school, high-school, and college-aged kids. She also loved to hang out with her friends and was even an avid water-skier. Tricia was a good student and very popular with her classmates.

Upon graduation from Westchester High School, Tricia migrated north for college at Southwest Texas State University (now known as Texas State University) in San Marcos, Texas, the halfway point between Austin and San Antonio. She attended Southwest Texas for one year before she returned home for the summer. That was when she met Kent.

Having been smitten with her newfound love, Tricia knew she could no longer attend school in San Marcos, since she would have been nearly two hundred miles away from Kent. To remedy the situation, she instead opted to transfer to the University of Houston.

In 1974, Kent landed a job at Tricia’s father’s construction company, which was “in the commercial construction business in masonry.” The company was founded in 1951 by Tricia’s father, William Bartlett Sr., who ran a tight ship that turned into a lucrative venture in a short period of time.

According to Kent, he acted as the company’s office manager and also its accountant. He mainly handled relations with the government and oversaw all of the accounting and contracts that came over the transom.

After dating Tricia and working for her father’s company for more than one year, twenty-six-year-old Kent Whitaker and twenty-three-year-old Patricia Ann Bartlett decided to get married. They sealed their nuptials on June 21, 1975.

The happy couple enjoyed each other’s company for another four years before they excitedly welcomed their first child. Thomas Bartlett “Bart” Whitaker was a New Year’s Eve baby, born on December 31, 1979. The couple focused all their love and attention on Bart, until four years later when they welcomed their second son, Kevin, into the family on March 19, 1984.

The Whitaker household was a growing hub of love and activity. Kent and Tricia worked hard to raise healthy, happy children. They went out of their way to make sure each son was cared for, paid attention to, and encouraged to be the best possible children they could be.

As the boys grew older, the family became closer. Kent played sports with the boys, and Tricia, a school-teacher, worked with them on their studies. They exercised their minds, as well as their bodies. They also made sure to incorporate the boys into their religious beliefs, as they were very devout Christians.

When Bart and Kevin started having friends, the Whitaker household in Sugar Land was Grand Central Station for activity. Parents felt safe knowing their kids were with the Whitakers, and the kids enjoyed playing with Bart and Kevin and adored their parents.

By the time the boys were teenagers, they had pretty much anything and everything at their disposal. Nice clothes, a large two-story home, cars, skiing trips, girlfriends. All was good in the Whitaker household.

Bo Bartlett later described Tricia and Kent’s relationship as something most couples would envy. “They would wake up in the morning excited just to talk to each other,” Bo recalled. “Kent would even brush his teeth at the office before he went home just so he was more presentable to Tricia when he got home.

“He was so into my sister. That was his soul mate.”

Saturday, December 13, 2003
Memorial Hermann Sugar Land Hospital
Sugar Land, Texas

Kent and Bart Whitaker were scheduled to have their surgeries, back-to-back, early that Saturday morning. According to Kent, his and Bart’s injuries were practically mirror images of one another, with the damage to his right arm and Bart’s in his left arm. Kent claimed to have teased the nurses into making sure they inserted the appropriate metal into the correct arms.

Both Whitaker men were to have titanium rods inserted into their arms which “over time the fragments would fuse together around it” and would take approximately three months to heal. Kent described himself and Bart as “real bionic men,” after the ’70s television icon Steve Austin, from the hit series
The Six Million Dollar Man.

Both Kent and Bart came out of their successive surgeries without any further complications.

Sunday, December 14, 2003, 1:00
P.M
.
Whitaker Residence
Sugar Land, Texas

Detective Marshall Slot returned to the scene of the double murder. This time, however, he was right behind Kent and Bart Whitaker. The two victims of the shooting had been picked up and driven home by Kent’s brother, Keith. Slot hoped to get more information from the father and son as to what had occurred four nights earlier.

When Keith Whitaker pulled his vehicle alongside the front curb to his brother’s home, Kent Whitaker was taken aback by the sight of several large yellow ribbons tied to many of his neighbors’ trees, as well as around some of the trees in his own front yard. Tears welled up in Kent’s eyes as he exited the vehicle and slowly made his way up to the front door of his home. He somehow managed not to break down as he walked past the spot where Tricia had fallen. As he cracked the door open wider, he was shocked to see that there was no blood to be found.

Kent walked inside, followed by Bart and Detective Slot. The latter was surprised to see that the entire foyer had been cleaned, from top to bottom. The scene looked nothing like it had the night of the murders. Extended family members of the Whitakers, as well as friends from the church, had come in during the preceding days after the police investigation had been completed and cleaned up the house. Slot described it as “pristine.” The friends and family members wanted to make sure Kent and Bart came home to a nice, clean house that was seemingly devoid of any negative recollections from the gruesome scene, just four nights prior. They wiped up the bloodstains, removed tainted carpet, and placed everything back, including all of the Christmas decorations and tree, exactly where they had found it.

Kent and Bart’s return home was not a time for mourning and organization. They were joined by Detective Marshall Slot and two other Sugar Land Police Department officers. Slot had prepared to conduct two separate walk-throughs of the crime scene by its two surviving victims. Slot first had Bart removed from the scene so Kent could provide a videotaped narrative of the events that occurred on December 10.

According to Detective Slot, Kent was very thorough in his reenactment of what happened. He was very animated, succinct, and was easily able to recall exactly what happened, at least from his perspective. Kent was very detailed in his depiction of the murders and attempted murders.

As the two men went over the details, Kent began to discover that certain items were indeed missing from his home. One was a Ruger .22 pistol.

In addition, after he rifled through his closet, Kent informed Slot that an envelope that contained cash was missing. He knew it was gone, because it had been strategically hidden on a shelf inside a small plastic VCR tape drawer. It would not be something someone would simply stumble upon.

Detective Slot then summoned Bart and asked Kent to leave.

Bart’s walk-through was different than Kent’s. On the videotape, Bart was much vaguer about the details of the crime. Detective Slot felt that Bart “was holding back,” for some unknown reason.

Bart had his left arm holstered in a white hospital sling after his surgery. He was dressed casually in blue jeans, a brown sweater, and brown loafers. He began the walk-through videotaping session by turning off the light switch in the foyer so that the room was nearly pitch black.

Bart calmly walked out of the front entrance, where half his family had been murdered, made his way out onto the front porch, and then turned right onto the poorly lit driveway and headed toward the garage. He was reenacting what had occurred just after the family pulled into the driveway—after they returned from the restaurant, and before they headed inside.

Bart and three officers stood in the driveway as if they were seated in the car. Bart was in the back driver’s side, next to his father. Kevin was the driver and Tricia sat up front in the passenger seat. As they imaginarily exited the vehicle, Bart calmly walked back up the driveway and pointed out where his Yukon had been parked in the street.

Though the murders had occurred only four nights before, Bart did not appear distressed in any way. Instead, he looked like he was giving directions to a lost tourist by pointing out some of the town’s unique landmarks.

Bart directed the officers playing the roles of his family members to walk along the front of the house, while he made a beeline for the street to go to his vehicle. Bart turned around to the camera and replied, “I heard
Bang….
” The complete lack of emotion could not have been more apparent.

Bart continued the reenactment by traipsing through the fallen dry leaves in the front yard. “I paused,” he continued, “seeing my dad on the ground.” Bart moved forward and then directed the officers where to lie on the ground so as to resemble his dead mother and dead brother. As he pointed out their respective fallen spots, again not a single ounce of emotion was evident on his face. It felt more like a choreographed dance as opposed to the supposedly most traumatic experience a young man could have ever gone through in his short life.

As Bart directed the officer playing Kevin where to lie down, he said, “You weren’t that much in the way, so maybe you were somewhere over here, instead.”

Another officer played the suspect. When Bart spotted him, he said, “I saw you running,” as though actually talking to the killer. “When I ran into the door”—he recalled his alleged heroic motion—“I could see you running away. I ran in this way.” Bart headed into the dark living room. “I guess somewhere in here, I got shot. I fell back into the couch, onto the floor, and I remember I got up to use the phone to call 911.”

Fall 1996
Sugar Land, Texas

Adam Hipp met Bart Whitaker at Clements High School in Sugar Land, Texas, back in 1996. Hipp was a junior, and one year older than Bart. The two boys were introduced to one another via a mutual friend from a journalism class they all shared. While working on the school’s yearbook and newspaper, Adam and Bart became friendly acquaintances. They mostly hung out together on the school’s campus and in class, but they seldom spent time together away from school, at first.

The two students, however, did seem to run in the same circle of friends at Clements. The two handsome young men considered their circle to be the elite among the rest of the students at Clements, an already wealthy school, thus making them the elite of the elite—at least in their own minds.

Despite such a high opinion of himself, Hipp apparently did not do well enough in school to attend a four-year college, such as Rice, Texas, or Texas A&M. Instead, he settled for a satellite school, the Sugar Land campus of Wharton County Junior College.

Meanwhile, Bart would advance to his senior year at Clements High School.

Bart and Adam became closer friends that same year. Their main bonding experiences would come during casual weight-lifting sessions. Adam had expressed his desire to work out and talked to Bart about partnering up with him. Bart suggested that Adam move his weight equipment into the Whitaker house. He mentioned a finished-out attic space, just off his room on the second story. It was unoccupied and would serve as a great locale for a makeshift gym. Adam was excited and quickly agreed to the arrangement.

Bart and Adam spent many days together lifting weights, usually two or three times a week. In between reps, the young turks talked about life, women, and, of course, their favorite subject—money.

Hipp recalled how most of their conversations went. “It seemed to be a common subject of how we both wanted to get ahead in life and be able to do things
now
versus when we were fifty or sixty.” The two young men discussed “everything from the money that our parents had set away for our college accounts, and maybe different investments and monies that we had set aside for us.”

As bizarre as the image of two young teenagers lifting weights and talking about finances might seem, it was all very normal to Bart and Adam. Both young men were pampered by financially successful parents, attended one of the most academically superior high schools, and considered themselves on the top rung of the social-strata ladder of Sugar Land. Precocious and presumptuous, Bart and Adam believed they were the top dogs in the pack and carried themselves in such a manner at all times.

“We were definitely over average,” Hipp recalled in regard to his and Bart’s financial and social statuses in Sugar Land. He described his family and Bart family’s wealth as a barometer that “defines you as a class, separates you for what you have and what you don’t have.” Adam did not believe that he and Bart ever had to “portray” a wealthy and sophisticated image to their peers, because they simply just were. “I did not have to portray that, it’s just who I was,” and Bart too.

Over time, and thousands of reps of weights, Bart and Adam grew even closer. Their conversations took on a new life beyond just girls and money. They were mainly about Bart’s family. Adam had taken an instant liking to the Whitaker family, as they always graciously welcomed him into their home and treated him like one of their own.

While Adam took a shine to the Whitakers, he noticed that Bart never seemed truly happy around his parents. “He got along somewhat with his dad,” Adam recalled. “He identified himself, aligned himself, more with his father than with his mother.” Adam also noted that Bart “felt estranged from his mother for various reasons.” He just was not sure what those reasons were, because Bart would never completely open up to him.

Adam was able to glean a few reasons for Bart’s discontent with his mother. “He felt she paid too much attention to his brother,” Kevin. Hipp described this as very much “a sore spot” with Bart. According to Hipp, there were a multitude of reasons why this ticked Bart off. Number one on the list was that Bart believed he was, by far, Kevin’s intellectual superior in every way. Bart also believed Kevin was weak. He felt he was too feminine, too much of a pushover. He did not believe his little brother was tough. He did not believe he was a true man yet. Kevin was no superman.

Bart’s mentality tended to follow that of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. According to the
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
Nietzsche’s concept of the “superhuman” first made an appearance in his work
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, A Book for All and None
(
Also Sprach Zarathustra, Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen,
1883–85), wherein the famed philosopher described
the spiritual development of Zarathustra, a solitary, reflective, exceedingly strong-willed, sage-like, laughing and dancing voice of self-mastery who…envisioned a mode of psychologically healthier being beyond the common human condition. Nietzsche refers to this higher mode of being as “superhuman”
(übermenschlich).” He believed it to be
a doctrine for only the healthiest who can love life in its entirety—with this spiritual standpoint, in relation to which all-too-often downhearted, all-too-commonly-human attitudes stand as a mere bridge to be crossed and overcome.

Indeed, sometimes it appeared as if Bart and Kevin Whitaker could not be any more different. Bart fashioned himself to be an intellectual who was well-read, worldly, and always impeccably dressed. Bart knew these traits were going to shoot him into the upper stratosphere of success in life.

On the other hand, at least in Bart’s mind, Kevin was beneath him. Kevin was the jock of the family who loved to play baseball. Kevin was more interested in making friends and being sociable than he was about studying his academics. Kevin apparently got along with his parents better than Bart did. He would willingly and eagerly participate in family events with his parents, while Bart usually made up some type of excuse to get out of such gatherings.

Another way the two brothers were distinct could best be described using Texas colleges as an analogy. Rice University is considered to be upper-crust, on par with a private Ivy League school in the state; while Texas A&M is the everyman college that focuses on blue jeans, pickup trucks, and sports. Without a doubt, Bart was Rice, and Kevin was Texas A&M.

Kevin enjoyed hunting and fishing. Bart could not stand them. Kevin was a blue-jeans-and-cowboy-boots kind of guy. Bart was the preppy. Kevin was destined to become an Aggie, the mascot for Texas A&M. Bart considered himself to be more of a Princeton guy, or a Stanford guy.

Though the two brothers professed their love for one another, Bart often complained about Kevin, saying that his younger brother was a “lazy, good-for-nothing bum,” who always had everything handed to him.

Despite Bart and Kevin’s differences, Adam always felt comfortable in the Whitaker household. He believed theirs was a warm and loving home, and that any problems that they may have had existed behind closed doors and were no worse than any other typical American family.

It was apparent to many that Bart believed he was truly better than most people, and he did not suffer fools lightly. In a later counseling session with Dr. Lynne Ayres, he informed her that he truly did not care about having relationships with other human beings. Yes, he had a girlfriend—yes, he loved his family—but he did not want to be bothered with other people’s trivialities. As a result, most of the people who came into contact with Bart viewed him as “cold.”

Bart did, however, believe he was a fixer. According to Ayres, he told her that if people wanted something done, they would often turn to him. “If they wanted anything done,” Bart surmised, “they would come to me, because they would know the job would be done well.” Ayres was not exactly sure what “jobs” people would hit Bart up for.

The young man also informed the doctor that he struggled with the responsibility that others placed on him. Since he was so reliable, he believed others leaned on him to fix their problems, but he could handle it. He referred to himself as “Atlas,” because he was able to “hold the whole world” on his shoulders. Indeed, according to Greek mythology, Atlas personified the quality of endurance and was condemned to bear the heavens upon his shoulders. In addition, Atlas had been appointed the guardian of the pillars that held the Earth and the sky asunder. These roles were often combined, and Atlas became the god who turned the heavens on its axis, causing the stars to revolve.

Bart also assured Ayres that he was a master manipulator. He bragged about how he could charm his high-school teachers into giving him an A in their classes, even if he did not deserve such a grade.

Bart also spoke about his future aspirations. He claimed he wanted to join the FBI, and believed he would be an ideal candidate, as he assumed they would want agents “who can think like criminals.”

After Ayres’s single session with Bart, she was appalled by what she felt existed within the young man. She remarked that his “profile does not seem consistent with ADHD (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder), but more consistent with irritability, intolerance for incompetence of others, and social disconnects.”

In just one meeting, Ayres determined that Bart was egomaniacal, extremely narcissistic, and removed emotionally from everyone around him, including his girlfriend, brother, and parents. She felt he believed he was better than everyone else around him, including her. She described their encounter as a “very disturbing interview, especially social disconnections.”

In 1924, two young men, Nathan Leopold Jr., nineteen, and Richard Loeb, eighteen, who subscribed to the Nietzschean “superman” philosophy distorted its meaning to fit their own wicked scheme. Leopold and Loeb, who met as teenagers at the University of Chicago, came from Chicago aristocracy, such as it was, and were basically bored out of their skulls. Each young man believed he was far superior to his peers. They were constantly seeking new thrills to plumb themselves out of the boredom that their families, their neighborhood, and their friends afforded them. These seemingly well-bred, well-mannered pinnacles of upstanding youth were anything but.

From all outward appearances, Leopold and Loeb were the type of young men that mothers wanted their daughters to marry, and fathers wanted their sons to grow up to emulate. Unbeknownst to everyone around them, the two young men’s ennui led to a life of lies, deceit, and petty crime. The young men would occasionally lift belongings from their fellow college mates out of the others’ fraternity houses. Having been bestowed with great financial wealth due to their families, neither young man was wanting for material possessions. Indeed, the majority of the goods they pilfered were almost always well below a value they were customarily used to. Leopold and Loeb stole from others because they wanted to experience a thrill they never had, and hoped it would spark a fire within them.

As with any junkie, however, the initial rush would soon wear off for the college students, and they needed an even greater fix. Not soon after they began their minor thievery spree, Leopold and Loeb decided they wanted to experience what they believed would be the ultimate thrill: the taking of a human life.

Leopold, definitely the more dominant of the two young men, convinced Loeb that the act of murder of an innocent human being would fall perfectly in line with what Nietzsche allegedly preached. According to Leopold, total dominance over another person could only come from the complete desecration and annihilation of that individual. Until you actually snuff the last breath out from another soul, you were never in complete control of that person, no matter how much power you may have seemingly exerted over them. In a correspondence with Loeb, Leopold wrote,
A superman…is, on account of certain superior qualities inherent in him, exempted from the ordinary laws which govern men. He is not liable for anything he may do.

Leopold and Loeb took their twisted misinterpretation of Nietzsche’s “superman” philosophy to the ultimate, horrifying conclusion when they picked out a so-called “inferior” human being to slaughter, fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks.

The stalking, abduction, and subsequent murder of Franks was all too easy for the misanthropes, and only served to reinforce their beliefs that they were above and beyond their fellow humans.

Eventually, however, Leopold and Loeb were discovered, arrested, and paraded in front of the national media for what was then considered to be the first “Trial of the Century.” Though the phrase has now been overused, as this occurred before the Lindbergh Baby kidnapping trials and the O.J. Simpson/Nicole Brown Simpson murder trial, it was an apt description.

Indeed, Leopold and Loeb retained one of the highest-profile attorneys of the day, Clarence Darrow, noted defender of the study of evolution the following year with his defense of high-school football coach and substitute science teacher John T. Scopes in the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial. Darrow was an adamant opponent of the death penalty, and even though he was no longer an active advocate for the court, he took the young men’s cases pro bono to make sure they received the highest-quality defense. He hoped to make the argument that every American citizen, regardless of how despicable he might be or how heinous a crime he might have committed, is fully entitled to top-level representation before the court—especially if that defendant’s punishment might include execution at the hands of the people.

Despite Leopold and Loeb’s adherence to their credo promulgated, as they believed, by Nietzsche and their ability to murder Franks with the utmost of ease, their ultimate convictions and life imprisonments blew out the biggest hole in their belief that they were supermen, that they were far superior in intellect and physical prowess to their fellow lowly mortal travelers.