Savage Son (8 page)

“Bart, man. I don’t know, buddy. I don’t know. I don’t think I can—”

“You can do it, Will,” Bart interrupted. “I know you can do it,” he insisted.

“Why? Why, Bart?” Will asked. “I can see where you might want to do something, but they’re your parents, not mine. What good is it going to do for me? Why would I do something so risky?”

“I already told you.” Bart smiled at his pal.

“What?”

“Money. I’m going to get a ridiculous amount of money from my mom and dad’s life insurance,” Bart reminded Will, as though they were just discussing a simple business transaction between two friends. “I will give you enough money to make sure you can do what you want to do.”

Will stopped to consider what Bart just told him.

Bart continued, “You can finally play your music. You can write songs and rehearse and start up a band and land some gigs. You can finally be what you always wanted to be—a working musician. You won’t have to mess with going to school or moving back home to your parents. You can finally live your dream.”

For the first time since Bart brought up the idea, Will seemed intrigued. Bart was obviously appealing to Will’s own self-interests, and Will could not help but think of the possibilities if he had a large influx of cash. It was not as if Will needed the money, he was the son of a very well-to-do dentist. Furthermore, it was not as if Will’s bank account had been emptied by his college tuition, because his parents had paid for his schooling. He did not even have to work while attending Baylor. Nonetheless, the allure of money was strong for him.

Despite Will’s seemingly steady financial situation, he still had a desire to prove himself. He was determined not to leech off his family, and wanted to make it on his own. He had no idea how difficult it truly was going to be.

“I’ll think about it,” Will told Bart.

Bart Whitaker smiled. “Thank you, Will. Thank you.”

Fall 1998
Baylor University
Waco, Texas

Bart Whitaker and Will Anthony’s other friend at Baylor was a freshman named Justin Peters. Like Bart and Will, Justin was an intelligent young man with a hankering for video games and a rather bored disposition toward life. He was intelligent, almost too intelligent for his own good. He aced high school and was rewarded with National Merit Scholarship status. His college was covered. It all could have been so easy.

As with Will, however, Justin seemed more interested in hanging out with his new friends and playing video games. Justin was majoring in bioinformatics, “the use of techniques, including applied mathematics, informatics, statistics, computer science, artificial intelligence, chemistry, and biochemistry, to solve biological problems usually on the molecular level.”

At least, that is what he told his family. In reality, he was majoring in EverQuest.

Justin was always a bit of an outcast. Too smart for his own good. He never really fit in with any of the cliques in school. He did, however, have one friend who thought the best of him, no matter what. Jennifer Japhet, Justin’s best friend since seventh grade, was way out of his league. She was beautiful, intelligent, and popular with the guys and the girls. Everyone knew Jennifer, and everyone was crazy about her, including Justin.

Justin and Jennifer attended high school in San Antonio at a magnet school called Health Careers High School. It was geared toward high-achieving students who believed they might consider a career in the profession of medicine upon graduation. It is an extremely difficult school to get into, with high admission standards and a tough selection process. The students who attended Health Careers High School were usually self-motivated, had specific goals they wanted to obtain, and would usually meet their objectives.

There was another reason Justin was so fond of Jennifer. He had a physical handicap. His right arm had no attached tendon, thus rendering it nearly useless. Jennifer never made fun of his malady and never brought it up in conversation. She simply accepted Justin for who he was and how he looked.

Though she became good friends with Justin, Jennifer saw their relationship as purely platonic. Indeed, Justin viewed her almost more like an older sister rather than an object of his affection. When Jennifer and Justin graduated from high school, however, they both made plans to attend college at Baylor. Justin never let on that the sole reason he applied there was so he could be closer to her.

Justin and Jennifer, however, did not spend much time together during their freshman year at Baylor. Jennifer had joined a sorority, and the majority of her time was split between her sorority sisters and her classes. Justin, on the other hand, found himself hanging out with Will and Bart playing video games.

Justin felt he had quite a bit in common with Will and Bart. They all loved playing video games, they had similar tastes in music, and they all enjoyed many of the same movies, mainly action and sci-fi flicks. The three young men made a point to attend a screening of the revolutionary hi-tech film
The Matrix,
and all three immediately fell in love with it.

During their sophomore year at Baylor, in the fall of 1999, after Will Anthony dropped out of school, Justin and Bart decided to move into an apartment off campus together. They were joined by Sal Davis, a friend of Justin’s from high school, who also attended Baylor.

Justin’s world came crashing to a brutal halt soon after he moved in with Bart. Justin’s high-school girlfriend, whom he no longer dated, was killed in a freak automobile accident back in his hometown. Justin was devastated and completely beside himself when he heard the news. He was never fully able to pull himself out of the haze for several months. He went into a severe depression and locked himself away from the rest of the outside world.

Bart tried his best to help his roommate and friend during his time of need. It seemed like an unmanageable task, however, because Justin would hole himself up in his room in their apartment and not come out for days. He started to cover up the windows with thick brown paper, and never turned on any lights in his room. He had developed a mourning cave and was in no hurry to rush his hibernation.

Justin’s depression continued, and it began to affect his grades at Baylor. He refused to attend class, and he was so discombobulated during the few that he actually made it to, he was unable to function and make passing grades.

Bart continued to try and help Justin out of his funk. One way was to get him out of the apartment and into another city. Bart decided to take Justin down to Sugar Land to meet his family. They made it there twice. Justin found Bart’s parents to be very sweet, accommodating, and humble. He also believed Bart’s brother, Kevin, was a very nice young man.

During these trips to Sugar Land, Bart began to pepper Justin with his own tales of woe—namely, how much he despised his parents and also his little brother. Bart’s main complaint about his family was that they were hypocritical Christians. They acted all superior over non-Christians, when, in reality, they were far from the idyllic symbol of Christianity.

Bart’s rumblings against his parents and brother continued when the boys returned to Waco. He kept harping on how much he did not like them. After having met them in person, Justin did not understand how Bart could feel that way. Justin did understand how a son could find resentment against his parents, especially if the majority of things that Bart said about them were true.

Around November 1999, Bart started in on Justin. “You know what I’d like to do, Justin? Kill someone and see if I can get away with it. Commit the ultimate crime and see if I could not get caught.”

Justin knew Bart had a predilection for dark humor. He laughed in spite of himself.

“No, I’m serious,” Bart continued. “Could you imagine what it would feel like to actually take another human being’s life, and then have the intelligence and cunning to get away with it. That would be the ultimate high. Better than any stupid video game or murder in a movie.”

Just as Will reacted when Bart talked about the ultimate murder theory, Justin believed Bart was simply messing with him. So, instead of acting appalled, Justin played along. “Yeah, man. What do you have in mind?”

Bart started telling Justin all the fun things they could do together if they only had money. They could take trips, go skiing, buy a yacht. “All we have to do is get some money,” Bart declared rather nonchalantly.

“And how do you propose we do that?” Justin queried.

“Kill my parents,” Bart stated emphatically. “Kill my parents.”

“Kill your parents?”

“Yeah. We kill my parents,” Bart said with a serious tone to his voice. “They have lots of life insurance money. They’re dead—
bam!
The money is mine. I’ll give you some of it, and we can do whatever we want to. It’s that easy.”

“Bart,” Justin said. “You are crazy. You’ll never be able to get away with killing someone close to you. Family members are always at the top of the list when it comes to suspects.”

Bart nodded. It was a good point.

“You would need to kill someone else that you weren’t related to,” Justin added, still playing along with Bart.

“But then there would be no way to get the money,” Bart countered. “No, it definitely has to be my parents.”

Justin shook his head and chuckled. “That is messed up.” He still did not believe his roommate was serious. “But I like it.” He had no idea whether Bart was serious and, frankly, he did not care.

Over the course of the next few months, Bart kept up the “kill my parents” litany with Justin. Bart had upped the ante, however, by asking Justin to help him accomplish his morbid task. Instead of telling Bart to stop, or calling the police on him, Justin continued to play along.

Finally, the following fall 2000, Bart’s persistent talk about killing his family seemed to turn into a reality. For the first time, Justin finally began to realize that his roommate had not been joking around. He had never been
just
joking around. Justin could sense that Bart truly wanted to murder his parents. And he seemed to be okay with that thought. Justin explained his position thusly: “I was extremely unhappy, and I guess I figured I might as well be unhappy with money.”

Bart never promised Justin a specific amount of money if he helped him kill his parents. Bart merely told Justin that his parents were worth more than a million dollars, and that if they were dead, he would collect the insurance money. Bart would then give Justin more than his fair share for helping him out.

Bart eventually let Justin know that he had also recruited Will Anthony into the fold. Justin had no problem with Will’s inclusion, since he was good friends with him, too. He was actually closer to Will than he was with Bart, so he found it reassuring to know that all three were involved.

The three young men would usually gather at Bart and Justin’s apartment to lay out the plans on how they were going to murder Bart’s parents. All three would participate in the discussions, though Bart was usually the ringleader. Justin and Will, however, would attempt to pick apart his suggestions in an attempt to make the crime foolproof.

After several weeks of dissecting and rethinking strategies, a plan was devised. All three men were to travel down to Sugar Land. Will and Justin would follow Bart in a separate car. When they arrived, Bart would get his parents out of their house under the ruse of a celebration dinner.

Meanwhile, Justin and Will would hide inside their car behind Bart’s parents’ home. Once they were assured that the Whitakers were gone, Will would sneak into their home via a back window, which Bart would leave unlocked. Once inside, he would have access to a hidden gun kept in Bart’s brother’s room. Will would then wait, patiently, with gun in hand until the Whitakers returned from their meal. He would be alerted by Justin, who was equipped with a walkie-talkie, so he could let Will know when the family arrived. Bart actually would have the other walkie-talkie to clue Justin in whenever they would be leaving the restaurant.

It was also agreed upon that Will would be dressed in all-black from head to toe. This would prevent him from being described by any potential witnesses. Furthermore, Will was advised that he needed to make the inside of the house look as if someone had attempted to burgle the home. No specifics were mentioned as to how to do so. The purpose of the burglary scene would be to throw the police off the scent and make them think it was simply a botched burglary that escalated, unfortunately, to murder.

To draw attention away from Bart, Will was supposed to shoot him as well. Of course, he was not supposed to shoot to kill, only to maim, so he would shoot his former roommate in the arm. That way, Bart could say he struggled with the shooter in an attempt to apprehend him and subsequently remove any doubt as to whether or not he was involved in the killings.

Bart’s brother, Kevin, was not to be a part of the murder, only Bart’s mother and father.

The plans were agreed upon by all three young men in December of 2000. Bart decided that just before Christmas would be the best time to execute his plans. He convinced both men to be ready to go forward in just a matter of days.

Less than a week later, Bart made the call. The three friends gathered together at Bart and Justin’s apartment and prepared for their excursion. They did just as they had planned. Will and Justin followed behind Bart in a separate vehicle, and they made their way down to Sugar Land. Bart called up the other two guys on the walkie-talkie and told them that they were all going to meet in the parking lot of the restaurant, where Bart would bring his parents. It was a slight deviation from the plan, but it made more sense, because no one in his parents’ neighborhood would get suspicious seeing a strange vehicle parked on the side of the street with someone inside.

When they arrived at the restaurant, Bart got out of his truck and walked over to Will and Justin. “All right, this is the restaurant. I’ll be bringing my parents up here in about half an hour. Why don’t you guys just hang out here until I call you, and then you can head over to my parents’ house.”

Will and Justin nodded.

Bart handed Justin the walkie-talkie. “Here you go. This way you can let Will know when we are returning home. Oh, and remember, don’t answer my phone call. When you see my number on your phone, you will know it’s time.” Bart did not want a record of any completed phone calls from his cell phone in case police decided to pin the crime on him.

Justin took the walkie-talkie and stated, “Okay.”

Bart tapped Justin’s car door and said, “I’ll call you when we are leaving.”

As soon as Bart turned his back and headed toward his truck, Will pulled out the black clothes he was supposed to wear. He began changing into them.

The pair waited in silence.

Thirty minutes later, their calmness was broken. Justin’s cell phone lit up with a loud, clanging sound. It was Bart. They must be ready to go, he thought. “All right, Will, let’s go,” he stated as he took a deep breath and fired up the engine.

Will said nothing.

Justin shifted the vehicle into gear and pulled out of the restaurant parking lot. The fact that this was the location of the Whitakers’ last supper did not enter into his mind. He was on a mission. He was focused and he needed to stay alert.

The two young men made their way to the Sugar Lakes Subdivision. Both had been to Bart’s parents’ home in the recent past, so they were pretty confident on how to get into the neighborhood and past the security gate, and where to find the house.

Justin pulled onto Heron Way and drove down to the Whitaker residence. Once in front of the house, he looked at Will, nodded, and idled the vehicle. Will exited the vehicle and made his way to the backyard and the unlocked window, left open by Bart. Justin then drove the car around to the back of the Whitaker house and parked it so he could wait for everything to go down and then provide the getaway car for Will.