Paperback: 10 December 2003. Sugar Lane, Texas.
It was a night of celebration for the Whitaker family. Their eldest son, Thomas Bartlett "Bart" Whitaker, was graduating from college but when Bart's younger brother, Kevin, opened the door to their house, a masked intruder shot him point blank. His mother, who was behind Kevin, took the next bullet followed by Mr Kent Whitaker and Bart. Blood was everywhere. Tricia, 51, and Kevin, 19, both died that night but somehow Bart and Kent, then 54, survived.
Both men had survived a broken arm. According to Kent, the bullet he had taken had "entered my right shoulder and travelled through the arm muscle, striking midhumerus and shattering the bone." Bart had been shot in the left arm.
The arms of the Whitaker men weren't the only things to be set and healed that night. According to Kent, a self-described very religious man, he "felt God's presence and comfort" in his hospital room the night of the murders. As a constant stream of well-wishers respectfully marched in and out of his hospital room, he claimed that "Scriptures of comfort came to mind" and described it as if "God gave me a shot of Novocain" to deal with the pain of the complete and total upheaval he was now about to embark on.
Miraculously, on the same night his beloved wife, Tricia, and his equally beloved son, Kevin, were murdered, Kent Whitaker decided to invoke a "conscious act of will." He forgave the shooter.
Not wanting to be burdened by the additional emotional turmoil wrought by anger, Kent made an emphatic decision to forgo anger and hatred. Instead, he decided to turn his faith over to God. He stated, "I wanted whoever was responsible to come to Christ and repent for this awful act."
Kent's decision to forgive startled even himself. Earlier, he felt the normal feelings of an individual who had a loved one ripped away from him - depression, anger, the desire to kill his wife and son's killer. He stated, however, that once he decided to forgive the killer for the murders, "This forgiveness astounded me." He believed the act saved his life and changed everything for the better.
To the cops, the story didn't add up. Moreover, to the seasoned lead detective in charge, the crime scene sent up an obvious red flag and his first thought was that he was looking at a staged robbery.
Not long after, their investigation discovered a stunning web of lies. Bart hadn't been enrolled in college since his freshman year. Instead of attending classes, he'd spent his days playing video games while planning to murder his family to inherit their million-dollar estate. Police confirmed this information by obtaining Bart’s school transcripts with grand jury subpoenas. When confronted with this information, Bart told police and his father that he had informed his mother that he was not graduating.
In a later counselling session with Dr Lynne Ayres, the doctor was appalled by the encounter in which she described the single session with Bart as a "very disturbing interview, especially social disconnections." In just one meeting, Ayres determined that Bart was egomaniacal, extremely narcissistic and removed emotionally from everyone around him including his girlfriend and family. She felt he believed he was better than everyone else around him including Ayres.
It turned out that Bart, then 24, had arranged the assassination. He was arrested, convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death. In 2008, Bart explained why he wanted to kill his entire family, weaving together reasons with envy, insecurity, anger and hate. Bart, meanwhile, still sits on death row. Kent and his new wife, Tanya, visit him once a week. "My relationship with my son is much better than it had been. He has become much more open and honest with me about his failures, about his losses, about the things that were bothering him at that time," Kent says. "I just wish that I had had the relationship with him then that I do now." Kent admits that there are still days when he struggles, especially with the fact that he has a loved one on death row. Today, Kent and Tanya travel the country speaking about the power of forgiveness and redemption. To this end, Kent has written a book - Murder by Family (2009) - about his heart-wrenching journey after the brutal murder of his beloved wife and son.
Savage Son (2010) is about a chilling murder case that reveals the twisted motives of a seemingly All-American Boy-Next-Door and tells a true story of why a son and brother wanted to kill his father, mother and brother.
Bart Whitaker currently resides in the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas, and awaits his unknown execution date. He still has the right to appeal his death sentence in the federal courts. To pass the time, he writes posts for his blog that focus on prison conditions, arguments against the death penalty, attacking any media coverage of his case and mocking people who write him letters that are not deferential enough to him.
About the author: Corey Mitchell (d 2014), JD, was a law school graduate and the author of the Los Angeles Times bestseller Dead and Buried (2003) as well as Murdered Innocents (2009), Pure Murder (2008) and Strangler (2007). He was also the author of the underground true crime classic, Hollywood Death Scenes (2001).
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