A Young Heir Tries to Hasten His Fortune
(“Family Interrupted,” Forensic Files)
Two years before a masked assailant shot them in their own house, Kent and Patricia Whitaker found out that their son had formulated a plan to kill them.
But how could parents believe such a thing? Their mental highlight reel was probably playing footage of an 8-year-old Bart teaching his little brother how to ride a bike.
At it again. So the couple believed Bart’s explanation that it was all a joke or misunderstanding when a college friend tipped off police about a murder plot.
Instead of thanking his lucky stars that his parents bought his story, Bart decided to push his luck again. (a common Forensic Files pathology — see Barbara Stager and Mark Winger.)
Bart, then a wholesome-looking 22-year-old with a Princess Diana complexion, came up with a new plot to wipe out his mother, father, and brother, and get his hands on all of the family’s assets, worth $1 million to $1.5 million.
Jekyll and Hyde. He succeeded in annihilating two-thirds of the other Whitakers but, instead of an office visit with an estate attorney, Bart got himself a trial with a judge and jury. They handed him a death sentence.
Past posts on this blog have briefly touched on the Whitaker murders and their aftermath, but a deeper dive seems in order.
I’m curious to find how the community in and around the family’s home in Sugar Land, Texas, reacted when the justice system bared the id of the respectable-seeming young man in their midst.
Partners in crime. There’s also the question of what turned Bart Whitaker into a homicidal fiend. Was he a born a sociopath or did some kind of abuse taint and mold him?
And finally, I checked into where Bart’s young accomplices are today.
So, let’s get going on the recap of “Family Interrupted” along with extra information drawn from internet research:
Gathering place. Thomas Bartlett Whitaker was born on Dec. 31, 1979, to Kent Whitaker, a comptroller for a family-owned construction business, and Patricia, known as Tricia, who gave up a career as an elementary school teacher to stay at home with Bart and his younger brother, Kevin.
Bart would later tell ABC’s 20/20 that he never felt as though he fit in. In a jailhouse interview with Lisa Ling in 2014, Bart said he committed the murders because he felt inadequate and thought his parents didn’t love him.
But from the outside, his home life and social life seemed near perfect.
The Whitakers had the “cool house to be at” and Kent and Tricia “were the second parents to so many people,” according to Kevin’s friend Brittany Barnhill, who appeared on the 48 Hours episode “The Sugar Land Conspiracy.”
Mr. Popular. During her teaching days, Tricia was known for her kind and fun-loving approach to her job, according to friends who appeared on 20/20.
Kent spent lots of time with his sons. He and Bart enjoyed biking long distances together.
Bart was close to 19-year-old Kevin, a college sophomore who looked up to him. After all, Bart was graduating from Sam Houston State University with honors. Barnhill also noted that Kevin’s friends considered Bart “cool.”
House of horror. Little did Kent, Patricia, and Kevin Whitaker know that their life together was just a house of cards.
On Dec. 10, 2003, after the Whitakers returned from a dinner to celebrate what Bart said was the completion of his final exams, an unknown gunman shot all four of them as they entered their house in Sugar Land, a wealthy suburb of Houston.
Tricia and Kevin sustained fatal chest wounds from the Glock pistol. Kent was also hit in the upper body but survived, and Bart escaped with a wound to his upper arm. He had been the last one to walk into the house; he lagged behind while checking his phone messages.
Waking nightmare. Sugar Land had a practically nonexistent murder rate and Kent would later recall that, when he saw the armed intruder, he figured it was one of his kids’ friends playing a prank with a paintball gun.
Then, things took a horrifying turn for Kent. As an NBC account later quoted a Whitaker lawyer:
“He watched his son Kevin walk into the house, heard the first and fatal shot, and saw his son’s fallen body in their darkened home. He heard Tricia’s last, wet coughs as Kent himself lay dying from his own gunshot wound. The bullet hit Kent nearly six inches from his heart.”
Convenient scapegoat. But Kent didn’t die. A neighbor named Cliff Stanley raced onto the scene and used his own T-shirt to stanch Kent’s bleeding bullet wound.
Bart called 911, explaining that he was shot in the arm and had just chased the shooter out the back door. When asked about the race of the assailant he said, “Maybe black — I don’t know.”
Homicide detective Marshall Slot, who appeared on both Forensic Files and the 20/20 episode about the murders, recalled that he thought the operator was joking when she said a shooting of four people had taken place in Sugar Land.
Red herring. But he arrived to find a real firearm, not a paintball gun, on the scene and four people with one bullet wound each. It turned out the gun was registered to Kevin Whitaker. Someone had pried open his gun safe.
Police initially thought they had a suspect in an armed robber who struck a different house soon after the Whitaker attack, but bloodhounds didn’t pick up his scent at the Whitakers’.
In the meantime, a newspaper reporter discovered that Bart never finished college. He had transferred from Baylor University in Waco — where an informant tipped off police about Bart’s aborted plan to kill his family in 2001 — to Sam Houston State University. Apparently he skipped a lot of classes, then stopped going entirely, and blew his tuition funds on some form or recreation; it’s not clear what kind.
Blueprint for murder. Forensic Files didn’t mention it, but Bart had a prior arrest record for breaking into his high school and stealing computers — after which his parents sent him to a private Christian academy, according to the LA Times.
in court. A
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account described
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Investigators also found it troubling that a picture of Bart taken at the “graduation” dinner showed him giving the finger (although I’d file that one in the “kids like to make obscene gestures, no big deal” folder).
Then, a buddy of Bart’s named Adam Hipp came forward five days after the murders and told police that Bart had tried to enlist him to shoot Bart’s parents two years earlier. Adam had replicated a diagram of the house’s layout and where the triggerman was to lie in wait.
Hipp said that Kent and Tricia had heard about the plot, but didn’t take it seriously.
Phones bugged. Police first checked out Adam Hipp himself as a suspect, but he had an alibi for the night of the shooting.
Next up, they focused on two of Bart’s co-workers from the Bentwater Yacht & Country Club near Lake Conroe. Chris Brashear and Steven Champagne denied any involvement in the homicides and provided DNA samples and scent-test specimens.
Cops secretly tapped Brashear’s and Champagne’s phones, but they never picked up any incriminating conversations.
Friend starts singing. Still, in an effort to unnerve the young men, police continually made it clear that they were watching them.
The authorities also directed Adam Tripp to try to get Bart to admit he planned his family’s murder. Bart didn’t specifically refer to any plot, but a phone call recording caught him trying to bribe Adam to keep quiet in return for $20,000.
Finally, a year and a half after the shootings, Champagne admitted that Bart hired him to help kill his family.
Money tangled. Champagne explained that he staked out the Whitakers at the graduation dinner at Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen — where Bart enjoyed bread pudding with “Congratulations” spelled out in chocolate sauce — and called Brashear to let him know when the group left the restaurant.
Champagne also drove the getaway car although, he claimed, he really didn’t want to get involved with the homicide plot but felt trapped.
Brashear was the shooter, he said, and Bart had promised to cut both of his buddies in on a $1 million life insurance payout he would receive after his family’s death.
Sack of evidence. Champagne led police to the spot where he and Brashear threw a bag with the murder evidence into Lake Conroe. Divers recovered it.
The bag contained a chisel with paint matching that on Kevin’s gun safe. It also held a glove that matched one left at the murder scene and a water bottle with Chris Brashear’s DNA sealed on the inside of the cap.
Brashear and Champagne were arrested almost two years after murders.
Bart never paid his accomplices for their hit man services. He helped himself to $7,000 to $10,000 of his dad’s cash and fled to Mexico with the help of his friend Rudy Rios.
Tall tale. Rios got Bart settled in the town of Cerralvo, where he soon found a girlfriend and got a job at a furniture store owned by her family, according to 48 Hours.
The popular new guy in town explained to his south of the border friends that he sustained the bullet wound to his arm while fighting in Afghanistan. (Murderers like to tell war stories, whether they happened or not — Michael Peterson and John Boyle.)
Bart also reportedly told them his mother was a prostitute and he was essentially an orphan.
But Rudy Rios couldn’t resist a $10,000 reward offered for information on Bart’s whereabouts. Rudy ratted him out, and the law hauled Bart back to the U.S.
Trio of convicts. A grand jury indicted Bart, then 25, and Steve Champagne and Chris Brashear, both 23, in October 2005.
Chris Brashear pleaded guilty in 2007 and received life with the possibility of parole after 30 years.
Steve Champagne got 15 years in exchange for testifying against Brashear and Bart.
Police believe that while the Whitakers were out celebrating, Brashear entered the house, pried open the safe, and made an attempt at giving the master bedroom a ransacked look.
You missed something. But investigators couldn’t help but notice that the drawers were all neatly pulled out to the exact same length and nothing had been removed from them. The Whitakers’ cash, jewelry, and computer equipment remained untouched.
Brashear shot Kent, Patricia, and Kevin as they entered the house and then gave Bart his courtesy wound in the arm. In his haste to exit the scene, Brashear gathered up Bart’s cellphone instead of the gun.
Then, Brashear entered a getaway car driven by Champagne, and they dumped the bag with the murder items in the water.
Would-be Waco whackers. After the shootings, Bart did a good job of pretending that he was happy that EMTs saved his dad’s life, but at some point, he told Champagne he wanted to finish off the job and really kill his dad the next time, according to 20/20.
Apparently, Bart’s bloodlust had been brewing for even longer than originally thought. Investigators found out that in addition to Bart’s 2001 and 2003 attempts to eliminate his family, there was at least one prior plot: In 2000, Bart had a couple of his Baylor acquaintances break into the Whitakers’ home to kill them, but the henchmen fled when an alarm went off, according to an AP account.
On March 8, 2007, after deliberating for two hours, a jury found Bart Whitaker guilty of murder.
Serious needling. Before the sentencing phase, both Kent Whitaker and Tricia Whitaker’s brother asked that Bart be spared the death penalty. Bart had admitted his guilt and expressed remorse for the murders and for roping his friends into the plans, they stressed.
Bart had also said he always felt he couldn’t live up to his parents’ expectations (a halfway decent explanation for lying about college, but way short of mitigating murder).
According to a Houston Chronicle account, after an emotional, contentious 12 hours during which some jurors at first disagreed about whether Bart constituted a “continuing threat to society,” Bart got a sentence of death by lethal injection.
Corrections officers’ pet. The kind-hearted Kent Whitaker forgave Bart and fought for years to stave off his looming execution. (Kent also said he forgave shooter Chris Brashear.)
Kent believed his son had reformed.
Although no one knows whether Bart’s remorse was genuine, his polite, cooperative behavior behind razor wire impressed the guards so much that several of them wrote letters asking for clemency for Bart, according to the LA Times.
His lawyer Keith Hampton urged the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to remember the Old Testament story of Cain, who killed his brother but was himself spared by God.
Last-minute reprieve. In February 2018, each of the seven board members separately voted to commute Bart’s sentence, and the governor concurred.
“Mr. Whitaker’s father insists that he would be victimized again if the state put to death the last remaining member of his immediate family,” said Gov. Greg Abbott.
Texas halted Bart’s execution within hours of his date with a gurney and syringe. The state reduced his sentence to life.
In return, Bart agreed to give up any rights to parole.
Faithful father. Today, Bart resides in the William G. McConnell Unit, or McConnell for short, in Beeville, Texas.
Along with his second wife, Tanya Youngling, Kent Whitaker visits Bart regularly, speaking to him from behind a glass partition. Tanya also accompanied Kent for court proceedings related to Bart’s fate.
Kent came out with his own book about the shootings and their aftermath, and he travels around the country to speak about forgiveness.
As far as an epilogue on Bart’s accomplices, Chris Alan Brashear occupies a cell in the Eastham Unit and will reach parole eligibility in 2035, when he’s 53.
Parents provided. Steve Champagne got out and stayed out. He’s no longer listed with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Finally, as to the question of what turned Bart into such a callous and motivated killer, no mention of any type of abuse or trauma came up.
Quite the opposite, his parents were kind and generous by all accounts. They bought him a townhouse to live in while he was supposed to be attending college and gave him a Rolex for his faux graduation.
Bart Whitaker, it seems, was born— rather than made — a sociopath.
You can watch the entire 48 Hours episode about the case online on a CBS news site.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube
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Thanks, Rebecca. Your article highlights just what a piece of work Whitaker is. Although opposed to the death penalty, I thought him a proper candidate for it on the ground of consistency with those whose lives were taken for crimes no worse. The unfairness of the situation is, ironically, an argument against the penalty, illustrating unjustness in US criminal practice. I sent this regarding his clemency plea:
Gov. Greg Abbott
Office of the Governor
P.O. Box 12428
Austin, Texas 78711-2428
E: governor@state.tx.us
Dear Governor Abbott,
Pending Execution of Offender Thomas Whitaker, TDJC Number: 999522, date of birth: 12/31/1979
I am writing as a member of the public with no connection to the above, his relatives, or his crime.
I respectfully wish to express my agreement with Mr Whitaker’s scheduled execution next month, which I do with a heavy heart.
I do not support the death penalty – but given that it exists in the State, that due process appears to have been followed, and that the offence is in my view and that of the jury egregious, it seems to me gravely important that this punishment – execution – is applied consistently if it must be applied at all. That is, if it is a scandal that anyone is judicially executed, it is so if some are and some are not merely given the contingency of special pleading.
Can it be fair and reasonable that one person’s execution is applied because he happens not to have family/friends to lobby for him, a ‘victim’ not ideologically opposed to execution and/or forgiving, etc – but another is spared because he does have such representation and a victim differently-minded?
While I am torn over the question whether one fewer execution is better than no fewer, I find that if execution is to remain the ultimate punishment it must be applied strictly impartially unless as a principle it is to collapse in disrepute. Perhaps it should, and has. But that is not the question.
Mr Whitaker premeditatedly arranged the murder of three family members, including his own injury to throw suspicion from him. There appears little or no question, then, that this was not a fully-considered crime, and, moreover, one that seems to require a peculiar callousness given his relation to the victims. I cannot comment upon the quantitative status in evaluating his crime that his not being the actual perpetrator should have. This seems to me the only potential mitigation against execution. If it is so considered, my question would be: insofar as there are similar crimes, has this fact materially distinguished execution from life imprisonment in some of those cases? If the answer is wholly or mainly in the negative, that potential mitigation is removed.
I argue, therefore, for an objective determination as to punishment that disregards the view of family, friends and even victim(s). I consider it profoundly wrong that the victim may determine the difference between life (imprisonment) and death, as if the law is not a public entity, answerable to the many, as consistent, proportionate and impartial, not an indirect instrument for the vagaries of passions: anger, revenge, mercy, forgiveness, etc. The laudable desire to ‘hear’ the victim must not become a means of outcome determination of the magnitude of life and death…
I understand that Mr Whitaker’s father is requesting your clemency. I feel for him, as I am sure very many do. He argues that he is to be re-made a victim if his son is executed. We can agree. But the fact remains that this has been the case for the loved ones of very many executees: they have been hurt by the offender’s actions and will be hurt again by his death. That Mr Whitaker snr was himself an intended victim makes no material difference in my view: he is simply expressing what many parents in his situation would do, albeit that he has had to overcome the greatest of losses and provocation. He is to be admired. The hurting of the innocent in executing their loved ones is one consideration in the legitimacy of capital punishment – but it cannot arbitrarily apply to this case and not so many others that it has not done, nor will do. If it is to make a difference there must be distinct characteristics of this case, which I cannot discern. The overwhelming forgiveness offered by one victim is not of the order of distinctness necessary. And, of course, Mr Whitaker snr cannot properly speak for the three dead victims, only himself.
Nor am I moved by a person’s ‘progress’ in prison. The intellectual capacity to succeed in academics, as Mr Whitaker apparently has, is neither here nor there morally, so would be a quite improper citation to mitigation. He had a good start – better than most prisoners. Does a low-achieving prisoner deserve less consideration over a matter he has no control over (intellectual capacity)? Do the undoubted many prisoners facing execution who have personality disorders – in some cases substance-induced; in others endogenous, so no fault of their own – deserve less because they are (inevitably) non-compliant with prison life?
I respectfully submit that in terms of what is public knowledge, at least, Mr Whitaker’s crime should merit execution to respect fairness – that those who plead for clemency have nothing substantive to claim.
If I were Governor I know I would be seeking reasons to offer clemency – but I do not think I could find them in this case… As an opposer of execution I would have to come to terms with that…
Thanking you for your kind attention and with all good wishes for your work and the difficult and sometimes painful decisions you have to make,
Sincerely yours,
cc:
The Chairman
Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles
P. O. Box 13401
Austin, Texas 78711-3401
E: bpp_pio@tdcj.texas.gov
Nice letter — I think Laci Peterson’s husband is also a good candidate for carrying out the sentence.
Thanks, Rebecca. I agree: killing a wife and mother-to-be – two deaths – is child-murder in my book (or near to) and should be treated as such. But his state, California,has an unofficial moratorium on execution – which is absurd when the State still sentences to death. At least citizens should expect and demand consistency within the same state (cf Jeffrey Dillingham in my below post).
Another case of perverse justice – we could name many – is Rae Carruth, whom you’ve covered. He should’ve got life for murder and causing severe, permanent harm to his unborn child… but served just 18 years. Of course, someone rich enough to post $3m bail can afford good representation, buying relative lenience. Would a poor unknown with a public defender have fared so well…?
He blatantly planned out his parents’ murder then he ran away in hiding. He should have gotten the death penalty and let it fold out as planned. That’s privileged white Justice
Yes; perps have been executed for less egregious murder. Although Texas very rarely commutes to life-imprisonment for capital sentences there are surely more meritorious than his case.
Part of the problem is parole boards don’t justify their reasoning/decisions to the public (knowing they’d be controversial) – but it’s the public they are answerable to, just as justice in general is, as all such agencies operate with the permission of the public, ultimately (who pay for it all). This must change. It is about to here in UK, as there’s been public outcry as some parole decisions* releasing vicious murderers. Decisions, as in US, were private, but ‘limited’ information about decisions will be made public. It’s a start…
*This particularly – an awful crime. I don’t care how much perps have ‘changed’, ‘repent’, or are model prisoners: the worst crimes, like his, should mean whole-life because they’ve earned the punishment they got (inc Whitaker).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_McGreavy
Marcus, I have never seen such objective view wow. You are a good candidate for governor of Texas. Your objectivity impartiality nor fear no favour is applausable. We need more like you! Especially when it has been said that capital punishment is punishment for them that don’t have the capital. I am South African. I knew about death row on TV whilst watching the mind of a murderer by Dr Michelle Ward. I decided to write to Travis Runnels #999505, who was executed by the state of Texas 11 December.
K: How kind – but I’m a Brit, so haven’t a cat in hell’s chance of being Governator (wasn’t that Arnie of California?) of Texas – but thanks all the same!
Good for you for writing to a condemned prisoner. Whatever awful things we’ve done, kindness and mercy – in the form of showing this man that he isn’t forgotten while he contemplates that most terrible of punishments, is always right. I wasn’t aware of Runnels until a few days ago, when I saw a news item, looking his case up.
I’ve been troubled for many years by the death penalty, in a country (US) in which justice (equality before the law) sometimes appears to be bought, or which otherwise privileges the white middle-class. I’m no race or class warrior – just concerned. With that penalty at stake, we must be concerned that justice really is so as much as reasonably possible.
I understand there’s a steady drift away from the DP in the US. I hope so. Texas’ll probably be the last to lose it if it does! I see there’s some pressure in South Africa for its return; thankfully there has never been here since Britain abolished it in the 60s. I don’t oppose it absolutely (ie, I can’t claim it to be unquestionably wrong in cases where there is no question of guilt); but because (i) it’s unequally applied even between cases of certainty in the same state; (ii) it costs a fortune to execute someone due to necessary legal safeguards – money that could be better spent; (iii) it typically takes at least 15 yrs to do it – often much longer – making it something of a farce; (iv) it harshly punishes the innocent loved ones of the perp, victimising them just as the perp’s victim’s loved ones were, it makes little sense.
Thank you for such an excellent letter with such thoughtfulness. Texas is fortunate to have you working in their state.
Amanda H
Great follow-up story, Rebecca. It’s telling that Bart offered no real excuse for arranging the murder of his family. He went through with it even after having two years to think about what his family meant to him following his first attempt to murder them. I think he was probably too calculating to admit that he was a lazy, work-shy ne’er do well who wanted the good life his parents had already been providing for him without the hard work they put in to give it to him. I think his father was partly responsible for the death of his wife and son by buying Bart’s story the first time and not protecting them from him. Gullible is what I think you could call him. Thank God Bart is behind bars now, where he can be as lazy as the Texas prison system will allow and the rest of us are safe from him.
Thanks, Monica — so glad you liked the piece! Bart is definitely a bad seed.
Thanks Rebecca – I love the way you write, and it’s great that you can follow-up on some of the information that we can’t access in the UK (I always try to google what happened to people in the programme).
Over here in the UK, CBS Reality shows these episodes as ‘Medical Detectives’, and seem to show the same ones quite regularly. This episode does not seem to be shown that often, so I really appreciated the reminder of this case and the update. It’s a very interesting case.
Just how he thought he’d get away with it I think underlines his feelings of superiority. It sounds like his parents were wonderful and he had all the trappings of a nice life. What a waste.
Marcus – I always enjoy reading your reflection on Rebecca’s updates and each episode. I think you are spot on; especially with the letter you wrote that you posted above. I agree with every sentiment, especially family members having the ‘deciding vote’ as to the Death Penalty or not. Bart is still one very lucky man.
Anyway greetings from the UK. And thanks Rebecca.
Helen
Hello Helen: Thanks so for your kind remarks – and I wholly agree re Rebecca’s posts! I too am writing from UK (maybe you gathered). Something like FF/MD based on UK cases would be very good here (a few of the FF/MD cases have been) – but it’s a sad fact (for the US) that the murder rate is much higher than UK – so we might be a bit short of subjects!
Re my letter reproduced, at the time of the clemency hearing I was moved to write ‘cos it’s so unfair that because an offender ‘did well in prison’ and his (living) victim (father) forgave him and lobbied for him, he gets to live when many others whose instant crime in my book was less evil die. As if, for me, the death penalty isn’t capricious enough, cases like this make an utter tragic farce of it.
As Rebecca describes, here’s a privileged man who plotted a number of times to murder at least his parents, eventually achieving death for some of his apparently loving family, for money. I don’t know how much MORE evil you can get (except by torturing them first, maybe?) What the hell has his being a model prisoner/’remorseful’/forgiven by the surviving victim (would those who didn’t?) got to do with justice (justice includes fair and equal treatment for all under law)?
Compare his with another Texas case that ended in death – one in which the perp was encouraged by another to kill her parents (no excuse, but not under his OWN initiative, unlike Whitaker), in which there was no significant, repeated premeditation, unlike of Whitaker, where the initiator – the daughter – didn’t get the death penalty, and where this offender is widely considered to have exhibited genuine remorse:
https://murderpedia.org/male.D/d1/dillingham-jeffrey.htm
One lives; one dies. Why? How horribly absurd – and why the death penalty must go…
PS Relative homicide rate, UK v US: 1 to 4.7 per 100,000 (with southern states generally higher). Well known that the US’s neighbour, Canada, has a much lower rate – 1.6 – raising the question why…
Many thanks, Helen — so glad you’re enjoying the site!
Rebecca – I love your updates, thank you so much for keeping these updates and these cases alive
Marcus – I totally agree. The lack of consistency in sentencing is puzzling. And you are quite right – Whitaker had at least two (that we know of) tries; so how ‘doing well’ in prison makes people seem better is unbelievable. It doesn’t change what they did and what they have been judged on.
We did have one murder from the UK on MD/FF – have you seen the one about Graham Backhouse?
Rebecca – I couldn’t find it, but it would be great if you reviewed it! (Sorry if you already have!)
Helen: Thanks – and yes, I saw the Backhouse one; and another comes to mind:
https://murderpedia.org/male.S/s/severs-roger.htm (don’t know the FF title)
One of the problems with clemency is that the decision/reasoning is never in the public domain. This WAS the case with the Parole Board here in UK until recently, but due to controversial decisions ‘broad reasons’ are now to be given. In this case the Texas parole board can make inconsistent decisions and ‘swerve’ criticism by never giving their reasoning. I think this needs to change – because in matters of life and death the public has a right to know why, when X has been adjudged by a jury as deserving of death, a panel not unanswerable to the public makes a private decision to overturn.
If I were a board member confident of my decisions I’d be content to be answerable to the public…
Helen: The Derek Severs ep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7geqiz8wb7I
‘Dirty Deeds’
(I live nr-ish Rutland )
Who is Brent? Or did you mean Bart?
Bart. I just fixed it — thx for the heads-up!
Abbott accepted the state parole board’s rare clemency recommendation. Whitaker’s father, Kent, also was shot in the 2003 plot at the family’s suburban Houston home but survived and led the effort to save his son from execution.
In 2007, Whitaker founded an inmate blog, originally created with the assistance of his father, now maintained by volunteers, entitled Minutes Before Six; it has published his work and trial records, and articles, poetry, and art from inmates held in prisons in the United States. This section needs expansion with: a relatively complete list, in chronological order, of all important works by the title subject, especially those referenced herein, for each giving their complete publication details, including date and publisher of its first appearance. You can help by adding to it.
This is the first I’ve heard of this.
Whitaker is an eloquent, erudite writer, as his essay “Hell’s Kitchen” demonstrates, spiced up with smart literary references and quotes. He’s probably hoping this is his ticket to salvation, a la Jack Henry Abbott, another eloquent killer. Famously, Norman Mailer corresponded with Abbott, praised his writing talent, helped him snag a book deal, and lobbied for his early release. All of New York loved it — redemption by literature! Until…
Only a month after his release, Abbott stabbed and killed a restaurant waiter over a trivial bathroom dispute. He was convicted and eventually committed suicide in prison. Mailer regretted the whole affair.
Write all you want, Bart, but you’re a true sociopath just playing all the angles, and you’re never, ever getting out.
Definitely, the guy needs to stay where he is.
So, his death sentence gets commuted, and now the taxpayers are on the hook to continue to support a sociopath that clearly can’t be rehabilitated. Talk about a parent’s undying love for their child. Little punk-ass spoiled brat!
Very true — there really aren’t any mitigating factors in Bart’s case.
No matter how ‘good’ a prisoner he was (the reason given for clemency) – which is largely irrelevant in my book – others have been executed for less egregiousness, and while I don’t support capital punishment, I see no reason whatsoever why he was spared when certain others aren’t. Punishment MUST be consistent to be fair and fairness is fundamental to justice.
That a victim relative supports one’s clemency should be neither here nor there. Victims don’t get to decide punishment; nor do relatives (thankfully). What of those perps who have no family (or even victims living) to support their case?
The Texas Bd of Pardons & Paroles – notoriously intransigent over clemency – made a grave error here.
Compare Whitaker’s seeming *two* attempts to kill – successful second time, with two of the intended three – to Jeffrey Dillingham’s case (TX): one attempt, initiated by a family member of the victim(s), who ‘hired’ him – with fewer victims and he was younger at the time, and by all accounts sincerely remorseful:
https://murderpedia.org/male.D/d1/dillingham-jeffrey.htm
I cannot remotely see how W deserved clemency when D didn’t on the facts of the cases available to the public. This for me brings the death penalty into profound disrepute and is a major reason of a number why it is untenable. I think that even the strongest supporters of death would be – and certainly should be – disturbed by this perverse ‘justice’…