Savage Son (29 page)

“I meant sort of as an inside, not an inside joke, but…” His voice trailed off before he could complete his thought.

“It was a joke, right?” Felcman baited.

“No, sir. It was not a funny joke.” Bart shook his head, “No, it was not.”

“Why did you put it in there?”

“As something he would identify with, without putting my own name on it.”

“You were stupid enough to put your own address on it,” Felcman spat out, all sense of decorum evaporated. “Did you see that?”

“I had to,” Bart claimed.

“This is not the first time you’ve told people in this legal system how sorry you were for all the pain and trouble you’ve caused, is it?”

“No, it’s not.”

“Remember me showing the confession you gave after burglarizing all these schools? Remember that,” Felcman chided.

“Yes, sir.”

Felcman read from Bart’s confession:
“I am sorry for all the pain and trouble I have caused and will seek to amend the wrongs as soon as possible.
That’s exactly what you’re saying today, right?”

Bart replied, “You don’t believe a person can be sorry for the things they did?”

Even more eyes rolled in the gallery as many in attendance could not believe what they were hearing from this young man.

“No, I think they can be, Mr. Whitaker.” Felcman seemed to grow six inches taller as the opportunity of a lifetime presented itself to him. “But I don’t think
you
are.” He paused. “I think you’re sorry you got caught, and now you’re trying to figure out how to get out of the death penalty.” More than a few heads nodded in unison from the crowd. “Tell me something, Mr. Whitaker, do you have anything in your background, for this jury, to somehow lessen your moral blameworthiness in this case?”

“I leave those decisions up to them,” Bart answered, still attempting to gain control.

“Do you have any evidence they can listen to?”

“I believed they listened to me today.”

“Do you have any evidence to show any lessening of moral blameworthiness on this case?”

Bart was unable to answer the question.

“The answer is no.” Felcman decided to answer the question for him. “You haven’t been mistreated, you haven’t been abused. You haven’t had anything like that happen in your life, have you?”

“I’ve never been abused, no.”

“And the moral blameworthiness on this? The simple fact is this—without you, Mr. Whitaker, your mom and brother would still be alive today.”

“Yes, they would be,” Bart agreed.

“So your moral blameworthiness exceeds everybody else’s, correct?” Felcman placed the final nail in Bart’s coffin.

“I can see how it can be looked at that way, yes, sir.”

“How could it not be looked at that way, Mr. Whitaker?”

“We were all in this together, but, yes, it was my plan. I started it. Yes, it was my responsibility.”

“The second issue—you knew your family was going to be killed. You anticipated that human life would be taken that night?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And finally, the continuing threat. I’ve got a person who manipulates people, manipulated the court system, has been in trouble before with the court, correct?”

“I have been in trouble with the court, yes.”

“And kills the people he loves the most,” Felcman summarized.

“Yes, I did that.”

“And then you had one last question. You say you don’t have an ax to grind with me?”

“No,” Bart quietly answered.

“If you should have an ax to grind with me, Mr. Whitaker, should I be scared?”

“Sir, I don’t have an ax to grind with anyone.”

“I could treat you nice and fine and love you as much as your mother and brother loved you, and you could make up some reason to kill me. Is that about right?”

“Not anymore.”

“How many more years do you think you’re going to live, Mr. Whitaker? Fifty?” Felcman queried.

“I don’t know, sir.”

“It only took five years from getting off probation for you to kill your parents. That’s all it took. You’re twenty-seven.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’ve got a good number of years, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“And you didn’t have to pull the trigger. You got somebody else to do it for you, right?” Felcman asked his final question.

“Yes, sir” was all Bart could muster.

“Thank you, Judge.” Felcman nodded toward Judge Vacek, acknowledged the members of the jury, and refused to look at Bart Whitaker again. He was done.

Randy McDonald, Bart’s attorney, had no further questions for his client. Bart was also the final defense witness.

Time had run out for the day, so Judge Vacek informed the jurors that attorneys from both sides would make their final arguments the following morning.

March 7, 2007
Fort Bend County Courthouse
Richmond, Texas

Nearly two months after jury selection began in the case against Bart Whitaker, attorneys for both sides were prepared to wrap up the trial. A bleary-eyed bunch of jurors shuffled into their familiar seats and listened, one last time, to each attorney argue why Bart Whitaker deserved to live or deserved to die.

First up was Assistant District Attorney Jeff Strange for the state. The forty-five-year-old prosecutor would eventually get to the defendant; however, he wanted to remind the jury members of what kind of people Tricia and Kevin Whitaker were.

“Kevin was a child. He was nineteen when he was killed. Kevin Whitaker could have become a doctor, or maybe some type of researcher that would find the cure for some disease. Or maybe a teacher or a police officer. He had a right to become whatever his talent and hard work would let him become, and this defendant has denied us all that.”

Strange continued, “He was an Aggie. He liked to hunt, he liked to fish, he liked sports, he wore boots. He liked country music.” He added, “There’s nothing wrong with that. He was a good kid, and he had a right to grow up. When that Cor-Bon bullet hit him in the chest, that child spent the rest of his life with his hand over his chest trying to stem the flow of blood, staggering around the lobby of his house. What could that baby have been thinking? How scared must he have been? How much did that hurt?”

Strange then continued to address the jury panel about Bart’s mother. “It would have been nice if she would have been able to help him. They died about ten feet apart. Patricia Whitaker’s last words alive were to express concern over Clifton Stanley’s health. I mean that literally. She said, ‘No, Clifton. He could still be in here.’ He’s not even her child,” Strange remarked, reminding jurors of the helpful, concerned neighbor, and how Tricia was selfless to the end.

The prosecutor spoke more of Tricia Whitaker. “She was a teacher. She spent her entire professional career educating the children of this community. She was a woman of great faith. I’ve been told she’d give you the shirt off her back. She deserved better than this. She had a right to become a grandmother. She had a right to grow old with Kent,” he stated, and looked up at the grieving widower.

“Make no mistake about it, that’s why we’re here. This is as bad as it gets. This is absolutely as bad as it gets,” Strange noted, and turned his gaze toward Bart. He turned the conversation to focus on Bart’s murder plotting, failed murder attempts, and, ultimately, brutal double murder. “On April 5, 2001, it’s the big day,” he declared facetiously. “The Whitakers are supposed to die that day, but Jennifer Japhet has a conscience. She calls the police. The Waco police call the Sugar Land police. Mr. Whitaker’s contacted, and—fortunately—nothing happened that day. [Bart] goes off and runs and hides. If he had any type of conscience, he would have fallen on his knees before God and prayed for forgiveness. He would have come back to Sugar Land and got down before each member of his family, one by one, and begged them for forgiveness.”

Strange turned his back on Bart and addressed the jury. “But what happens? His family buys him a Chevrolet Yukon. They buy him a townhome in Willis, because they think he’s going to Sam Houston State University, and on December 10, 2003, he kills his mother, he kills his brother, and he has his father shot. And make no mistake about it—he did this so he could inherit money. And then it just gets worse. Within a few months, he’s trying to bribe a witness, Adam Hipp, to lie to the police. Within a month, he’s up at T.G I. Fridays talking with Steven Champagne about having to finish the job and killing his father. Then he steals ten thousand of his father’s money and runs to Mexico. And you wonder why this is a death penalty case?” Strange could not fathom how anyone could think otherwise.

“His girlfriend told you that he looks for people with low self-esteem. He looks for people that are looking for something in their life. And that’s the amazing thing about him.” The attorney turned and jabbed an index finger in Bart’s direction. “At some point, Bart Whitaker somehow developed the skill to evaluate people. He can take a person that’s in some type of turmoil and size up what that person needs in their life, and he gives it to them. It’s as plain and simple as that.

“Look at all the different faces of the defendant we’ve seen. You heard his former fiancée testify that she knows ‘Family Bart.’ The Bart that loved his mom, the Bart that loved his dad, the Bart that was very, very protective of his brother, Kevin, because that’s the face he wanted her to see.

“Adam Hipp got to know ‘Financial Adviser Bart’ as they used to sit around in the upstairs lifting weights together, talking about their trust funds. He knew that was compelling to Adam Hipp.

“The people in Waco got to meet ‘Nerdy Bart,’ that spent all of his time playing video games and basically almost flunked out of school. That’s the face he showed Justin Peters and Will Anthony.

“The people in Willis and the Bentwater Country Club, they got to know ‘Party Animal Bart.’ The party was always at his place every night.

“And what you got to see yesterday was ‘On Trial for Capital Murder Bart.’ The defendant looks for people with low self-esteem and he exploits it. The reason why this makes him a future danger is because these are exactly the type of people that he’s going to be in prison with—people with low self-esteem, people who are less intelligent than him, people who are less sophisticated than him, people that he is going to be able to influence.”

Strange went on to point out three instances of evidence that Bart Whitaker considered to be a joke: first, a picture, taken on the night of the murder, with Bart and Kevin, smiling together, and Bart flipping him off in secret; second, the Keyser Soze–addressed mailer envelope sent to Adam Hipp, with bribery money inside; third, the Christmas card to Fred Felcman. Of the latter, he stated, “Fred Felcman obviously knows what Bart Whitaker is capable of, so if I send you a card with an ominous notation to your family, it’s going to ruin your holiday.”

Strange turned back toward Bart and said, “There is a time in your life to lay low. When you have been caught committing capital murder, and you are going on trial for your life, there is a time to just shut up.” A few snickers could be heard in the gallery. “He can’t do it”—Strange turned to face the jury box—“because it’s a compulsion. It’s just who he is.”

Strange was quick to dispel the idea that Bart suffered from the hard bigotry of high expectations. “He told you with his own mouth he planned on killing his family. Unless he kills his family, there is no inheritance. And we know that money was the motivation, not the Peter Pan fantasy he tried to sell you yesterday. You saw no evidence that was truly mitigating. He tried to tell you this irrational story that somehow his family’s expectations of him—the fact that they treated him too well, the fact that they bought him too much stuff—made him hate his family and caused him to kill them.” Strange practically spat the words out. “Folks, it was over the money. He wanted to inherit the money. The thing is, he understands that people who kill their mommas don’t fare particularly well in front of Texas juries when they do it for money, so he had to come up with Plan B. That’s why he made up the Peter Pan–like fantasy yesterday. He doesn’t want you to think he killed his family over money, because you’ll hold it against him. And you should. And he did.”

Strange told the jury that he felt bad for the Bartlett and Whitaker families. However, “the fact that the families have forgiven him, the fact that the families don’t want it (a death sentence) to happen, it doesn’t fit in this equation.” He added, “A legitimate purpose of the criminal justice system is to deter crime. Hopefully, by making an example out of a person, other people will know not to follow that conduct. And if we know anything else from the facts of this case, Bart Whitaker deserves to be made an example of. He should be the poster child for this.”

Strange lamented Bart’s choices in life: “He had the chance for a perfectly easy life. He came up here yesterday and tried to tell you that he has been spoiled rotten, that his parents have done so much for him that he resented it. That because they were successful, it raised expectations for him. That’s offensive! That’s basically blaming Tricia and Kevin for their own deaths!”

Strange was furious, as were many onlookers in the gallery. He continued, “The bottom line is he has absolutely no moral compass. He has remarkable ability to be all things to all people, and he has no moral compass.”

The prosecutor was ready to finish his portion of the argument. “Just like every one of you people, I hope the world, this community, is a better place because I tread on this earth. I think any moral person would want the same thing. We want to make a better life for our children, and we want the world to be a better place. There are some people, however, like Bart Whitaker, that just take. And they take and they take, and they suck the life out of everything they come in contact with. You’ve had a chance to see that.”

Strange paused, collected himself, and turned toward Bart. He then looked back at the jurors. “He killed his mother. He killed his brother. They both loved him. Without condition. And he killed them.” Strange let that sink in. “When you look at the life of Bart Whitaker, the only thing he’s ever earned himself is this trip to death row.”

The gallery fell silent.

Randy McDonald was up next to speak on behalf of Bart.

“There is no question, no question at all, that this is a horrible, tragic, unacceptable crime.” McDonald somehow wanted the jurors to stifle their emotions and, instead, focus on the task at hand, which was to assess if Bart Whitaker should be considered a continuing threat if he was to remain alive—one of the three criteria to determine whether or not he should be executed.

The defense attorney disagreed with Prosecutor Strange’s conclusion that Bart killed his family for money. “The state has made a big deal about the money. The money was his tool,” McDonald surmised, “the manipulation. Money was a tool for him. The bottom line is there was something wrong with Bart. No one does this without something being wrong with them. No rational person would do this.”

McDonald tried to blame Bart’s conspiratorial plans on his alleged lack of acceptance. “What you really see is an individual withdrawing from society. That’s exactly what he did. His feelings were that he was off on this island and he doesn’t have anybody that loves him. He somehow developed that into a hatred for his parents. There could be no other reasoning.”

McDonald then resorted to the death penalty defense attorney backup plan: guilt. “I’m up here telling you that you will never make a more important decision in your life about whether to take another human being’s life.”

McDonald’s next tactic was to comparison shop Bart alongside his co-conspirators. He seemed amazed that the prosecution plea-bargained with Steven Champagne. “Fifteen years on a lesser included of murder, all because they are so driven to seek justice with the death penalty in this case. No remorse from him whatsoever, and he gets fifteen years.”

The prosecution’s potential dealings with Chris Brashear were even more appalling to Bart’s defense attorney. “Is there something maybe less blameworthy about Bart’s conduct than Chris Brashear’s?” McDonald asked. He then listed Brashear’s actions the night of the murders. “Just another walk in the park. What does that tell you about that person? What does that tell you about his moral culpability? Is that actually greater than Bart’s? They didn’t make a decision to seek the death penalty for him, and it’s the same conduct. He was, in fact, the shooter! Had Chris Brashear not pulled the trigger, we wouldn’t be here today.”

McDonald then acknowledged the uniqueness of the case. “I’ve never been involved in a case where the defense called the victims in the case to put their feelings before you. The reason I did it is that they tell you they don’t want the death penalty [for Bart]. More importantly, the devastation continues for these victims. They want closure.”

The defense attorney made his final plea to spare Bart’s life. “For someone like Bart, who had every opportunity in the world, who had loving parents, he’s thrown it away. For someone like him being in prison every single day for the rest of his life, and thinking about what he did, that is pretty serious punishment.”

McDonald then attempted to convince the jury that Bart had changed. “The Bart Whitaker that committed this crime could no more have gotten up here and faced you and told you the truth and accepted responsibility for this than the Man in the Moon. There’s no way he could have done that. Only by being in jail, only by being faced with this, is he able to actually come clean with you about it. He tells you the truth. He actually is remorseful.”

McDonald trumpeted the Christian theme of forgiveness laid out by Kent Whitaker. “We all know from our religious beliefs that confession is the start. It is the start of forgiveness and redemption. That’s what you’re hearing his dad talk about. That’s what he’s interested in. That’s what he’s telling you about.”

McDonald closed with a return to guilt. “Do yourself a favor,” he said directly to everyone in the jury box, “depending on your decision, one day you’re going to wake up, and you’re going to read the paper that Bart Whitaker was executed. You’ve got to know that it was proven to you beyond a reasonable doubt, and that you didn’t just do it because it is such a notorious, high-profile, ugly, nasty crime.” Some of the jurors noticeably shifted in their seats. “Treat him the way the state of Texas wants you to treat him, following your oath to do justice. I think if you really, really look at it, there is absolutely no evidence that he is a continuing threat to society, once he’s given a life sentence.”

McDonald signed off with the following bit of advice for the jury: “Render a just verdict. If you can do that, you’ll be all right with yourself in the morning. If you can’t, you’re going to have problems with it. Thank you.”