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Speaker 1: Host you are now listening to True Murder, the most
Speaker 1: shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that
Speaker 1: have written about them. Geesy Bundy Dahmer, The Night Stalker DTK.
Speaker 1: Every week, another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
Speaker 1: and infamous killers in true crime history, True Murder with
Speaker 1: your host, journalist and author Dan Zupansky. Good evening, This
Speaker 1: is your host Dan Zepanski for the program True Murder,
Speaker 1: the most shocking killers in true crime history and the
Speaker 1: authors that have written about them. It was a night
Speaker 1: of celebration for the Whitaker family. Their son Bart was
Speaker 1: graduating from college, but when Bart's brother Kevin opened his
Speaker 1: door to their house, a massd intruder shot him point blank.
Speaker 1: His mother took the next bullet, followed by mister Whittaker
Speaker 1: and Bart. Blood was everywhere, but somehow Bart and his
Speaker 1: family survived. His father survived. To the cops, the story
Speaker 1: didn't add up, however, and their investigation discovered a stunning
Speaker 1: web of lies. Bart was living a double life. He
Speaker 1: hadn't been enrolled in college since his freshman year. Instead
Speaker 1: of attending classes, he'd spent his days playing video games
Speaker 1: with his friends while planning to murder his family to
Speaker 1: inherit a million dollar estate. Savage Son takes us inside
Speaker 1: this chilling murder case to reveal the twisted motives of
Speaker 1: a seemingly all American boy next door who turned into
Speaker 1: a cold blood a killer now residing on death row.
Speaker 1: My special guest this evening is author Corey Mitchell. Thank
Speaker 1: you very much for a green to his interview, and
Speaker 1: welcome to the program, Corey Mitchell, and how.
Speaker 2: You doing, sir. I appreciate you having me on.
Speaker 6: Well, thank you very much for a green in his interview.
Speaker 6: It's of great pleasure for us and for me and
Speaker 6: the audience to have you on a program tonight.
Speaker 2: So hey, I'm looking forward to talking to you about
Speaker 2: this book and learning more about you and what you're doing.
Speaker 2: And you're a true crime writing as well.
Speaker 6: Oh well, thanks very much for that. Let's get down
Speaker 6: to this savage murder. Of all the murder cases you
Speaker 6: could have chosen, and there's so many interesting cases, why
Speaker 6: did you decide to write about this particular case.
Speaker 2: I've been writing a lot of books about serial killers
Speaker 2: and big mass murders in Texas, and I needed to
Speaker 2: change a pace. I'm completely fascinated by serial killers, but
Speaker 2: I just wanted something a little bit different. I wanted
Speaker 2: something that involved, just like your introduction said that all
Speaker 2: American boy, you know, how does the all American kid
Speaker 2: who seemingly went down the similar path in life that
Speaker 2: I went down. As a matter of fact, I even
Speaker 2: grew up about twenty minutes away for murders occurred. I
Speaker 2: grew up in Parland, and this is in sugar Land,
Speaker 2: And you know, Bart Whittaker was raised in a family
Speaker 2: almost like I was raised in, in a town almost
Speaker 2: like I was raised in, And so that alone made
Speaker 2: me curious want to know more about this guy who
Speaker 2: had everything handed to him on a silver platter, yet
Speaker 2: he still just was not satisfied with everything he was
Speaker 2: given and decided to resort to not only murder, but
Speaker 2: murder of his entire family, his loved ones, people that
Speaker 2: really adored him and gave him everything that he wanted.
Speaker 2: To me, that that was just very fascinating. It's very
Speaker 2: different than the mindset of a serial killer. So I
Speaker 2: wanted to dig deeper into that. And of course, like
Speaker 2: I said, the fact that it was so close to
Speaker 2: where I grew up always makes it interesting to learn
Speaker 2: about the things that happened around you, And when you're
Speaker 2: familiar with the surroundings, it just makes it that much
Speaker 2: more interesting and bizarre to find out about it. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: that was the number one one reason on that, And
Speaker 2: then the second one was that this is a much
Speaker 2: more high profile case than what I usually take on.
Speaker 2: I tend to take on cases that they go under
Speaker 2: the radar. I mean, Coral Eugene Wants in my book
Speaker 2: Evil Eyes, even though he's probably the most prolific serial
Speaker 2: killer in the history of the United States, most people
Speaker 2: were not even aware of him. So I wanted to
Speaker 2: really dig in and expose you know, Coral Wants and
Speaker 2: let everybody know about him. But this one is just
Speaker 2: a little different. It actually had been covered on forty
Speaker 2: eight Hours first and had an hour long special in
Speaker 2: the case. I found a very fascinating watch in that case.
Speaker 2: I'd followed the case in the news before it aired
Speaker 2: on forty eight Hours, so I was already aware of it,
Speaker 2: and I just thought, you know, I wanted to try
Speaker 2: something a little bit different, something a little bit more
Speaker 2: high profile, just to see, you know, something that's not
Speaker 2: completely saturating in the airways though, like you know, Casey
Speaker 2: Anthony case or Holloway case, those those just hold no
Speaker 2: interest to me at all. You know, those cases just
Speaker 2: get overdone, overblown, overanalyzed, over talking headed by the so
Speaker 2: called experts out there, but this one just had enough
Speaker 2: that there was just enough national interest. But it still
Speaker 2: was interesting to me to be able to get that
Speaker 2: story out to people. So, like I said, it's very
Speaker 2: different than what I normally write, but I thoroughly enjoyed
Speaker 2: the process of taking on a different type of case
Speaker 2: like this and now such a bizarre case that you know,
Speaker 2: how can you not be fascinated by it? Oh?
Speaker 6: Absolutely it is. It is an incredible case. Now tell
Speaker 6: us a little bit, go back a little bit to
Speaker 6: tell us a little bit about this where this story
Speaker 6: primarily takes place, and you talked about a place called Sugarland, Texas,
Speaker 6: very close to Houston, Texas. And also tell us a
Speaker 6: little bit more about Bart's family. You talked about they gave,
Speaker 6: they doted on him. Tell us what were they a
Speaker 6: wealthy family? You said they spoiled him, But were they
Speaker 6: a wealthy family? Tell us a little bit more in
Speaker 6: your research for this book, which you found out what
Speaker 6: bart life was like with his father Kent, his mother Tricia,
Speaker 6: and his brother Kevin. What was their life really like?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know sugar Land that the town is just
Speaker 2: a small suburb of Houston, and what it's basically occurred
Speaker 2: over time is well, first of all, it's built on
Speaker 2: money from the Imperial Sugar Company. So that's where the
Speaker 2: name of sugar Land comes from. Sugar Land back, you know,
Speaker 2: back when I was a kid living in Parland, sugar
Speaker 2: Land was you know, very small. I didn't really have
Speaker 2: a whole lot going on. Then all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: a lot of the pro sports athletes from Houston started
Speaker 2: to move out there, Like Achemolage one I believe, had
Speaker 2: a house out there. A lot of the Houston astros
Speaker 2: had moved out there back then, the Houston Oilers and
Speaker 2: then now they're known as the Houston Texans. You know,
Speaker 2: a lot of these guys with a lot of money
Speaker 2: had started to move out there. And then there was
Speaker 2: a certain amount of flight from the city of Houston
Speaker 2: and all the crime that was occurring in Houston from people,
Speaker 2: so they were moving out to sugar Land where it
Speaker 2: was you know, quite you know, suburb, very very low key,
Speaker 2: just not a lot of nonsense going on, not a
Speaker 2: lot of criminal activity. And uh, you combine that that
Speaker 2: quiet Cottagy feeling, neighborhoods feel along with this extra amount
Speaker 2: of money coming in, and that's kind of the direction
Speaker 2: the sugar landtern, which was more money was coming into
Speaker 2: the town, and subsequently that it became a very affluent
Speaker 2: suburb of the city of Houston. And within that realm
Speaker 2: of you know, nice little neighborhoods was the Whittaker family.
Speaker 2: By most Sugar Lake standards, they were not super wealthy.
Speaker 2: By the average American, they were very much so, I mean,
Speaker 2: they're they're doing extremely well. They lived in a very
Speaker 2: nice home basically you know what they call mcmahonsions out here,
Speaker 2: and you know, basically pushing close to a million dollars
Speaker 2: for which to people out in the Northeast and in California,
Speaker 2: that doesn't sound like a lot of money, but the
Speaker 2: housing prices in Texas have always been incredibly low. So
Speaker 2: a million dollar houses in Texas are probably worth about
Speaker 2: three or four million in Los Angeles just.
Speaker 6: To kind of comity.
Speaker 2: So so yeah, they they did extremely well and really
Speaker 2: not on any fancy jobs. Basically, Kent was working an
Speaker 2: accounting department for his wife's husband's construction company, and then Tricia,
Speaker 2: the mother, was working as a teacher at one of
Speaker 2: the nearby schools, so they weren't these really outs. You know,
Speaker 2: it wasn't a CEO of a major company or you
Speaker 2: know Mary, you know Mary kay Cosmetics, multi dollar regional
Speaker 2: saleswoman or anything like that. They just have seemingly normal jobs.
Speaker 2: But they did very well at their jobs. They were
Speaker 2: very conservative with their money. They held tightly to it,
Speaker 2: and then you know, make smart investments, and you know,
Speaker 2: they really just put all that money into a very
Speaker 2: nice home and also to as I said, doting on
Speaker 2: their children, their two sons, Bart and Kevin. And by that,
Speaker 2: you know Bart Whitaker when he was in college, he
Speaker 2: had his full college paid for. He was given a
Speaker 2: one hundred thousand dollars condominium on the lake, and he
Speaker 2: had a thirty five thousand dollars SUV. So not bad
Speaker 2: when you're in your early twenties and you've got everything
Speaker 2: covered for you. So uh and then fight. So that's
Speaker 2: financially and then emotionally as well. Now, Bart Whittaker will
Speaker 2: tell you a different story. He'll tell you that his
Speaker 2: father didn't really paid enough attention to him. His mother
Speaker 2: paid more attention to his younger brother, Kevin, because Kevin
Speaker 2: was a worse student, and therefore he needed more attention.
Speaker 2: But the reality is quite the opposite. Bart really really
Speaker 2: was paid attention to by his father, and his dad
Speaker 2: really cared about Bart, and the two spent time training
Speaker 2: on bikes together. They rode what's called the MS one.
Speaker 2: It's a it's a ride for muscular or multiple score
Speaker 2: roses that I've even ridden in about seven times where
Speaker 2: you ride one hundred and fifty miles in their case
Speaker 2: would be from Houston to Austin. So that takes a
Speaker 2: lot of training on bikes. Hours and hours and hours
Speaker 2: on the bikes that Kent spent with his son, and
Speaker 2: you know, taught him the ways that it was, you know,
Speaker 2: trying to teach him ways of business, and you know,
Speaker 2: they had sit down dinners, everything you would think in
Speaker 2: a good family. And same with the mother too. She
Speaker 2: Tricia really doated on Bart and really tried to give
Speaker 2: as much attention to both of her boys and as
Speaker 2: much love to both of her boys as well. And
Speaker 2: also another aspect of the Whittaker family's religion played a
Speaker 2: very very strong part in their lives, and.
Speaker 6: They were a very religious family, very religious.
Speaker 2: Not not over the top, but just they always made
Speaker 2: sure they were at church every weekend, Kent would have
Speaker 2: heard the father. His brother was actually in the ministry
Speaker 2: as well, and I believe a Baptist church near the area,
Speaker 2: and so it was a very important aspect of their
Speaker 2: life that religion and faith was to be talked about
Speaker 2: in the family and discussed and shared with friends and family,
Speaker 2: and that was one of the I think that's probably
Speaker 2: one of the key points for Bart is that he
Speaker 2: was actually seemingly turned off by a lot of that
Speaker 2: when he was younger, and I think that probably caused
Speaker 2: a lot of consternation in the household, or at least
Speaker 2: from his perspective, that he thought his parents were browbeating
Speaker 2: him with religion. As a matter of fact, he even
Speaker 2: went to Baylor University in Waco, Texas, which is known
Speaker 2: as mainly a Baptist school, and a lot of the
Speaker 2: students there go, you know, further into the ministry. And
Speaker 2: then it also just plays a very big part of
Speaker 2: that social you know, that campus life as well religion.
Speaker 2: And that was another thing you talked. You mentioned earlier,
Speaker 2: how Bart who somehow pulled the wool over his parents'
Speaker 2: eyes all this time, you know, convincing them that he
Speaker 2: was graduating from college and in reality, he didn't even
Speaker 2: have enough credits to be considered a sophomore. He spent
Speaker 2: a lot of his time at Baylor, where he first
Speaker 2: started college, smoking pot and playing video games and you know,
Speaker 2: playing Have Request with his roommates hours and hours on end,
Speaker 2: and instead of going to his classes, instead of getting
Speaker 2: a job to help support his income, he just basically
Speaker 2: got high and played video games. And I think a
Speaker 2: lot of that was because he was kind of sick
Speaker 2: of all these religious hypocrites, as he called him, religious
Speaker 2: hypocrite students at Baylor.
Speaker 6: Right now, before we get into the you know, you've
Speaker 6: got us to the point where he is fooling around
Speaker 6: in school unbeknownst to his parents who are paying the
Speaker 6: incredible tab and have all these great expectations for their son.
Speaker 6: What was Bart Whitaker ever seen by any psychiatric or
Speaker 6: mental health professionals? And did he have any legal problems
Speaker 6: during his adolescence or any events where he would he
Speaker 6: would seen by any again psychiatric experts or mental health professionals.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Bart started off normal kid, good kid, going to school,
Speaker 2: making decent grades, and then he got into high school
Speaker 2: and then he started to get bored. And what he
Speaker 2: would do was convince some of his buddies that, hey,
Speaker 2: we should go up to these schools of ours and
Speaker 2: start robbing them and taking things out. And he was
Speaker 2: really fascinated by computers, so he would convince a couple
Speaker 2: of his buddies from school that we'd go in, sneak
Speaker 2: into the campus, climb up on top of the roof,
Speaker 2: break in through a skylight, almost like a mission, impossible mission,
Speaker 2: and then lower themselves down in, go in and steal
Speaker 2: as many computers as they could, and then take off,
Speaker 2: and then they stored them in a storage. Shit. He
Speaker 2: didn't even resell them. He didn't he didn't pawn them off,
Speaker 2: and he actually didn't even really use them. It was
Speaker 2: more just the thrill of going in and stealing things.
Speaker 2: And to make it even more bizarre is that one
Speaker 2: of the schools he stole from was the school where
Speaker 2: his mother taught. They just devastated Tricia Whittaker that her son,
Speaker 2: who was supposed to be this great kid and all
Speaker 2: American boy, goes in to steal from her own school.
Speaker 2: She was so devastated by Bart's actions that he stopped
Speaker 2: shopping at the grocery store that she used to shop
Speaker 2: at all the time, she stopped going to the same
Speaker 2: church that she went to because she was so embarrassed
Speaker 2: that she thought all of the people there would be
Speaker 2: talking about what her son did. You know, the good
Speaker 2: old Bart is actually a bad boy, and based on
Speaker 2: the several thefts that when he got caught and was
Speaker 2: got in trouble, he was sent to a couple of
Speaker 2: different doctors actually for a psychiatric evaluation. And ironically, the
Speaker 2: two reports couldn't have been much different from one another.
Speaker 2: One report said that this guy is deranged, he is narcissistic,
Speaker 2: he's over the top. He's gonna be nothing but trouble
Speaker 2: for everybody involved with him. And the recommendation was that
Speaker 2: this guy should not be allowed back in school. He
Speaker 2: should be sent to jail and locked, locked away and
Speaker 2: have the key thrown away. Uh. The other report, also
Speaker 2: by another doctor there in sugar Land, was the total opposite,
Speaker 2: was that Bart made a bad choice. He's a good kid. Really,
Speaker 2: you have nothing to be afraid of. And so, of
Speaker 2: course the parents tended to ignore the first report and
Speaker 2: focus more on the second and think that, oh, this
Speaker 2: is Bart, he's a good guy. He couldn't have really,
Speaker 2: he didn't mean to do this.
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Speaker 2: He's just he's trying to have some fun and it
Speaker 2: was a bad way of expressing his desire to do that.
Speaker 2: And that's kind of it's there in black and white.
Speaker 2: It's kind of scary that one guy nailed it so perfectly,
Speaker 2: that one of the doctors nailed it that you know,
Speaker 2: this is a basically a deranged sociopath who's going to
Speaker 2: end up harming himself and other people as well.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's an interesting early assessment for sure. Must have
Speaker 6: been some obvious signs at least to him to make
Speaker 6: that type of big assessment. Now you're talking about him
Speaker 6: being in college and he doesn't even have enough credits
Speaker 6: to graduate potentially. And you do talk about in the
Speaker 6: book that he often talked to people around him, his friends,
Speaker 6: which were at a higher socioeconomic status, kids were well
Speaker 6: off at least compared to a lot of a lot
Speaker 6: of people, not the people you would typically think of
Speaker 6: that he might discuss this sort of thing. What was
Speaker 6: he discussed much earlier than his graduation date. Take us
Speaker 6: back into college and some of his friends, and what
Speaker 6: was the kind of conversations he was having with these
Speaker 6: friends in his first.
Speaker 2: Year in college at Baylor. What he would do with
Speaker 2: his buddies, who would instead of going to classroom, you know,
Speaker 2: going to these classes, would be sitting around smoking, playing
Speaker 2: video games. They would jokingly start talking about what would
Speaker 2: be the best way to kill your family? And you know,
Speaker 2: Bart would always be the one to bring that up,
Speaker 2: and he would ask one of his classmates, one of
Speaker 2: his dorm mates, and say, you know, how could I
Speaker 2: kill my family? How could I do this and get
Speaker 2: away with it? And of course here they are, they're
Speaker 2: smoking pie, they're getting drunk, they're just having fun and
Speaker 2: they're just playing along with Bart. They think, oh, he's
Speaker 2: just being stupid, and you know why not. So they
Speaker 2: would sit around and actually dream up fantasy is about
Speaker 2: how they would kill Bart's parents, and you know, for
Speaker 2: the other people involved, it was just a joke and
Speaker 2: they just played, you know, in their minds. They were
Speaker 2: just along with it. And Bart was basically what he
Speaker 2: was doing while he was throwing these little seeds out
Speaker 2: was that he was gauging people. He was seeing, Okay,
Speaker 2: how would these people react when I bring up such
Speaker 2: a morbid topic. Are they going to be afraid of me?
Speaker 2: Are they going to think that this is interesting? Are
Speaker 2: they going to want to participate in something like this?
Speaker 2: So he was actually sitting there scouting people. It's almost
Speaker 2: like an NBA scout, going down to the high school
Speaker 2: playground or the junior high school playground and seeing what
Speaker 2: the talent is. And this is what Bart was basically doing,
Speaker 2: was figuring out who he could bring into his web
Speaker 2: to actually help him kill his family. And this, like
Speaker 2: we said, this occurred early on in his college career,
Speaker 2: and it went on for a number of years and eventually,
Speaker 2: like you were talking about too, Dan is that you
Speaker 2: not only were the majority of these people that he
Speaker 2: was speaking with in a higher economic stratum, but also
Speaker 2: intelligent kids as well. Some of these kids were National
Speaker 2: Merrider Scholarship award winners, which means they're basically the cream
Speaker 2: and the crop. Uh you know, just highly intelligent people,
Speaker 2: you know that were not going to school just a party.
Speaker 2: They were going to learn about microbiology, and they were
Speaker 2: going to learn about nanotechnology and all these scientific based
Speaker 2: education tracks.
Speaker 6: Of the unlikely, unlikely candidates for this sort of thing,
Speaker 6: for sure, meanly exactly you would think.
Speaker 2: You would think it would just be somebody that you know,
Speaker 2: was kind of a low life scum, would be the
Speaker 2: person to be a triggerman and a murder and a
Speaker 2: hit job. But these were not. These were the cream
Speaker 2: of the crop. They were the good kids. And uh
Speaker 2: Bart had the ability to find these kids and spot,
Speaker 2: you know, and just I don't know, spot something there
Speaker 2: some some helplessness, some pain in their life. There was
Speaker 2: something missing in those people's lives that he was able
Speaker 2: to hone in on and determined that that could be
Speaker 2: a guy that would actually pull a trigger and kill
Speaker 2: my parents for me.
Speaker 6: Now, to all the critics or not the critics, but
Speaker 6: say a skeptic or someone that is listening right now
Speaker 6: and saying, well, yeah, but this is just talk. He's
Speaker 6: smoking a bunch of weed, he's talking to his buddies.
Speaker 6: Obviously his buddies didn't take it very seriously, or the
Speaker 6: very first time that he mentioned something like that, they
Speaker 6: would have went to the police and then they would
Speaker 6: have wired up his friends or something like you see
Speaker 6: on TV. But telling our audience, what evidence you have
Speaker 6: that this was not just a conversation. You know there
Speaker 6: are you spoke about some other plots? Well, how far
Speaker 6: did he go in plotting the death other than smoking
Speaker 6: weed and talking with his friends.
Speaker 2: As Bart would would instigate these conversations and engage the
Speaker 2: response and the reactions of his friends, he started to see, Okay,
Speaker 2: this guy is actually listening to what I'm saying and
Speaker 2: is responding to me, and is not calling the cops
Speaker 2: and is not afraid of me, and it is not
Speaker 2: calling me a deranged psychopath. So he would start to
Speaker 2: hone in further, and then the conversations would taper off
Speaker 2: for a week or two, and then he'd bring it
Speaker 2: up again and they see how the reaction was and
Speaker 2: if they still weren't running away to the hills. After
Speaker 2: he brought this up, he would continue on and pursue it.
Speaker 2: And eventually, after several months of this, two of his
Speaker 2: closest roommates he actually convinced that, okay, we're actually gonna
Speaker 2: do this. And he had just hit you know, nothing
Speaker 2: super dramatic. I mean, it wasn't laid out, this is
Speaker 2: exactly how we're gonna do it. It was just almost
Speaker 2: this continuation of this stoner talk. But somehow, within a
Speaker 2: few months he was able to convince these people that hey,
Speaker 2: you know, we're actually gonna go down to sugar Land, Texas,
Speaker 2: all the way from Waco, and we're gonna go and
Speaker 2: kill my parents. And it actually it actually in three
Speaker 2: different occasions before Bart was actually successful in murdering his parents,
Speaker 2: and each time that had happened, it seemed, and I
Speaker 2: tell people this, there's almost a dark sense of humor
Speaker 2: throughout the book when Bart's actually trying these murder cases
Speaker 2: or trying trying to actually commit the murders of his families.
Speaker 2: And as I said before, this is no disrespect intending
Speaker 2: towards Kevin or Trisha Whittaker or anybody involved in this
Speaker 2: crime because it's not one it's not humors, but the
Speaker 2: idiocy involved on Bart's side of what he was trying
Speaker 2: to do. It's almost like a bad Keystone cop movie
Speaker 2: or something, just this moronic bad guy because you know,
Speaker 2: one of the murder one of the times when he
Speaker 2: actually sent the guys down to murder his parents, he
Speaker 2: had said, Okay, you're gonna go in. You're gonna go
Speaker 2: I'm gonna take my parents out to dinner. You're gonna
Speaker 2: go into the house. I'm gonna turn off the alarge system.
Speaker 2: You're gonna raise up this window, crawl in, shut the window,
Speaker 2: and wait for my family. Well, Bart had all that
Speaker 2: said up he actually drove down. This is about two
Speaker 2: or three years before the murders actually occurred. The same
Speaker 2: exact scenario. We came in, He took his parents out there,
Speaker 2: parents came his buddies. Then we're to go in sneak
Speaker 2: in the house. Well, one time Bart forgets to turn
Speaker 2: out the alarm. So the guys are going in there
Speaker 2: all dressed up in black, and he goes in to
Speaker 2: lift up the window and the alarm system goes off.
Speaker 2: So they had to line up and they actually take
Speaker 2: off all the way to Waco. And then about a
Speaker 2: year later, a totally different set of guys were involved
Speaker 2: in this and same situation. Bart's gonna go down to
Speaker 2: sugar Land. Uh, he's gonna meet the guys there. They're
Speaker 2: gonna go the same process. Well, he sets one of
Speaker 2: his buddies up in a stolen car to get out
Speaker 2: of town, but he forgets to fill up the tank
Speaker 2: of the tank with gasoline. So here they are. This
Speaker 2: guy's ready to drive all the way down to sugar Land.
Speaker 2: And he's in his car driving away and gets outside
Speaker 2: of Waco. And if you've ever driven from Waco down
Speaker 2: to sugar Land at night, there's almost no lights for
Speaker 2: about fifty miles. So he gets out of Waco, there's
Speaker 2: no lights, there's no gas stations, there's nothing. This guy
Speaker 2: runs out of gas on his way down there. And
Speaker 2: to make matters even worse on that particular case, is
Speaker 2: that one of the one of his helper's former friend,
Speaker 2: a female friend, had found out what they were gonna do,
Speaker 2: and she actually called the police. He's the only person
Speaker 2: out of all these people, there's probably about nine different
Speaker 2: potential murderers involved, and only one person who was a
Speaker 2: friend of these groups actually called the cops and said, hey,
Speaker 2: these guys are gonna come down and kill this family.
Speaker 2: And what happened was this girl had called the police
Speaker 2: down in sugar Land or actually in Waco, who then
Speaker 2: contacted the police in sugar Land, who then contacted the
Speaker 2: Whittaker family. And so here this guy, this buddy of Bart,
Speaker 2: is driving, He's runs out of gas, and all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, he's sitting there about three in the morning,
Speaker 2: he gets a phone call from Kent Whittaker, Bart, Whitaker's dad,
Speaker 2: and he's sitting waiting for Bart to bring him a
Speaker 2: you know, gas for a gas stang for his gas
Speaker 2: or for his vehicle, and he gets a call from
Speaker 2: the guy he's about to go down and kill and
Speaker 2: Whittaker says, you know what, so are you coming down
Speaker 2: to kill us?
Speaker 6: You know?
Speaker 2: Jokingly, he says, well, where are you coming down to
Speaker 2: kill us? That's got to be a joke. I mean,
Speaker 2: they're all laughing about it, you know, it's just a joke.
Speaker 2: And so, needless to say, that particular plot failed Bart,
Speaker 2: and in that particular instance too, Bart once he once
Speaker 2: his parents had found out, Bart actually took off and
Speaker 2: fled to Dallas and ran away for about three days.
Speaker 2: And so you would think that, Okay, this guy, if
Speaker 2: he's innocent, he wouldn't run away, So why is he
Speaker 2: running away? That that would start to actually spark some
Speaker 2: concern by the Whitakers that maybe there's something wrong with
Speaker 2: their kids, you know, why the phone call. So that's
Speaker 2: you know, those two of the plots. And the third
Speaker 2: plot was a different scenario altogether, which is that Bart
Speaker 2: was going to corral his entire family, which would be
Speaker 2: cousins and nieces and that use into a family lake
Speaker 2: house and set the house on fire and Bart was
Speaker 2: going to heroically escape from the house slightly burned, but
Speaker 2: he would be the sole survivor that everyone else would
Speaker 2: burn inside the house. And that was, you know, the
Speaker 2: the excuse that the prosecution used, or the motive that
Speaker 2: the prosecution argued, was that Bart was doing this for money,
Speaker 2: that he was mainly interested in collecting life insurance from
Speaker 2: his mother and his father and his brother and probably
Speaker 2: you know, well over a million dollars. And this is
Speaker 2: what he was vaguely telling his cohorts that he was
Speaker 2: going to give them some money. And unfortunately for him,
Speaker 2: when the actual murder took place. The mother was killed,
Speaker 2: as you said, the brother was killed, but can't whitaccur
Speaker 2: the father was not killed. So all this whole ridiculous
Speaker 2: scenarios that had Bartie created and allegedly for money, was
Speaker 2: all hinging on the fact that both the parents had
Speaker 2: to die and that they were not successful in killing
Speaker 2: the father, thus meaning Bart's not going to get any money.
Speaker 2: So it's it's been incredible, it is. It's so bizarre too.
Speaker 6: No, Now, tell us Corey about the day in question.
Speaker 6: Tell us about the whole day. I mean, give us
Speaker 6: the whole background. He's about to graduate. It's a big
Speaker 6: you know, it's an important event. It's a big celebration.
Speaker 6: Take us back to that day and everything that happens,
Speaker 6: the sequence of events place.
Speaker 2: Oh, and you've you've nailed it on the heads that
Speaker 2: this is Bart Whitaker who's convinced his parents that you know,
Speaker 2: he's actually graduating from college. And as I said earlier,
Speaker 2: he did not even have enough credits to be considered
Speaker 2: a sophomore, much less a graduating senior in college. And Bart,
Speaker 2: of course, it started at his college off at Baylor
Speaker 2: University in Waco. It did poorly, and so we had
Speaker 2: to transfer to sam Houston State, which is considered a
Speaker 2: good college, but slightly lower level as far as the
Speaker 2: reputation that it has. Sure they do, however, have a
Speaker 2: fairly internationally renowned the criminal Justice department.
Speaker 6: Ironically, ironically enough so and yeah, but basically, Bart had
Speaker 6: told his parents, Hey, I've been going to college.
Speaker 4: All this time.
Speaker 2: I'm doing great. I'm graduating in four years. Uh, you know,
Speaker 2: I want to come down before Christmas starts and let's
Speaker 2: go out, you know, the night before my graduation ceremony,
Speaker 2: and let's celebrate. And of course the Whitakers are just ecstatic.
Speaker 2: You know, here's their number one firstborn son. He's graduating
Speaker 2: from college. He had troubles in high school with the law,
Speaker 2: but he you know, he's worked through all that, he's
Speaker 2: done really well. We're just so excited for him. So they,
Speaker 2: of course, you know, let's get the family together. Let's
Speaker 2: surprise part with the great gift. And that gift turns
Speaker 2: out to be a four thousand dollars Rolex watch, which
Speaker 2: nice great graduation gift for a st kid. And it's
Speaker 2: ironic too, because there's a lot of photographs that were
Speaker 2: taking in the house that night of Bart opening his gifts,
Speaker 2: and in one of the photographs, which I don't even
Speaker 2: know that I even talked about in the book, but
Speaker 2: I've actually posted this photograph online a few times. Bart
Speaker 2: and his brother Kevin are sitting on in front of
Speaker 2: the fireplace and Bart's just got oh, he's just just
Speaker 2: got this grin on his face, like he knows something's
Speaker 2: really interesting he's about to happen. And Kevin is sitting
Speaker 2: next to him. He just looks so happy for his brother.
Speaker 2: But if you look really, it was very very clear.
Speaker 2: You can look down at Bart's right hand, on his
Speaker 2: right thigh, he's shooting the bird at his brother and
Speaker 2: it's just you know, boom, flipping his brother off. It's
Speaker 2: it's a very telling photograph. And like I said, I
Speaker 2: didn't put it in the book, but I do. I
Speaker 2: have put that out there so people can see it
Speaker 2: because it's pretty you know, here's this guy. He knows
Speaker 2: exactly what's going to go down in a few hours,
Speaker 2: and basically what is going to go down is the
Speaker 2: same plan that he he's the same plot that he's planned,
Speaker 2: you know, years in advance, which is he's gonna take mom, dad,
Speaker 2: and brother out to a nice restaurant, or they're gonna
Speaker 2: take him out. They're gonna be celebrating his impending graduation
Speaker 2: the following night. And while they're at the restaurant, one
Speaker 2: of his buddies is gonna sneak into the house. The
Speaker 2: other buddy is going to actually go to the restaurant
Speaker 2: and wait in the parking lot to follow him back.
Speaker 2: And that that person is the getaway driver as well.
Speaker 2: And that's Chris Bresheer was the masked gunman and Steven
Speaker 2: Champagne was the driver. And these are two nice, good
Speaker 2: looking young boys, you know, about twenty four to twenty
Speaker 2: five years old, who lived in a near Bart, in
Speaker 2: a place called bent It's actually a Bentwater near Lake Conroe.
Speaker 2: They worked with Bart at a fancy country club, country
Speaker 2: club restaurant that Bart was the restaurant manager at. And
Speaker 2: you know, good kids, right, good background. Stephen sham pains
Speaker 2: a marine. You think, okay, you know these are decent kids.
Speaker 2: And again these were just two more pawns in Bart's
Speaker 2: game of murdering Chis on his family that he had
Speaker 2: had brought into the fold, that we're gonna do his
Speaker 2: dirty work for him, and that's exactly what happened. Bart
Speaker 2: and the family drove a few miles away from their
Speaker 2: house to a very nice.
Speaker 3: Lucky Land casino, asking people, what's the weirdest place you've
Speaker 3: gotten lucky?
Speaker 4: Lucky in line at the Delhi I guess ah, in
Speaker 4: my dentist's office more than months.
Speaker 2: Actually do I have to say?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: You do?
Speaker 3: In the car before my kid's PTA meeting?
Speaker 5: Really? Yes, excuse me? What's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky?
Speaker 2: I never win?
Speaker 1: And tell well, there you have it.
Speaker 3: You could get lucky anywhere playing at lucky landslots dot
Speaker 3: com play for free right now?
Speaker 5: Are you feeling lucky?
Speaker 3: No, We're just necessary Ford were my long eighteen plus
Speaker 3: terms conditions of plus see what's.
Speaker 2: Every details quest front called Papado, where they were treated
Speaker 2: very well, were given a celebratory cake and having drinks
Speaker 2: and eating all kinds of delicious seafood. And meanwhile, Chris
Speaker 2: is sneaking in the house. He's wearing all black dressed
Speaker 2: like a ninja, and Steven Champagne's in the parking lot
Speaker 2: of Papado to keep an eye on the family to
Speaker 2: track him to basically be a heads up phone call
Speaker 2: guy to Chris when the family was coming back, so
Speaker 2: Chris would be ready to go ahead and shoot. The
Speaker 2: family and the Whittakers eat, they take off. It's still
Speaker 2: relatively early when they started eating, and they got back
Speaker 2: at the house at a fairly decent hour, but it
Speaker 2: was definitely dark outside. They drive into their neighborhood just
Speaker 2: you know, very again, very quiet neighborhood, nice houses, fairly
Speaker 2: close to one another, and they pull into the driveway
Speaker 2: and Kevin darts out of the car. He always likes
Speaker 2: to be the first one to open the door, and
Speaker 2: so he makes his way to the front door. His mom,
Speaker 2: Trice's falling right behind him, can't Whitaker. The Dad's right
Speaker 2: behind her her, and Bart's behind all three of them,
Speaker 2: And as Kevin walks to the front door, Bart says, Dad,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go out to the street and check my
Speaker 2: cel phone. I left it in the car. He wanted
Speaker 2: to hear from his fiance or his girlfriend at the
Speaker 2: time and give her a call. So the three Whittaker
Speaker 2: family members are going to the front door, Bart is
Speaker 2: walking in the opposite direction out to the street to
Speaker 2: his car. Kevin Whitaker walks up to the door, has
Speaker 2: a key, unlocks the front door, and the second he
Speaker 2: walks in is just immediately a gunshot and he falls
Speaker 2: down right there in the foyer. His mother's screaming, bloody murder.
Speaker 2: She's like, oh my god, she's screaming. She immediately runs
Speaker 2: in to Kevin's aid and she gets shot. And then
Speaker 2: here's Kent Whitaker, the father, the husband, and he hears
Speaker 2: all these pops and of course, you know, gunfire just
Speaker 2: doesn't exist in this neighborhood, so obviously something is amiss.
Speaker 2: He runs in, he gets shot, and he john in
Speaker 2: the shoulder. He turns around, falls he starts bleeding profusely.
Speaker 2: Bart hears all the commotion and makes a mad dash
Speaker 2: through the front yard, sees his dad lying down bleeding,
Speaker 2: sees his mother literally jumps over his mom and is dead,
Speaker 2: you know, basically now already almost his dead brother, and
Speaker 2: runs into uh the living room right next to the
Speaker 2: kitchen and tackles the intruder, the man in the black
Speaker 2: mask and uh, you know, dressed and everything. Tackles the guy,
Speaker 2: knocks the gun out, and the guy gets away. The
Speaker 2: guy runs out the back you know, the back door
Speaker 2: goes to the backyard, through the and jumps over a fence,
Speaker 2: goes through a navy yard, jumps into the getaway car
Speaker 2: and takes off, and Bart somehow manages to call nine
Speaker 2: to one one uh no one one gets out there,
Speaker 2: and by the time they already arrived, his brother is dead.
Speaker 2: Patricia Whitaker is actually still alive, but she is basically
Speaker 2: hanging on by a thread, and she immediately gets what
Speaker 2: they call life flight helicopters, and it's emergency helicopters. These
Speaker 2: are people that are dying. They need to be lifted
Speaker 2: up and taken to a hospital right away. Kevin and
Speaker 2: Patricia both were life flighted out and two separate helicopters. Kent,
Speaker 2: the father, however, is basically coherent. He's in severe pain,
Speaker 2: as is Bart, who was shot as well. Bart also
Speaker 2: took a took a bullet to the shoulder. And so
Speaker 2: the oldest Whitaker men are still doing okay, They're cognizant,
Speaker 2: they can talk. Patricia and Kevin, however, Kevin basically is dead.
Speaker 2: Patricia is however, alive, but needs immediate attention. Well. She
Speaker 2: actually does not even make it to the hospital. She
Speaker 2: died in transit to the hospital, and of course Kent
Speaker 2: did not find this out until a little bit later
Speaker 2: once he was transferred up to the hospital as well.
Speaker 2: But yeah, Kent and bar both were were winged or
Speaker 2: wounded pretty hit. More so was wounded very badly. Bart
Speaker 2: was just kind of winged with the bullet, but he
Speaker 2: was coherent enough that he could actually talk to the
Speaker 2: police and try to give them a description. Now, he
Speaker 2: described the shooter and he couldn't obviously see the skin
Speaker 2: of the face, of the hands, or anything of the shooter,
Speaker 2: but he told a police officer that the voice of
Speaker 2: the shooter sounded like a black man.
Speaker 6: Okay, Now, what did the Now you had the incredible
Speaker 6: access or you had well, you had very good access
Speaker 6: to be able to write this book from authorities, from
Speaker 6: the people that prosecuted this case. You had some access
Speaker 6: to those people in your research. What did the police
Speaker 6: initially think when they assessed the crime scene or shortly
Speaker 6: after anyway, with this, with Bart's story, with everything that
Speaker 6: they saw, what was initially their reaction and what was
Speaker 6: initially the media's reaction. Did they portray Bart's uh, you know,
Speaker 6: some kind of hero or or would would be hero?
Speaker 6: Tell me the assessment of the police, and tell me
Speaker 6: how the media reported on this initially.
Speaker 2: The police, you know, it's you're talking about the town
Speaker 2: with almost knowing it's murdered, barely any crimes committed. I
Speaker 2: mean we're talking maybe some cars getting, you know, cars healing,
Speaker 2: some cars, maybe some broken windows, teenage hooliganism, that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff. Murder almost never exists in this town. So
Speaker 2: when this first happened, you know, a detective Marshall Slot
Speaker 2: was actually the head of this case. And it's it's
Speaker 2: bizarre because you know, the the creation that was that
Speaker 2: Bart wanted to have the crime scene was that this
Speaker 2: is obviously a robbery gone back and turned into a murder.
Speaker 2: And so what Bart had told Chris Forsheer is when
Speaker 2: you go into the house, pull out some dresser drawers,
Speaker 2: pull out some clothes out of these drawers, ransacked the place.
Speaker 2: Make it look like you've been rifling through all these
Speaker 2: drawers that you're going through looking for jewelry, for money,
Speaker 2: for anything. Make it look like a crime had been committed.
Speaker 2: You know, a robbery had been committed first before the murder.
Speaker 2: And again this kind of goes to that dark humor
Speaker 2: that the goofiness factor of this case. And I don't
Speaker 2: mean to be I'm not just I'm not trying to
Speaker 2: be too light about it, but I understand Chris Brasher
Speaker 2: actually went in in the parents' bedroom and then also
Speaker 2: in a hallway to a bathroom where there were these
Speaker 2: different dressers, and you think, okay, you're gonna pull these
Speaker 2: dressers out, and you're gonna just, you know, pull you're
Speaker 2: actually gonna pull entire drawers out on some of them,
Speaker 2: or you're gonna pull them out. Everything's gonna be pulled out.
Speaker 2: Every single drawer was pulled out almost the exact same length.
Speaker 2: Like you have ten drawers, they're pulled out about an
Speaker 2: inch and a half and one of them, you know,
Speaker 2: or three inches here, So it wasn't even enough to
Speaker 2: be able to pull it out and toss everything around.
Speaker 2: And immediately Marshall Slot the detective, walks in and he
Speaker 2: sees this. He's like, this is a joke. You know,
Speaker 2: this can't be a robbery. This is some kind of
Speaker 2: some idiot's idea of a prank. And as prank's has
Speaker 2: gone horribly wrong. So the detective immediately thinks something is up.
Speaker 2: Now he doesn't really know that it's Bart until I
Speaker 2: should say, he doesn't really even start thinking that it's
Speaker 2: Barred until just a couple of days, well, probably about
Speaker 2: the next day or two days after, when Bart and
Speaker 2: can't Whitaker in the hospital. Detective Slot is putting out
Speaker 2: phone calls to different people. He wants to find out,
Speaker 2: you know, anything he can't about the Whittakers, anything that
Speaker 2: might help him. And what he finds out, of course,
Speaker 2: is that Bart was down for his graduation ceremony. Well
Speaker 2: he called he being Marshall Slot called Sam Houston State
Speaker 2: and wanted to find out is Bart Whitaker actually graduated
Speaker 2: from college? Why did he do that? Why did he
Speaker 2: do that? Though you just being a good detective, I guess, okay,
Speaker 2: maybe maybe he assumed that he was. Maybe he just
Speaker 2: thought he could find somebody there that might have known
Speaker 2: Bart or something. You know, he's never really said flat
Speaker 2: out why he did that. He just he goes that
Speaker 2: was just, you know, that's why Bart was down. So
Speaker 2: my instinct was to just contact the school just to
Speaker 2: double check. And sure enough, he got a phone call
Speaker 2: the next day and said, no, mart Whittaker's not graduating
Speaker 2: from college here. As a matter of fact, he can't
Speaker 2: even be a sophomore here yet, so away he's going
Speaker 2: to graduate. So immediately, you know, light bulb moment everything
Speaker 2: he ever saw, and Marshall Slot confronts Bart in the hospital,
Speaker 2: separate from his dad. He says, Bart, why did you
Speaker 2: lie to my guys? Why did you lie to me?
Speaker 2: You're not graduating? And then he hummed and hawed, and
Speaker 2: he just said he told them, you know, told his
Speaker 2: parents that because he didn't want to embarrass himself. He
Speaker 2: didn't want his parents to find out that he was
Speaker 2: actually a bad student, he was not going to graduate,
Speaker 2: that he had been spending all their money all this time,
Speaker 2: so he lied to the police officers the night before.
Speaker 2: We're about graduating. So obviously this looks really really bad,
Speaker 2: you know, Marshall's slought's thinking that, but he can't pin
Speaker 2: it down. He can't pin anything down. And miracle, miracles
Speaker 2: of a day after that, a gentleman by the name
Speaker 2: of Adam Hip, who happened to be one of Bart's
Speaker 2: earlier pawns in this whole These previous failed murder plots
Speaker 2: had solved about the murders on the internet and had
Speaker 2: read about the case and the details that were given
Speaker 2: out in the media. Uh, he felt like, man, this
Speaker 2: is exactly what Bart was trying to tell me that
Speaker 2: he was trying to convince me to do three years ago.
Speaker 2: And actually Adam Hipp actually went down and was one
Speaker 2: of those guys that was down there driving you was
Speaker 2: going to be an original getaway driver. And Adam Hip
Speaker 2: whether he there's some debate as to whether he actually
Speaker 2: had some you know, consciousness raising and he was ready
Speaker 2: to do the right thing, or if he was just
Speaker 2: interested in getting the reward money. Okay, but he came forward,
Speaker 2: he drove, he was living in Dallas at the time.
Speaker 2: He drove all the way down to sugar Land, met
Speaker 2: Marshall Slott and told him, this is a plot that
Speaker 2: Bart Whitaker wanted me to do three years ago to
Speaker 2: kill his family. I think this is exactly what he
Speaker 2: probably did here. And so Marshall Slott, even though he
Speaker 2: knows Bart led about his college graduation, even though he's
Speaker 2: got Adam Hip telling him flat out this guy has
Speaker 2: plotted this before, he still didn't have any proof all
Speaker 2: this time. So he's over a period of months, it
Speaker 2: actually takes almost seven months to finally get enough evidence
Speaker 2: and get enough information to at least go forward and
Speaker 2: start putting this, you know, turning the screws on Bart,
Speaker 2: and right as he's about to make his move and
Speaker 2: come in for the arrest, Bart gets wind of it
Speaker 2: and takes off to Mexico. Now he takes off for
Speaker 2: almost a year and a half.
Speaker 6: Now, tell us tell us about the how the police
Speaker 6: start putting the screws on on Bart Whitticker, and how
Speaker 6: on earth did he get wind of it? How did like,
Speaker 6: how did he actually be so convinced and then he
Speaker 6: was correct. I assume that they were close to an
Speaker 6: arrest and that caused him to take off the Mexico.
Speaker 6: So tell us first what the police did, and then
Speaker 6: tell us how Bart figured out that they were going
Speaker 6: to make an arrest.
Speaker 2: Adam Hip the same guy who was Bart's friend, who
Speaker 2: was involved in a previous murder plot, who had come
Speaker 2: forth to Officer Slot right, he actually went even further
Speaker 2: in helping the police and said, you know, basically, they said,
Speaker 2: we want to put a wire on you. Okay, we
Speaker 2: want to wire your phones, and we want you to
Speaker 2: reinstigate your friendship with Bart. Because Adam had actually grown
Speaker 2: up in sugar Land with Bart were they met actually
Speaker 2: in high school, but they had become friends. Adam would
Speaker 2: actually come over to Bart's house, where they had a
Speaker 2: little gym set up in their upstairs portion of the house,
Speaker 2: and the two would work out together. They were both
Speaker 2: very elitists as far as their belief that they were
Speaker 2: economically superior than other people from their town, and so
Speaker 2: their weight lifting sessions would consist of talking about how
Speaker 2: smart they were, how brilliant they were, and how much
Speaker 2: money they were going to make. And then eventually, even
Speaker 2: back then, Bart started talking to him to Adam Hip,
Speaker 2: telling him how much he didn't like his parents and
Speaker 2: how much he really just didn't care for his parents,
Speaker 2: and Adam Hip never could understand that because he just
Speaker 2: saw a loving family the whole time. So those guys
Speaker 2: had known each other for a while. Adam now in
Speaker 2: the present tense, so at least in two thousand and three,
Speaker 2: was in Dallas. He was working at a bank. He
Speaker 2: was doing very well, but he came down, talked to
Speaker 2: the police, agreed to do what they wanted to basically
Speaker 2: pen this on run Bart, and it took several meetings
Speaker 2: between Bart and Adam. Bart however, was very smart in
Speaker 2: the sense that he always felt like Adam's questions were
Speaker 2: a little bit two contrived, it didn't really sound like Adam,
Speaker 2: and so he tended to be more evasive when answering
Speaker 2: Adam's questions about the murders, because Adam would come out, well, Bart,
Speaker 2: what happened, man?
Speaker 6: Is this?
Speaker 2: You know what happened to your parents? Is this what happened?
Speaker 2: When you have the same it almost sounds like exactly
Speaker 2: what you wanted us to do. And Bart would never
Speaker 2: really come out and answer anything whatever Adam had the
Speaker 2: wire on. So this kind of went on for a while.
Speaker 2: But then then what the police had instructed Adam Hip
Speaker 2: to do was, look, we're gonna we're gonna, you know,
Speaker 2: we are gonna turn the screws on Bart. We want
Speaker 2: you to basically tell Bart. Bart, if you don't tell,
Speaker 2: I mean, if you don't pay me a certain amount
Speaker 2: of money, I'm gonna go tell the cops what had
Speaker 2: happened before. So what they did was they set up
Speaker 2: a post office box up in Dallas, Texas, and it
Speaker 2: was basically a hush money box office fund that our
Speaker 2: post office box that Bart would be sending money to
Speaker 2: Adam Hip, basically to keep his mouth shut, and he
Speaker 2: was sent it under the name of Kaiser. So I'm
Speaker 2: not sure if you've ever seen the movie The Usual Suspects.
Speaker 6: Yes, I did, Yes, yes, yes, Okay.
Speaker 2: So you know, great story. Well, that is actually Park's
Speaker 2: favorite movie. He just loves this movie and he he
Speaker 2: envisions himself as Kevin Spacey is the the ultimate mastermind criminal.
Speaker 2: And so here he is sending actually sending money to
Speaker 2: Adam Hip to the p O box at the police
Speaker 2: set up in Dallas, Texas with the name k SoSE
Speaker 2: Uh and using his actual return address. These are basically,
Speaker 2: here's your your hush money is the hush money fund.
Speaker 2: And so that was the first thing that they said, Okay,
Speaker 2: we've got this. And then and then some of the
Speaker 2: recordings also were the phone recordings. The wiretap ones weren't
Speaker 2: all that great, but then the phone ones were a
Speaker 2: little bit more telling, even though they weren't completely explicit
Speaker 2: that he had killed them, but they felt at that
Speaker 2: point then they felt that they had enough. And then
Speaker 2: he said, well, how did Bart get wind of it?
Speaker 2: Basically it was his intuition he could tell I mean
Speaker 2: no when it flat out came and said Bart, the
Speaker 2: cops were coming for you. But he could tell by
Speaker 2: the way Adam kept acting that something was going down.
Speaker 2: You know, he's threatening to tell the cops he might
Speaker 2: do it anyway, and sure, he just kind of It's
Speaker 2: kind of bizarre, really, because what happened for with Bart
Speaker 2: after the murders is that, you know, he was living
Speaker 2: about an hour north of sugar Land at the time.
Speaker 2: After the murders, he came back to the house where
Speaker 2: his family was killed and moved in with his dad. Sure,
Speaker 2: even though her he is he'd orchestrated this murder, and
Speaker 2: he's willing to go right back and live in his
Speaker 2: home and his dad, again very religious man, spent the
Speaker 2: next seven months basically healing with Bart and you know,
Speaker 2: unbeknownst to him, not knowing that this and not knowing
Speaker 2: that his son had been responsible for killing his wife
Speaker 2: and his youngest and here he is basically trying to
Speaker 2: minister to his own son that you know, through Christ
Speaker 2: and through religion and through the Bible and through these
Speaker 2: religious based homes, we can find salvation and we can
Speaker 2: continue on with our lives. And that's a big part
Speaker 2: of the story too, is that the night of the
Speaker 2: murders can't. Would Oker the father actually forgave the shooters
Speaker 2: and forgave the killers that.
Speaker 6: Night he had an epiphany in the hospital.
Speaker 2: You said, absolutely, and he just realized that he could
Speaker 2: not carry the anger, the rage, a grudge against the
Speaker 2: people that shot his family, because it would destroy him
Speaker 2: and that would not be within his religious calling. So really,
Speaker 2: you know, again I've talked about this to people that
Speaker 2: I could never do that. You know, if somebody whacked
Speaker 2: my entire family, I would be lividly, insane and in rage.
Speaker 2: And that's exactly what he's saying not to be. And
Speaker 2: so it's extremely admirable. I don't know if it's extremely
Speaker 2: realistic for most people, but it's it's definitely something to
Speaker 2: be admired by a lot of people. And I just,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't know how he could do that.
Speaker 2: But here he is living in his home with this,
Speaker 2: you know, walking across the entrance into the house every night,
Speaker 2: where you know your wife and your kid has been
Speaker 2: killed and or you're you know, being part knowing that
Speaker 2: you were responsible for that, and living under this guy
Speaker 2: is of Hey, I love my dad and life's great,
Speaker 2: and he's teaching me about God. And I'm gonna, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna live a better, more healthy, you know, god
Speaker 2: fearing lifestyle. And you know, seven months into it, all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, he just starts getting these intuitions. He
Speaker 2: starts feeling the pressure from Adam that you know, Adam
Speaker 2: hit that you know that Adam might go and talk
Speaker 2: to the cops, And all of a sudden, he just
Speaker 2: decides he's ready to hide. Tell it. He gets ten
Speaker 2: thousand dollars from his dad. His dad didn't really know
Speaker 2: what's going on. He gets one of his coworkers at
Speaker 2: a restaurant that he works at to drive him to Mexico,
Speaker 2: or at least to the border and where then that
Speaker 2: he would move in with a family. And he ends
Speaker 2: up going to Mexico bleaking his hair blonde, telling the
Speaker 2: locals that he's actually an Iraqi war veteran. His wound
Speaker 2: from the shooting was actually from a firefight in Afghanistan,
Speaker 2: I believe, and befriends a young girl and she falls
Speaker 2: in love with him and convinces her daddy that he's
Speaker 2: a great guy. So he ends up getting a job
Speaker 2: and her daddy is a furniture store. You know, he
Speaker 2: just leaves this whole new lifestyle for almost a year
Speaker 2: and a half, and you're talking about what depressed him
Speaker 2: as a hero. They really they didn't really focus on
Speaker 2: that too much in the press in the beginning with
Speaker 2: the shootings. But ironically, when he went to Mexico, he
Speaker 2: actually supposedly saved the life of a girl who was drowning.
Speaker 2: There was a flood that had come through, and he
Speaker 2: allegedly saved this girl's young this little girl's life. So
Speaker 2: he was actually a hero to a lot of the
Speaker 2: Mexican families down there.
Speaker 6: They might have to look they might want to look
Speaker 6: into that one though.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: No, but but with with his tendency to set up
Speaker 6: things for his own, uh.
Speaker 2: There you go. You know who knows it make him
Speaker 2: look good? You know, yeah, probably a perfect examine. Everything
Speaker 2: to do is to look into that.
Speaker 6: So how was he be turned from Mexico? Was it
Speaker 6: was he extradited? What was the circumstances?
Speaker 2: Yeah, basically, you know in cases like that, you know,
Speaker 2: Mexico does an extra dite death row potential death row candidates. Okay,
Speaker 2: because Texas, you know, Texas is just like, hey, you're
Speaker 2: in Texas, you kill somebody, capital murder your toast, sure
Speaker 2: against the death penalty. Well, in that particular case, it
Speaker 2: didn't work out. Uh, the authorities in sugar Land contacted
Speaker 2: the Mexican authorities and they basically told him what had happened,
Speaker 2: and that this guy's been pulling a ruse over your
Speaker 2: people for the last year and a half. And uh,
Speaker 2: they they actually kindly escorted Bart back across supporder. Wow,
Speaker 2: friseningly after said almost eighteen months out there in Mexico.
Speaker 2: And yeah, and then at that point Bart, you know,
Speaker 2: from that point then it's all pretty much boiler play
Speaker 2: to what happens is that Bart gets arrested, he gets charged,
Speaker 2: he goes on trial. What makes the story, you know,
Speaker 2: Another bizarre twist on it is that Kent Whitaker, who
Speaker 2: was a shooting victim and also the survivor, the lone
Speaker 2: survivor of the crime, is actually there supporting his son
Speaker 2: sure to be to avoid the death penalty. As opposed
Speaker 2: to saying, you know that guy did it. Yeah, he's
Speaker 2: my son, but he killed my family. So you know,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry to say this, but he needs to die.
Speaker 2: It was a total opposite. You know, Kent was actually
Speaker 2: very very adamant even before the case went to trial.
Speaker 2: They really tried hard. And that's actually a lot of
Speaker 2: true crime books will kind of rehash the whole story
Speaker 2: in the trial section. Sure, what I tried to do
Speaker 2: is a little different on this particular book is that
Speaker 2: I only focus on three people. I mean, the actual
Speaker 2: trial itself I didn't really care about because I've already
Speaker 2: told you the crime and what had happened, right, So
Speaker 2: I actually skipped almost all that and went straight to
Speaker 2: he's guilty. But let's hear from three people that believe differently.
Speaker 2: You know that Bart should not be executed, and that
Speaker 2: was his uncle, which was his mother's brother, Bold his
Speaker 2: name is Bow, and then Uh and then Kent Whittaker,
Speaker 2: who you know, really gave him a lot of pages
Speaker 2: to really discuss why it was important for him to
Speaker 2: not have his only living UH family member executed, then
Speaker 2: encountered it at the end with Bart Whittaker's own testimony. So, Harry,
Speaker 2: you've got these two really really great nice men. Bo
Speaker 2: Whittaker really, honestly, I don't think it gave a rat's
Speaker 2: lick about Bart, but he didn't believe that his sister
Speaker 2: would want him executed. Kent, of course, did not want
Speaker 2: his son executed. Then when you actually listen to what
Speaker 2: Bart says and the arrogance that he continued to display,
Speaker 2: the braggadaccio that he has, it's amazing. And when you
Speaker 2: actually read what Bart says, you're like, thank God they
Speaker 2: put this guy on death row because it's just the
Speaker 2: ego that was running is so rampant in his world,
Speaker 2: is just phenomenal.
Speaker 6: And you know what I was very curious about Corey
Speaker 6: was though, and we haven't mentioned it, is that what
Speaker 6: was his fiance? He was he was planning to get
Speaker 6: married to this woman, and a couple of months after
Speaker 6: the murders, he actually asked her to marry her. Tell
Speaker 6: us a little bit about the fiance's reaction. Did she
Speaker 6: have any indication of his real true character, tell us
Speaker 6: a little bit about her reaction, and just tell us
Speaker 6: a little bit about his fiance. His girlfriend.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's just say that, first of all, when the
Speaker 2: word came out that Bart was leaving for Mexico because
Speaker 2: he was a major suspect and a murder, Yeah, wedding
Speaker 2: invitations were recalled. Basically his girlfriend at the time, you know,
Speaker 2: at the time of the murders. Really sweet girl, very smart,
Speaker 2: was going to a different college than him. She was
Speaker 2: attending University of Texas. He was a Baylor at the time.
Speaker 2: She came from a very well to do family, so
Speaker 2: obviously had no need for any Whittaker money because her
Speaker 2: family actually made a lot more money than the Whitaker
Speaker 2: family did. And so really, this is a very cute, attractive,
Speaker 2: sweet smart girl who had fallen in love with this guy,
Speaker 2: who really thought he was just a sweet, charismatic, congenial
Speaker 2: fellow who made her feel like a queen, you know,
Speaker 2: basically what any person would want in a relationship. And yeah,
Speaker 2: they had been together for quite a while through college
Speaker 2: at a long distance relationship before the murders. And she
Speaker 2: was actually gonna meet up with Bart the day after
Speaker 2: the murders to meet with their family. She couldn't go
Speaker 2: out that night because she was seeing her family when
Speaker 2: she come into town. And uh a, you know, at
Speaker 2: the time they're still boyfriend and girlfriend. The murders, and
Speaker 2: of course she's right there by his side that you know,
Speaker 2: after he gets shot, and sure she's the good, loving
Speaker 2: girlfriend and she's going to take care of him. And
Speaker 2: sure enough soon as Bart Hills and they get kind
Speaker 2: of back into a flow of life. After the murders,
Speaker 2: Bart and his girlfriend start talking about let's do this,
Speaker 2: let's get engaged, let's let's let's get married. And he
Speaker 2: asked her to marry him and she said yes. And
Speaker 2: this is all in the interim for the murders before
Speaker 2: he leaves for Mexico. So that whole seven month period
Speaker 2: and again just you know, a woman, a young woman
Speaker 2: truly in love with her man, and needless to say,
Speaker 2: once Bart hotels, and the way she finds out is
Speaker 2: that Bart actually wrote a few letters to a few people,
Speaker 2: one being his girlfriend, one to his father, and one
Speaker 2: to the family attorney. And at that time what he
Speaker 2: said in the letter to Lynn is, you know, I
Speaker 2: adore you. You're my world. Everything is about you is fantastic. However,
Speaker 2: these people think I'm the I'm this crazy killer and
Speaker 2: I didn't do it, but I've got to go because
Speaker 2: they think that I did it. So obviously she's like
Speaker 2: mortified that, you know, her lover, you know, the man
Speaker 2: she has said I do or is planning on saying
Speaker 2: I do too, is like I said, the prime suspect
Speaker 2: and the murder of his own family, and uh yeah,
Speaker 2: everything from that point for her just shut down. And
Speaker 2: to this day she is very you know, pulling the
Speaker 2: curtains down and doesn't want anybody to know what had
Speaker 2: happened to her and doesn't want to talk about it because,
Speaker 2: you know, mortified, embarrassed, horrified that what her lover could
Speaker 2: do and she had no clue.
Speaker 6: So yeah, that's crazy, tragic all the way around. Yeah,
Speaker 6: now we've only got about three minutes left. I will
Speaker 6: leave the rest of the book for people that now
Speaker 6: have been intrigued to buy this book and then read it,
Speaker 6: because it's a great read. It's your great storyteller, Corey,
Speaker 6: And this is a this is a crazy story. Like
Speaker 6: you say, so much black humor. You hate to laugh
Speaker 6: at it, but it's so absurd. You talk about criminal mastermind,
Speaker 6: This guy's the exact opposite if there ever was one.
Speaker 6: And you did talk a little bit about just briefly,
Speaker 6: I want to talk about some of the things that
Speaker 6: you're doing now, your latest project are projects. But you
Speaker 6: did say that you thought that the reason for this
Speaker 6: overall was he was just bored.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I really do. I use the you know, the
Speaker 2: almost on hundred centy year old or a hundred year
Speaker 2: old case now of Leopold Lobe, of the young rich,
Speaker 2: bored guys that are trying to commit the ultimate crime.
Speaker 2: And I really think I don't think it was money,
Speaker 2: because bart was fine, you know, he was doing great financially.
Speaker 2: I really think he was bored out of his skull
Speaker 2: and I think he thought he was smarter than everybody else,
Speaker 2: and what better way to prove that than kill your
Speaker 2: entire family and get away with it. Incredible, he almost did.
Speaker 2: I mean he literally almost got away with it. It's incredible,
Speaker 2: but amazing he did not. And then, yeah, as far
Speaker 2: as projects go, I'm a boy. I'm working on a
Speaker 2: case now where my killer actually just committed suicide in prison.
Speaker 2: Two weeks ago, a case here in San Antonio, Texas,
Speaker 2: a teacher by the name of Diane Tilly was kidnapped, raped,
Speaker 2: and tortured by a father and daughter team. Gentleman by
Speaker 2: the name of Ronnie joe' neil had committed the murder.
Speaker 2: Just an amazing woman. Diane Tilly actually founded a school
Speaker 2: for troubled teens, which ironically would have been perfect for
Speaker 2: the daughter. You know, she probably would have been a
Speaker 2: prime candidate for her school instead she ends up killing
Speaker 2: this woman.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 2: So that case, I'll be finishing that up this summer
Speaker 2: and that'll be my book for Kensington that'll come out
Speaker 2: next year. And then real excited, I've got a little
Speaker 2: change of pace. I'm working on the I'm actually helping
Speaker 2: co author in autobiography for the heavy metal band Pantera
Speaker 2: and the lead singer Philip en Somo. Huge, huge metal
Speaker 2: band for those people that don't know about him. They've
Speaker 2: sold over twenty million records, played thousands of shows worldwide.
Speaker 2: Where you know, the first heavy extreme heavy metal band
Speaker 2: to debut number one on the Billboard Charts with an
Speaker 2: album back in nineteen eighty four. There's actually even a
Speaker 2: true crime angle on it where one of the guitar
Speaker 2: players in the band was shot murdered on stage. So
Speaker 2: that's an exciting story for me to be involved in.
Speaker 2: Very privileged to be involved in that. And then I'm
Speaker 2: actually co authoring a I call it the Spurned Political
Speaker 2: Wife memoir of a former wife of a Kentucky legislator who,
Speaker 2: after he divorced his wife, went on to kill his mistress.
Speaker 2: So I'll actually be working on that book as well,
Speaker 2: and co authoring that with the wife on that case.
Speaker 2: So I'm just trying something a little different. You know.
Speaker 2: This Savage Son is my seventh book book, and I'm
Speaker 2: looking for just a little change in life a little bit.
Speaker 2: But I'll always write true crime books. I just need
Speaker 2: to take a bit of a step back and try
Speaker 2: something different for my own interest. But I think everybody
Speaker 2: that follows me and knows what I like well will
Speaker 2: enjoy all of those books. So I'm hoping right now
Speaker 2: though that they'll go out by Savage Son and enjoy
Speaker 2: that one too.
Speaker 6: So absolutely, it's an incredible story, Corey, and I want
Speaker 6: to thank you very much for coming on my program
Speaker 6: and talking about this incredible book. And it was a
Speaker 6: great interview. Like I say, you're a great natural storyteller,
Speaker 6: so we've really enjoyed it. I will speak on behalf
Speaker 6: of the audience and myself, so I want to thank
Speaker 6: you very much and good luck with your next project,
Speaker 6: and hopefully we'll have you on the show in the
Speaker 6: fall when that comes out, or when it does come out,
Speaker 6: we'll have you back on the program talk about that book.
Speaker 2: It should be good anytime. Dan, it's a pleasure to
Speaker 2: talk with aspiring true crime authors like you, not only
Speaker 2: aspiring but published true crime authors like you. And you know, hey,
Speaker 2: all my fans out there, I want you to check
Speaker 2: out Dan's work because he definitely is an up and
Speaker 2: coming voice that we all need to hear and read
Speaker 2: and go out and support this man too, because he's
Speaker 2: doing a great job with this radio program and a
Speaker 2: great storyteller as well. So right back at you, sir.
Speaker 6: Well, thanks very much, Corey. If you ever need a
Speaker 6: job as a publicist, I got a job for you,
Speaker 6: so absolutely, okay, anytime. Okay, Well, it's very nice talking
Speaker 6: to you. Have a great evening, Corey, and thanks very
Speaker 6: much for coming on the program.
Speaker 2: Dan, thanks so much for having me, sir. It was
Speaker 2: my pleasure and I look forward to talking to you
Speaker 2: in the future.
Speaker 6: Okay, great, good night, You have a great night.
Speaker 2: Bye bye, you too.
Speaker 6: You've been listening to the program True Murder, the most
Speaker 6: shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that
Speaker 6: have written about them, with your host, Dan Zupanski. See
Speaker 6: you next time.
Speaker 2: Good night,