SAVAGE SON-Corey Mitchell

authors that have written about them. It was a night of celebration for the Whitaker family. Their son Bart was graduating from college, but when Bart's brother Kevin opened his door to their house, a massd intruder shot him point blank. His mother took the next bullet, followed by mister Whittaker and Bart. Blood was everywhere, but somehow Bart and his family survived. His father survived. To the cops, the story didn't add up, however, and their investigation discovered a stunning

web of lies. Bart was living a double life. He hadn't been enrolled in college since his freshman year. Instead of attending classes, he'd spent his days playing video games with his friends while planning to murder his family to inherit a million dollar estate. Savage Son takes us inside this chilling murder case to reveal the twisted motives of a seemingly all American boy next door who turned into a cold blood a killer now residing on death row.

My special guest this evening is author Corey Mitchell. Thank you very much for a green to his interview, and welcome to the program, Corey Mitchell, and how.

grew up about twenty minutes away for murders occurred. I grew up in Parland, and this is in sugar Land, And you know, Bart Whittaker was raised in a family almost like I was raised in, in a town almost like I was raised in, And so that alone made me curious want to know more about this guy who had everything handed to him on a silver platter, yet he still just was not satisfied with everything he was given and decided to resort to not only murder, but

murder of his entire family, his loved ones, people that really adored him and gave him everything that he wanted. To me, that that was just very fascinating. It's very different than the mindset of a serial killer. So I wanted to dig deeper into that. And of course, like I said, the fact that it was so close to where I grew up always makes it interesting to learn about the things that happened around you, And when you're familiar with the surroundings, it just makes it that much

more interesting and bizarre to find out about it. So, yeah, that was the number one one reason on that, And then the second one was that this is a much more high profile case than what I usually take on. I tend to take on cases that they go under the radar. I mean, Coral Eugene Wants in my book Evil Eyes, even though he's probably the most prolific serial killer in the history of the United States, most people

were not even aware of him. So I wanted to really dig in and expose you know, Coral Wants and let everybody know about him. But this one is just a little different. It actually had been covered on forty eight Hours first and had an hour long special in the case. I found a very fascinating watch in that case.

I'd followed the case in the news before it aired on forty eight Hours, so I was already aware of it, and I just thought, you know, I wanted to try something a little bit different, something a little bit more high profile, just to see, you know, something that's not completely saturating in the airways though, like you know, Casey Anthony case or Holloway case, those those just hold no

interest to me at all. You know, those cases just get overdone, overblown, overanalyzed, over talking headed by the so called experts out there, but this one just had enough that there was just enough national interest. But it still was interesting to me to be able to get that story out to people. So, like I said, it's very different than what I normally write, but I thoroughly enjoyed the process of taking on a different type of case like this and now such a bizarre case that you know,

how can you not be fascinated by it? Oh?

a wealthy family? Tell us a little bit more in your research for this book, which you found out what bart life was like with his father Kent, his mother Tricia, and his brother Kevin. What was their life really like?

a whole lot going on. Then all of a sudden, a lot of the pro sports athletes from Houston started to move out there, Like Achemolage one I believe, had a house out there. A lot of the Houston astros had moved out there back then, the Houston Oilers and then now they're known as the Houston Texans. You know, a lot of these guys with a lot of money

had started to move out there. And then there was a certain amount of flight from the city of Houston and all the crime that was occurring in Houston from people, so they were moving out to sugar Land where it was you know, quite you know, suburb, very very low key, just not a lot of nonsense going on, not a

lot of criminal activity. And uh, you combine that that quiet Cottagy feeling, neighborhoods feel along with this extra amount of money coming in, and that's kind of the direction the sugar landtern, which was more money was coming into the town, and subsequently that it became a very affluent suburb of the city of Houston. And within that realm of you know, nice little neighborhoods was the Whittaker family. By most Sugar Lake standards, they were not super wealthy.

By the average American, they were very much so, I mean, they're they're doing extremely well. They lived in a very nice home basically you know what they call mcmahonsions out here, and you know, basically pushing close to a million dollars for which to people out in the Northeast and in California, that doesn't sound like a lot of money, but the

housing prices in Texas have always been incredibly low. So a million dollar houses in Texas are probably worth about three or four million in Los Angeles just.

But they did very well at their jobs. They were very conservative with their money. They held tightly to it, and then you know, make smart investments, and you know, they really just put all that money into a very nice home and also to as I said, doting on their children, their two sons, Bart and Kevin. And by that, you know Bart Whitaker when he was in college, he had his full college paid for. He was given a one hundred thousand dollars condominium on the lake, and he

had a thirty five thousand dollars SUV. So not bad when you're in your early twenties and you've got everything covered for you. So uh and then fight. So that's financially and then emotionally as well. Now, Bart Whittaker will tell you a different story. He'll tell you that his father didn't really paid enough attention to him. His mother paid more attention to his younger brother, Kevin, because Kevin was a worse student, and therefore he needed more attention.

But the reality is quite the opposite. Bart really really was paid attention to by his father, and his dad really cared about Bart, and the two spent time training on bikes together. They rode what's called the MS one. It's a it's a ride for muscular or multiple score roses that I've even ridden in about seven times where you ride one hundred and fifty miles in their case would be from Houston to Austin. So that takes a

lot of training on bikes. Hours and hours and hours on the bikes that Kent spent with his son, and you know, taught him the ways that it was, you know, trying to teach him ways of business, and you know, they had sit down dinners, everything you would think in a good family. And same with the mother too. She Tricia really doated on Bart and really tried to give as much attention to both of her boys and as

much love to both of her boys as well. And also another aspect of the Whittaker family's religion played a very very strong part in their lives, and.

heard the father. His brother was actually in the ministry as well, and I believe a Baptist church near the area, and so it was a very important aspect of their life that religion and faith was to be talked about in the family and discussed and shared with friends and family, and that was one of the I think that's probably one of the key points for Bart is that he was actually seemingly turned off by a lot of that when he was younger, and I think that probably caused

a lot of consternation in the household, or at least from his perspective, that he thought his parents were browbeating him with religion. As a matter of fact, he even went to Baylor University in Waco, Texas, which is known as mainly a Baptist school, and a lot of the students there go, you know, further into the ministry. And then it also just plays a very big part of that social you know, that campus life as well religion.

And that was another thing you talked. You mentioned earlier, how Bart who somehow pulled the wool over his parents' eyes all this time, you know, convincing them that he was graduating from college and in reality, he didn't even

have enough credits to be considered a sophomore. He spent a lot of his time at Baylor, where he first started college, smoking pot and playing video games and you know, playing Have Request with his roommates hours and hours on end, and instead of going to his classes, instead of getting a job to help support his income, he just basically

got high and played video games. And I think a lot of that was because he was kind of sick of all these religious hypocrites, as he called him, religious hypocrite students at Baylor.

start robbing them and taking things out. And he was really fascinated by computers, so he would convince a couple of his buddies from school that we'd go in, sneak into the campus, climb up on top of the roof, break in through a skylight, almost like a mission, impossible mission, and then lower themselves down in, go in and steal as many computers as they could, and then take off, and then they stored them in a storage. Shit. He didn't even resell them. He didn't he didn't pawn them off,

and he actually didn't even really use them. It was more just the thrill of going in and stealing things. And to make it even more bizarre is that one of the schools he stole from was the school where his mother taught. They just devastated Tricia Whittaker that her son, who was supposed to be this great kid and all American boy, goes in to steal from her own school.

She was so devastated by Bart's actions that he stopped shopping at the grocery store that she used to shop at all the time, she stopped going to the same church that she went to because she was so embarrassed that she thought all of the people there would be talking about what her son did. You know, the good old Bart is actually a bad boy, and based on the several thefts that when he got caught and was got in trouble, he was sent to a couple of

different doctors actually for a psychiatric evaluation. And ironically, the two reports couldn't have been much different from one another. One report said that this guy is deranged, he is narcissistic, he's over the top. He's gonna be nothing but trouble for everybody involved with him. And the recommendation was that this guy should not be allowed back in school. He should be sent to jail and locked, locked away and

have the key thrown away. Uh. The other report, also by another doctor there in sugar Land, was the total opposite, was that Bart made a bad choice. He's a good kid. Really, you have nothing to be afraid of. And so, of course the parents tended to ignore the first report and focus more on the second and think that, oh, this is Bart, he's a good guy. He couldn't have really, he didn't mean to do this.

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that he might discuss this sort of thing. What was he discussed much earlier than his graduation date. Take us back into college and some of his friends, and what was the kind of conversations he was having with these friends in his first.

away with it? And of course here they are, they're smoking pie, they're getting drunk, they're just having fun and they're just playing along with Bart. They think, oh, he's just being stupid, and you know why not. So they would sit around and actually dream up fantasy is about how they would kill Bart's parents, and you know, for the other people involved, it was just a joke and they just played, you know, in their minds. They were

just along with it. And Bart was basically what he was doing while he was throwing these little seeds out was that he was gauging people. He was seeing, Okay, how would these people react when I bring up such a morbid topic. Are they going to be afraid of me? Are they going to think that this is interesting? Are they going to want to participate in something like this?

So he was actually sitting there scouting people. It's almost like an NBA scout, going down to the high school playground or the junior high school playground and seeing what the talent is. And this is what Bart was basically doing, was figuring out who he could bring into his web

to actually help him kill his family. And this, like we said, this occurred early on in his college career, and it went on for a number of years and eventually, like you were talking about too, Dan is that you not only were the majority of these people that he was speaking with in a higher economic stratum, but also intelligent kids as well. Some of these kids were National Merrider Scholarship award winners, which means they're basically the cream

and the crop. Uh you know, just highly intelligent people, you know that were not going to school just a party. They were going to learn about microbiology, and they were going to learn about nanotechnology and all these scientific based education tracks.

some some helplessness, some pain in their life. There was something missing in those people's lives that he was able to hone in on and determined that that could be a guy that would actually pull a trigger and kill my parents for me.

that this was not just a conversation. You know there are you spoke about some other plots? Well, how far did he go in plotting the death other than smoking weed and talking with his friends.

if they still weren't running away to the hills. After he brought this up, he would continue on and pursue it. And eventually, after several months of this, two of his closest roommates he actually convinced that, okay, we're actually gonna do this. And he had just hit you know, nothing super dramatic. I mean, it wasn't laid out, this is exactly how we're gonna do it. It was just almost

this continuation of this stoner talk. But somehow, within a few months he was able to convince these people that hey, you know, we're actually gonna go down to sugar Land, Texas, all the way from Waco, and we're gonna go and

kill my parents. And it actually it actually in three different occasions before Bart was actually successful in murdering his parents, and each time that had happened, it seemed, and I tell people this, there's almost a dark sense of humor throughout the book when Bart's actually trying these murder cases or trying trying to actually commit the murders of his families.

And as I said before, this is no disrespect intending towards Kevin or Trisha Whittaker or anybody involved in this crime because it's not one it's not humors, but the idiocy involved on Bart's side of what he was trying to do. It's almost like a bad Keystone cop movie or something, just this moronic bad guy because you know, one of the murder one of the times when he actually sent the guys down to murder his parents, he had said, Okay, you're gonna go in. You're gonna go

I'm gonna take my parents out to dinner. You're gonna go into the house. I'm gonna turn off the alarge system. You're gonna raise up this window, crawl in, shut the window, and wait for my family. Well, Bart had all that said up he actually drove down. This is about two or three years before the murders actually occurred. The same exact scenario. We came in, He took his parents out there, parents came his buddies. Then we're to go in sneak in the house. Well, one time Bart forgets to turn

out the alarm. So the guys are going in there all dressed up in black, and he goes in to lift up the window and the alarm system goes off. So they had to line up and they actually take off all the way to Waco. And then about a year later, a totally different set of guys were involved in this and same situation. Bart's gonna go down to sugar Land. Uh, he's gonna meet the guys there. They're

gonna go the same process. Well, he sets one of his buddies up in a stolen car to get out of town, but he forgets to fill up the tank of the tank with gasoline. So here they are. This guy's ready to drive all the way down to sugar Land. And he's in his car driving away and gets outside of Waco. And if you've ever driven from Waco down to sugar Land at night, there's almost no lights for about fifty miles. So he gets out of Waco, there's

no lights, there's no gas stations, there's nothing. This guy runs out of gas on his way down there. And to make matters even worse on that particular case, is that one of the one of his helper's former friend, a female friend, had found out what they were gonna do,

and she actually called the police. He's the only person out of all these people, there's probably about nine different potential murderers involved, and only one person who was a friend of these groups actually called the cops and said, hey, these guys are gonna come down and kill this family. And what happened was this girl had called the police down in sugar Land or actually in Waco, who then contacted the police in sugar Land, who then contacted the

Whittaker family. And so here this guy, this buddy of Bart, is driving, He's runs out of gas, and all of a sudden, he's sitting there about three in the morning, he gets a phone call from Kent Whittaker, Bart, Whitaker's dad, and he's sitting waiting for Bart to bring him a you know, gas for a gas stang for his gas or for his vehicle, and he gets a call from the guy he's about to go down and kill and Whittaker says, you know what, so are you coming down to kill us?

running away? That that would start to actually spark some concern by the Whitakers that maybe there's something wrong with their kids, you know, why the phone call. So that's

you know, those two of the plots. And the third plot was a different scenario altogether, which is that Bart was going to corral his entire family, which would be cousins and nieces and that use into a family lake house and set the house on fire and Bart was going to heroically escape from the house slightly burned, but he would be the sole survivor that everyone else would

burn inside the house. And that was, you know, the the excuse that the prosecution used, or the motive that the prosecution argued, was that Bart was doing this for money, that he was mainly interested in collecting life insurance from his mother and his father and his brother and probably you know, well over a million dollars. And this is what he was vaguely telling his cohorts that he was going to give them some money. And unfortunately for him,

when the actual murder took place. The mother was killed, as you said, the brother was killed, but can't whitaccur the father was not killed. So all this whole ridiculous scenarios that had Bartie created and allegedly for money, was all hinging on the fact that both the parents had to die and that they were not successful in killing the father, thus meaning Bart's not going to get any money. So it's it's been incredible, it is. It's so bizarre too.

University in Waco. It did poorly, and so we had to transfer to sam Houston State, which is considered a good college, but slightly lower level as far as the reputation that it has. Sure they do, however, have a fairly internationally renowned the criminal Justice department.

of course, you know, let's get the family together. Let's surprise part with the great gift. And that gift turns out to be a four thousand dollars Rolex watch, which nice great graduation gift for a st kid. And it's ironic too, because there's a lot of photographs that were taking in the house that night of Bart opening his gifts, and in one of the photographs, which I don't even know that I even talked about in the book, but

I've actually posted this photograph online a few times. Bart and his brother Kevin are sitting on in front of the fireplace and Bart's just got oh, he's just just got this grin on his face, like he knows something's really interesting he's about to happen. And Kevin is sitting next to him. He just looks so happy for his brother. But if you look really, it was very very clear. You can look down at Bart's right hand, on his right thigh, he's shooting the bird at his brother and

it's just you know, boom, flipping his brother off. It's it's a very telling photograph. And like I said, I didn't put it in the book, but I do. I have put that out there so people can see it

because it's pretty you know, here's this guy. He knows exactly what's going to go down in a few hours, and basically what is going to go down is the same plan that he he's the same plot that he's planned, you know, years in advance, which is he's gonna take mom, dad, and brother out to a nice restaurant, or they're gonna take him out. They're gonna be celebrating his impending graduation the following night. And while they're at the restaurant, one

of his buddies is gonna sneak into the house. The other buddy is going to actually go to the restaurant and wait in the parking lot to follow him back. And that that person is the getaway driver as well. And that's Chris Bresheer was the masked gunman and Steven Champagne was the driver. And these are two nice, good looking young boys, you know, about twenty four to twenty five years old, who lived in a near Bart, in a place called bent It's actually a Bentwater near Lake Conroe.

They worked with Bart at a fancy country club, country club restaurant that Bart was the restaurant manager at. And you know, good kids, right, good background. Stephen sham pains a marine. You think, okay, you know these are decent kids. And again these were just two more pawns in Bart's game of murdering Chis on his family that he had had brought into the fold, that we're gonna do his

dirty work for him, and that's exactly what happened. Bart and the family drove a few miles away from their house to a very nice.

family and the Whittakers eat, they take off. It's still relatively early when they started eating, and they got back at the house at a fairly decent hour, but it was definitely dark outside. They drive into their neighborhood just you know, very again, very quiet neighborhood, nice houses, fairly close to one another, and they pull into the driveway and Kevin darts out of the car. He always likes to be the first one to open the door, and so he makes his way to the front door. His mom,

Trice's falling right behind him, can't Whitaker. The Dad's right behind her her, and Bart's behind all three of them, And as Kevin walks to the front door, Bart says, Dad, I'm gonna go out to the street and check my cel phone. I left it in the car. He wanted to hear from his fiance or his girlfriend at the time and give her a call. So the three Whittaker family members are going to the front door, Bart is walking in the opposite direction out to the street to

his car. Kevin Whitaker walks up to the door, has a key, unlocks the front door, and the second he walks in is just immediately a gunshot and he falls down right there in the foyer. His mother's screaming, bloody murder. She's like, oh my god, she's screaming. She immediately runs

in to Kevin's aid and she gets shot. And then here's Kent Whitaker, the father, the husband, and he hears all these pops and of course, you know, gunfire just doesn't exist in this neighborhood, so obviously something is amiss. He runs in, he gets shot, and he john in the shoulder. He turns around, falls he starts bleeding profusely.

Bart hears all the commotion and makes a mad dash through the front yard, sees his dad lying down bleeding, sees his mother literally jumps over his mom and is dead, you know, basically now already almost his dead brother, and runs into uh the living room right next to the kitchen and tackles the intruder, the man in the black mask and uh, you know, dressed and everything. Tackles the guy,

knocks the gun out, and the guy gets away. The guy runs out the back you know, the back door goes to the backyard, through the and jumps over a fence, goes through a navy yard, jumps into the getaway car and takes off, and Bart somehow manages to call nine to one one uh no one one gets out there, and by the time they already arrived, his brother is dead. Patricia Whitaker is actually still alive, but she is basically hanging on by a thread, and she immediately gets what

they call life flight helicopters, and it's emergency helicopters. These are people that are dying. They need to be lifted up and taken to a hospital right away. Kevin and Patricia both were life flighted out and two separate helicopters. Kent, the father, however, is basically coherent. He's in severe pain, as is Bart, who was shot as well. Bart also took a took a bullet to the shoulder. And so the oldest Whitaker men are still doing okay, They're cognizant,

they can talk. Patricia and Kevin, however, Kevin basically is dead. Patricia is however, alive, but needs immediate attention. Well. She actually does not even make it to the hospital. She died in transit to the hospital, and of course Kent did not find this out until a little bit later once he was transferred up to the hospital as well. But yeah, Kent and bar both were were winged or

wounded pretty hit. More so was wounded very badly. Bart was just kind of winged with the bullet, but he was coherent enough that he could actually talk to the police and try to give them a description. Now, he described the shooter and he couldn't obviously see the skin of the face, of the hands, or anything of the shooter, but he told a police officer that the voice of the shooter sounded like a black man.

initially the media's reaction. Did they portray Bart's uh, you know, some kind of hero or or would would be hero? Tell me the assessment of the police, and tell me how the media reported on this initially.

was actually the head of this case. And it's it's bizarre because you know, the the creation that was that Bart wanted to have the crime scene was that this is obviously a robbery gone back and turned into a murder. And so what Bart had told Chris Forsheer is when you go into the house, pull out some dresser drawers, pull out some clothes out of these drawers, ransacked the place.

Make it look like you've been rifling through all these drawers that you're going through looking for jewelry, for money, for anything. Make it look like a crime had been committed. You know, a robbery had been committed first before the murder. And again this kind of goes to that dark humor

that the goofiness factor of this case. And I don't mean to be I'm not just I'm not trying to be too light about it, but I understand Chris Brasher actually went in in the parents' bedroom and then also in a hallway to a bathroom where there were these different dressers, and you think, okay, you're gonna pull these dressers out, and you're gonna just, you know, pull you're actually gonna pull entire drawers out on some of them, or you're gonna pull them out. Everything's gonna be pulled out.

Every single drawer was pulled out almost the exact same length. Like you have ten drawers, they're pulled out about an inch and a half and one of them, you know, or three inches here, So it wasn't even enough to be able to pull it out and toss everything around. And immediately Marshall Slot the detective, walks in and he sees this. He's like, this is a joke. You know, this can't be a robbery. This is some kind of some idiot's idea of a prank. And as prank's has

gone horribly wrong. So the detective immediately thinks something is up. Now he doesn't really know that it's Bart until I should say, he doesn't really even start thinking that it's Barred until just a couple of days, well, probably about the next day or two days after, when Bart and can't Whitaker in the hospital. Detective Slot is putting out phone calls to different people. He wants to find out, you know, anything he can't about the Whittakers, anything that

might help him. And what he finds out, of course, is that Bart was down for his graduation ceremony. Well he called he being Marshall Slot called Sam Houston State and wanted to find out is Bart Whitaker actually graduated from college? Why did he do that? Why did he do that? Though you just being a good detective, I guess, okay, maybe maybe he assumed that he was. Maybe he just thought he could find somebody there that might have known Bart or something. You know, he's never really said flat

out why he did that. He just he goes that was just, you know, that's why Bart was down. So my instinct was to just contact the school just to double check. And sure enough, he got a phone call the next day and said, no, mart Whittaker's not graduating from college here. As a matter of fact, he can't even be a sophomore here yet, so away he's going to graduate. So immediately, you know, light bulb moment everything he ever saw, and Marshall Slot confronts Bart in the hospital,

separate from his dad. He says, Bart, why did you lie to my guys? Why did you lie to me? You're not graduating? And then he hummed and hawed, and he just said he told them, you know, told his parents that because he didn't want to embarrass himself. He didn't want his parents to find out that he was actually a bad student, he was not going to graduate, that he had been spending all their money all this time, so he lied to the police officers the night before.

We're about graduating. So obviously this looks really really bad, you know, Marshall's slought's thinking that, but he can't pin it down. He can't pin anything down. And miracle, miracles of a day after that, a gentleman by the name of Adam Hip, who happened to be one of Bart's earlier pawns in this whole These previous failed murder plots had solved about the murders on the internet and had read about the case and the details that were given

out in the media. Uh, he felt like, man, this is exactly what Bart was trying to tell me that he was trying to convince me to do three years ago. And actually Adam Hipp actually went down and was one of those guys that was down there driving you was going to be an original getaway driver. And Adam Hip whether he there's some debate as to whether he actually had some you know, consciousness raising and he was ready to do the right thing, or if he was just

interested in getting the reward money. Okay, but he came forward, he drove, he was living in Dallas at the time. He drove all the way down to sugar Land, met Marshall Slott and told him, this is a plot that Bart Whitaker wanted me to do three years ago to kill his family. I think this is exactly what he

probably did here. And so Marshall Slott, even though he knows Bart led about his college graduation, even though he's got Adam Hip telling him flat out this guy has plotted this before, he still didn't have any proof all

this time. So he's over a period of months, it actually takes almost seven months to finally get enough evidence and get enough information to at least go forward and start putting this, you know, turning the screws on Bart, and right as he's about to make his move and come in for the arrest, Bart gets wind of it and takes off to Mexico. Now he takes off for almost a year and a half.

in high school, but they had become friends. Adam would actually come over to Bart's house, where they had a little gym set up in their upstairs portion of the house, and the two would work out together. They were both very elitists as far as their belief that they were economically superior than other people from their town, and so their weight lifting sessions would consist of talking about how smart they were, how brilliant they were, and how much

money they were going to make. And then eventually, even back then, Bart started talking to him to Adam Hip, telling him how much he didn't like his parents and how much he really just didn't care for his parents, and Adam Hip never could understand that because he just saw a loving family the whole time. So those guys had known each other for a while. Adam now in the present tense, so at least in two thousand and three,

was in Dallas. He was working at a bank. He was doing very well, but he came down, talked to the police, agreed to do what they wanted to basically pen this on run Bart, and it took several meetings

between Bart and Adam. Bart however, was very smart in the sense that he always felt like Adam's questions were a little bit two contrived, it didn't really sound like Adam, and so he tended to be more evasive when answering Adam's questions about the murders, because Adam would come out, well, Bart, what happened, man?

you to basically tell Bart. Bart, if you don't tell, I mean, if you don't pay me a certain amount of money, I'm gonna go tell the cops what had happened before. So what they did was they set up a post office box up in Dallas, Texas, and it was basically a hush money box office fund that our post office box that Bart would be sending money to Adam Hip, basically to keep his mouth shut, and he was sent it under the name of Kaiser. So I'm not sure if you've ever seen the movie The Usual Suspects.

we've got this. And then and then some of the recordings also were the phone recordings. The wiretap ones weren't all that great, but then the phone ones were a little bit more telling, even though they weren't completely explicit that he had killed them, but they felt at that point then they felt that they had enough. And then he said, well, how did Bart get wind of it? Basically it was his intuition he could tell I mean no when it flat out came and said Bart, the

cops were coming for you. But he could tell by the way Adam kept acting that something was going down. You know, he's threatening to tell the cops he might do it anyway, and sure, he just kind of It's kind of bizarre, really, because what happened for with Bart after the murders is that, you know, he was living about an hour north of sugar Land at the time. After the murders, he came back to the house where

his family was killed and moved in with his dad. Sure, even though her he is he'd orchestrated this murder, and he's willing to go right back and live in his home and his dad, again very religious man, spent the next seven months basically healing with Bart and you know, unbeknownst to him, not knowing that this and not knowing that his son had been responsible for killing his wife and his youngest and here he is basically trying to minister to his own son that you know, through Christ

and through religion and through the Bible and through these religious based homes, we can find salvation and we can continue on with our lives. And that's a big part of the story too, is that the night of the murders can't. Would Oker the father actually forgave the shooters and forgave the killers that.

so it's extremely admirable. I don't know if it's extremely realistic for most people, but it's it's definitely something to be admired by a lot of people. And I just, you know, I don't know how he could do that.

But here he is living in his home with this, you know, walking across the entrance into the house every night, where you know your wife and your kid has been killed and or you're you know, being part knowing that you were responsible for that, and living under this guy is of Hey, I love my dad and life's great, and he's teaching me about God. And I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna live a better, more healthy, you know, god fearing lifestyle. And you know, seven months into it, all

of a sudden, he just starts getting these intuitions. He starts feeling the pressure from Adam that you know, Adam hit that you know that Adam might go and talk to the cops, And all of a sudden, he just decides he's ready to hide. Tell it. He gets ten thousand dollars from his dad. His dad didn't really know what's going on. He gets one of his coworkers at a restaurant that he works at to drive him to Mexico, or at least to the border and where then that

he would move in with a family. And he ends up going to Mexico bleaking his hair blonde, telling the locals that he's actually an Iraqi war veteran. His wound from the shooting was actually from a firefight in Afghanistan, I believe, and befriends a young girl and she falls in love with him and convinces her daddy that he's a great guy. So he ends up getting a job

and her daddy is a furniture store. You know, he just leaves this whole new lifestyle for almost a year and a half, and you're talking about what depressed him as a hero. They really they didn't really focus on that too much in the press in the beginning with the shootings. But ironically, when he went to Mexico, he actually supposedly saved the life of a girl who was drowning. There was a flood that had come through, and he

allegedly saved this girl's young this little girl's life. So he was actually a hero to a lot of the Mexican families down there.

people for the last year and a half. And uh, they they actually kindly escorted Bart back across supporder. Wow, friseningly after said almost eighteen months out there in Mexico. And yeah, and then at that point Bart, you know, from that point then it's all pretty much boiler play to what happens is that Bart gets arrested, he gets charged,

he goes on trial. What makes the story, you know, Another bizarre twist on it is that Kent Whitaker, who was a shooting victim and also the survivor, the lone survivor of the crime, is actually there supporting his son sure to be to avoid the death penalty. As opposed to saying, you know that guy did it. Yeah, he's my son, but he killed my family. So you know, I'm sorry to say this, but he needs to die.

It was a total opposite. You know, Kent was actually very very adamant even before the case went to trial. They really tried hard. And that's actually a lot of true crime books will kind of rehash the whole story in the trial section. Sure, what I tried to do is a little different on this particular book is that

I only focus on three people. I mean, the actual trial itself I didn't really care about because I've already told you the crime and what had happened, right, So I actually skipped almost all that and went straight to he's guilty. But let's hear from three people that believe differently.

You know that Bart should not be executed, and that was his uncle, which was his mother's brother, Bold his name is Bow, and then Uh and then Kent Whittaker, who you know, really gave him a lot of pages to really discuss why it was important for him to not have his only living UH family member executed, then encountered it at the end with Bart Whittaker's own testimony. So, Harry,

you've got these two really really great nice men. Bo Whittaker really, honestly, I don't think it gave a rat's lick about Bart, but he didn't believe that his sister would want him executed. Kent, of course, did not want his son executed. Then when you actually listen to what Bart says and the arrogance that he continued to display,

the braggadaccio that he has, it's amazing. And when you actually read what Bart says, you're like, thank God they put this guy on death row because it's just the ego that was running is so rampant in his world, is just phenomenal.

She came from a very well to do family, so obviously had no need for any Whittaker money because her family actually made a lot more money than the Whitaker family did. And so really, this is a very cute, attractive, sweet smart girl who had fallen in love with this guy, who really thought he was just a sweet, charismatic, congenial fellow who made her feel like a queen, you know,

basically what any person would want in a relationship. And yeah, they had been together for quite a while through college at a long distance relationship before the murders. And she was actually gonna meet up with Bart the day after the murders to meet with their family. She couldn't go out that night because she was seeing her family when she come into town. And uh a, you know, at

the time they're still boyfriend and girlfriend. The murders, and of course she's right there by his side that you know, after he gets shot, and sure she's the good, loving girlfriend and she's going to take care of him. And sure enough soon as Bart Hills and they get kind of back into a flow of life. After the murders, Bart and his girlfriend start talking about let's do this, let's get engaged, let's let's let's get married. And he

asked her to marry him and she said yes. And this is all in the interim for the murders before he leaves for Mexico. So that whole seven month period and again just you know, a woman, a young woman truly in love with her man, and needless to say, once Bart hotels, and the way she finds out is that Bart actually wrote a few letters to a few people, one being his girlfriend, one to his father, and one to the family attorney. And at that time what he said in the letter to Lynn is, you know, I

adore you. You're my world. Everything is about you is fantastic. However, these people think I'm the I'm this crazy killer and I didn't do it, but I've got to go because they think that I did it. So obviously she's like mortified that, you know, her lover, you know, the man she has said I do or is planning on saying I do too, is like I said, the prime suspect and the murder of his own family, and uh yeah,

everything from that point for her just shut down. And to this day she is very you know, pulling the curtains down and doesn't want anybody to know what had happened to her and doesn't want to talk about it because, you know, mortified, embarrassed, horrified that what her lover could do and she had no clue.

And you did talk a little bit about just briefly, I want to talk about some of the things that you're doing now, your latest project are projects. But you did say that you thought that the reason for this overall was he was just bored.

entire family and get away with it. Incredible, he almost did. I mean he literally almost got away with it. It's incredible, but amazing he did not. And then, yeah, as far as projects go, I'm a boy. I'm working on a case now where my killer actually just committed suicide in prison. Two weeks ago, a case here in San Antonio, Texas, a teacher by the name of Diane Tilly was kidnapped, raped,

and tortured by a father and daughter team. Gentleman by the name of Ronnie joe' neil had committed the murder. Just an amazing woman. Diane Tilly actually founded a school for troubled teens, which ironically would have been perfect for the daughter. You know, she probably would have been a prime candidate for her school instead she ends up killing this woman.

Where you know, the first heavy extreme heavy metal band to debut number one on the Billboard Charts with an album back in nineteen eighty four. There's actually even a true crime angle on it where one of the guitar players in the band was shot murdered on stage. So that's an exciting story for me to be involved in.

Very privileged to be involved in that. And then I'm actually co authoring a I call it the Spurned Political Wife memoir of a former wife of a Kentucky legislator who, after he divorced his wife, went on to kill his mistress. So I'll actually be working on that book as well, and co authoring that with the wife on that case. So I'm just trying something a little different. You know. This Savage Son is my seventh book book, and I'm looking for just a little change in life a little bit.

But I'll always write true crime books. I just need to take a bit of a step back and try something different for my own interest. But I think everybody that follows me and knows what I like well will enjoy all of those books. So I'm hoping right now though that they'll go out by Savage Son and enjoy that one too.

so we've really enjoyed it. I will speak on behalf of the audience and myself, so I want to thank you very much and good luck with your next project, and hopefully we'll have you on the show in the fall when that comes out, or when it does come out, we'll have you back on the program talk about that book.