Savage Son. Corey Mitchell
He told Bart that he believed the police now viewed Bart as the only suspect. “You weren’t in school, you told everyone you were graduating, and they think you arranged to have us killed to cover it up. Can you see how stupid that was?”
Bart immediately snapped to and made sure his dad was fully aware he was in no way involved with the deaths of his mother and brother. “Dad, that’s nuts! I didn’t have anything to do with the shootings!” Bart tearfully apologized to his father for the ridiculous lie and reiterated that he did not want his parents to be disappointed with him for not doing well in college. “This will be okay,” he reassured his father.
Kent, however, was not completely satisfied with Bart’s response. “I’m so mad now, I could spit!” he bellowed out at his oldest son. “I’ve told you before—you cannot ever allow yourself to start lying again!” Kent reiterated that the police were now wasting time focusing on Bart because of his lies, instead of doing everything in their power to find the real killers.
Kent eventually relaxed and the two men made up, told one another that they loved each other, and mentioned that the police would get back on the proper trail soon enough.
Kent, however, had a niggling sensation that he could not shake. He was still very angry with Bart for having lied to him about his college career. One thing he did not ponder: How could Tricia and I have not known Bart wasn’t in college all these years?
7
Kent and Tricia Whitaker’s first encounter was on a blind date. “I walked into her house and I didn’t know what I was expecting, but she came down [the stairs] and I thought, ‘I’ve never been on a blind date like this before,’” Kent joyfully recalled. “We hit it off very well right from the start.” Indeed, he was smitten by the beauty with long blond hair that draped below her shoulders. He realized within a matter of months that he had fallen deeply in love with her, and she had reciprocated his feelings.
Tricia and her younger brother, William “Bo” Bartlett, grew up near the South Loop in Houston. When she turned fifteen, the family moved over to the west side of Houston. Tricia and Bo attended Westchester High School. Tricia participated in the group Young Life, a Christian ministry that reached out to middle-school, high-school, and college-aged kids. She also loved to hang out with her friends and was even an avid water-skier. Tricia was a good student and very popular with her classmates.
Upon graduation from Westchester High School, Tricia migrated north for college at Southwest Texas State University (now known as Texas State University) in San Marcos, Texas, the halfway point between Austin and San Antonio. She attended Southwest Texas for one year before she returned home for the summer. That was when she met Kent.
Having been smitten with her newfound love, Tricia knew she could no longer attend school in San Marcos, since she would have been nearly two hundred miles away from Kent. To remedy the situation, she instead opted to transfer to the University of Houston.
In 1974, Kent landed a job at Tricia’s father’s construction company, which was “in the commercial construction business in masonry.” The company was founded in 1951 by Tricia’s father, William Bartlett Sr., who ran a tight ship that turned into a lucrative venture in a short period of time.
According to Kent, he acted as the company’s office manager and also its accountant. He mainly handled relations with the government and oversaw all of the accounting and contracts that came over the transom.
After dating Tricia and working for her father’s company for more than one year, twenty-six-year-old Kent Whitaker and twenty-three-year-old Patricia Ann Bartlett decided to get married. They sealed their nuptials on June 21, 1975.
The happy couple enjoyed each other’s company for another four years before they excitedly welcomed their first child. Thomas Bartlett “Bart” Whitaker was a New Year’s Eve baby, born on December 31, 1979. The couple focused all their love and attention on Bart, until four years later when they welcomed their second son, Kevin, into the family on March 19, 1984.
The Whitaker household was a growing hub of love and activity. Kent and Tricia worked hard to raise healthy, happy children. They went out of their way to make sure each son was cared for, paid attention to, and encouraged to be the best possible children they could be.
As the boys grew older, the family became closer. Kent played sports with the boys, and Tricia, a school-teacher, worked with them on their studies. They exercised their minds, as well as their bodies. They also made sure to incorporate the boys into their religious beliefs, as they were very devout Christians.
When Bart and Kevin started having friends, the Whitaker household in Sugar Land was Grand Central Station for activity. Parents felt safe knowing their kids were with the Whitakers, and the kids enjoyed playing with Bart and Kevin and adored their parents.
By the time the boys were teenagers, they had pretty much anything and everything at their disposal. Nice clothes, a large two-story home, cars, skiing trips, girlfriends. All was good in the Whitaker household.
Bo Bartlett later described Tricia and Kent’s relationship as something most couples would envy. “They would wake up in the morning excited just to talk to each other,” Bo recalled. “Kent would even brush his teeth at the office before he went home just so he was more presentable to Tricia when he got home.
“He was so into my sister. That was his soul mate.”
8
Saturday, December 13, 2003
Memorial Hermann Sugar Land Hospital
Sugar Land, Texas
Kent and Bart Whitaker were scheduled to have their surgeries, back-to-back, early that Saturday morning. According to Kent, his and Bart’s injuries were practically mirror images of one another, with the damage to his right arm and Bart’s in his left arm. Kent claimed to have teased the nurses into making sure they inserted the appropriate metal into the correct arms.
Both Whitaker men were to have titanium rods inserted into their arms which “over time the fragments would fuse together around it” and would take approximately three months to heal. Kent described himself and Bart as “real bionic men,” after the ’70s television icon Steve Austin, from the hit series The Six Million Dollar Man.
Both Kent and Bart came out of their successive surgeries without any further complications.
9
Sunday, December 14, 2003, 1:00 P.M.
Whitaker Residence
Sugar Land, Texas
Detective Marshall Slot returned to the scene of the double murder. This time, however, he was right behind Kent and Bart Whitaker. The two victims of the shooting had been picked up and driven home by Kent’s brother, Keith. Slot hoped to get more information from the father and son as to what had occurred four nights earlier.
When Keith Whitaker pulled his vehicle alongside the front curb to his brother’s home, Kent Whitaker was taken aback by the sight of several large yellow ribbons tied to many of his neighbors’ trees, as well as around some of the trees in his own front yard. Tears welled up in Kent’s eyes as he exited the vehicle and slowly made his way up to the front door of his home. He somehow managed not to break down as he walked past the spot where Tricia had fallen. As he cracked the door open wider, he was shocked to see that there was no blood to be found.
Kent walked inside, followed by Bart and Detective Slot. The latter was surprised to see that the entire foyer had been cleaned, from top to bottom. The scene looked nothing like it had the night of the murders. Extended family members of the Whitakers, as well as friends from the church, had come in during the preceding days after the police investigation had been completed and cleaned up the house. Slot described it as “pristine.” The friends and family members wanted to make sure Kent and Bart came home to a nice, clean house that was seemingly devoid of any negative recollections from the gruesome scene, just four nights prior. They wiped up the bloodstains,