Savage Son. Corey Mitchell
“The Bartlett family, his grandparents, cousins, everyone.”
“What about his parents and brother?” the detective followed up.
“They were all supposed to be there.”
“What’d you say to him?”
“Nothing. I just kind of nodded my head.” Hipp nodded his own head yes. “I didn’t take any of it seriously. I mean, it seemed to me at the time that he wasn’t taking it seriously. It was definitely not well-thought-out, so I figured he was just venting off some steam.”
Hipp explained how Bart planned to deflect attention away from himself. “He would be in the lake house when the fire was set. He would also make sure that he got burned in the process.”
“Why would he want to get burned?” Slot asked.
“So as not to be suspicious for having survived the fire,” Hipp replied.
“What was the motivation for wanting to do this?”
“His first cousins were in line to inherit the family company, Bartlett Construction Company,” Hipp recalled. “He wanted to position himself to be in control of that business.”
“He obviously didn’t follow through with the plan that time, did he?” Detective Slot asked Hipp.
“Correct. He did not.”
“So, did you guys ever talk about it again?”
“Yes, sir,” Hipp replied. “He brought it up again, not too long afterward. He asked me if I wanted to help him and make some money. I told him no, and that there was no way I could do something like that.”
“How did he react to that?”
“He didn’t seem too pleased, but he kept talking about how he was going to do it, like it would convince me to change my mind or something,” Hipp added.
“Did he say how he planned on killing his family?” Detective Slot needed to know.
“Yes, sir. He said it would be a fake robbery. That he would get his family out of the house, and that one of us would hide out inside. When they returned to the house, our other guy would shoot them as they came in. And Bart would get shot, too, to make it look real.”
Detective Slot had difficulty keeping the stunned look off his face. This was the exact same story Bart told him the day after the murders. And now, here was an old friend of his corroborating the details, but implicating Bart directly in the murder of his mother and brother.
“Now, when did you say you guys first talked about killing Bart’s family?”
“February 2001, sir,” Hipp answered.
“Do you know any of the specifics on how he wanted to accomplish this?” Slot asked.
“He said his family would be out of the house, and he would provide someone else with a key and an alarm code to go into the house and stay in the living room and wait for his family to return,” Hipp remembered. “He said it wouldn’t be that hard to do, and that the shooter would just have to wait for the first two people to come in the door, all the way in, and they’d be able to shoot them at close range.”
Slot sat quietly, checking to make sure that his tape recorder still worked properly.
“Bart said that after it was over, the shooter would take off through the back door, run through their yard, jump a fence, and meet up with another person who had a car ready to go.”
Hipp began to unspool even more aspects of the supposed murder plot by Bart Whitaker. “He even told me where the shooter would stand, to make sure he maximized his efforts. He even talked about what kind of clothes the shooter should wear. He suggested black clothing, along with a mask to hide the shooter’s face.”
“What did he say about shooting him?” Slot asked.
“He said he wanted someone to shoot him in the arm,” Hipp responded. “He wanted it to be where it would heal, like muscle tissue or something. He mentioned it could be in different places, like the arm or shoulder, just so long as it was in a spot that could heal relatively easily.”
“Was there supposed to be some kind of struggle?”
“Yes, sir. He was interested in making it look like he was in the position of tackling the shooter. Almost as if he were apprehending the shooter. He wanted it to look like the shooter had to shoot at him to try and get away.”
“What else did Bart say about this?” Slot inquired.
Hipp paused and looked directly at the detective. “He basically warned me that I was not supposed to talk to anyone else about what he had said. He then added that if I were to talk to anyone else besides him about the plot, that either I or someone important to me might get hurt.”
“He threatened you?”
“Not in so many words, but, yeah. He threatened me.”
“What’d you do?”
“I just nodded and told him it was strictly between the two of us.”
Detective Slot decided to change the direction of the conversation. “This plan did not, however, come to fruition, either, correct?”
“Correct,” Hipp replied.
“So, was that the end of it for you two?”
“No, sir. There was a third plan.”
“A third plan?” Slot asked incredulously.
“Yes, sir,” Hipp responded. “For whatever reason, he decided to change it up a little bit. It was a further maturing of what we had talked about before.” Hipp paused, took a deep breath, and continued. “Only this time, it was more geared to him wanting me to be the shooter. Having me catch his family early in the morning to do it.”
“Was this the first time that he asked you to participate [directly] in killing his family?” Detective Slot asked.
“Yes, sir. For the earlier incarnations, I was simply his sounding board. Now he wanted me to be the triggerman.”
“Now, when you say ‘his family,’ who all was he referring to?”
“Kevin, Tricia, and Kent.”
“Tell me how he wanted you to kill his family.”
“I was supposed to do it before Kevin would leave for school, or his dad left for work,” Hipp recalled. “He told me if I was there before eight in the morning that the whole family would probably still be there, or I would catch his mom and brother on their way out to school.” Hipp continued, “Bart told me, ‘If my dad’s there, then you can catch him off-guard as well. If not, I’ll drive you over to my dad’s place of business, and you or I can shoot him there.’”
“Did you take him seriously this time?” Slot asked.
“Since he was trying to get me involved, absolutely. Yes, sir. And I didn’t want to have anything to do with it,” Hipp protested. “He told me he was going to get the weapon, drive me from Waco to Sugar Land, and take me to his parents’ house and his dad’s place of business, in case we had to go there.”
“How did he want you to do it?”
“Just shoot them as they walked out of the door.” Hipp shook his head in disbelief.
“Do you remember when you and Bart had these most recent discussions?”
“Yes, sir. It was April 2001.”
“How much further did this plan go?” Slot asked.
“Like I said, I didn’t want to have anything to do with it. Bart said he would call me when he was ready for us to do it, but I continually begged off,” Hipp continued. “Finally, sometime in April, I got a call from him late one night. He told me I had missed