“Absolutely.” Kent perked up. “Justice is important. I don’t think anyone could have misunderstood us from the start, thinking that we were trying to go through some legal proceedings that would absolve Bart of his responsibilities for this, or him to have to pay a debt to society for this.”
“Would Tricia feel the same way?” McDonald wondered aloud.
“I promise you, yes,” Kent offered. “She would have been appalled at that”—he was referring to Bart’s potential punishment—“that the state chose to pursue the death penalty in this case.”
“Now, you understand that the state, in their discretion, can choose [in] which cases to seek the death penalty?”
“I do, yes.”
“You don’t actually fault Mr. Felcman or Mr. Strange for doing their job that Mr. Healey decided was the proper way to go about this?”
“I do not,” Kent firmly replied. “Someone asked me if I felt like I was the victim of the fact that the state has chosen to pursue the death penalty, and I told them no, I don’t feel like a victim at all. The state is given the responsibility of protecting society, and there are laws on the books that they operate from, and they made this decision. I think it is the wrong decision,” he added, “I think there’s a lot of collateral damage to the family as a result of having to go through this trial.
“It’s been a long time since Bart was arrested,” Kent continued. “I would like to have an opportunity to have resumed our relationship through the court systems, with him being remanded to the state for the rest of his life.”
“You agree that that would be an appropriate sentence for Bart? That he be sentenced to life in the penitentiary?”
“I agree, yes. I believe that would be an appropriate answer.”
McDonald again steered the conversation into a different direction, focusing on the night of the murder, and Kent’s hospital night of forgiveness. “As you were laying there in that hospital room, you didn’t know what had happened, or who had done this to your family—is that correct?”
“That’s correct. We had no idea.”
“What was your reaction in the hospital with regard to the person, unknown to you at the time, that actually did the shooting?”
“The night of the shootings, after the nurses had left from hooking me up to some IVs, and cleaning me up the best they could, after they left—and I was there by myself for the first time—I tried to wrap my mind around all the changes that I knew had happened to me.” Kent began to describe the painful, immediate aftereffects of the worst night in his entire life. “I was having a hard time with all of it, but one thing that kept coming into my mind was that I had told many people, for many years, that faith was an act of willpower. That faith wasn’t, or isn’t, a feeling. Because your feelings will lie to you, and if you rely on your judgments, on just emotions, then you will make mistakes. But if you have faith in the word of God, and you read in the Bible that it tells you to do something, even though it doesn’t feel like it makes much sense to you, the Bible tells you what faith is. And I realized that this was the granddaddy of all situations.” Kent faintly smiled at the absurdity of the situation.
“I was faced with a situation that changed my life,” he continued as the audience sat, enraptured. “I had spent the last two hours since the shooting bouncing back and forth from being numb, from extreme anger, from a desire for deep revenge—even revenge with my own hands—to shock. There were all these different feelings that I had been experiencing, and I knew that if I chose one of them, my life would be different as a result of making that decision.”
Kent Whitaker continued to talk about the internal struggle that he was forced to confront. “I came to the inescapable conclusion that, even though I could not understand how it could possibly be true, I believed.” He paused. “There’s one verse in the Bible that says the Lord will take all things and work them for good for those who love him and are called to his service. I made the conscious willpower decision that ‘all things’ included the murder of my wife and my son, and that I was going to trust him to work good from it.” A few patrons in the courthouse nodded their heads silently. Others looked dumbfounded.
“At the moment that I made that decision, another question popped into my mind, and it was kind of a strange one, which was ‘What about the shooter?’ And immediately I knew what my response was going to be. I thought, ‘I want whoever is responsible for this to stand next to Tricia, Kevin, and me in Paradise and sing the praises of the Lord.’ And I haven’t wavered from that. I looked in my heart, and that’s what I really wanted.”
The silence in the courtroom was marred only by the nearly imperceptible sound of someone crying.
Kent straightened up in his chair and continued. “I had no idea at the time that one of those I was praying for was my son,” he stated as he looked up at Bart.
“I think what happened that night was that God knew what was coming, and he knew that people are redeemable, and he knew Bart was going to need someone to stand with him and show him what my faith was all about, so he could see, firsthand, the forgiveness of the Lord, who has forgiveness for all of us who repent. And he gave me the power, the strength beyond what is reasonable to expect, to forgive someone for an awful crime without knowing who they were, because he knew that only if I was able to get past that forgiveness, for real, when it didn’t mean anything, when there was nothing I could gain from it, that I would be able to truly spend time with my son when he came under suspicion, and then later ran, and after he was arrested.” Kent took a deep breath. “It was only by truly forgiving everyone involved, including the real shooter, that I would be able to stand up to what was coming.”
Defense attorney McDonald stepped in. “Based on your beliefs, now that you know your son was involved in this, you haven’t wavered in your position?”
“No, I have not,” Kent responded. He also added that he came to the decision of his own accord—with God. “It was a decision between myself and the Lord. This was my heart speaking.”
McDonald steered the questioning toward the conversation between Kent and Bart that occurred in prison, on the second anniversary of the murders of Tricia and Kevin. The men had spoken about Bart’s potential sentencing, and how they both hoped he could serve a sentence of life in prison instead of facing execution.
“Have we ever proposed anything other than pleading to a life sentence for capital murder for Bart?” McDonald wondered aloud.
“No. That is the only thing we’ve ever sought. It is what I begged the district attorney’s office to take when we met, before you came on the scene,” Kent acknowledged.
“And we have even tried to do it in such a way that they could stack life sentences, if they wanted to?”
“Yes. As I understand it, that was really the first and only offer we’ve ever made. Bart was willing to accept stacked sentences, which, as I understand, means that the sentence for the first murder has to be completed in its entirety before the second one can even begin.”
McDonald asked Kent about the jury members. “Is it your desire that they assess a life sentence in this case?”
“It has been from the start,” Kent stated, then gave a knowing glance toward the jury box “and it still is. I would ask that they would determine the appropriate punishment in this case is to give him life in prison, so that he would never be released to the public again, but that I would have the chance to rebuild the relationship he and I had before this, and allow everybody in the family to say, ‘All right, this awful nightmare has passed from one stage to the next, and we don’t have to go through the state of Texas–required series of appeals that will take years and years to play out,’ which is going to happen if the death penalty is assessed.”
“If it’s a life sentence, there will be no appeal?” McDonald asked.
“No, no. That’s what we’ve been pursuing ever since the day he was arrested.”
McDonald wrapped up his initial round of questions for Kent Whi
taker. “Pass the witness.”
After a short break so the jurors could stretch their legs and attend to any bathroom needs, the court resumed with First ADA Fred Felcman taking over. He seemed to be in no mood to coddle Mr. Whitaker.
“Mr. Whitaker, I’ve listened very intently to your testimony, and also to the previous witness, Mr. Bo Bartlett. How does y’all’s feelings about whether or not Bart deserves the death penalty aid the jury? The defendant is the one on trial. These people judge the defendant by his actions, okay? I have not heard from you or Mr. Bartlett talk about the defendant and his actions.”
“I think I spoke directly to that,” Kent Whitaker countered.
Felcman was not satisfied with the answer. “Let me talk about the actions of the defendant then,” he declared, obviously miffed at Kent Whitaker’s stance. “On the night that he had your wife and son killed, y’all went out to eat, right?”
“That’s correct.”
“He celebrated with you, broke bread with you, knowing that you were supposed to be dead, that your wife was supposed to be dead, that your son was supposed to be dead, in a matter of minutes. You understand that?”
Kent seemed flustered by Felcman’s demeanor. He stumbled over his words in response. “I have…this is what I’ve been saying all along. I don’t understand where we’re getting off—”
“Because the testimony that you have just given to this jury,” Felcman countered, “really had nothing to do with his actions. It had to do with the way you felt, and the way Mr. Bartlett felt, but it did not have anything to do with the defendant.”
Kent attempted to defend himself. “Well, first of all, that was what I was asked to answer.”
“I understand,” the moustachioed Felcman responded.
“And secondly, I believed I answered that when I said that nobody was trying to absolve him of the responsibility of this crime. It wasn’t a matter of guilt or innocence. It never has been.” Kent continued in almost a defiant manner, though the timbre of his voice remained calm. “It has been a matter of what the appropriate response is for the state.”
“Then you know what the defendant’s plea was in this particular case?” Felcman prodded.
“I understood that the defendant did not plead at all,” Kent answered, using the same description of his son as the “defendant,” as used by the prosecution.
“So, instead of the defendant pleading guilty to something you knew he did, that meant this jury had to wrestle with the decision of whether he was guilty or not?”
“I’m not an attorney, Mr. Felcman, but I have been told that there’s a very good reason why a person chooses not to lie and say, ‘I’m innocent,’ but to stand silent and for the state to prove he’s guilty.”
Felcman decided to refocus the attention on Bart Whitaker. “The defendant, as he was growing up in your household with you and your wife and your other son, was never abused by you. You didn’t physically abuse him, sexually abuse him, or anything else like that?”
“No, we did not,” came Kent’s terse reply.
“Fact is, as everybody said, he’s lived a good life.”
“Yes.”
“Then, when he was seventeen years old, he started burglarizing the schools?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t have any idea that he was doing that?”
“No, we did not.”
“How did you find out, Mr. Whitaker, that your son had been burglarizing schools?” Felcman asked.
“We found out when he was arrested, and the school police called to say so,” Kent admitted, still embarrassed to this day.
“Did you talk to the defendant about these burglaries at the school?”
“Of course, I did,” Kent replied, annoyed. “At length, and many times. Tricia and I both did.”
“What did the defendant tell you about the burglaries at the school?”
“It was more of a prank than anything else. He said that they figured a way how to do it, so they did it.”
“It was a joke, or a prank?”
“Well, it was not a very smart prank, and it was a very stupid joke,” Kent responded.
“Did he tell you how they went ahead and accomplished burglarizing these schools?”
“I heard they went on the roof and through a skylight.”
Felcman pressed on. “Did he tell you he actually rented a storage room to store the items they stole?”
“Yes, I learned that after the fact.”
“Would you say that it was well-planned, executed burglaries to gain property that he is not entitled to?”
“Yes, that’s correct. You’re right,” Kent agreed with the prosecutor.
“After he’s done these things, you then take him to see a counselor, to see if you can help him out?”
“Yes, we did. Tricia took him to Brendan O’Rourke.”
“Was she a family friend?”
“Yes, we knew her before, or, at least, Tricia knew her.”
“And this Dr. O’Rourke counseled the defendant about what, exactly?”
Kent looked down, shifted in the witness stand, and spoke. “This is going to sound awful, but the truth is, I don’t know exactly what she talked to him about that. Tricia took him, and while Tricia and I talked, it was all thirdhand information to me.”
“But did you ask Dr. O’Rourke to write a letter to try to get the defendant back into Clements?” Felcman asked in regard to Bart’s onetime high school.
“Yes, we did.”
“Did the defendant tell you he was sorry for what he did with the burglaries?”
“Yes, he did.”
“And do you know he [pleaded] nolo contendere?” per the burglaries.
“Probably on the advice of counsel,” Kent surmised.
“Got placed on probation?”
“Correct.”
“When he got arrested for that, do you remember how many days he spent in jail?”
“One,” Kent answered.
“One day?”
“One night,” Kent corrected the prosecutor.
“And y’all had to bond him out?”
“That’s correct.”
“Had your son ever been in jail before?”
“No.”
“Did he appear to be or tell you that he was scared to have been in jail?”
“He did not say he was scared to be in jail.” Kent seemed uncomfortable. “He said that he was apprehensive, but that it was just an experience he had.”
“An experience,” Felcman repeated.
“Yeah.”
“You realize in his confession that he said he burglarized these schools because it was an adventure?” Felcman noted a recurring theme with Bart Whitaker and his need for excitement, adventure, and experience.
Kent merely nodded his head. “Probably, that’s what it said.”
“It was absolutely mortifying on y’all’s part, wasn’t it?”
“It affected Tricia greatly. There was a deep shame she felt, and it took a long time before she felt comfortable going out in public,” Kent recalled.
“Did y’all forgive him at the time?”
“Yes, I did.”
“You realize, Mr. Whitaker, that while he was on probation for the four years, he was plotting to kill your family?”
“I did not know that at the time,” Kent responded.
“Did you know he actually plotted to kill the Bartletts at their lake house also?”
“I did not know that (at the time).”
“Nothing you did, nothing the court system did, prevented the defendant from continuing to try to kill you, correct?”
“I never knew he was trying to kill me,” Kent simply answered.
“You found out in April of 2001 that there was a plot?”
“It was just an episode that was just beyond bizarre to Tricia and I.” Kent shook his head at the memory. “We had seen absolutely no indication of any hatred on Bart’s part, any interest in having us killed. And the r
esults of the investigation by the Waco Police Department indicated there was nothing substantive to it, because there was nothing to it.”
“That’s after you talked to the defendant, who lied to you about what happened out there, correct?”
“Yes. Everybody talked to the defendant after this happened,” Kent answered, unconsciously referring to his own son again as “the defendant.”
“And he lied to everybody?”
“In retrospect, we see he did.”
“Didn’t it strike you as strange that your son had been able to carry out burglaries on a sophisticated level, and how he had run after a plot that was exposed? Didn’t that strike you as sort of strange? Maybe your son’s not telling you the truth about things?”
“It struck me that three or four years earlier, when he had gotten in trouble in school, that he had changed,” Kent answered. “That he had turned from the stupidity of something that was very foolish. Between that time and the night of the call from the police department saying that he was on his way down here to kill us, there were no indications that there was anything wrong. There were, quite the contrary, positives. And when the police department came to the conclusion that it was a misunderstanding between roommates, and that there was nothing substantive to it, there was no reason why I should have placed any particular value on it.”
“That’s because the defendant lied to you, right?”
“That’s correct.”
“Now, in August 2002”—Felcman shifted gears yet again—“the defendant was in some kind of psychotherapy, or something, where he talked to a Lynne Ayres. Do you know who she is?”
“Yes.” Kent nodded. “Tricia arranged for that, too.”
“Did you ever talk to Lynne Ayres?”
“I don’t remember if I ever talked to her about Bart or not. We did visit with her about Kevin and testing for ADD, which I also tested positive for.”
“Didn’t she tell you that the interview she had with the defendant was very disturbing?”
“Yes, I guess she did. I’m sure your next question was that Bart said that he got angry at her for being so plodding, and in a perverse reason, [he] just answered the questions wrong.”
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