“Yes, I think you blew it out of proportion, but, yes, you are correct.”
“How can I take it to any higher proportion?” a befuddled Felcman demanded. “You killed your mother and your brother.”
“Yes, but I…You’re right.”
“So, when I told the jury what we’re dealing with is a person who’s purely manipulative, I was absolutely correct about it, right?”
“Sir, that’s such a loaded word”—the comment elicited several sighs from some of the participants in the gallery—“and I know that I did offer these people money. But if you’re talking about…I’m not really sure what you mean by manipulative. I did offer them money, but I think you mean something above and beyond that.”
“You have a tendency, Mr. Whitaker, to talk in cryptic terms. You don’t come out and say what you really mean. You don’t speak forward with people and tell them how you really think. You use manipulative terms, correct?”
“I know I did some of that in those days, yes.”
“You did that throughout the case.”
“Yes, in regard to the police.”
“Even the letters you wrote when you fled were still in manipulative terms,” Felcman added.
“The last section, yes.”
“The only time you actually told them the truth in the letters is when you said, Hey, the longer you keep anyone from knowing I am gone, the better the chances are. That’s the only time you actually talked about the truth. Everything else, you talk about, I’ll be the only one that has to go through the fire, and so forth like that.”
“I believe that was the truth, sir.”
“You’re not the only one who has to go through the fire. I do, these people do”—Felcman gestured toward the jury members—“a whole community does.”
“I know that now.”
“Did you ever make a comment to anybody, Mr. Whitaker, that the way you manipulate people is you give them what they want?”
“Well, that’s what I did in this case, yes.”
“Lynne Sorsby wanted to believe you, that you didn’t do this. Lynne Sorsby loved you and wanted to marry you, and that’s the reason you were able to get her to say, ‘Yes, I will marry you,’ despite everything here, correct?”
“There was much more to it than that, but that was a part of it.”
“Really? What else?” Felcman wanted more information.
“After all this happened, I think the six months after this all happened was the best time in our relationship. I think the shock of this hit me in a way, like Will Anthony said, it didn’t become real until it actually happened. It was sort of that way with me.” Bart paused to let that bit of information sink in. “I knew it was going to happen, and I wanted it to happen, but on a level, I didn’t understand it, like I did afterward. I tried to distance the person that I had been by becoming someone else, by being better than I had been before that. I did love her, and that’s why I proposed to her, more than anything else.”
“You love Lynne Sorsby?” Felcman asked.
“To this day, I do,” declared Bart.
“Was she in any type of danger from you, Mr. Whitaker?”
“Certainly, she’s not.”
“Your mother loved you.”
“Yeah,” he answered unenthusiastically.
Felcman continued to hammer away at the phony exterior he believed comprised Bart. “You actually went to the rodeo with your father and held up one of those lighters when Pat Green played the song for Kevin?”
“I don’t remember that, but I might have done so.”
“All this emotion, of course, never once broke down your façade that you had about killing him, did it?”
“It broke me down, but not in a public place.”
“Really?” declared Felcman. “Tell the jury. I’m just dying to know how this broke you down.”
“It broke me down a lot afterward.”
“Tell us.”
“I remember the first time we got back from the hospital. I was in the shower, and it just hit me in a way I just couldn’t believe that it happened, that I had done this. I don’t think I had cried for maybe fifteen years to that point.”
“You actually talked to Steven Champagne that you were upset that he didn’t kill your father. Remember that?”
“I did not say that.”
“So he wasn’t telling the truth on that?”
“No, he was not.”
“But you weren’t upset with anybody that they didn’t finish the job with your father?”
“No, sir, I never said that.”
“So Steven Champagne, who has no reason to lie about that particular thing, was lying about that?”
“There were other people at that lunch where that comment was supposedly said. If I had said it, they would have testified here.”
“Really?”
“Yes, sir, they would have.”
“How do we know you just didn’t talk to them on a private basis?”
“Because they were not involved in this in any way and wouldn’t have been involved in it in any way.”
“We didn’t know you were talking to Adam Hipp, unless we tape-recorded it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“If Marshall Slot hadn’t tape-recorded Adam Hipp’s conversation with you, what would have been your response to that? That you never talked to Adam Hipp?”
“Testifying today, no. I would admit it today. Back at the beginning, when the police were talking to me, I would have lied about it, yes.”
“But you told your father you didn’t know anything about it.”
“Yes, I did.”
“So, once we catch you at it, then you come in and admit to it. But before then, no, right?”
“That’s something that’s happened over the last year and a half, sir, two and a half years.”
“Well, you act like this is some minor thing. You’re being investigated for killing your mother and your brother, and your father’s asking you about Adam Hipp, and you say, ‘I don’t know what they’re talking about, and I still don’t know,’ right?”
“Yes, I did say that, but it wasn’t a minor thing. It was fear.”
“The fear was that Adam Hipp was going to come forward and tell them about you,” Felcman emphasized.
“Yes, sir.” Bart admitted to the only thing that truly worried him: getting caught.
“You also thought maybe he was talking to the police, because you thought, ‘I hope we’re on the same page here.’”
“I don’t know that I thought that at the time. I just thought that Adam would have gotten a better deal from them fiscally, financially. That meant he would have told them anything, yes.”
Felcman moved on to the money Bart was able to take with him and use to escape to Cerralvo, Mexico. “Ten thousand dollars from your father’s home. He said that you took it. He was right, correct?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Where was that money at?”
“It was taped behind a drawer.”
“Why couldn’t you just have left? Why did you have to take the man’s money, too, after killing his wife and son? Why couldn’t you have just left?”
“I didn’t have any money of my own.”
“You had eighty thousand dollars, according to the trust fund.”
“I didn’t know I could access that.”
“Everybody said you can access it,” Felcman reminded the defendant.
“I know that’s what they say. I didn’t know I could access it. I would have wanted it, if I could have.”
“Marshall Slot is able to track you down to the Lancaster Hotel. You had to spend four hundred dollars [on a hotel room] before you left. Tell the jury why?”
“I got really drunk and I wanted a last night out.”
“One last time after killing your mother and brother, huh?”
“One last time in America was what I was thinking.”
Felcman spun around and cornered the defendant. “Do
you remember your attorney Dan Cogdell saying you ran away in fear?”
Bart nodded his head in his version of shame.
“You weren’t running in fear,” Felcman declared. “You actually had it planned for a while to spend a night at a nice hotel. You had it all planned. Then you skedaddled to Mexico, right?”
“Something I came up with that night, actually.” Bart again downplayed his planning skills.
Fred Felcman was just about finished with Bart Whitaker. “Is there any way you want to change your plea to guilty from not guilty now?”
“If I could go back and do this over, I would have insisted on that, yes,” Bart admitted.
Felcman, however, was not ready to stop painting Bart in the most negative light possible. “Why did you put ‘K. Soze’ on the letter,” he asked in regard to the letter Bart mailed to Adam Hipp, along with bribe money.
“It was something that me and Adam had joked about in the past, that we both enjoyed that movie The Usual Suspects.”
“You’re sending him bribe money to cover up you killing your brother and mother, and you have time to write something you think is a joke?”
“I meant sort of as an inside, not an inside joke, but…” His voice trailed off before he could complete his thought.
“It was a joke, right?” Felcman baited.
“No, sir. It was not a funny joke.” Bart shook his head, “No, it was not.”
“Why did you put it in there?”
“As something he would identify with, without putting my own name on it.”
“You were stupid enough to put your own address on it,” Felcman spat out, all sense of decorum evaporated. “Did you see that?”
“I had to,” Bart claimed.
“This is not the first time you’ve told people in this legal system how sorry you were for all the pain and trouble you’ve caused, is it?”
“No, it’s not.”
“Remember me showing the confession you gave after burglarizing all these schools? Remember that,” Felcman chided.
“Yes, sir.”
Felcman read from Bart’s confession: “I am sorry for all the pain and trouble I have caused and will seek to amend the wrongs as soon as possible. That’s exactly what you’re saying today, right?”
Bart replied, “You don’t believe a person can be sorry for the things they did?”
Even more eyes rolled in the gallery as many in attendance could not believe what they were hearing from this young man.
“No, I think they can be, Mr. Whitaker.” Felcman seemed to grow six inches taller as the opportunity of a lifetime presented itself to him. “But I don’t think you are.” He paused. “I think you’re sorry you got caught, and now you’re trying to figure out how to get out of the death penalty.” More than a few heads nodded in unison from the crowd. “Tell me something, Mr. Whitaker, do you have anything in your background, for this jury, to somehow lessen your moral blameworthiness in this case?”
“I leave those decisions up to them,” Bart answered, still attempting to gain control.
“Do you have any evidence they can listen to?”
“I believed they listened to me today.”
“Do you have any evidence to show any lessening of moral blameworthiness on this case?”
Bart was unable to answer the question.
“The answer is no.” Felcman decided to answer the question for him. “You haven’t been mistreated, you haven’t been abused. You haven’t had anything like that happen in your life, have you?”
“I’ve never been abused, no.”
“And the moral blameworthiness on this? The simple fact is this—without you, Mr. Whitaker, your mom and brother would still be alive today.”
“Yes, they would be,” Bart agreed.
“So your moral blameworthiness exceeds everybody else’s, correct?” Felcman placed the final nail in Bart’s coffin.
“I can see how it can be looked at that way, yes, sir.”
“How could it not be looked at that way, Mr. Whitaker?”
“We were all in this together, but, yes, it was my plan. I started it. Yes, it was my responsibility.”
“The second issue—you knew your family was going to be killed. You anticipated that human life would be taken that night?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And finally, the continuing threat. I’ve got a person who manipulates people, manipulated the court system, has been in trouble before with the court, correct?”
“I have been in trouble with the court, yes.”
“And kills the people he loves the most,” Felcman summarized.
“Yes, I did that.”
“And then you had one last question. You say you don’t have an ax to grind with me?”
“No,” Bart quietly answered.
“If you should have an ax to grind with me, Mr. Whitaker, should I be scared?”
“Sir, I don’t have an ax to grind with anyone.”
“I could treat you nice and fine and love you as much as your mother and brother loved you, and you could make up some reason to kill me. Is that about right?”
“Not anymore.”
“How many more years do you think you’re going to live, Mr. Whitaker? Fifty?” Felcman queried.
“I don’t know, sir.”
“It only took five years from getting off probation for you to kill your parents. That’s all it took. You’re twenty-seven.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ve got a good number of years, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“And you didn’t have to pull the trigger. You got somebody else to do it for you, right?” Felcman asked his final question.
“Yes, sir” was all Bart could muster.
“Thank you, Judge.” Felcman nodded toward Judge Vacek, acknowledged the members of the jury, and refused to look at Bart Whitaker again. He was done.
Randy McDonald, Bart’s attorney, had no further questions for his client. Bart was also the final defense witness.
Time had run out for the day, so Judge Vacek informed the jurors that attorneys from both sides would make their final arguments the following morning.
54
March 7, 2007
Fort Bend County Courthouse
Richmond, Texas
Nearly two months after jury selection began in the case against Bart Whitaker, attorneys for both sides were prepared to wrap up the trial. A bleary-eyed bunch of jurors shuffled into their familiar seats and listened, one last time, to each attorney argue why Bart Whitaker deserved to live or deserved to die.
First up was Assistant District Attorney Jeff Strange for the state. The forty-five-year-old prosecutor would eventually get to the defendant; however, he wanted to remind the jury members of what kind of people Tricia and Kevin Whitaker were.
“Kevin was a child. He was nineteen when he was killed. Kevin Whitaker could have become a doctor, or maybe some type of researcher that would find the cure for some disease. Or maybe a teacher or a police officer. He had a right to become whatever his talent and hard work would let him become, and this defendant has denied us all that.”
Strange continued, “He was an Aggie. He liked to hunt, he liked to fish, he liked sports, he wore boots. He liked country music.” He added, “There’s nothing wrong with that. He was a good kid, and he had a right to grow up. When that Cor-Bon bullet hit him in the chest, that child spent the rest of his life with his hand over his chest trying to stem the flow of blood, staggering around the lobby of his house. What could that baby have been thinking? How scared must he have been? How much did that hurt?”
Strange then continued to address the jury panel about Bart’s mother. “It would have been nice if she would have been able to help him. They died about ten feet apart. Patricia Whitaker’s last words alive were to express concern over Clifton Stanley’s health. I mean that literally. She said, ‘No, Clifton. He could still be in here.’ He’s not even her child,” Strange remarked
, reminding jurors of the helpful, concerned neighbor, and how Tricia was selfless to the end.
The prosecutor spoke more of Tricia Whitaker. “She was a teacher. She spent her entire professional career educating the children of this community. She was a woman of great faith. I’ve been told she’d give you the shirt off her back. She deserved better than this. She had a right to become a grandmother. She had a right to grow old with Kent,” he stated, and looked up at the grieving widower.
“Make no mistake about it, that’s why we’re here. This is as bad as it gets. This is absolutely as bad as it gets,” Strange noted, and turned his gaze toward Bart. He turned the conversation to focus on Bart’s murder plotting, failed murder attempts, and, ultimately, brutal double murder. “On April 5, 2001, it’s the big day,” he declared facetiously. “The Whitakers are supposed to die that day, but Jennifer Japhet has a conscience. She calls the police. The Waco police call the Sugar Land police. Mr. Whitaker’s contacted, and—fortunately—nothing happened that day. [Bart] goes off and runs and hides. If he had any type of conscience, he would have fallen on his knees before God and prayed for forgiveness. He would have come back to Sugar Land and got down before each member of his family, one by one, and begged them for forgiveness.”
Strange turned his back on Bart and addressed the jury. “But what happens? His family buys him a Chevrolet Yukon. They buy him a townhome in Willis, because they think he’s going to Sam Houston State University, and on December 10, 2003, he kills his mother, he kills his brother, and he has his father shot. And make no mistake about it—he did this so he could inherit money. And then it just gets worse. Within a few months, he’s trying to bribe a witness, Adam Hipp, to lie to the police. Within a month, he’s up at T.G I. Fridays talking with Steven Champagne about having to finish the job and killing his father. Then he steals ten thousand of his father’s money and runs to Mexico. And you wonder why this is a death penalty case?” Strange could not fathom how anyone could think otherwise.
“His girlfriend told you that he looks for people with low self-esteem. He looks for people that are looking for something in their life. And that’s the amazing thing about him.” The attorney turned and jabbed an index finger in Bart’s direction. “At some point, Bart Whitaker somehow developed the skill to evaluate people. He can take a person that’s in some type of turmoil and size up what that person needs in their life, and he gives it to them. It’s as plain and simple as that.
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