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Bart Whitaker and the Sugar Land, Texas Murders

Aug 19
10 min read

How a Son's Greed Nearly Erased an Entire Family


On the night of December 10, 2003, Kent and Tricia Whitaker sat down to dinner at a Pappadeaux seafood restaurant in Stafford, Texas, with their two sons, 24-year-old Bart and 19-year-old Kevin. It was supposed to be a celebration. Bart had told his parents he was about to graduate from Sam Houston State University. None of it was true — and by the time the family pulled back into their driveway in the Sugar Lakes subdivision that night, two of them would be dead, and investigators would soon discover that the person who set it all in motion was sitting in the back seat of the family car (TDCAA).

This is one of true crime's more disturbing "family annihilator" cases — not because of an unknown killer or a decades-long mystery, but because of how calculated, how repeatedly attempted, and how coldly rehearsed the plot against the Whitaker family turned out to be.

Bart "had no reason to hate his parents. But he did it anyway" ––Lead Prosecutor, Fred Felcman


A Seemingly Ordinary Family

Kent Whitaker worked as the comptroller of W. W. Bartlett, Inc., a Houston-area commercial masonry company founded in 1952 by his father-in-law, Bill Bartlett — meaning Kent had married into the family construction business rather than founded it himself (W. W. Bartlett, Inc.). His wife, Tricia Bartlett Whitaker, was an elementary school teacher. Their older son, Bart, had a rocky adolescence: at 17, he was convicted for a series of planned burglaries at Clements High School in Sugar Land, where he and a group of friends broke in — reportedly rappelling into the building through the ceiling — and made off with school computers (Fort Bend Independent). His parents responded by transferring him to a private Christian academy to finish high school before he went on to attend Baylor University and later Sam Houston State University (Los Angeles Times).

On paper, it read like a normal, if imperfect, coming-of-age story. In reality, Bart had already tried to have his entire family killed at least twice before that December night.


The Murders

After dinner, the Whitakers arrived home to find a masked intruder waiting inside. The gunman opened fire, killing Tricia and Kevin, and wounding Kent in the shoulder. Bart was also shot — in the arm — a detail he would later admit was staged so that he would appear to be a victim rather than a suspect (CBS News/48 Hours). On the surface, it looked exactly like what the killers wanted it to look like: a home invasion gone catastrophically wrong.

But the investigation moved fast. On December 12, 2003 — just two days after the murders — Sugar Land police received a tip that Bart wasn't actually enrolled at Sam Houston State and hadn't attended in some time. A grand jury subpoena for his transcripts confirmed it (TDCAA). Then, on December 15, a Dallas bank teller named Adam Hipp walked into the Sugar Land Police Department and told Detective Marshall Slot an extraordinary story: Bart had approached him back in the spring of 2001 with a fully drawn-out plan to kill the Whitaker family so he could inherit his parents' estate. Hipp drew Slot a diagram of the house showing exactly where the shooter was meant to stand — a diagram that turned out to be, in the words of the Houston Chronicle, "virtually identical" to the actual crime scene (CBS News).


Not the First Attempt — Not Even the Second

What made this case so chilling to investigators and prosecutors wasn't just that Bart had planned his family's murder. It's that he had tried, and failed, multiple times before he finally succeeded.

·       December 2000: Bart recruited his Baylor roommate Justin Peters and another Baylor student, Will Anthony, to ambush his parents and brother as they returned home from dinner. Anthony tried to jimmy open a back window to get into the house, tripped the alarm, and the pair fled without going through with it (CBS News/48 Hours).

·       Spring 2001: Bart recruited Adam Hipp — a former Clements High School classmate — to act as the shooter, with Peters agreeing to drive a pistol down from Waco. The plan, per Hipp's own account, was for the family to be lured out to dinner, the door left unlocked, and Hipp to open fire as they walked back in — with Bart shot in the arm to deflect suspicion (TDCAA).

·       2003: Having exhausted his Baylor-connected recruits, Bart turned to two coworkers from Bentwater Yacht & Country Club — Chris Brashear and Steven Champagne — who finally carried the plan to completion. Brashear pulled the trigger; Champagne drove the getaway car (TDCAA).


Prosecutors later noted an unsettling pattern in how Bart chose his co-conspirators: he seemed to seek out friends who were going through personal turmoil — Peters had recently lost a girlfriend in a car accident, while Hipp and Anthony were both struggling academically — and exploit that vulnerability to pull them into his scheme (TDCAA).


Money, or Something Else?

The prosecution's case rested almost entirely on financial motive: Bart stood to inherit an estate estimated between $1 million and $1.5 million, along with a life insurance payout, if his parents and brother were dead (Wikipedia). Hipp testified that Bart had offered him a cut of the money to pull the trigger.

But when Bart took the stand in his own defense during the 2007 punishment phase, he told a different story — one about resentment, not greed. He said he had developed what he called an "irrational hatred" toward his family, driven by a feeling that their love for him was conditional on a standard he could never meet. In later interviews, he went further, describing envy toward his brother Kevin ("he had so many of the qualities that I tried so hard for... people just loved him always") and saying he had wanted "revenge for being alive" (Oprah.com; ABC News).

Prosecutors weren't moved. Lead prosecutor Fred Felcman later said flatly that Bart "had no reason to hate his parents. But he did it anyway" (Oxygen).


Capture, Trial, and Sentence

After the murders, Bart fled to Mexico, living under an alias before being tracked down and arrested in September 2005 (Houston Chronicle, Sept. 14, 2005). His accomplices struck plea deals in exchange for testimony: Steven Champagne received 15 years, and shooter Chris Brashear pleaded guilty to murder and received a life sentence, eligible for parole after 30 years. Bart went to trial in March 2007. The jury took just two hours to convict him of capital murder, and he was sentenced to death (Wikipedia).


A Father's Forgiveness

The most extraordinary thread of this case isn't the crime — it's what came after. Kent Whitaker, who had survived being shot by the same plot that killed his wife and younger son, publicly forgave Bart almost immediately and spent the next decade fighting to have his son's death sentence commuted to life in prison. He wrote about the ordeal in his memoir, Murder by Family (Whitaker, 2009), and became an advocate against the death penalty in his son's case specifically.

On February 22, 2018 — about 20 minutes before Bart's scheduled execution — Texas Governor Greg Abbott granted clemency, commuting the death sentence to life without the possibility of parole. It was only the third time a Texas governor had granted clemency in a capital case since executions resumed in 1982, and the first time the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles had unanimously recommended it since 2007 (Sky News; ABC News). Kent's pleas to the parole board were widely credited as the deciding factor.


Where Things Stand Today

Bart Whitaker remains incarcerated in the Texas prison system, serving life without parole — having, per the terms of his commutation, permanently waived any future claim to parole in exchange for having his death sentence lifted. Chris Brashear remains in custody and won't be eligible for parole until 2035. Kent Whitaker has continued to speak publicly about forgiveness in the years since.

The Whitaker case endures in true crime discussion not for its mystery — there wasn't much of one, once Adam Hipp came forward — but for what it says about how long a plot can simmer beneath an outwardly normal family, and how far one father was willing to go to forgive the person who took almost everything from him.







Sources used for this podcast

ABC News. (2018, February 22). Man who plotted his family's murder will not be executed, governor says. ABC News. https://abcnews.com/US/man-plotted-familys-murder-executed-governor/story?id=53274744

CBS News. (2019, January 5). Texas man targeted by a hitman fights for the life of the person who ordered the murder – his son. CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bart-whitaker-sugar-land-texas-murders-father-fights-to-save-son-from-execution/

Fort Bend Independent. (2018, February 14). Sugar Land father forgives son who killed mother and brother; fights to save son from death row. Fort Bend Independent. https://fbindependent.com/sugar-land-father-forgives-son-who-killed-mother-and-brother-fights-to-sav-p11889-1.htm

O, The Oprah Magazine. (n.d.). The gift of forgiveness. Oprah.com. https://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/the-gift-of-forgiveness_1/all

Oxygen. (2023, December 28). Texas man Bart Whitaker hired friends to murder his family. Oxygen. https://www.oxygen.com/final-moments/crime-news/texas-bart-whitaker-hired-friends-murder-family

Strange, J. (n.d.). A most unusual suspect. Texas District and County Attorneys Association. https://www.tdcaa.com/journal/a-most-unusual-suspect-3/

True Crime Explained. (2026, May 4). The shocking Bart Whitaker family murder plot [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u74BVoB5vG8

Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Thomas Bartlett Whitaker. In Wikipedia. Retrieved August 16, 2026, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bartlett_Whitaker

20/20. (2018, February 24). Dad survives son's murder plot that killed mom and brother: 20/20 Part 2 [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd_D8U4Syn0

ABC News. (2018, February 22). Man who plotted his family's murder will not be executed, governor says. ABC News. https://abcnews.com/US/man-plotted-familys-murder-executed-governor/story?id=53274744

ABC7 Chicago. (2018, February 22). Texas man Bart Whitaker's execution halted, clemency granted, after last meal. ABC7 Chicago. https://abc7chicago.com/post/clemency-granted-texas-mans-execution-canceled-after-last-meal/3126217/

CBS Entertainment. (n.d.). A Texas man targeted by a hit man fights for the life of the person who ordered the murders, his son, in 48 Hours: Sugar Land: Life or Death [Press release]. Paramount Press Express. https://www.paramountpressexpress.com/cbs-entertainment/releases/?view=51704-a-texas-man-targeted-by-a-hit-man-fights-for-the-life-of-the-person-who-ordered-the-murders-his-son-in-48-hours-sugar-land-life-or-death

CBS News. (2019, January 5). Texas man targeted by a hitman fights for the life of the person who ordered the murder – his son. CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bart-whitaker-sugar-land-texas-murders-father-fights-to-save-son-from-execution/

Dewey, K. (2023, April 17). Representing a "cult" leader: Dan Cogdell on the Waco trial. Lawdragon. https://www.lawdragon.com/lawyer-limelights/2023-04-17-representing-a-cult-leader-dan-cogdell-on-the-waco-trial

Forensic Files Now. (n.d.). Kent Whitaker [Tag archive]. Retrieved August 18, 2026, from https://forensicfilesnow.com/index.php/tag/kent-whitaker/

Fort Bend Independent. (n.d.). Felcman receives award for outstanding advocacy in capital murder trials. Fort Bend Independent. https://fbindependent.com/felcman-receives-award-for-outstanding-advocacy-in-capital-murder-trials-p5013-91.htm

O, The Oprah Magazine. (n.d.). The gift of forgiveness. Oprah.com. https://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/the-gift-of-forgiveness_1/all

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Sky News. (2018, February 21). Death row inmate who plotted own family's murder to be handed reprieve. Sky News. https://news.sky.com/story/death-row-inmate-who-plotted-own-familys-murder-to-be-handed-reprieve-11259840

Triggerman in Sugar Land slayings pleads guilty. (n.d.). Houston Chronicle. https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/triggerman-in-sugar-land-slayings-pleads-guilty-1837350.php (exact publish date not retrievable due to site access restrictions; the plea occurred in 2007)

Tolman, V. (1997, April 19). FBISD students earn second. Houston Chronicle. https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/1210755277/

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Book

Whitaker, K. (2009). Murder by family: The incredible true story of a son's treachery and a father's forgiveness. Howard Books. (Amazon listing: https://amzn.to/3Sa0l7y)

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Baylor University. (2019, September). Baylor again among Big 12's top 2, Texas top 5 in U.S. News rankings. Baylor Proud. https://www2.baylor.edu/baylorproud/2019/09/baylor-again-among-big-12s-top-2-texas-top-5-in-u-s-news-rankings-2/

Find a Grave. (n.d.). Patricia Ann Whitaker. Retrieved August 18, 2026, from https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/8564976/patricia_ann-whitaker

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Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Sam Houston State University. In Wikipedia. Retrieved August 18, 2026, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Houston_State_University

Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). William P. Clements High School. In Wikipedia. Retrieved August 18, 2026, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_P._Clements_High_School

Film & television

Coppola, F. F. (Director). (1972). The Godfather [Film]. Paramount Pictures.

Singer, B. (Director). (1995). The Usual Suspects [Film]. Gramercy Pictures.

De Palma, B. (Director). (1996). Mission: Impossible [Film]. Paramount Pictures.

Hamilton, G. (Director). (1964). Goldfinger [Film]. Eon Productions.

Shaw, L., & Larson, G. A. (Creators). (1976–1983). Quincy, M.E. [TV series]. Universal Television.

Quincy, M.E. [YouTube channel]. (2025, October 2). The breakthrough [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPbx7UorPOA

Levinson, R., & Link, W. (Creators). (1971–2003). Columbo [TV series]. Universal Television.




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