Huntsville, Texas.
February 22, 2018.
Thomas Bartlett Whitaker had already spent more than a decade on Texas death row.
Everyone called him Bart.
That afternoon, prison officials were preparing to execute him.
The hour was approaching.
The appeals had almost run out.
The legal arguments had been made.
The crime itself was not seriously disputed anymore.
Bart had orchestrated a plan to eliminate his own family.
His mother was dead.
His younger brother was dead.
His father had survived a gunshot wound.
Bart himself admitted that the murders happened because of a plan he created.
Texas had sentenced him to die.
And now, approximately thirty minutes before the execution was scheduled to begin, one of the most unusual clemency decisions in modern Texas history was still unresolved.
The person fighting hardest to keep Bart alive was not an anti-death-penalty activist who had never met the family.
It was not a defense attorney insisting Bart was innocent.
It was not someone arguing that the wrong man had been convicted.
It was Kent Whitaker.
Bart's father.
The man Bart had arranged to have killed.
Not once.
Evidence at Bart's trial showed that plans targeting the Whitaker family had been discussed repeatedly over several years.
The successful attack in December 2003 was at least the third serious murder plan connected to Bart.
Kent had already lost his wife.
He had already lost his younger son.
He had nearly died himself.
And now he was asking Texas not to take the only member of his immediate family who remained alive.
Bart.
The son who had caused nearly all of it.
Kent had been fighting that battle for years.
He had begged prosecutors not to seek death.
He testified in court asking jurors for a life sentence.
When that failed, he continued visiting Bart in prison.
When an execution date finally arrived, Kent petitioned the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.
His argument was painfully simple.
The state believed execution would deliver justice.
Kent believed it would make him a victim again.
Shortly before the execution, Texas Governor Greg Abbott made the decision.
Bart Whitaker would not die that evening.
His sentence was commuted to life without parole.
It was the first death sentence Abbott had commuted as governor.
Bart would remain in prison forever.
But Kent Whitaker would not have to watch his last surviving son be executed.
But to understand why Texas came within minutes of executing Bart Whitaker, you have to go back to a dinner fifteen years earlier, a Rolex watch, and a college graduation that never existed.
Sugar Land, Texas.
December 10, 2003.
The Whitaker family looked like they had something worth celebrating.
Kent and Patricia Whitaker had raised two sons.
Bart was the oldest.
Kevin was nineteen.
The family lived in Sugar Land, a prosperous suburb southwest of Houston.
They had a comfortable home in the Sugar Lakes neighborhood.
Kent worked in the family construction business.
Patricia, often called Tricia, was deeply involved in family and community life.
Kevin was the younger brother.
Bart was supposed to be approaching a major milestone.
College graduation.
That evening, the family believed Bart had completed his final exams at Sam Houston State University and would soon receive his degree.
Before dinner, Kent and Tricia gave their older son a graduation present.
A Rolex watch.
Then the four went to Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen in Stafford.
They ate together.
They talked.
They celebrated.
Photographs were taken.
Everyone appeared happy.
Kevin smiled.
Tricia smiled.
Kent smiled.
Bart smiled too.
What the other three did not know was that almost everything about the celebration was false.
Bart was not graduating.
He was not even living the academic life his parents believed he was living.
Police would soon discover that he had not been attending Sam Houston State the way he claimed.
The graduation was a fiction.
But the lie served another purpose.
It gave Bart a reason to gather all four members of the family together.
More importantly, it gave him a reason to get everyone out of the house at the same time.
While the Whitakers were eating dinner, someone was waiting inside their home.
Christopher Brashear.
A friend and roommate of Bart.
Brashear was armed.
He was not there to steal a television.
He was not there to frighten the family.
According to the plan later established in court, he was there to kill them.
All of them except, ultimately, the man who had arranged the attack.
Bart needed to survive.
He needed to look like a victim.
So his own injury had been built into the plan.
Outside the neighborhood, another friend, Steven Champagne, was positioned to help Brashear escape.
Everything depended on one thing.
Bart bringing his family home.
And the most chilling part was that Bart had rehearsed almost this exact scenario years before.
The Whitakers left the restaurant.
Champagne later testified that he had been watching the family vehicle from the parking lot.
He followed them.
As the family arrived in Sugar Land, Bart knew what was waiting inside.
The house looked ordinary from the street.
There was no shattered front door signaling danger.
No police lights.
No screaming neighbors.
Kevin got out.
Kent and Patricia followed.
Bart delayed.
He told his father that he needed to retrieve his cell phone from his Chevrolet Yukon.
That small separation was deliberate.
It kept him away from the front door at the critical moment.
Kevin reached the house first.
He entered.
Inside, Brashear waited near the front portion of the home with a 9mm Glock.
The gun itself came from the Whitaker residence.
Investigators later determined that the intruder had entered a concealed storage area connected to Kevin's room and forced open a small gun safe.
That knowledge would become suspicious almost immediately.
A random burglar would have had to know exactly where to look.
Kevin stepped inside.
He was shot in the chest.
The wound was fatal.
Patricia came next.
She too was shot in the chest.
Kent approached the doorway, trying to understand what was happening.
He was shot as well.
The bullet entered his chest area and lodged near his shoulder after causing serious injury.
Bart then entered.
He later told police that he had struggled with the intruder.
During that supposed struggle, Bart was shot in the arm.
It looked perfect for the story he intended to tell.
Mother dead.
Brother dead.
Father expected to die.
Bart wounded but alive.