According to investigators, he agreed to pay Hipp $20,000 to lie about the earlier murder conspiracy.
A post office box was arranged.
Eventually an envelope arrived through Federal Express.
Inside was only a small portion of the promised money.
But the package created another bizarre clue.
The return name was "K. Soze."
For investigators, that name immediately stood out.
Bart was known to like the film The Usual Suspects.
Its famous fictional criminal mastermind is Keyser Söze.
One of the film's most famous ideas is that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist.
Police interpreted Bart's use of "K. Soze" as revealing.
A man suspected of designing a deceptive murder scene was referencing a fictional criminal mastermind famous for escaping through deception.
More importantly, investigators said Bart's fingerprints were on the package.
Now the case had moved beyond a suspicious college lie.
Bart appeared to be trying to manipulate a witness tied to a previous family murder plot.
Then Bart did something that made suspicion look even worse: he disappeared.
June 2004.
The murder investigation was tightening.
Bart's Chevy Yukon was found abandoned at an apartment complex in southwest Houston.
The engine was reportedly still running.
Bart was gone.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals later summarized that as investigators focused on him, Bart stole $10,000 from his father and fled to Mexico.
For Kent Whitaker, the disappearance created another impossible situation.
He had survived the shooting.
His wife was dead.
Kevin was dead.
Now his remaining son had vanished while police increasingly suspected that son had orchestrated everything.
A parent facing that reality has no normal emotional script.
Kent had spent the months after the murder trying to understand the attack.
Bart had been beside him during part of that process.
Father and son were both survivors.
Then evidence began showing that Bart might not have been a survivor in the same sense at all.
He may have been the architect.
Bart crossed into Mexico.
According to investigative accounts, a former coworker later told police Bart had paid him $3,000 to help him get there.
Bart lived in Nuevo León.
He used a false identity.
He worked.
He built a new routine.
For more than a year, Mexico protected him from the Texas prosecution.
But the investigation at home continued.
Detectives watched Brashear.
They watched Champagne.
They examined phone records.
They obtained authorization for wiretaps.
Investigators wanted one of the remaining participants to crack.
For months, no decisive confession came.
Then, in August 2005, Steven Champagne asked to speak with Detective Slot.
They met at a Starbucks in Conroe.
At first Champagne minimized his role.
He claimed he had helped Brashear after the crime without knowing beforehand what would happen.
Police did not accept that version.
The questioning continued.
Champagne faced the possibility of capital murder.
Eventually, the story changed.
He admitted knowing about the plan.
He implicated Bart.
He implicated Brashear.
And suddenly investigators had an insider describing the mechanics of the murder from beginning to end.
For nearly two years, police had been trying to prove the ambush was planned from inside the family. Now the getaway driver was telling them exactly how it worked.
Champagne described the dinner.
The surveillance.
The route.
The waiting vehicle.
Brashear.
The disposal of evidence.
The cash.
The plan to make Bart look innocent.
He also led investigators toward the area where evidence had been discarded near Lake Conroe.
A bag was eventually recovered.
Inside were items prosecutors said connected directly to the crime.
A small vacuum.
A metal pry tool.
A water bottle.
Ammunition.
The pry tool carried paint investigators said matched the blue paint transfer on the damaged gun safe.
The water bottle produced DNA associated with Brashear.
Cor-Bon 9mm ammunition was present.
Investigators had already found that type of ammunition in connection with the Glock used in the shootings.
Physical evidence was beginning to align with Champagne's confession.
Then Champagne revealed another chilling conversation.
It happened after the December murders.
Bart had wanted to know what Champagne was telling police.
During a meeting in early 2004, Champagne said Bart told him that "the job wasn't finished."
Kent was alive.
The original plan had failed in one crucial respect.
The father Bart had intended to eliminate had survived.
According to Champagne's testimony, Bart began discussing killing Kent again.
This became devastating at trial.
It suggested that Kent's survival did not trigger immediate remorse.
Instead, prosecutors argued, Bart considered finishing the plan.
That meant Kent was not merely the survivor of one attempt.
Across the multiple conspiracies that began years earlier, his life had repeatedly been part of the target.
And even after Patricia and Kevin were dead, Kent still might not have been safe.
Yet this same father would ultimately become the person who saved Bart from execution.
That contradiction would define the next fifteen years.
Before father and son could confront each other, police still had to find Bart. He was living hundreds of miles away under another identity.
September 2005.
A man contacted Detective Slot using the name "Mike Jones."
The caller eventually provided the information investigators needed.
Bart was in Mexico.
The tip led authorities toward Nuevo León.
Police learned Bart had been staying around Cerralvo and later Monterrey.
By then, a capital murder warrant was waiting in Texas.
Mexican authorities cooperated.
On September 22, 2005, Bart appeared for what he believed was a job interview at a restaurant in Monterrey.
Police were waiting.
The fugitive period ended quietly.
No shootout.
No final chase.
No dramatic barricade.
The man accused of engineering the destruction of his family was arrested and eventually returned to Texas.
Kent went to see him.
There was glass between them.
They had not seen each other for roughly fifteen months.
Kent later described the meeting in court.
Bart apologized.
Not vaguely.
Kent understood the apology as an acknowledgment of responsibility.
He came away believing his son was guilty.
This is where the Whitaker story splits into two different questions.
Did Kent believe Bart did it?
Yes.
Did Kent therefore want Bart executed?
No.
Those two conclusions never became the same thing for him.
Kent did not build his campaign for mercy on innocence.
He did not say police had framed Bart.
He did not say the accomplices were lying about everything.
He acknowledged the horror of what happened.
He acknowledged Bart's responsibility.
Then he asked the state to preserve his son's life anyway.
Even before the capital trial, Kent hired lawyers and pleaded with prosecutors to accept a life sentence.