Psychiatrist calls convicted murderer Bart Whitaker, second from right, who is on death row after plotting to kill his family, "an empty human being."

In December 2003, the quiet community of Sugar Land, Texas was horrified when armed men break into the Whitaker house and tried to murder the entire family. Kent Whitaker, the head of the family survived, as well as his eldest son Bart Whitaker.

Today, Bart Whitaker is on death row in Texas, convicted of capital murder and sentenced to lethal injection for masterminding a plot to murder his parents and brother. And he came really close to getting away with it.

When interviewed by the media, Bart Whitaker said:
“I wanted them dead, It was my idea.”

Kent Whitaker with his son Bart. The two enjoyed long-distance bike riding, and appeared to have a close father-son relationship.

From a first impression, anyone will say it’s a perfect happy family. Bart Whitaker and his younger brother, Kevin, were as close as two brothers could be. Bart and his father shared a passion for distance bicycling, and the family went on vacations to places like Cancun, Mexico. To outsiders, there seemed to be a lot of love in the family.

In the evening of Dec. 10, 2003, began with a special announcement at the Whitaker residence. Bart Whitaker told Kevin and his parents, Kent and Tricia Whitaker, that he had finished his final exams at nearby Sam Houston State University and would be graduating. To honor his achievement, his parents presented him with a Rolex watch, and that night the family went to a popular restaurant to celebrate.

The family snapped photos over a festive dinner and congratulatory dessert. But secretly, Bart knew that even as he smiled for the camera, an intruder had quietly entered their home and was waiting for their return. If everything went according to his plan, in less than 30 minutes his brother, mother and father would all be dead.

“I don’t really know a better term for how I was feeling, other than I was on auto-pilot,” he said. “I wasn’t even aware of myself.”

“We had a wonderful time before dinner and then packing up and driving over to the restaurant, and all the way home,” Kent Whitaker said.

When the family arrived home, Bart, knowing what awaited his family inside the house, ran down the driveway, saying he needed to take his cell phone out of his car.

“Kevin opened the door, stepped in, was shot,” recalled Kent Whitaker, who survived the attack and still lives in the home. “Tricia … stepped up to the door, was shot. I looked in the door and was shot.”

Bart says he ran into the house and pretended to try and catch the shooter. They wrestled a bit and then Bart was shot in the arm, to make him appear to be a victim.

“It was to distance me from the guilt,” he said. “But also I think on an internal level it was me realizing that there was no way that I could come out of this physically unscathed.”

A neighbor called 911, and responding officers found 19-year-old Kevin Whitaker dead where he fell, a single bullet in his chest. Tricia Whitaker died of a single gunshot wound soon after being airlifted to the hospital.

Kent Whitaker survived his wounds, and so did his oldest son Bart, but his wife of 28 years Tricia and his younger son, 19-year-old Kevin, were killed.

But despite all that he had been through, Kent Whitaker decided to support his son in a way many couldn’t comprehend, most of all Bart himself. Kent forgave his son.

“This is the most important thing in my life, knowing why this happened,” he said “And he and I wrestled with this for a long time. And based on things that we picked up in letters and in conversations, the short deal is that he never could accept the love that Trish and I gave him.

“He always felt empty inside. He didn’t know what emotions felt like. And he hated it…he felt that there was something wrong with him, that he was defective. He started building these masks to try to hide the fact that he was — that he was broken.”

Over time, Kent says that he was able to heal because he was able to forgive.

“The important thing about forgiveness is that it’s not easy, but it just promises that when you get to the other side of all this, then you can find happiness and joy, and that there is a restoration of life. And that’s what I wanted. I wanted that from the start.”

“I prayed about it and I believe that Tricia and Kevin both would’ve said, ‘there are kids out there just like Bart who don’t know who they are, who feel like they’re empty, and, while they aren’t going to go out and kill their parents, there is going to be an emptiness in their lives…that can be resolved if they will come forward and talk about it.’”

To this day, Kent remains steadfast in his support of Bart, saying that his son is a changed man now and doesn’t deserve to die.

“He changed. He’s a different person and now he’s going to go to Heaven, which wasn’t going to happen before. So from a faith standpoint, if you’re ever able to look at life through the lenses of eternity instead of just what you see around here in the physical world…you’ll realize that there are things that happen down here that appear to be awful that aren’t in the long run.”