Bart Whitaker

I don't even remember. I don't think so.

Certainly not, no.

All right. I was very, very, very afraid of what he had to say.

Forgive everyone involved. He truly forgave the person that did this. I mean, he was the first real Christian that I'd ever met that really did what Jesus Christ told him to do.

Yeah.

Yeah, I did.

Yeah, but it's not that simple. I didn't want to cause that pain on me primarily and on anyone else secondarily, so... I just was a coward.

That was my legend down there. I was a soldier that was AWOL because I had been shot up and didn't want to go back. That was something that was told from the very first minute I was down there in order to cover me.

At that point, Chris got out of the vehicle and entered the house. with the key and the alarm code.

That whole plot was sort of like a game of chicken between me and the other guys. Who flinches? I never really expected Chris to pull that trigger. Did you feel any guilt? Did you feel any shame? I wasn't feeling much of anything, but yeah, it was there. It was just on a level that I wasn't paying any attention to.

I'd love to have an outside perspective about why I think certain things.

I hate myself.

That was motivation for them. It was never about that for me. I don't care about money. I had plenty of it.

I believe there were three separate occasions.

I wanted revenge for being alive, and I blame them for that. I blame them for who I was instead of blaming me.

Yeah, but we didn't really connect on that level.

He's an amazing man. And whether or not I'm a person incapable of love, I am a person incapable of feeling a very deep respect for that man. I love him to death.

I wish I could talk to her now. I'd like to tell her I'm sorry. I'd like to redo that whole relationship from start to finish and be able to really appreciate what she was sending me, so... Yeah, I'd like to... If we could all live twice.

Brothers inseparable since birth. He looked up to me and wanted to be me and I thought that was so ironic because I wanted to be him.

It was a good relationship.

It was idyllic, yeah.

I was always an independent child, and I think somewhere along in there... Can we stop for a second?

No, just... It's all a lot thinking back on all those days. We had a pretty close family. In terms of what was going on inside of me, that was a little different. Never really fit in very well with anybody, to be honest with you.

Enter the house with the key and the alarm code.

I don't really know a better term for how I was feeling other than I was in autopilot. I wasn't even aware of myself. We left the restaurant and drove back to the house.

I went out to my car to get my cell phone and I was walking back from the car when the first shots happened.

Bang!

Yes, ma'am.

I did.

I was about as close to numb as a human being can get, I think.

Nothing. Nothing at first, and then the gunshots went off, and shock came.

Someone has just shot our neighbors. Get over here. I know I ran into the house. They say I ran past my dad, but I don't even remember seeing him. I do remember getting shot. I do vaguely remember making the 911 call.

I don't know. He went out the back door.

Yeah. It was to distance me from the guilt. So you were trying to throw the cops off in your mind?

When he told me that he had forgiven the shooter, of course I didn't have the courage to say anything at the time, but how do you face that? I don't know how to face that. Hiding it all from everybody else was sort of like hiding it from myself also. There was also the fear of this place.