Marshall Slott

There are some things that stuck out in our minds as being odd, but nothing that we could really hang our hat on to say this is not what it appears.

The drawers being pulled out like they were and not rifled through was not typical of a burglary scene.

And the burglar leaves the gun, leaves all of the electronics, but takes a cell phone that we couldn't find in the scene. That was a real oddity that stuck out in everybody's mind.

But... Bart Whitaker had not graduated from Sam Houston State.

He had not even been attending the university. He was listed in their records. as a freshman on academic probations.

We took that information immediately. and went to Kent Whitaker first with it.

We've got the burglary scene that just doesn't look just right. We now know that the son is not graduating from Sam Houston.

All those little pieces sent off bells and whistles in our heads, just thinking, we need to start looking at the sun.

is going to be playing a part of the suspect.

I got shot. I fell back into the couch. And on the floor. There were no other witnesses. So my only two sources of information, one of them is the father of the primary suspect. One of them is the primary suspect. So that was a juggling act.

And then he dropped some bombs on me as far as, hey, Bart has contacted me before and asked me about making plans to kill his father, his mother, and his brother.

One of the plans that he laid out to me that he and Bart had discussed was an exact mirror image of the actual crime scene.

And Kaiser Soze will get you. Latent fingerprints. That's what all those markers are. But every one of them on the package that was identified came back to Bart Whitaker.

We feel wholeheartedly that he is responsible for this and that you are living with a murderer.

Kent's response to me was, you guys are either way wrong or my son's a monster.

He did not move out of the home, and it was very soon after that Bart went missing.

I had nowhere to look for him and no leads to follow up on to try and find him. So that was disappointing at times.

Almost two years after the crime occurred, Stephen Champagne

I'm just going to go. Is that? Yeah, sure. There's the door.

He knew about the missing glove, and obviously we had this glove in evidence already, so everything fit together just based on one small piece of evidence.

Stephen Champagne explained to me that he and Chris Brashear had thrown items from the crime scene into a bag and thrown that off a bridge that runs over Lake Conroe near Bart's town home in Willis.

This was definitely when we said, we've got it.

Did you ever see any signs of remorse at Barton? No.

I'm thinking this is the break we need. When Rudy Rios gave me this information and it seemed to check out... I was ecstatic.

How did you get all of these people to do such horrible things for you? And Bart responded to me that it was easy. All he had to do was give them what they wanted. What was y'all's benefit for doing this?

I had been at church with my family eating dinner and had just gotten home and my pager went off telling me to call the police department.

The dispatcher told me that four people had been shot. I initially thought she was joking with me. And I said, you're kidding, right? And she said, no. I need you to respond to Sugar Lakes. A family of four has been shot.

This friendship is my love story. Yes, it's sexless and annoying, but what long-lasting love story is it?

Kent's response to me was, you guys are either way wrong or my son's a monster.

The crime scene that I was investigating was a burglary gone bad where the victims were shot by the suspect and the suspect fled the scene.

We called out tracking dogs that night in an attempt to track the shooter.

They were in separate rooms. So we first went to Kent Winokur. Kent seemed somewhat at peace. He was obviously upset, but not crying. But he very much demanded that we catch who was responsible for committing this crime.