51: Johnson County’s Other Serial Killer & the Graduate

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Brandi starts us off with the story of Johnson County’s other serial killer. That’s right, folks. There’s more than one.

In the late 80’s, young women in Johnson County apartment complexes had a good reason to be afraid. Three twenty-something’s vanished without a trace. Their apartments showed no signs of a break in. But there weren’t signs of murder, either. For a while, all anyone could go on was a sinking suspicion that something was terribly wrong.

Then, to everyone else in Sugar Land, Texas, the Whitaker family seemed to have it all. But that all changed one winter night in 2003. The family went out to celebrate Bart Whitaker’s graduation from Sam Houston State University, and when they arrived back home, a masked gunman shot all four of the family members. Kevin died almost immediately. Trisha died in the hospital. Bart and his father Kent survived. They begged police to find the people responsible for the crime. But police didn’t have to look too far…

And now for a note about our process. For each episode, Kristin reads a bunch of articles, then spits them back out in her very limited vocabulary. Brandi copies and pastes from the best sources on the web. And sometimes Wikipedia. (No shade, Wikipedia. We love you.) We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the real experts who covered these cases.

In this episode, Kristin pulled from:
The 48 hours episode, “Sugar Land: Life or Death”
And a tad from “Thomas Bartlett Whitaker,” Wikipedia.com

In this episode, Brandi pulled from:
“Gone in an Instant” episode, On The Case With Paula Zahn
“CRIME HISTORY: Serial Killer Richard Grissom — A Conviction Without Any Corpses” by Terri Osborne, crimefeed.com
“Jurors Convict Grissom in Triple Murder, Eight Other Counts” by Richard D. Lipsey, Associated Press
“20 Years Later, Killer Refuses to Reveal Bodies’ Location” Associated Press