Jason Starr (Coffee County Sheriff’s Office), Sara Starr (WTVY/screengrab), Darin Starr (FBI)
Brothers found guilty of the November 2017 murder-for-hire shooting of an Enterprise, Alabama, elementary school teacher and mother to two sets of twins were sentenced on Thursday to spend the rest of their lives in federal prison, and two of Sara Starr’s children had a clear message for their father, the victim’s ex-husband.
“I never want to see you again. You are useless,” one child said to 50-year-old Jason Starr, while another said, “I hope you rot,” local Fox affiliate WTVY reported.
The defendant and his brother, 54-year-old Darin Starr of Texas, were found guilty by a federal jury in September of carrying out a murder-for-hire conspiracy just months after Jason Starr and Sara Starr divorced and days after Thanksgiving. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Alabama, the “unthinkable” crime was committed after a judge sided with Sara Starr and awarded her “a significant portion” of her ex-husband’s “income” as part of the divorce.
AL.com reported that Jason Starr was ordered to pay more than $1,000 in child support and $1,500 in alimony in a shared custody arrangement that also cost him “a portion of his military benefits.”
Prior to the shooting, Jason Starr, an accused child molester who served in the U.S. Army, gave his brother a motorcycle and paid him $2,600 to travel from Texas to Coffee County in Alabama and shoot Sara Starr in her driveway on Nov. 27, 2017, as she left for work at Harrand Creek Elementary School, jurors found.
Prosecutors presented evidence that Darin Starr’s phone was powered off from midnight until the morning of the shooting, a seven-hour time frame, and only turned the device back on once he was back on the interstate to Texas.
“Darin Starr shot and killed his brother’s ex-wife in her driveway as she was leaving for work. Darin Starr turned his phone back on around 8:00 a.m. when he was on I-10 heading back to Texas,” prosecutors said.
Over the course of the case, which took more than four years to bring, U.S. District Judge R. Austin Huffaker, Jr., refused to allow Darin Starr’s defense to present an “alternative perpetrator” theory claiming a U.S. Army helicopter pilot who died by suicide months after Sara Starr’s death — and left a note suicide note saying Jason and Darin Starr should be considered persons of interest — should be viewed as a suspect.
The judge saw the “alternative perpetrator” theory as mere “rank speculation and conjecture” filled with “glaring omissions” and citing “no real evidence,” especially when placed next to evidence that Jason Starr and Sara Starr “were involved in a bitter divorce.”
The Starr brothers’ punishment was no surprise, as 18 U.S. Code § 1958, the relevant murder-for-hire federal statute, mandates either the death penalty or life imprisonment upon conviction, since Sara Starr died as result of their plot to kill.
Family said in an obituary that Sara Starr’s children “were the loves of her life” and that she “loved them more than anything else.” She always dreamed to be a teacher, “excelled in the classroom and was loved by her students,” the obit said.
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