A Stranger in the Family: A True Story of Murder, Madness, and Unconditional Love

by Steven Naifeh, Gregory White Smith

Overview

Who would ever connect this handsome, charming, straight-arrow son of a perfect all-American family with the gruesome crimes of a serial killer? Richard Daniel Starrett was the dangerous visitor for too many unlucky young women in Georgia and South Carolina in the late 1980s. Answering “for sale” ads in the classifieds, he was a buyer hunting for victims, not bargains, and he paid in grim coin: rape, kidnapping, murder.
 
Because of his articulate intelligence and prestigious job, no one suspected this “golden boy” of such heinous acts. This gripping, intimately detailed account by Pulitzer Prize-winning authors probes every tortured thought and twisted urge of a “boy-next-door murderer”—as well as the dynamics of the model family that shaped him. The result is both a stunning portrait of a diseased mind and the moving story of a loving family’s emotional nightmare and painful disintegration.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780451406224
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/01/1996
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	602,042
Product dimensions:	4.30(w) x 6.90(h) x 1.20(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Steven Naifeh is a graduate of Harvard Law School. Mr. Naifeh, who has written for art periodicals and has lectured at numerous museums including the National Gallery of Art, studied art history at Princeton and did his graduate work at the Fogg Art Museum of Harvard University. He has written many books on art and other subjects, including four New York Times bestsellers. His biography Jackson Pollock: An American Saga won the Pulitzer Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award. It also inspired the Academy Award–winning 2000 film Pollock, starring Ed Harris and Marcia Gay Harden, as well as John Updike’s novel, Seek My Face.

Gregory White Smith is a graduate of Harvard Law School. Smith has been profiled in The New Yorker, The New York Times, USA Today, and People, and have appeared on 60 Minutes, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Larry King Live, Charlie Rose, and the Today show.

Editorial Reviews

It would be hard to imagine a more atypical serial rapist and murderer than Richard Daniel (``Danny'') Starrett-a handsome, outgoing, considerate, married father of a three-year-old daughter and member of what seemed an ideal American family. We learn early on that he has confessed to five rapes and one murder in Georgia and South Carolina and is now serving 10 consecutive life sentences. Interspersed throughout this account by Naifeh and Smith (Jackson Pollock) is an interior monologue by the rapist presented as ``autobiographical sketches,'' as he tries to come to terms with his crimes. Another important part of this story is the rapist's mother, Gerry, whose frantic efforts were instrumental in saving her son from the electric chair. Gerry gave the authors access to the family as well as to the journals Danny wrote after he was imprisoned. We learn of her gradual acceptance of certain disturbing facts in her own life and how her son's loss of liberty paradoxically freed her from her emotionally inaccessible husband, Richard, and her idealized image of her family. A powerful and perceptive study. True Crime, Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club selections. (June)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Richard Daniel Starrett was the charming, handsome son in a seemingly perfect family, but in 1989, he confessed to a two-year spree of rape and murder. What makes this superbly written account even more striking than most true crime books is the candor Starrett shows in his confessions and diary entries. He confounded his lawyers by insisting on facing the punishment for his crimes, trying to apologize to the victims' families, and cooperating with the FBI in a study of criminal minds. The authors (The Morman Murders, LJ 8/88; Final Justice, LJ 9/15/93) were granted access to Starrett and his family, and the result is a work that presents not only an account of the crimes and what the victims and their families endured but also a look at the heartbreaking ordeal suffered by the criminal's innocent loved ones: guilt, denial, confusion, and ultimately, the agonizing realization of the truth. For all true crime collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/1/95.]-Christine Moesch, Buffalo & Erie Cty. P.L., N.Y.

Library Journal

Serial killer Danny Starrett is currently serving consecutive life sentences for the murders of several young women whom he kidnapped, sexually abused, and killed in the 1980s. The unlikely serial sex offender led a seemingly normal middle-class life in Georgia with his obedient Mormon wife and young daughter. While his wife spent long periods of time visiting her parents in California, Starrett went on his murderous sprees. After his arrest, the killer's outspoken mother was indignant. How could her son who had "always been the hero in the family" be guilty of such heinous crimes? Writing both a profile of a serial killer and an examination of the impact of his crimes on his rigid mother, who refused to accept her son's admission of guilt, Naifeh and Smith bring considerable journalistic talent to bear, yet their account lacks the punch of their earlier books, such as "Final Justice" (1993). Nevertheless, true-crime junkies may enjoy reading about another delusional, obsessive killer, particularly the excerpts from his diary that lend some insight into his disturbed mind.

Sue-Ellen Beauregard