Murder-for-Hire: Brothers who killed man’s ex-wife over divorce settlement ordered to pay over $1M In restitution
Cover photo: Jason Starr (Coffee County Sheriff’s Office), Sara Starr (obituary), Darin Starr (FBI)
This week, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Alabama released word that a federal judge in Montgomery, Alabama, ordered Jason Starr, 50, and Darin Starr, 54, to pay $1,069,242.03 in restitution after the two planned and carried out a plot to kill Jason Starr’s ex-wife, as announced by United States Attorney Jonathan S. Ross.
According to an indictment shared by WDHN, Jason Starr paid Darin Starr with a 2016 Triumph motorcycle and an undisclosed amount of money to kill Sara Starr. At the time of her murder, 38-year-old Sara, a beloved schoolteacher, left behind four children and numerous other family members.
On September 20, 2023, a federal jury convicted both Jason Starr and Darin Starr for committing their murder-for-hire scheme. Both Jason and Darin Starr received a life sentence following their convictions. There is no parole in the federal system. In addition to the prison sentence, the judge ordered Jason Starr to pay a fine of $25,000.
Last year, a jury found that Jason Starr, from Coffee Springs, Alabama, was upset about the amount of money his ex-wife had been awarded after their divorce and that Jason Starr hired his brother, Darin Starr, a resident of Lakehills, Texas, to kill her. On the Monday following Thanksgiving in 2017, Darin Starr shot and killed his brother’s ex-wife in her driveway as she was leaving for work.
According to WTVY, a few days prior to the murder, a judge ordered Jason to pay at least $2,550 in spousal and child support – which prosecutors consider the thing that pushed him to have his ex-wife murdered. At Jason Starr’s January 2024 sentencing hearing, his estranged family had choice words to share with him, “with one daughter saying, ‘You are useless,’ and another telling Starr she had waited years to say to him one thing. ‘F*** you, I hope you rot.’
Federal prosecutors alleged, and jurors were persuaded, that 50-year-old Jason Starr, an accused child molester who served in the U.S. Army, hired his 54-year-old brother from Texas, Darin Starr, to murder Jason’s ex-wife Sara Elizabeth Shubert Starr, 38, on Nov. 27, 2017, right around the Thanksgiving holiday and four months after the couple divorced. ~ Law and Crime
Sara Starr Obituary
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Coffee County Sheriff’s Office, the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences, and the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency investigated the case, with Assistant United States Attorneys B. Chelsea Phillips and Joshua J. Wendell prosecuting. Assistant United States Attorney Audrey L. Willis handled the restitution portion of the case.
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Posted by Richard Webster, Ace News Today
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