A Stranger in the Family: A True Story of Murder, Madness, and Unconditional Love [Mass Market Paperback]

Steven Naifeh (Author), Gregory White Smith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1996

An intimate portrait of the slow disintegration of a family documents the ordeal of everyone close to rapist and murderer Richard Daniel Starrett--the epitome of the all-American boy--who confessed to a two-year rampage attacking young women. Reprint. K. PW.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The setting is the progressive South United States of the 80s, where education and hard work offer hope for the good life--until mental illness brings tragedy. This is an unusual true-crime book because it's neither a whodunit, nor a manhunt, nor an account of a trial. Instead, it's a character study of a sadistic sexual predator who is all too human in his desperate need for love, and of his family members who need, just as desperately, to believe that their love for him will make them whole again. Authors Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith are adept at teasing out the many-layered subtleties of the criminal mind. Here they create a thought-provoking portrait by alternating passages from the well-educated killer's own diary, with the unfolding narrative of how the revelations of his crimes are affecting his family. It includes a surprising twist, and a powerful scene of confrontation near the end.

From Publishers Weekly

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.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Onyx Books (May 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451406222
• ISBN-13: 978-0451406224
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #827,310 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Well written, but one-sided, January 21, 2001

By 

Paul Cerra - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Stranger in the Family: A True Story of Murder, Madness, and Unconditional Love (Mass Market Paperback)

This is a well written book that is strikingly one-sided. Before discussing the book, here is some brief background on the topic. Richard Daniel Starrett -- Danny to his friends -- was arrested in early 1989 and accused of a series of kidnappings and sexual assaults. While in jail, he also admitted murdering one of his victims, a 15-year-old girl named Chrissy Blake. The evidence against Starrett was overwhelming: he was caught when a seventeen year-old victim escaped after being kidnapped and imprisoned in Starrett's home. Starrett fled the scene in his car and remained free for more than a week, but in his home police found (among other things) a video camera mounted on a tripod that had captured his most recent sexual assault on tape. He was eventually arrested in Texas and returned to Georgia. Starrett pled "guilty but mentally ill", which at the time was a relatively new kind of plea allowed in South Carolina, and he was sentenced to multiple life sentences in jail.

Authors Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith draw on Starrett's own diary, which he began in prison, and the words of his parents and siblings to construct a picture of a man who seemed an unlikely rapist and murderer. A successful man who worked as an engineer in a nuclear power plant, Starrett had no criminal record and appeared to have loving relationships with his wife, daughter, and family. His family couldn't have been more shocked at his arrest. So while it initially appears very revealing to see Starrett discuss his crimes and himself in his own words, the reader quickly begins to feel that his efforts are very self-serving. Also, if the authors made attempts to corroborate his stories, they present no evidence of it in the book.

This book attempts to put forth two points of view: one, that poor Danny Starrett was mentally ill and no one, not even he, realized it before it was too late; and two, that the other living victims of sexual crimes are the members of the accused's own family. Starting with the second point first, I feel that this book quickly sacrifices any sympathy we might have for Gerry Starrett, Danny's mother, by playing up that claim to the exclusion of all others. We're supposed to feel empathy for Gerry Starret as she learns that her jailed son no longer has unlimited access to reading material; that he isn't eating and looks shrunken, "like a cadaver"; that he's been threatened in jail; that prison is too loud, and so forth. Yes, it sounds horrible -- but I think I'm not alone in saying that I feel a lot more sympathy for the girls who were assaulted by Starrett.

Worse still, however, is the book's insinuation that life is unfair because people focus their attentions and sympathies on the victims of Starrett's crimes instead of Starrett himself. While she was held captive by Starrett, Chrissy Blake was reported missing by her worried parents. Naturally, the story appeared in the newspaper -- yet the authors refer to it as "a local story of doubtful newsworthiness" and refer to the headlines as being "breathless", as if to say that this is all so much hype. When Blake escaped and was returned home to the arms of her parents, the authors sarcastically call it "a heartwarming spectacle." The larger context is that Gerry Starrett had to read all of these headlines as her son was simultaneously being demonized by the press. But while it was surely painful for her, it is difficult to ignore the almost sneering tone that the authors used to refer to all the attention being given to the victims.

Regarding Danny Starrett's mental illness, here is yet another criminal who showed no evidence of a Multiple Personality Disorder until he'd been arrested for his crimes. In fact, in all of his prison diary writings of 1989 that appear in this book, Starrett says nothing about a second personality that caused him to commit these crimes. He refers only to his obsessive compulsions that caused him to follow women and sometimes attack them. He seems to put at least some of the blame on pornography. It isn't until approximately a year after his arrest, in February of 1990, that Starrett suddenly begins referring to HIM, a malevolent personality who took control of his life and forced him to buy detective magazines, forced him to stalk women, and forced him to sexually assault them.

Not being a mental-health professional, I should be the first one to admit that it's certainly possible that Starrett is mentally ill. After all, state psychiatrists did label him as such before he was allowed to enter a plea of "guilty but mentally ill." Nevertheless, it seems to me that Starrett's MPD is simply a massive denial mechanism. I think the authors erred in being so sympathetic to Starrett's claims. That said, I do feel that there is a place for this kind of book because, as some have noted, victims of violent crime now have many more resources than they used to; yet the families of criminals are often ostracized by society and left to fend for themselves. The different point of view proferred here is thus welcome.

Unfortunately, this book comes off as a platform for Richard Daniel Starrett to excuse away his crimes -- a way to say that he couldn't control himself. And that point of view is NOT welcome. This is a man who deliberately chose victims from far-reaching areas because he knew it would help him avoid detection. He used aliases. He hoarded thousands of books and magazines on rape, violence, and sexual bondage and torture. He converted a closet to a small prison cell, boarded up windows, and put deadbolts on interior doors. He obtained guns, a police badge, even handcuffs to help him intimidate and restrain his victims. It's hard to believe his excuse that he can't control himself when there is all this evidence of premeditation and planning. I think we'd all like to feel sympathy for his poor family, who were obviously blindsided by all of this. But we'd feel more sympathetic if their son didn't make excuses for his behavior.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars One sided account & an example of poor journalism, March 8, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: A Stranger in the Family: A True Story of Murder, Madness, and Unconditional Love (Mass Market Paperback)

The authors of this book must have had a very easy time writing because they have done nothing to verify the accounts of the Starret family in the book. This book presents the Starrets and Danny as the way they want to be presented. Except for the mental health professionals & the lawyers who knew Danny only after his arrest, the authors did not interview anyone outside the immediate family -- no neighbors, friends, extended family, customers of the mother's busines, childhood friends of Danny Starret -- to ask how they percieved the family. The family said they didn't realize what Danny had become, but perhaps old schoolteacher's etc. might not be as surprised. I am surprised that this book was recommended by the true crime editor. I did not think it let me into the mind of a killer at all and gave me no empathy towards his mother. It would have been much better if there were others who could substaniate the family's claim, or rebut it and allow the reader to see the how people see what they want to see.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars What about the victims?, January 31, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: A Stranger in the Family: A True Story of Murder, Madness, and Unconditional Love (Mass Market Paperback)

I was very disappointed that the authors didn't write about the victims of Danny Starrett's crimes. It was 400 pages of Danny and his Mother, Gerry's feelings and thoughts. Which were very self-serving. At one point, when asked in a television interview what she would like to say to Danny's victims, his Mother said in essence, feel sorry for Danny. This book was a forum for an overbearing, selfish mother to tell us what a wonderful, sweet child her son was. He murdered, kidnapped, raped 12 year old children! What about them?