Jason and Darin Starr: Texas brother duo face life in prison for carrying out a 2017 murder-for-hire plot

ENTERPRISE, ALABAMA: A Texas brother duo was sentenced to life in prison on Thursday, January 4, after they were found guilty of the November 2017 murder-for-hire shooting of an Enterprise, Alabama, elementary school teacher and mother-to-two sets of twins. One of the defendants, who happened to be the victim, Sara Starr's husband, was severely chastised by her two children. 

“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 reports.

Why was Sara Starr killed?

The defendant and his brother, Darin Starr, 54, 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 US 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.

Jason Starr was ordered to pay more than $1,000 in child support, as per AL.com and $1,500 in alimony in a shared custody arrangement that also cost him “a portion of his military benefits.”

Jason Starr was an accused child molester

Before the shooting, Jason Starr, an accused child molester who served in the US 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 November 27, 2017, while she left for work at Harrand Creek Elementary School.

Prosecutors presented evidence that Darin Starr’s phone was switched 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 am when he was on I-10 heading back to Texas,” prosecutors said.

The district judge didn't allow the defense to present an 'alternative perpetrator' theory

Over the course of the case, which took more than four years to bring, US District Judge R Austin Huffaker, Jr, refused to allow Darin Starr’s defense to present an “alternative perpetrator” theory claiming a US Army helicopter pilot who died by suicide months after Sara Starr’s death and left a note suicide note, accusing the Starr brothers as persons of interest, should be instead 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.”

In an obituary, family said 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.