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Richard Daniel
STARRETT
Classification: Murderer
Characteristics: Serial
rapist and sex offender
Number of victims: 1 +
Date of murder: December
26, 1988
Date
of arrest:February
14,
1989
Date of birth:
September 25,
1959
Victim profile: Jean
Taylor McCrea, 15
Method of murder:
Shooting
Location: Irmo, South Carolina, USA
Status:
Sentenced to five
life sentences en prison without parole on February
5, 1990
Irmo, SC -- Jean Taylor
McCrea, 15, who had been kidnapped in 1989, was believed to have
been killed in Richard Daniel Starrett's Martinez home before her
body was dumped in a creek in Newberry County, S.C.
Mr. Starrett was 29, worked at
Savannah River Site and preyed on young women when his wife and child
flew to California. He would kidnap his victims, take them home to
Martinez and hold them captive for a few days while sexually assaulting
them.
Then he met Shari Dawn Teets.
Just 17, the pretty, petite brunette was kidnapped in February 1989.
Four days later - on a chilly Friday night - she escaped to a house
across from Mr. Starrett's rented West Lynne Drive home.
That night, Maj. Adams said, Mr.
Starrett was drinking and passed out, and Ms. Teets got away.
"She
went and looked out one of the windows and saw she was in a subdivision,''
Maj. Adams said. "And basically said to herself, `If I'm going to get
away, now is my chance.'''
Maj. Adams, now in charge of
management services for the sheriff's department, was the county's lead
investigator in 1989.
"We
were just lucky that Shari was able to get away as soon as she did,'' he
said.
In the end, Mr. Starrett killed
only one person: He shot Jean Taylor McCrea, 15, because he was falling
in love with her, he told investigators. He wrapped her body in a green
blanket and trash bags before dumping her into a creek bed near her home
in Irmo, S.C. He was arrested in Texas in February 1989 after Ms. Teets
escaped. He is now serving life in prison in South Carolina with no
possibility of parole.
But Maj. Adams says he believes
Mr. Starrett planned to kill others. His trail of rapes led from
Charleston, S.C., to Atlanta.
"They
start off with just a rape or an assault, and it just grows from there,''
Maj. Adams said, comparing the killers to drug addicts who start with
marijuana but move to more powerful drugs to sustain the high.
Mr. Starrett, a convicted serial
rapist and sex offender, had already been sentenced to two consecutive
life sentences for kidnapping Shari Dawn Teets, 17, of Lexington, S.C.,
and kidnapping a 12-year-old Irmo girl in June 1988. He had received a
previous sentence of life plus 20 years in prison when he pleaded guilty
but mentally ill to kidnapping and sodomizing a Columbia girl in
December 1987.
Mr. Starrett also faced charges
in Charleston, S.C., in the kidnapping and sexual assault of a 22-year-old
woman.
He was captured in Texas after a
manhunt and led police to Miss McCrea's body. He blamed his behavior on
pornography.
Investigators confiscated from
his Martinez home more than 1,000 books and magazines depicting nudity,
horror, sexual violence and posters depicting bondage.
SEX: M RACE: W TYPE: N MOTIVE:
Sex.
MO: Rapist/slayer of girls and
young women met through newspaper classified ads.
DISPOSITION: Five life terms
in S.C., 1991; five life terms in Ga., 1993.
