The Stalking of Kristin: A Father Investigates the Murder of His Daughter - Softcover

Lardner, George

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451407318 ISBN 13: 9780451407313

Publisher: Onyx, 1997

Synopsis

Drawing on a series of articles that won him a Pulitzer Prize, an investigative reporter tells how his young daughter became involved with a man who eventually killed her, while the law failed to protect her. Reprint.

About this title

Review:

"This is Kristin's story. I'd give anything not to have written it." Kristin Lardner's father won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of Washington Post articles about this promising young art student who was killed by a jealous ex-boyfriend. In this expanded book version he makes the important point that Kristin did everything right. She was educated and sophisticated, and had the time and resources to make the law work for her. And she was a member of the class of people who believe the law when it promises to protect them. With a parent's rage, and an impressive command of the facts and statistics, George Lardner refutes the widespread belief that the courts offer effective protection to battered women who do report their abusers and press charges. The book includes photos of Kristin's artwork about abuse of women and 80 pages of footnotes and bibliography about the legal system.

From Publishers Weekly:

The author's 21-year-old daughter, Kristin Lardner, began dating 22-year-old Michael Cartier in January 1992. She first suffered his violence that April; on May 19, she was granted a restraining order; on May 30, she was dead, gunned down on a Boston street by Cartier, who, within hours, committed suicide. She, an art student, was the daughter of a Washington Post journalist. He was a part-time bouncer and a felon who, from age seven, had been raised in state homes and whose arrest record covered three pages. All they shared in common was a liking for noisy music, snakes and tattoos. In a powerful, courageously personal, heart-wrenching book, the author, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his expose of the domestic abuse laws that failed his daughter, reaches deep inside himself to assuage the pain of a preventable tragedy. We learn of Kristin's supportive home life with her parents and four siblings, her serious application to her studies, her lack of self-confidence. We're also told of the background of her killer, his abuse of a former girlfriend and his other crimes. Lardner, whose press coverage of this story reformed domestic abuse legislation in Massachusetts, indicts the courts for their laxity in punishing criminals. Kristin's complaint against Cartier "was processed like a slice of cheese," he charges; the justice system is "witless... the law is not properly protecting us."
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Onyx
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0451407318
• ISBN 13: 9780451407313
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400