Lust, Lies & Life Insurance: The Disappearance of Janice Starr

In the fall of 1981, 23-year-old Janice Starr, a ROTC student and army veteran, disappeared from her home in Chesapeake, Virginia. Her apartment showed signs of foul play—belongings left behind, chain door lock cut with bolt cutters, and suspicious stains in the bathtub. Her ROTC instructor reported her missing 11 days after she stopped showing up for classes. But as investigators dug deeper, they uncovered a secret romance and an unexpected motive.

Join us for Lust, Lies, & Life Insurance. Just weeks after Janice vanished, investigators learned that Janice had recently purchased two life insurance policies. Then, after the beneficiary to her policies died in a plane crash, Janice’s family feared that they would never get answers. Janice was an intelligent but naive young woman, coping as well as she could with the misogyny of the military culture. The justice system was slow to act, but could Janice’s fate have been prevented and would her disappearance ever be solved?

Sources

Deadly Dishonor, Buried in the Backyard, S6 E5, Oxygen, 8/9/2025

In the Wind: The Disappearance of Janice Starr by Ron Peterson