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A Southington, Ohio, man called 911 on the night of June 22, 2013, and told a Trumbull County sheriff's dispatcher that he had just stabbed his mother and her husband, according to court records and news accounts from the time. Thomas J. Starr, then 28, said on the call that he had "tried to kill" his mother, Lisa Frye, and her husband, Jeffrey Westfall, with a knife, then ran into the woods behind the family's home on State Route 305.

Deputies arriving at the house found Westfall, 53, dead on the front porch from a stab wound to the neck. Frye, then 46, had also been stabbed in the neck but made her way to the road, where a passerby saw her and called for help. She was flown to a hospital in Cleveland in what was described at the time as satisfactory condition.

Dispatchers stayed on the phone with Starr for about 75 minutes while search teams used a helicopter spotlight, vehicle horns and tracking dogs to find him in the woods. Deputies took him into custody once they reached him, without further incident.

Authorities said Starr had been living with his mother and Westfall, who had been asking him to move out in the months before the attack, though no motive was ever established. He had one prior conviction, for criminal damaging, from 2002. Prosecutors initially charged Starr with murder, attempted murder and felonious assault. A Trumbull County grand jury later indicted him on the more serious charge of aggravated murder after investigators found evidence the killing had been planned.

Starr initially entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity and asked the court to evaluate his competency to stand trial. In February 2014, he changed course and pleaded guilty to aggravated murder, attempted murder and two counts of felonious assault. Trumbull County Common Pleas Judge Andrew Logan sentenced him to life in prison with parole eligibility after 30 years, telling him he had "a lot of time and soul-searching to do."

Frye survived the stabbing but underwent several surgeries, including a tracheotomy, to treat her wounds. She died of cancer in March 2014, about seven weeks after her son's sentencing. Starr died in an apparent suicide in May 2024 at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, where he had been serving his sentence, prison officials said.