Starr L'Espirt aka Stephanie Whitenour (Timilee Romolini) was a villainess from "The Corpse's Costume", the first episode of the short-lived Lifetime web series Inspector Mom (released in 2006). She was a fashion designer who found fame in New York, working under the apprenticeship of famed designer to the stars Emmett Belling, with implications being that she was also one of Emmett's many extra-martial lovers.
The episode's beginning reveals Starr's personality as a catty and self-centered woman, boasting to Emmett that she'd managed to get herself a solo debut in the upcoming fashion show in their hometown behind Emmett's back and accusing Emmett of (in her mind) holding her back. Starr also threw verbal insults at several other people during the show, including Bernice Haskins and several of her models.
Starr was also revealed to be an old friend of local fabric store owner Nancy, with Nancy (perplexed by Starr's change in personality since her rise to fame) attempting to reconnect with Starr by showing her an old photograph of them. In response, however, Starr callously tore up the photograph, saying she wanted to get away from the past and was trying to use the fashion show to do so. Earlier in the episode, Starr was also witnessed by series protagonist Maddie Monroe extorting money from designer Vanessa Lafleur, which would later serve as evidence to Starr's status as a villainous blackmailer.
During the fashion show, Starr was found dead in what appeared to be a suicide via hanging, with Maddie disbelieving the theory and investigating Starr further. In a conversation with Starr's ailing mother Delores Whitenour, Delores revealed that Starr's original name was Stephanie and that she was always an ambitious and indepedent person. As for her extortion of Vanessa, a distraught and drunk Vanessa confessed a secret to Maddie: her reputation as a vegan designer was a lie, and Starr was blackmailing her with her secret after catching her eating a steak. As for her murder, Starr's killer was revealed to be none other than Emmett Belling, who Starr had also been blackmailing with the fact that he was a bigamist.
However, as revealed in the episode's climax, Emmett's motivation was more strongly motivated by the death of his first wife, Anne, who committed suicide after her fashion collection was heavily panned. Sometime after Starr announced her intentions of going solo, Emmett found that Starr had stolen a blue dress from Anne's collection, presumably intending to modify the design and use it to launch her career. Furious at Starr using his late wife's work for her own gain, Emmett killed Starr presumably by strangling her to death and staging her death as a suicide, later setting fire to her design collection.
Trivia[]
- Starr L'Esprit is one of the first villainesses of the Inspector Mom web series.
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