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

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.'' (Nov.)