A former Baylor University (BU) president who played a central role in the investigations centered on former President Bill Clinton died at the age of 76 in Houston on Tuesday, per Austin and Central Texas-based media outlets.
Waco CBS affiliate KWTX reported that Ken Starr succumbed to a lengthy illness.
Starr, who was an attorney by profession, helmed Baylor University from June 2010 to May 2016, per KWTX.
KWTX reported that Starr was born in the north Texas town of Vernon on July 21, 1946, to a minister and his wife.
As a young man, Starr sold Bibles door-to-door to earn money for college and would eventually earn a bachelor’s degree from George Washington University in 1968, a master’s degree from Brown University in 1969 and a juris doctorate from Duke University in 1973, the station reported.
Per KWTX, Starr’s legal career began in 1975 when he clerked under then-U.S. Chief Justice Warren E. Burger.
Starr argued before the nation’s highest court more than 20 times and occupied the bench of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (D.C.) Circuit.
“Judge Starr was a consummate legal scholar and gentleman,” retired Texas state district judge Ralph Strother, said, according to KWTX. “It was a privilege to have been associated with him and to have known him. We have lost a giant.”
Citing The Associated Press (AP), Austin ABC affiliate KVUE reported that the zenith for Starr as a jurist was both his investigations of Clinton’s involvement in a number of fraudulent real estate deals known as the Whitewater scandal and the 42nd president’s extramarital affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky in the 1990s.
Clinton, who was in the White House from 1993 to 2001, was impeached for lying under oath.
Former President Donald J. Trump in 2020 enlisted Starr to help defend him in the second of his two impeachment trials, per the AP.
Waco FOX affiliate KWKT reported that BU is mourning the loss of its 14th president.
“Judge Starr was a dedicated public servant and ardent supporter of religious freedom that allows faith-based institutions such as Baylor to flourish,” his successor and incumbent university president Dr. Linda A. Livingstone said, the station reported. “Ken and I served together as deans at Pepperdine University in the 2000s, and I appreciated him as a constitutional law scholar and a fellow academician who believed in the transformative power of higher education.”
Starr leaves behind a wife and three children.