the spring lambs being slaughtered, fleeing with a mare also destined for the slaughterhouse whom she named Hannah. Starling was caught, but her mother's cousin eventually agreed to let her go, and she and Hannah both went to a Lutheran orphanage, where she spent the rest of her childhood. According to the novel, Starling attended the University of Virginia as a double major in psychology and criminology. During that time, she spent two summers working as a counselor in a mental health center. Starling first met Crawford when he was a guest lecturer at UVA. His criminology seminars were a factor in her decision to join the FBI. During the investigation, Starling is assigned to coax Lecter into revealing Buffalo Bill's identity. Lecter gives her clues in the form of cryptic, riddling information designed to help Starling figure it out for herself. The two grow to respect each other, so when Lecter escapes during a transfer to a state prison in Tennessee, Starling does not fear that he will kill her, as he "would consider it rude". Starling deduces from Lecter's hints that Buffalo Bill's first victim had a personal relationship with him, and so goes to the victim's home in Belvedere, Ohio, to interview people who knew her. She unknowingly stumbles onto the killer himself, Jame Gumb, who is living under the alias "Jack Gordon". When she sees a Death's-head Moth, the same rare kind that Buffalo Bill stuffs in the throats of each of his victims, flutter through the house, she knows that she has found her man and tries to arrest him. Gumb flees, and Starling follows him into his basement, where his latest victim is alive and screaming for help. Gumb turns off the electricity in the basement, and stalks Starling through the rooms wearing night-vision goggles. As Gumb readies to shoot Starling, Starling hears him cock the hammer of his revolver and opens fire towards the sound, killing him. She is lauded as a hero in the press, and graduates with honors from the FBI Academy, becoming a full-fledged agent. Weeks later, Lecter writes Starling a letter from a hotel room somewhere in St. Louis asking her if the lambs have stopped screaming. The final scene of the novel has Starling sleeping peacefully at a friend's vacation house at the Maryland seashore. Hannibal At the beginning of Hannibal, Starling is in her early 30s and