Sorry to hear that Greg!
Those damn linckias are just difficult to acclimate to captivity. They don't ship well and more often than not suffer from the shipping stress. My understanding is that the fromia species do much better than the linckia. I agree, it's strange, I have two Serpent stars that came with my CUC package. When I first started out, I didn't know any better, and just threw them in the tank right out of the bag!
They are doing great today. Why are these linckia so hard to keep?