Charles Raymond Starkweather (November 24, 1938 – June 25, 1959) was an American spree killer who murdered eleven people in Nebraska and Wyoming between December 1957 and January 1958, when he was nineteen years old. He killed ten of his victims between January 21 and January 29, 1958, the date of his arrest. During his spree in 1958, Starkweather was accompanied by his fourteen-year-old girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate.

Both Starkweather and Fugate were convicted on charges for their parts in the homicides; Starkweather was sentenced to death and executed seventeen months after the events. Fugate served seventeen years in prison, gaining release in 1976. Starkweather's execution by electric chair in 1959 was the last execution in Nebraska until 1994.

Criminologists and psychologists have analyzed the Starkweather case in an attempt to understand spree killers' motivations and precipitating factors. It also became notorious as one of the earlier crime scandals that reached national prominence, much like the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh's son, with the media outlets covering the case at the time openly condemning Starkweather. Starkweather’s crime spree has endured in popular culture, most notably as the inspiration for the 1973 film Badlands, Bruce Springsteen’s song “Nebraska" and was also mentioned in the Billy Joel song "We Didn't Start the Fire.”

Early life

Starkweather was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, the fourth of seven children of Guy and Helen Arnold Starkweather. The Starkweathers were a working-class family; Starkweather's father was a carpenter who was often unemployed due to rheumatoid arthritis in his hands; Helen worked as a waitress to supplement the family's income. Guy Starkweather admitted at Charles's trial to having pushed his son into a window; later his wife would divorce him on the grounds of extreme cruelty. Starkweather's great-great-grandfather, George Anson Starkweather, was a member of the United States House of Representatives from New York's 21st district from 1847 to 1849.

Starkweather attended Saratoga Elementary School, Irving Junior High School, and Lincoln High School. Starkweather later recalled nothing positive of his time at school.

As he grew older and stronger, the only subject in which Starkweather excelled was physical education, Eventually, he felt rage against anyone he disliked. Author Ginger Strand argues that his writings from prison suggest a strong element of class envy and bitterness. Starkweather went from being one of the most well-behaved teenagers in the community to one of the most troubled. His high school friend Bob von Busch would later recall:

By the time Starkweather dropped out of school, his parents and family were reportedly afraid of him due to his violent outbursts.

Relationship with Caril Ann Fugate

In 1956, at eighteen, Starkweather was introduced to thirteen-year-old Caril Ann Fugate. He began plotting bank robberies, and settled on a personal philosophy: "Dead people are all on the same level".

First murder

Late on November 30, 1957, Starkweather became angry at Robert Colvert, a service station attendant in Lincoln, for refusing to sell him a stuffed animal on credit. He returned several times during the night to purchase small items until finally, brandishing a shotgun, he forced Colvert to give him $100 from the till. He then abducted and drove Colvert to a remote area, where they struggled over the gun, injuring Colvert before Starkweather killed him with several shots to the head. He hid the bodies in an outhouse and chicken coop behind the house.

Starkweather later said that Caril was there the entire time, but she said that when she arrived home, Starkweather met her with a gun and said that her family was being held hostage. She said Starkweather told her that if she cooperated with him, her family would be safe; otherwise, they would be killed. A note reading "Everybody is sick with the flu" was placed in the family home's window. The pair remained in the house until shortly before the police, alerted by Fugate's suspicious grandmother, arrived on January 27.

Starkweather and Fugate drove to the farmhouse of seventy-year-old August Meyer, one of his family's friends who lived in Bennet, Nebraska. Starkweather killed him with a shotgun blast to the head.

Fleeing the area, the pair drove their car into mud and abandoned it. When Robert Jensen and Carol King, two local teenagers, stopped to give them a ride, Starkweather forced them to drive back to an abandoned storm cellar in Bennet. He shot Jensen in the back of the head. He attempted to rape King, but King put up too much resistance for him to do so. He became angry with her and fatally shot her as well. Starkweather later admitted shooting Jensen, but claimed that Fugate shot King. Fugate said she had stayed in the car the entire time. The two fled Bennet in Jensen's car. Starkweather and Fugate filled Ward's black 1956 Packard with stolen jewelry from the house and fled Nebraska. Law enforcement agencies in the region sent their officers on a house-to-house search for the perpetrators. Governor Victor Emanuel Anderson contacted the Nebraska National Guard, and the Lincoln chief of police called for a block-by-block search of that city. After several sightings of Starkweather and Fugate were reported, the Lincoln Police Department was accused of incompetence for being unable to capture the pair.

Needing a new car because of Ward's Packard having been identified, the couple came upon traveling salesman Merle Collison sleeping in his Buick along the highway outside Douglas, Wyoming. After Collison was awakened, he was fatally shot. Starkweather later accused Fugate of performing a coup-de-grâce after his shotgun jammed. Starkweather claimed Fugate was the "most trigger-happy person" he had ever met. Fugate denied ever having killed anyone.

Starkweather drove off and was involved in a car chase with three officers—Romer, Douglas Police Chief Robert Ainslie, and Converse County Sheriff Earl Heflin—exceeding speeds of . A bullet fired by Heflin shattered the windshield and flying glass cut Starkweather deep enough to cause bleeding. He stopped, surrendered, and was taken into custody near Douglas on January 29, 1958. Heflin said, "He thought he was bleeding to death. That's why he stopped. That's the kind of yellow son of a bitch he is."

Trial and execution

thumb|Starkweather's mugshot at Nebraska State Penitentiary, May 1958.

Starkweather chose to be extradited from Wyoming to Nebraska. He and Fugate arrived there in late January 1958. He believed that either state would have executed him. He was not aware, however, that Milward Simpson, Wyoming's governor at the time, opposed the death penalty. Starkweather first said that he had kidnapped Fugate and that she had nothing to do with the murders. However, he changed his story several times. He testified against her at her trial, saying that she was a willing participant.

Fugate has always maintained that Starkweather was holding her hostage by threatening to kill her family, claiming she was unaware they were already dead. Judge Harry A. Spencer did not believe Fugate was held hostage by Starkweather, as he determined she had had numerous opportunities to escape. When Starkweather was first taken to the Nebraska penitentiary after his trial, he said that he believed that he was supposed to die. He said if he was to be executed, then Fugate should also be executed.

thumb|Starkweather's grave at Wyuka Cemetery

Starkweather was convicted after the jury deliberated for 22 hours for the murder of Jensen, the only murder for which he was tried. On May 23, 1958, he was sentenced to death, and Starkweather was executed in the electric chair at the Nebraska State Penitentiary in Lincoln, Nebraska, at 12:04 a.m. on June 25, 1959. Half an hour before the execution, the doctor who was supposed to pronounce Starkweather dead, B.A. Finkel, suffered a fatal heart attack. Starkweather gave no last words but in a letter from prison to his parents, wrote: "but dad I'm not real sorry for what I did cause for the first time me and Caril have (sic) more fun."

Starkweather is buried in Wyuka Cemetery in Lincoln, as are five of his victims, including the Wards.

Fugate was convicted as an accomplice and received a life sentence on November 21, 1958. She was paroled in June 1976 after serving seventeen and a half years at the Nebraska Correctional Center for Women in York, Nebraska. She settled in Hillsdale, Michigan.

Victims

Murders between 1957 - 1958

  1. Robert Colvert (21), gas station attendant
  2. Marion Bartlett (58), Fugate's stepfather
  3. Velda Bartlett (36), Fugate's mother
  4. Betty Jean Bartlett (2), Fugate's sister
  5. August Meyer (70), Starkweather's family's friend
  6. Robert Jensen (17), boyfriend to Carol King
  7. Carol King (16), girlfriend to Robert Jensen
  8. Lillian Fencl (51), maid in the Ward household
  9. Clara Ward (50), Chester Lauer Ward's wife
  10. Chester Lauer Ward (47), industrialist
  11. Merle Collison (34), traveling salesman

See also

  • List of people executed in Nebraska
  • List of people executed in the United States in 1959
  • List of rampage killers in the United States

Footnotes

References

  • Allen, William. Starkweather: Inside the Mind of a Teenage Killer. (2004), Emmis Books, 240 pages.
  • Del Harding, reporter for the Lincoln, Nebr., Star, who covered the murders, the Starkweather and Fugate trials, and Starkweather's execution.
  • Strand, Ginger. Killer on the Road: Violence and the American Interstate. (2012), University of Texas Press.
  • Bardsley, Marilyn. Charles Starkweather & Caril Fugate. Crime Library. Retrieved on July 30, 2009.
  • Life Magazine article February 10, 1958

! colspan="3" | Executions carried out in Nebraska