Charles Raymond Starkweather was born in Lincoln, Nebraska on the back end of 1933. He suffered from a birth defect, Genu Varum, more commonly identified today as “bow leggedness”; along with a very bad speech impediment. These two things combined left Starkweather to be the victim of constant bullying throughout his time in grade school. Despite this, many claimed he was actually a very mild mannered boy, going so far as to be called polite and “a good friend”. However while he was nice to those he considered his friends, he quickly gained a reputation of having a violent side. Even his mother and father, a waitress and a carpenter, grew to love and fear their son because of these outbursts.
Starkweather would not finish school, dropping out at 18 and finding a job working at a local newspaper warehouse. He would soon after befriend a 13 year old Caril Anne Fugate, and the two began seeing each other. During the course of their relationship. Starkweather would steal his father’s car and attempt to teach Fugate how to drive; she would crash it, leading to Starkweather being kicked out of his family home and disowned by his father. The childhood bullying, combined with him being cut off from his own family, would lead him to develop a nihilistic view on the world. In his eyes, nothing mattered, he would accomplish little, and everyone is equal when everyone is dead.
In 1957, Charles Raymond Starkweather would begin to find his true calling. He would visit a gas station, and after having a dispute with the cashier Robert Colvert, Starkweather brandished a rifle and raised it up to the young mans head. After robbing the register for $100 (Around $1,000 today) the two drove out to a remote area, where they began to wrestle and fight over control of Starkweather’s rifle. Sadly, he would gain control, and killed Robert Colvert, taking his first life. Although now having gotten a taste for the act, it would be almost two whole months before he would take his next victims; the Fugate family.
January 21st of the following year, Caril’s mother Velda and her stepfather Marion were shot and killed by Starkweather in their home. Disturbingly, Starkweather would also club their 2 year old infant daughter to death. Now, depending on who you choose to believe, the narrative goes one of two ways. Starkweather claims that Caril Anne was present during the time of the killings, and that she was in on the act. However, Fugate would claim that she was not home when the murders happened, and that when she did arrive home she found an empty house, with Starkweather claiming to have taken her family hostage and threatened to kill them if she did not cooperate and leave with him. They would stay in the house for several days, leaving just before the police arrived on the 27th. On the same day, the two would drive to Bennet, Nebraska to the home of a family friend named August Meyer. Meyer would become the 5th victim of Starkweather’s murderous spree, dying from a gunshot wound at the age of 70.
After leaving the Meyer farm, taking with them food and valuables, the pair would abandon their car, and be picked up by local teenagers Robert Jensen and Carol King. Once they were inside the car, Starkweather would again pull out his rifle and turn it to the 17 year old Jensen, demanding to return to Meyer Farm. On the way there however, they would stop at an abandoned storm cellar, where more horror would happen. Robert Jensen was shot 6 times, and with him out of the way, Starkweather would attempt to rape 16 year old Carol King. The attempt would fail, resulting in her being shot once in the head. Starkweather’s attempt to rape King had wildly upset Fugate, who was lost in a jealous rage. She demanded that Charles mutilate King by stabbing her in the stomach multiple times, in order to prove his love to Fugate. Police would find the two teen’s bodies, as well as the body of August Meyer. Starkweather had now killed 7 people.
With the death toll rising, the two made their way from Bennet back to Lincoln, NE. After deciding on a house, they would enter and find Lillian Fencl, the maid to wealthy industrialist C. Lauer Ward. Fencl was stabbed to death, and after killing the family’s dog, they would wait until someone else came home. Clara Ward, C. Lauer’s wife, would arrive to find the body of Fencl, and would soon after, join her. Finally, Mr. Ward would come home, there was no one around to greet him anymore; no one except a pair of killers.
As you can imagine, these killings were being thoroughly investigated by the police, so Starkweather and Fugate were constantly on the run from the law. There were so many sightings of the pair that the local population would actually cast judgement on Lincoln Police for not being able to catch the two young spree-killers. The governor at the time, Victor Anderson, even brought in the Nebraska National Guard to assist with the search.
While on the run, Starkweather and Fugate would come across a traveling salesman named Merle Collison. Collison was roadside, sleeping in his car near Douglas, Wyoming, some 8 hours away from Lincoln, NE. Collison was also shot by Starkweather, but with tensions rising and the law on their tail, the two began to turn on each other even more. Starkweather later called Fugate the most “trigger happy” person he had known, despite Fugate still claiming that she had never killed anyone. The once loving couple had realized that neither of them could be trusted by the other.
Eventually, their time had come, and they would be caught. After stealing Collison’s car, Starkweather soon found there was one aspect of it he did not know how to work; the parking brake. Since the parking brake was not released, the car stalled, and they were stuck again. Joe Sprinkle, a passing driver, stopped to see what the issue was and offer his help. Starkweather, having become angry and frustrated by the troubles with Collison’s car, raised his rifle one final time; directly at Sprinkle’s face. In an act of what some may call divine intervention, the entire exchange had been witnessed by William Romer; a sheriff’s deputy for Natrona County. When Romer approached them, Caril Fugate would come bolting out of the car, arms raised, and would scream out “It’s Starkweather! He’s gonna kill me!”. Panicking, Starkweather got in the car and drove off, in what would become a full scale pursuit involving three different police cruisers, exceeding speeds of 100 miles per hour. With guns firing, a bullet would strike the windshield of the getaway car, sending shards of glass flying. One of which pierced Starkweather deep enough to draw a scary amount of blood. Charles Starkweather, fearing death from his injuries, pulled the car over and surrendered. Sheriff Earl Hefflin of Converse County, the one who fired the bullet that shattered the windshield, later had this to say about the chase:
“He thought he was bleeding to death, that’s why he stopped. That’s the kind of yellow son of a bitch he is.”
Finally, on the 29th of January 1958, Starkweather and Fugate were both be taken into custody. The final count of lives lost during their rampage had reached 2 animals, 10 adults and one infant.
Fugate would serve 17 years of a life sentence in prison before being released on parole. She would marry a man named Frederick Clair, yet their marriage would be cut short as in 2013 he would be killed in a car accident. In February of 2020, Caril Fugate, now going by the surname Clair, would appeal to Nebraska courts to be pardoned for the crimes. Even with relatives of the victims supporting her, the request was denied, since the purpose of a pardon is to restore the felon’s rights; not absolve them of the crime.
Starkweather would be tried and convicted for only one of the murders, that of Robert Jensen. Starkweather believed that Wyoming would give him the death penalty, and fought to be extradited back to Nebraska; perhaps in an effort to die at home. However what he didn’t know was that the governor of Wyoming at the time was Milward Simpson, a man who openly opposed the death penalty. He was found guilty, sentenced to death and given the electric chair and on June 25th, 1959, Charles Raymond Starkweather was executed in Nebraska State Penitentiary; he gave no last words. He did however, write to his parents while he was in prison, and in a letter he told his father,
“But dad I’m not real sorry for what I did, because for the first time me and carol had so much fun.”
