Charles Starkweather: The Teenage Spree Killer Who Terrorized America’s Heartland
Casper College Western History CenterDespite the governor of Nebraska being against execution, he changed his tune in the case of Charles Starkweather.
For two months starting in late 1957, Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate embarked on a killing spree across Nebraska and Wyoming that left 11 people dead and shattered America’s sense of Heartlant innocence forever.
Starkweather, unlike some of the other killers in his age bracket, grew up living a “solidly middle-class” life. His experience at school was a different story, though.
He was bow-legged and had a speech impediment, which led his schoolmates to bully him relentlessly. To cope, he channeled his growing rage into building up his physicality in gym class. As he grew older and stronger, his anger grew too. He had also developed a fascination with the Hollywood actor James Dean, emulating parts of his persona and presenting himself as a rebellious social outcast.
Eventually, Starkweather dropped out of high school and took a job at a local newspaper warehouse where he would meet the girl who would become his future partner in crime.
It would almost be a sweet story, if not for the age gap and the eventual atrocities they would commit. The year was 1956, and Starkweather, now 18, had recently gotten out of a relationship with 17-year-old Barbara Fugate. Then, he developed an interest in Barbara’s younger sister, Caril Ann. Other than the natural complications of dating your ex’s younger sister, there was one major issue with this new relationship: Caril Ann’s age.
When their relationship began, Caril Ann Fugate was only 13 years old — three years below Nebraska’s age of consent, even back in the 1950s.
Not that Starkweather cared much for the law, of course.
After being kicked out of his parents’ house, he took a job as a garbage collector — but started making other, more lucrative plans. As he would go around on his routes, he plotted robberies on the homes he passed. Soon enough, he was putting those plots into action.
But it wasn’t until a year later that his transition from petty criminal to murderer would begin, with one shocking act of violence.
Bettmann/Getty ImagesCaril Ann Fugate and Charles Starkweather.
On Nov. 30, 1957, Starkweather tried to purchase a stuffed animal “on credit” at a local gas sation. When the young attendant refused, Starkweather robbed him at gunpoint, took him to the woods, and shot him in the head. It was his first murder, but now he had a taste for blood.
The next one would prove to be even more grisly.
On Jan. 21, 1958, Starkweather went to see Fugate at her home, where her mother and stepfather confronted him and told them to stay away from their daughter. Starkweather responded by fatally shooting both of them, then strangling and stabbing Fugate’s two-year-old half-sister to death. As for Caril Ann Fugate, her role was less clear. She would later claim, several times, that she was Starkweather’s hostage. He, on the other hand, cited her as an accomplice.
Regardless, she would go on to join him for the rest of his subsequent killing spree.
For several days after this triple murder, Starkweather and Fugate camped in the house with a sign on the door warning visitors taht everyone inside was “sick with flu.”
Shortly after, the two visited a 70-year-old man named August Meyer, a family friend whom Starkweather shot along with his dog. When their car got stuck in the mud while fleeing, two teenagers — Robert Jensen and Carol King — stopped to help. Starkweather then repaid their kindness by shooting Jensen dead and attempting to rape King before killing her as well. He later claimed, however, that Fugate had been the one to shoot King. Fugate, once again, denied this.
Their next target was the home of industrialist C. Lauer ward. After entering, Starkweather stabbed a maid by the name of Lillian Fencl to death, killed the family dog, and then murdered Ward’s wife Clara when she arrived home. The murder spree ended with the fatal shooting of C. Lauer Ward himself and the robbing of his home.
While looking for a new getaway vehicle, Starkweather and Fugate encountered a man named Merle Collison, asleep in his Buick just outside Douglas, Wyoming. Almost immediately, they shot and killed him — Starkweather saying Fugate pulled the trigger; her denying it — to steal his car. But Starkweather wasn’t sure how the Buick’s brake mechanism worked, and the car stalled.
At this point, an unfortuante trend reemerged. A well-intentioned passerby, Joe Sprinkle, stopped to try and help the teenage couple, but an altercation ensued. As Starkweather threatened Sprinkle with a gun, Natrona County Sheriff’s Deputy William Romer arrived, and Fugate ran to him, identifying Starkweather as a murderer.
Starkweather fled, leading to a high-speed chase that ended after he pulled over due to one of the cop’s bullets shattering his windshield and cutting his ear.
“He thought he was bleeding to death,” one of the arresting officers recalled. “That’s why he stopped. That’s the kind of yellow son of a bitch he is.”
