Charles Starkweather, The Teenage Serial Killer Who Terrorized America’s Heartland
Casper College Western History CenterGovernor Milward Simpson of Wyoming was typically against execution — but he changed his tune in the case of teenage serial killer Charles Starkweather.
For two months beginning 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 Heartland innocence forever.
Starkweather, unlike some other teenage serial killers, had a “solidly middle-class” life. His experience at school was a different story, though.
He was bow-legged and had a speech impediment, and his schoolmates bullied 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 also developed a fascination with the Hollywood actor James Dean, emulating his persona and presenting himself as a rebellious social outcast.
Eventually, Starkweather dropped out of high school. Then, in 1956, 18-year-old Starkweather began dating 13-year-old Caril Ann Fugate.
After being kicked out of his parents’ house, he took a job as a garbage collector — but he 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 plans 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 in early 1958.
On Nov. 30, 1957, Starkweather tried to purchase a stuffed animal “on credit” at a local gas station. 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 that she was Starkweather’s hostage. He, on the other hand, cited her as an accomplice.
Regardless, she would go on to join the teenage serial killer for the rest of his grisly spree.
For several days after this triple murder, Starkweather and Fugate camped in the house with a sign on the door warning visitors that everyone inside was “sick with the 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 Chester Lauer Ward. After entering, Starkweather stabbed a maid by the name of Lilyan 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 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 claimed that Fugate pulled the trigger, an accusation she denied — to steal his car. But Starkweather wasn’t sure how the Buick’s brake mechanism worked, and the car stalled.
At this point, an unfortunate trend emerged. A well-intentioned passerby, Joe Sprinkle, stopped to 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 when he pulled over after a bullet fired by a police officer shattered his windshield and cut his ear.
“He thought he was bleeding to death,” one of the officers involved in the chase told the Alton Evening Telegraph the day after Starkweather’s arrest. “That’s why he stopped. That’s the kind of yellow son of a b—ch he is.”
Charles Starkweather was sentenced to death and was executed in the electric chair on June 25, 1959, at age 20.
