Caril Ann Fugate


Caril Ann Fugate is the youngest female in United States history to date to have been tried for first-degree murder. She was the adolescent girlfriend of spree killer Charles Starkweather, being just 14 years old when his murders took place in 1958. She was convicted as his accomplice and sentenced to life imprisonment, and was paroled after 17 years in 1976.

Background to crime spree

Caril Ann Fugate lived in Lincoln, Nebraska, with her mother and stepfather. In 1956, at age 13, she formed a relationship with Charles Starkweather, a high school dropout five years her senior. They met through Caril's sister Barbara, who was dating Starkweather's friend, Bob von Busch. Starkweather worked as a truck unloader at the Western Newspaper Union warehouse. On January 21, 1958, Starkweather shot and killed Fugate's stepfather, Marion Bartlett, and her mother, Velda. Starkweather then hit her baby half-sister, Betty Jean, causing blunt-force trauma, and stabbed her in the neck. Fugate claimed she came home to find Starkweather there alone, waiting for her with a gun. She said he told her that her family was being held hostage and that if she did exactly as he said, her family would be safe. During the next six days, the pair lived in the house and turned away all visitors, which made Fugate's relatives suspicious. The bodies were found later in outbuildings on the property.

Cross-state crime spree

Starkweather and Fugate then fled, driving across Nebraska and into Wyoming on a spree of murders that claimed six more lives before they were arrested. She admitted holding a.410 shotgun on a young high school couple, Robert Jensen and Carol King.

Sentencing

Starkweather was sentenced to death and executed by electric chair on June 25, 1959. He insisted that although he had personally killed most of the victims, Fugate had murdered several as well. Although she continued to maintain her innocence, she was tried and convicted for her role in the murder spree. Based on evidence presented that Fugate had opportunities to leave her captivity, and Starkweather's own testimony, the jury found her testimony that she was Starkweather's hostage not credible. She was sentenced to life imprisonment at the Nebraska Correctional Center for Women in York, Nebraska. Her sentence was reduced in 1976 due to a Supreme Court ruling on minors.

Release from prison

Considered to be a model prisoner, Fugate was paroled in 1976 after serving 17 years. She lived for a time in the Lansing, Michigan, area after being paroled. Following her release, Fugate worked as a janitorial assistant and a medical technician, and has since retired.
In 2007, Fugate married Fredrick Clair, a machinist who also worked as a weather observer for the National Weather Service. Their most recent city of residence has been Stryker, Ohio.
Fugate was seriously injured on August 5, 2013, in a single-vehicle accident near Tekonsha, Michigan. Her husband, who was driving their sport utility vehicle when it went off the road and overturned, died at the scene of the accident.
Fugate, going by her married name of Caril Ann Claire, was denied a pardon by the Nebraska Parole board in February 2020. Her pardon application was supported by relatives of the murder victims. She maintained her innocence in the 1958 slayings and requested a pardon to "alleviate the burden" of being known as a convicted killer. Her pardon was denied because the role of a pardon is to restore a felons' rights, not to absolve them of crimes.

Portrayal in media

Film and television

The Starkweather–Fugate case inspired the films The Sadist, Badlands, Kalifornia, Natural Born Killers and Starkweather. The made-for-TV movie Murder in the Heartland is a biographical depiction of Fugate and Starkweather, starring Fairuza Balk and Tim Roth in the starring roles. Stark Raving Mad, a film starring Russell Fast and Marcie Severson, provides a fictionalized account of the Starkweather–Fugate murder spree.
The 1996 Peter Jackson film The Frighteners features central plot elements with characters almost identical to Starkweather and Fugate, who commit a murder spree. The fourth episode, "Dangerous Liaisons", of season three from the ID series Deadly Women was about the Starkweather–Fugate murders. The first episode, "Teenage Wasteland", of season four from the Investigation Discovery series A Crime to Remember portrays the murders and subsequent trial. "The Thirteenth Step", the January 11, 2011, episode of Criminal Minds, depicts newlyweds on a North Dakota-Montana killing spree similar to the Starkweather–Fugate case.

Literature

The 1974 book Caril is an unauthorized biography of Fugate written by Ninette Beaver, B.K. Ripley, and Patrick Trese. Liza Ward, the granddaughter of victims C. Lauer and Clara Ward, wrote the 2004 novel Outside Valentine, based on the events of the Starkweather–Fugate murder-spree. The 1997 novel Not Comin' Home to You by Lawrence Block fictionally parallels the Starkweather and Fugate crimes. The book Pro Bono: The 18-Year Defense of Caril Ann Fugate by Jeff McArthur follows Fugate's defense team through the trial and appeals process.
2014 saw the release of the book The Twelfth Victim: The Innocence of Caril Fugate in the Starkweather Murder Rampage by Linda M. Battisti and John Stevens Berry.
In 2011, art photographer Christian Patterson released Redheaded Peckerwood, a collection of photos taken each January from 2005 to 2010 along the 500 mile route traversed by Starkweather and Fugate. The book includes reproductions of documents and photographs of objects that belonged to Starkweather, Fugate and their victims, several of which Patterson discovered while making his photographs and have never been seen publicly before.
Their story is mentioned in the book Old Sparky: The electric chair and the history of the death penalty by Anthony Galvin

Music

The crime is mentioned in Billy Joel's song "We Didn't Start the Fire" with the line "Starkweather homicide.."