Top ten #9 Caril Fugate

In 1956, Charlie, then 18, met a 13-year-old girl named Caril Ann Fugate. He soon developed a fixation on the girl, who returned the older boy’s attentions. In order to be close to Caril, he dropped out of Lincoln High School in his senior year and started working at the Western Union newspaper warehouse. It was the perfect job for him since it was located near Whittier Junior High, where Caril was a student. Being close by, he was able to visit her every day after school. Starkweather was considered a poor worker, and his employer later recalled that he was terrible at his job, having to be told things two or three times so that he’d get it right. But it wasn’t stupidity that made Charlie bad at his job – it was his obsession with Caril.

Charlie taught Caril how to drive and one day she crashed his 1949 Ford into another car. Mr. Starkweather paid the damages, since he was the legal owner of the car, but this caused a fight between Charlie and his father (just like the fight between James Dean’s movie father in Charlie’s favorite movie) and he kicked Charlie out of the house.

Charlie quit his job at the warehouse and began working as a garbage collector. Unhappy, angry and belligerent, he used the garbage route to begin plotting bank robberies and finally conceived his own personal philosophy by which he lived the remainder of his life: "Dead people are all on the same level".

On November 30, 1957, Charlie committed his first murder. He became angry at a local gas station attendant named Robert Colvert for refusing to sell him a stuffed animal on credit. Starkweather returned several times during the night to purchase small items, then finally – brandishing a shotgun – forced Colvert to hand over $100. He forced the man into his car and drove him out to a remote location. When Colvert realized that Charlie planned to kill him, he fought back, but was injured by the younger, stronger man. Starkweather shot him in the head and left him to die in an empty field. He later claimed that by killing Colvert he believed he had transcended his former self, reaching a new plane of existence in which he was above and outside the law.

On January 21, 1958, Charlie went to Caril’s home. She wasn’t there but her mother and step-father, Velda and Marion Bartlett, were. Out of the young girl’s earshot, they took the opportunity to Charlie that he needed to stay away from the young girl. Charlie responded by shooting both of them to death. He then killed their two-year-old daughter Betty Jean by strangling and stabbing her.

When Caril came home, they hid the bodies behind the house. For the next six days, they lived there together until shortly before the police arrived on January 27. They had been alerted by Caril’s suspicious grandmother, who had been unable to reach Velda and Marion for days.

Charlie and Caril went on the run. They drove first to the Bennet, Nebraska farm house of 76-year-old August Meyer, a family friend. Looking for money, food and a place to hide out, they broke into the house and Charlie killed Meyer with a shotgun blast to the head. After ransacking the house, they ran again.

Starkweather and Fugate drove to a wealthy section of Lincoln, where they entered the home of industrialist C. Lauer Ward and his wife, Clara. Both Clara and maid Lillian Fencl were fatally stabbed, and Starkweather snapped the neck of the family dog. Starkweather later admitted throwing a knife at Clara; however, he accused Caril of inflicting the multiple stab wounds that were found on her body. He also accused Caril of fatally stabbing Fencl, whose body also had multiple stab wounds. When Lauer Ward returned home that evening, Starkweather shot him. Charlie and Caril filled Ward's black 1956 Packard with stolen jewelry from the house and fled Nebraska.

It was the murder of the wealthy industrialist that caused an uproar in Lincoln. Every law enforcement agency in the region began a house-by-house search for the killers. Governor Victor E. Anderson contacted the Nebraska National Guard, and the Lincoln chief of police called for a block-by-block search of the city. Frequent sightings of the two were often reported but the teenage killers stayed one step ahead of the law.

In need of a new car –thanks to the high profile of Ward’s stolen Packard – Charlie and Caril found traveling salesman Merle Collison sleeping in his Buick along the highway outside Douglas, Wyoming. After they woke Collison, they shot him. Starkweather later accused Caril of finishing the salesman off after his shotgun jammed. He claimed that she was the "most trigger happy person" he had ever met.