In 1957/58, two teenagers, 19-year-old Charles Starkweather and 14-year-old Caril Fugate, killed 11 innocent people. Instead of condemnation, these monstrous crimes brought them ... fame. They became the idols of young, rebellious Americans and an inspiration for many works of American pop culture.
Natural Born Killers is a 1994 film classic. Few people are aware that the script for Olivier Stone's work was inspired by real events. The main characters, played by Woody, Harrelson and Juliette Lewis, are none other than Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugate.
The story of two teenage murderers was also an inspiration for other popular culture creators:Terrence Malick ("Badlands"), Dominic Sena ("California") and David Lynch ("Wild at Heart"). Bruce Springsteen recalled these events in his song "Nebraska", and Stephen King modeled the Starkweather character of one of the heroes in his novel.
Probably all these creators wondered how it is possible that such young people are capable of committing such macabre crimes ...
Have a nice bad start
Charles Starkweather was born on November 25, 1938 in Lincoln, Nebraska. His parents, besides him, had seven more children. They were extremely poor, but it was by no means a dysfunctional family. Little Charles's early childhood was a happy one.
Things got complicated when Starkweather went to school. He has gained a reputation among teachers as a bully and a mildly handicapped person. He actually had an above-average IQ. He was misjudged because the boy had very poor eyesight and simply couldn't see anything from the back bench. It was only an eye examination, which he underwent at the age of 15, that his health problems were revealed.
When Starkweather was examined by forensic psychiatrists after his crime and arrest, he was not diagnosed with any mental illness. Doctors, however, ruled that his anti-social stance may have been due to a negative school experience. Starkweather was very short, with banded legs, red hair, and torn clothes. He was quickly mocked by his peers.
Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate
As he himself recalled, not a day went by when he did not have to fight with someone. In fact, it's hardly surprising that he dropped out of school at the age of 16. Three years later he met his future girlfriend, only 13-year-old Caril Fugate. Despite her young age, the girl was quite a herb. Undoubtedly, she inherited her defiant character from her alcoholic mother.
Starkweather and Fugate liked each other immediately. The girl liked his rebellious image (à la James Dean) and his love of fast cars. Starkweather, in turn, gave the chosen one gifts, took her on romantic trips and talked about their future life together. The problem was that the gifts and amorous escapades were expensive. Meanwhile, the odd jobs that Charles made a living from were a very poor source of income. To get some money, the boy decided to go criminal.
First Blood
Even though Starkweather had very bad eyesight, he was an excellent shooter. In his spare time, he loved practicing shooting and throwing a knife at the target. He "presented" his skills for the first time on December 1, 1957, when he attacked a local gas station.
The robbery would have gone quite smoothly for him had it not been for the fact that a newly hired salesman, Robert Colvert, had forgotten the code for the safe. Starkweather decided to take the shopkeeper on a little "trip" out of town and take his anger out on him. When they got there, a young bandit killed Colvert with a headshot from close range.
Starkweather thought back frequently to his first kill. He claimed that killing a man put him in a state of bliss and peace he had not experienced since childhood. He was relieved to retaliate against society.
The girl liked his rebellious image (à la James Dean) and his love of fast cars
Less than two months after the first murder, he killed again, but this time he had an accomplice, Caril. On January 21, 1958, Miss Fugate's parents announced that the young people were forbidden from further dating. The agitated boy shot the girl's father in the face and then murdered her mother in the same way. Caril threw a knife at his two-year-old sister. The child died instantly.
The most terrifying fact is that right after the murder, the young lovers sat down in front of the TV as if nothing had happened. Only after some time did they start cleaning up the mess and hiding the bodies (Caril's father was buried in a henhouse, mother in an outhouse, and the sisters' body was placed in a small box).
After that, the young people lived in the Fugate house for another week, not disturbed by anyone (they even put the inscription on the door of the house:" Keep everyone away - the whole family is sick with the flu") . Starkweather later stated that it was the best time of his life. The couple did not mind the Caril family hidden around the house.
The idyll does not last long, however. Time and time again, the Fugate home was visited by friends and extended family, and the flu excuse became more and more suspect. When the police knocked on the door on January 28, 1958, Charles and Caril were no longer home.
Killing time
Starkweather and Fugate wanted to get out of the state, but on the way their car was stuck in January mud on the roads of Nebraska. Unfortunately, 70-year-old August Mayer gave them a helping hand. He drove a couple to his farm to take horses to pull out the vehicle. As soon as the man entered the shed, Starkweather shot him in the back.
After the murder, the young people returned to the car with the shovels collected from the farm, and after several hours of painstaking work, they managed to dig it out. Bad luck, however, did not leave them. After some time they got stuck again on one of the country roads. This time, they were offered help by Robert Jansen and his girlfriend Carol King.
Starkweather recalled that up to that point he had thought more and more about surrendering himself to the police. The moment he met a couple of teenagers, however, he changed his mind. He stated that Jansen and King must die. They were the complete opposite of Starkweather and Fugate. Liked at school, gifted and from good homes. Jensen was a local American football player and King was a cheerleader and member of the school's orchestra. For the young thug, this murder was another chance to get even with the people who once despised him.
All four drove to one of the abandoned schools in the Lincoln suburbs. There, Jansen and King were shot (the boy received six bullets to the head). Investigating the crime scene discovered that the body of the murdered Carol was brutally mutilated after her death. According to later testimony from Starkweather, it was Fugate who stabbed the girl's intimate area with a knife.
Crime…
After the murder of the teenagers, Starkweather decided the best option was to seek refuge with his brother in Washington. However, before the murderers set off on the 1,200-mile journey, they decided to rest in the mansion of one of the local entrepreneurs - C. Lauer Ward.
The moment they knocked on the door of his house, only Ward's 46-year-old wife and their housekeeper Lilian Fencl were inside (the Ward's 14-year-old son was then coming to boarding school). Women terrorized by teenagers spent the whole day with them.
Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis in "Natural Born Killers" were inspired by the actions of a young couple from Nebraska, Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugate.
Starkweather wandered around the mansion and saw with his own eyes the luxury of those who made good life. Aggression began to build up within him. He managed to mutilate the housekeeper with a knife and kill the Ward's dog by late afternoon . When Lauer Ward returned to the residence at 6 p.m., he was shot dead. Both hostages died shortly after.
Meanwhile, in Lincoln, police had figured out that Starkweather and Fugate were responsible for the latest murders. The manhunt has begun. The National Guard entered the streets of the city, people were buying weapons from shops, and other people willing to help in catching the killers came to the police station.
The teenagers, however, had long been in the neighboring state. It was in Wayoming that their bloody "trip" would soon end. On January 29, 1958, Starkweather killed his last victim . 37-year-old shoe salesman Merle Collison was shot only because he refused to trade in cars with the teenagers.
Moments later, 29-year-old Joe Sprinkle showed up at the scene. He intended to help the strangers standing by the side of the road, but when he approached the car, Starkweather immediately took him at gunpoint. Sprinkle would have died that day if the police car had not suddenly arrived. At this point, Caril Fugate suddenly shouted to the policeman that Charles had just killed a man. Behind the wheel, Deputy Sheriff William Romer set off in pursuit of the escaping Starkweather. A few miles away, the young killer was finally arrested.
… and punishment
The story of the killer tour hit the headlines, and Starkweather and Fugate became famous. Promoted a few years earlier by James Dean in "Rebel Without a Cause", the image of the rebellious American boy came true in the form of Charles Starkweather.
The role of Caril Fugate in the crimes remains unclear to this day. The girl changed her testimony several times, but most often introduced herself as a hostage of the Starkweather. In court, however, she was charged with first-degree murder. She became the youngest woman in American history to face such a charge. Shortly thereafter, she was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.
However, Fugate did not give up and continued to fight in court. Finally, in 1976, she managed to get out of prison. In 1983, she even took part in a television show in which, hooked up to a polygraph, she tried to prove her innocence once again.
Starkweather immediately confessed to killing almost all the people on the indictment (he only claimed that Mrs. Ward and the housekeeper were still alive when he left the Ward house). During the trials, he was calm, chewed gum and did not seem to care about all the commotion around him. He was sentenced to death in the electric chair.
Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska
While waiting for his sentence on death row, he began to write down his memories and reply to hundreds of letters he received from female fans. During the trial, flatly refused to accept a line of defense based on declaring him insane, explaining that:"Nobody will remember the madman" . This sentence is significant in that it shows the motives that followed during his deadly escapade.
His self-esteem was shattered by the poverty he lived in and contemptible treatment by his peers and teachers during his school years. He dreamed of being someone respected, even for murder. In his memoirs, he wrote: "People murdered me. They murdered me slowly. I was better than them. I murdered quickly ” .
When asked if his companion was guilty of the charges against her, he replied, "If they want to fry me on the electric chair, Caril should sit on my lap." Starkweather was executed on June 25, 1959. A crowd of young Americans gathered outside the prison then. They came to say goodbye to their idol…