The car and driver by the side of the highway between Douglas and Glenrock looked like prey for the taking to the 19-year-old.
There were already 10 other blood-soaked crime scenes in Nebraska where dead bodies — some stabbed, clubbed or shot — had met merciless teen killer Charles Starkweather, who identified with James Dean in the movie “Rebel Without A Cause.”
The Montana salesman trying to rest in the Buick on the side of U.S. Highway 20 /26/87 near the road leading to Ayres Natural Bridge Park west of Douglas was hit with six shots from a .22-caliber rifle. Two rounds struck his head, one pierced his neck, one went through his shoulder and two hit him in a leg, according to the Jan. 30, 1958, edition of the Casper Tribune Herald.
Starkweather’s 14-year-old female companion sat in their stolen Packard car with a bottle of black raspberry soda.
The pair’s odyssey of death and destruction was about to come to an end. And one of the nation’s most notorious stories of mass murder was just starting to come to light. It would inspire books, movies, at least one top 10 song, and decades of journalists revisiting the story.
The red-haired guy who had put black shoe polish in his hair to disguise himself when caught would get the death sentence and the girl life in a Nebraska prison that was commuted into 18 years.
“It was the perfect storm of two young, kind of charismatic good-looking people doing these terrible things. They were white, wholesome, at least appearing, kids,” said Dan Fetsco, a former public defender and prosecutor in Carbon County.
He teaches in the University of Wyoming’s Criminal Justice Program and sometimes touches on the case in his classes.
“At that point American had gotten to the point where almost 90% of America had televisions, and they were the nightly news story for, I think, weeks,” he said.
Before the couple arrived in Douglas, Starkweather, a high school dropout and ex-garbage truck worker from Lincoln, Nebraska, and Caril Ann Fugate, his eighth grade girlfriend, had inspired terror across Nebraska’s capital city.
“Armed national guardsman mobilize at the armory to aid search,” read the cutline under a photo in the Jan. 30, 1958, Lincoln Star that showed helmeted soldiers with rifles in a parking lot.
The Murders
Starkweather was born Nov. 24, 1938, the third of seven children. He attended Sunday School as a youth and quit going in eighth grade, he told University of Nebraska criminologist James M. Reinhardt in June 1958.
Starkweather liked guns, was power hungry and enjoyed being important, Reinhardt would conclude.
Starkweather was introduced to Fugate, born July 30, 1943, when she was 13, and they became an item.
On Dec. 1, 1957, Starkweather robbed a Lincoln-area gas station in the early morning hours, forced the attendant into his vehicle and took him out of Lincoln where he shot him with a 12-gauge shotgun. Starkweather threw the shotgun into a creek, according to a timeline of the killings by History Nebraska, a state agency focused on historical preservation.
Starkweather then repainted his vehicle from red to black and changed the tires on it.
After losing his job the next month and being locked out of his apartment, he began his murderous ways again starting with Fugate’s stepfather, mother and half-sister, who was 3 years old.
When Fugate came home from school Tuesday, Jan. 21, 1958, she would allege he pointed a gun at her and informed her that her family were hostages at another location and that she would need to do what he said.
In an interview in 1989 on the TV show “A Current Affair,” Fugate said she had told Starkweather not to come around anymore and told her mother to tell him the same thing.
Starkweather, whose stories changed, alleged to officials that Fugate was home when the killings happened, and in court testimony included in the 2023 book “Starkweather” by Harry MacLean, he alleged Fugate pulled a gun on her mother and later helped clean up the crime scene.
The couple would stay in the home for six days before leaving to Starkweather’s house to get his vehicle. During that time, Fugate would go to her home’s front door and turn away her sister, brother-in-law and at one point police sent to the home by her grandmother.
On Jan. 27, 1958, the couple drove to a farm where a bachelor farmer named August Meyer had allowed Starkweather and his brother to hunt. As thanks, Starkweather shot him, killed his dog and ransacked his house.
Starkweather got his car stuck near the farm, and a young couple on a date, Robert Jensen Jr.,17, and Carol King, 16, would offer them a ride. Jensen was shot in the head and King raped, knifed and shot.
With Jensen’s car, the couple headed out of Lincoln. Early on Jan. 28, they returned, slept in the car and then in the morning, Starkweather invaded the home of an upper-class Lincoln couple that was on his former garbage route.
Starkweather killed C. Lauer Ward, his wife, Clara, and their maid Lilyan Fencyl. He ransacked their house and stole their Packard automobile.
Left: Charles Starkweather in his Converse County jail cell in Douglas shortly after his capture. Right, Charles Starkweather is led from the Converse County jail in Douglas by Sheriff Merle Kanopp of Lancaster County, Nebraska and Captain Harold Smith of the Nebraska State Patrol. (Courtesy Chuck Morrison Collection, Casper College Western History Center) 
Douglas Police Chief Robert Ainslie points to one of two bullet holes in the back of the stolen Packard. (Courtesy Chuck Morrison Collection, Casper College Western History Center) 
The Packard automobile stolen from murder victims Ward in Lincoln, Nebraska and used as a getaway car. The back window was shattered by bullets from Converse County Sheriff Earl Heflin in the chase. (Courtesy Chuck Morrison Collection, Casper College Western History Center) 
Natrona County Deputy Sheriff Bill Romer, right, examines one of the weapons taken during the Starkweather arrest. Caril Fugate stands behind the chair at left. (Courtesy Chuck Morrison Collection, Casper College Western History Center) 
A bottle of black raspberry Oregon Trail soda found in the stolen Packard following the Charlie Starkweather murder spree. The bottle is on display at the Wyoming Pioneer Memorial Museum in Douglas. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily) 
Caril Fugate, 14, in the back of a Douglas Police patrol car following her arrest on Jan. 29, 1958. (Courtesy Chuck Morrison Collection, Casper College Western History Center) 
Left, Caril Ann Fugate sits in the Converse County Sheriff’s Office following her surrender to Natrona County Deputy Sheriff Bill Romer. Right, Natrona County Deputy Sheriff Bill Romer turns Caril Fugate over to the custody of Converse County Undersheriff Bill Owens. (Courtesy Chuck Morrison Collection Casper College Western History Center) 
Natrona County Deputy Sheriff Bill Romer, left, sits in a chair as Converse County Sheriff Earl Heflin talks on the phone. Romer happened upon the murder scene on the highway between Douglas and Glenrock. (Courtesy Chuck Morrison Collection, Casper College Western History Center)
In Wyoming
When the couple arrived at the Ayres Natural Bridge turnoff that Wednesday afternoon and saw the Buick, Starkweather tried to steal the car.
After shooting salesman Merle Collison who was napping, he tried to drive the Buick but couldn’t figure out how to release the parking brake.
A good Samaritan from Casper, Joseph Sprinkle, happened along headed to Cheyenne and pulled over to see if he could help. When he approached the cars he saw the dead body. Starkweather turned around with the .22 rifle in his hand, and a wrestling match began.
During the struggle, Natrona County Deputy Sheriff William Romer, who had been out at a ranch near the natural bridge, came upon the scene. Fugate jumped out of the Packard and ran to Romer. Starkweather ran to the Packard and took off back toward Douglas. Romer radioed ahead for a roadblock.
Converse County Sheriff Earl Heflin and Douglas Police Chief Bob Ainsley were ready as Starkweather drove by. The sheriff tried to shoot out his tires with a pistol and they sped through town at nearly 115 mph, the Casper Tribune-Herald reported on Jan. 30, 1958.
The sheriff then took out his rifle and started shooting through the back window. Starkweather and the Packard disappeared into a dip in the road, and when the officers saw the car again, it had stopped in the middle of the road. They ordered Starkweather out of the car. Flying glass had cut his ear.
Once the pair were brought to the Converse County Jail, local and national media converged on Douglas.
“To make a telephone call, reporters had to bolt a block-and-a-half to a gas station in hopes of reaching their editors,” The Casper Tribune-Herald reported.
He Claims All Killings Were All Self-Defense
A Casper Tribune-Herald reporter got an interview with Starkweather while he was in his holding cell.
“I shot them all in self-defense,” Starkweather replied when asked why he had killed so many people for no apparent reason. “What would you do if they were coming at you?”
He also told the reporter that Fugate was with him as a “captive.”
“She didn’t have anything to do with it,” Starkweather told the reporter. “She tried to get away a couple of times.”
Following their capture, Wyoming Gov. Milward Simpson let it be known that he would not approve the death penalty for the pair.
Fetsco calls his stance “humane” and said Simpson was known for his commutations, even though they were politically unpopular.
“Milward Simpson was a visionary and he was a very progressive politician for that time,” he said. “It was a different approach to crime in America.”
The pair were sent back to Nebraska, where they had separate trials.
The Nebraska prosecutor charged Starkweather and Fugate with just one murder, that of Robert Jensen Jr. During the May 1958 proceedings, Starkweather refused to agree to an insanity defense. He was convicted by a jury and sentenced to death.
Starkweather told Reinhardt in an interview following his trial and conviction that, “I would be glad to go to the chair tomorrow if I could have Caril on my lap.”
Fugate was tried in late October and November of 1958. Her attorney, John McArthur, had tried to get her case into juvenile court and failed.
A Different Era
Fetsco said both trials took place before the changes in law under the Earl Warren-led Supreme Court in the 1960s that brought about the Miranda decision that mandates those arrested be informed of their rights and other laws that forced changes to police tactics.
“There were many interrogation tactics that police could get away with in the 1950s that have long been declared unconstitutional,” he said.
McArthur cited 71 errors in Fugate’s trial, according to History Nebraska. None of his motions for a mistrial or subsequent motions for a new trial were upheld.
“When I talked to Caril Ann Fugate for the first time, she had been repeatedly questioned by various police officers and the county attorney and his deputy,” McArthur told an interviewer in the 1990s. “When the subject was a 14-year-old child, I knew perfectly well the officers could get anything at all into her statement and she would be completely powerless to do anything about it.”
McArthur’s son Jim, who also became an attorney and accompanied his father at times during his research for the case, said their trip to Douglas found the sheriff and his wife, who took care of Caril during her short time there, sympathetic to her version of events.
“One big thing we learned on that trip was the fact that Mrs. Heflin found the note Caril had written and sent it back to Lincoln with the other evidence. That note was a plea for help Caril had written and tried to give to someone,” he said in an interview from the 1990s and posted by History Nebraska. “Now that was the only piece of evidence that disappeared ... the only thing. Lincoln police said they never received it.”
Fetsco also said that the biological aspects of brain formation and social aspects of a crime were not factors in the 1950s and would be today. There would not be the possibility for a death sentence for a 14-year-old or even a life sentence.
The national media coverage of the story and subsequent court cases are also part of the legacy of the crimes.
Just a year later in 1959, murders committed in Kansas would give author Truman Capote the idea to write “In Cold Blood” and start the true crime genre of literature, Fetsco said. He surmises Capote was aware of the Starkweather case and publicity.
“One takeaway for me if I have to summarize that case looking back on it, I would call it the beginning of what would become fear mongering in American culture in terms of violent crime,” he said. “Across time you are going to have murder sprees, but they are so infrequent and statistically unlikely to happen that they are not something that we as a society need to reorder everything and think it is going to happen to us.”
Casper Herald-Tribune on Jan. 30, 1958, reports Starkweather’s capture. (Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
The Lincoln Star on May 5 reports on the trial of Charles Starkweather for Robert Jensen. (Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
The Lincoln Evening Journal on Jan. 30, 1958, informs readers that pair no longer threat. (Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
The Lincoln Star on Jan. 29 reports more murders during crime spree. (Cowboy State Daily Staff)
The End
Starkweather was executed in Nebraska’s electric chair June 25, 1959.
Following her life sentence, Fugate spent 18 years in prison before the Nebraska Board of Pardons commuted her sentence to 30-50 years in 1973. She was released in 1976.
At her parole hearing in June 1976, Fugate told the parole board that she just wanted to settle down, get married, “dust the house, clean the toilet, you know, just be a little, dumpy housewife.”
While in prison, Fugate earned the opportunity to join a community Nazarene Church, taught Bible classes, babysat for worshipers attending Sunday services and occasionally delivered sermons, according to a June 9, 1976, Associated Press story.
In 2007, Fugate married Frederick Clair. He died in a car crash in Michigan in 2013. She was critically hurt in the crash but recovered. Her attempts for a pardon in 2020 were denied.
Fetsco sees her life as proof that prisoners can be rehabilitated and policies like those of Wyoming’s Simpson were correct.
“Caril Fugate led a great life and has been an upstanding citizen,” he said. “She got out and never offended again. She’s still alive and has done well by all accounts.”
In his book, MacLean writes in an epilogue that he was able to track Caril Fugate Clair down in a nursing home. They met, and he brought her photos of her past, but she was unable to speak. She did respond with smiles and nods.
Meanwhile, this month the PBS network offered a broadcast of a 2023 Bruce Springsteen concert of his Nebraska album that was released in 1982. The song “Nebraska” was based on the Starkweather-Fugate murder spree.
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
