Charles Starkweather was 19 when he took his 14-year-old girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate through Nebraska and Wyoming in January 1958 on a murder spree that ultimately took 11 lives (including her baby sister). Starkweather was obsessed with James Dean and loved the media attention and infamy this brought him. Caril Ann maintains to this day that she was an innocent victim of a psychopath.
Charles was executed on June 25, 1959, and Caril Ann served 18 years in a Nebraska prison. Their story has inspired films like Badlands, Kalifornia, and Natural Born Killers. Today we are talking about the controversy over who was the real killer and who were the real victims here.
Trigger warnings; Murder, coercive control, and sexual assault.
Sources
- Wiki Caril Ann Fugate
- Wikipedia Charles Starkweather
- Biography Charles Starkweather
- Wyoming History
- The Twelfth Victim: The Innocence of Caril Ann Fugate in the Starkweather Murder Rampage By Linda M. Battisti & John Stevens Berry
- Serial Killers & Mass Murderers: Profiles for the World’s Most Barbaric Criminals By Nigel Cawthorne
- Murder in the Heartland (1993) with Tim Roth, Fairuza Balk, & Brian Dennehy
- A Crime to Remember “Teenage Wasteland” Season 4, Episode four
- Deadly Women Season four episode four
- Most Evil: Spree Killer (2007)
This episode’s Not a Creep are the organizations that are fighting for what’s right as the US Supreme Court plans to overturn Roe v. Wade.
The Cut and Mashable have put together a list of state-level organizations that you can donate to. And here’s a list of other worthy organizations.