Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugate Trials: 1958 - Hostage Or Killer?

The trial of Caril Fugate, which began four months after Starkweather was condemned, was in most respects a carbon copy of the first; with many of the same principals, and many of the same witnesses, who gave much the same testimony. Naturally, most interest centered on the defendant's age. At 14, Fugate was the youngest female ever to be tried for first-degree murder in America. Despite this, under Nebraska law, she could still face the electric chair if convicted. Right from the moment of her arrest, she protested her innocence of any involvement in the murders, claiming that she had been Starkweather's abused hostage, nothing more. As her attorney, John McArthur, put it, "This girl was introduced into this horrible sequence of events by opening the door and having a gun stuck in her face."

Starkweather had also toed this line originally, insisting that Fugate had nothing to do with the crimes, but as she turned against him, so his attitude hardened to the point where he agreed to turn state's evidence. While Fugate fixed him with her most withering glare, he told the court of the day he killed her family.

"What did you do after all this happened?" asked Scheele.

"I cleaned up."

"When you were cleaning up, what was Caril Fugate doing?"

"Watching TV."

Desperate to rattle the witness, McArthur read out one of Starkweather's earliest statements in which he maintained that Fugate was his hostage. "Do you recall that?" asked McArthur.

"That's what I said, but it ain't true. That whole statement is a bunch of hogwash," drawled Starkweather.

McArthur also reminded the witness of his much-quoted remark made earlier, that if he "fried in the electric chair" then Fugate should be "sitting in his lap." Did he still feel the same way?

"No, I don't. Now I don't care if she lives or dies."

There were others, besides Starkweather, who linked Fugate to the killings. Most damning of all was Deputy Sheriff William Romer, with his claim that Fugate told him she had actually seen her family being murdered.

In closing arguments it was noticeable that Scheele singularly avoided asking for the death penalty, but he did say, "Even 14-year-old girls must recognize they cannot go on 8-day murder sprees … the time has come when she must face the consequences of her actions."

That day came on November 21, when Fugate was convicted and Judge Spencer sentenced her to life imprisonment.

The final act in this heartland tragedy was played out on June 25, 1959, when Starkweather strolled disinterestedly to his death in the electric chair. His former lover was paroled in 1976.

The notoriety that Charlie Starkweather craved so desperately has lived on, courtesy of two Hollywood movies, Badlands and Natural Born Killers, both of which are loosely based on the events of that mad January in Nebraska.