Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate

Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate

Biography:

Charles Raymond Starkweather, also known as Charlie, was born on November 24, 1938, in Lincoln, Nebraska. His parents were Guy and Helen Starkweather and Charles was the third of seven children. His father was a carpenter, who had arthritis in his hands, and was frequently unemployed and his mother was a waitress. In school, Charlie was often bullied because he was bow-legged and had a slight speech impediment. He was also very near-sighted, not even able to read the top letter on an eye chart, but it wasn't discovered until he was a teenager and before that, was considered a slow learner. Charlie was a James Dean devotee, and Dean's untimely death in 1955, only added to Charlie's mystique. Starkweather changed his hair style and clothing to the same as Dean's, with his copper colored hair and piercing green eyes, gave him a striking resemblance to James Dean, and was identified strongly with his "Teen Rebel" personality, trapped as he felt within the poverty of small-town Nebraska life, with its limited options for advancement. He was introduced to his girlfriend (and later partner in crime), Caril Ann Fugate, through the girlfriend of his best friend, Bob von Busch. Caril was 13 at the time and he was 18. Her youthful inexperience ensured that she cast him as the hero figure in her life, and he shared that by treating her like she was an adult, even with her young age. As expected, her parents were not delighted at the pair when they announced their relationship status as teen rebels. He believed the world had always been against him. Charlie took a job at a Western Union newspaper warehouse as a truck unloader and he conveniently chose that location because it was close to Caril's junior high school. While he was teaching Caril how to drive she crashed his 1949 Ford. His father, Guy, the rightful owner of the car, paid for the damages but threw Charlie out of the household and was no longer willing to put up with his behavior. Charlie then quit his job at the warehouse and became a garbage collector, using his route to plan bank robberies, even though he never actually carried them out and the injustice of his poverty, as he saw it, began to consume him. By age 19, he convinced himself that crime was his only route to financial gain.

Caril Ann Fugate was born on July 30, 1943, in Lincoln, Nebraska. Her parents were Marion and Velda Bartlett. (There is not a lot of information for Caril's biography)

Crimes:

Victim #1: Robert Colvert (21): He was working as a gas station attendant and got on Starkweather's bad side when he refused to let him take something on credit. Starkweather returned early in the morning of December 1st, 1957 and eventually kidnapped Colvert and killed him with a shotgun blast to the head. Robert rests

...