Caril Ann Fugate

Last updated
Caril Ann Clair
Caril Ann Fugate Nebraska 1958.A.jpg
Caril Fugate, pictured in February 1958
Born
Caril Ann Fugate

(1943-07-30) July 30, 1943 (age 80)
Lincoln, Nebraska, U.S.
NationalityAmerican
Criminal statusReleased
Spouse
Fredrick Clair
​
​
(m. 2007;died 2013)​
Conviction(s) First degree murder (2 counts) [1]
Criminal penalty

Caril Ann Fugate (born July 30, 1943) is the youngest female in United States history to have been tried and convicted of first-degree murder. [2] She was the adolescent girlfriend of spree killer Charles Starkweather, being just 14 years old when his murders took place in 1958. [3] She was convicted as his accomplice and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1976, she was paroled after serving 18 years.

Contents

Background to crime spree

Fugate lived in Lincoln, Nebraska, with her mother and stepfather. She attended Whittier Junior High School in Lincoln and was an intelligent student who was well-liked by her peers. In 1956, at age 13, she formed a relationship with Charles Starkweather, a high school dropout five years her senior. They met through Caril's sister, Barbara, who was dating Starkweather's friend, Bob von Busch.

On January 21, 1958, [4] Starkweather shot and killed Fugate's stepfather, Marion Bartlett, and her mother, Velda. Starkweather then clubbed to death Fugate's two-year-old half-sister, Betty Jean. Fugate claimed she came home to find Starkweather there alone, waiting for her with a gun. She said he told her that her family was being held hostage and that if she did exactly as he said, her family would be safe. During the next six days, Starkweather kept Fugate in the house and turned away all visitors, which made Fugate's relatives suspicious. The bodies were found later in outbuildings on the property. [5]

Cross-state crime spree

Starkweather and Fugate then fled, driving across Nebraska and into Wyoming on a murder spree that claimed seven more lives, plus those of two dogs, before they were arrested. [5] She admitted holding a .410 gauge shotgun on a young high school couple, Robert Jensen and Carol King. [6]

Sentencing

Starkweather was sentenced to death and executed in the electric chair on June 25, 1959. He insisted that although he had personally killed most of the victims, Fugate had murdered several as well. Although she continued to maintain her innocence, she was tried and convicted for her role in the murder spree. Based on the evidence presented that Fugate had opportunities to leave her captivity and Starkweather's own testimony, the jury found her testimony that she was Starkweather's hostage not credible. She was sentenced to life imprisonment at the Nebraska Correctional Center for Women in York, Nebraska. [2]

In 1973, the Nebraska Board of Pardons commuted Fugate's sentence to 30–50 years, making her eligible for parole. Governor J. James Exon and Secretary of State Allen Beermann voted in favor of the commutation, while Attorney General Clarence A. H. Meyer dissented. [7]

Release from prison

Considered to be a model prisoner, Fugate was paroled on June 20, 1976, from York Women's Reformatory in York, Nebraska, after serving 18 years incarceration. [8] [9] She lived for a time in the Lansing, Michigan, area after being paroled. [10] Following her release, Fugate worked as a janitorial assistant and a nanny. She has since retired.

In 2007, Fugate married Fredrick Clair, a machinist who also worked as a weather observer for the National Weather Service. Their most recent city of residence was Hillsdale, Michigan.

Fugate was seriously injured on August 5, 2013, in a single-vehicle accident near Tekonsha, Michigan. Her husband, who was driving their sport utility vehicle when it went off the road and overturned, died at the scene. [11]

Fugate, going by her married name of Caril Ann Clair, was denied a pardon by the Nebraska Board of Pardons in February 2020. Relatives of the murder victims supported her pardon application. She maintained her innocence in the 1958 slayings and requested a pardon to "alleviate the burden" of being known as a convicted killer. Her pardon was denied because the role of a pardon is to restore a felon's rights and because her request was too broad for the parole board. [12]

Film and television


The Starkweather–Fugate case inspired the films The Sadist (1963), Badlands (1973), Kalifornia (1993), Natural Born Killers (1994) and Starkweather (2004). Fugate was portrayed by Fairuza Balk in the made-for-TV biographical film Murder in the Heartland (1993), with Tim Roth starring as Starkweather. Stark Raving Mad (1981), a film starring Russell Fast and Marcie Severson, provides a fictionalized account of the Starkweather–Fugate murder spree.

Fugate appeared on a 1983 episode of Lie Detector hosted by F. Lee Bailey. [13]

The 1996 Peter Jackson film The Frighteners features central plot elements with characters almost identical to Starkweather and Fugate, who commit a murder spree. The fourth episode, "Dangerous Liaisons", of season three from the ID series Deadly Women (aired September 2, 2010) was about the Starkweather–Fugate murders. The first episode, "Teenage Wasteland", of season four from the Investigation Discovery series A Crime to Remember (aired December 6, 2016) portrays the murders and subsequent trial. "The Thirteenth Step", the January 11, 2011, episode of Criminal Minds , depicts newlyweds on a North Dakota-Montana killing spree similar to the Starkweather–Fugate case. [14]

An investigative true-crime documentary miniseries that portrayed Fugate as the titular "12th Victim" of Starkweather was released on Showtime in February 2023. [15] [16] [17]

Literature

The 1974 book Caril is an unauthorized biography of Fugate written by Ninette Beaver, B.K. Ripley (pen name of Alexandra Ripley), and Patrick Trese. [18] Liza Ward, the granddaughter of victims C. Lauer and Clara Ward, wrote the 2004 novel Outside Valentine , based on the events of the Starkweather–Fugate murder-spree. The book Pro Bono: The 18-Year Defense of Caril Ann Fugate by Jeff McArthur follows Fugate's defense team through the trial and appeals process. [19]

In 2011, art photographer Christian Patterson released Redheaded Peckerwood, a collection of photos taken each January from 2005 to 2010 along the 500-mile route traversed by Starkweather and Fugate. The book includes reproductions of documents and photographs of objects that belonged to Starkweather, Fugate, and their victims. [20]

Music

Related Research Articles

<i>Badlands</i> (film) 1973 American film by Terrence Malick

Badlands is a 1973 American neo-noir period crime drama film written, produced and directed by Terrence Malick, in his directorial debut. The film stars Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek, and follows Holly Sargis (Spacek), a 15-year old who goes on a killing spree with her partner, Kit Carruthers (Sheen). The film also stars Warren Oates and Ramon Bieri. While the story is fictional, it is loosely based on the real-life murder spree of Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate, in 1958.

A spree killer is someone who commits a criminal act that involves two or more murders in a short time, often in multiple locations. There are different opinions about what durations of time a killing spree may take place in. The United States Bureau of Justice Statistics has spoken of "almost no time break between murders", but some academics consider that a killing spree may last weeks or months, e.g. the case of Andrew Cunanan, who murdered five people over three months.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Starkweather</span> American spree killer

Charles Raymond Starkweather was an American spree killer who murdered eleven people in Nebraska and Wyoming between November 1957 and January 1958, when he was nineteen years old. He killed ten of his victims between January 21 and January 29, 1958, the date of his arrest. During his spree in 1958, Starkweather was accompanied by his fourteen-year-old girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate.

Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of Nebraska. In 2015, the state legislature voted to repeal the death penalty, overriding governor Pete Ricketts' veto. However, a petition drive secured enough signatures to suspend the repeal until a public vote. In the November 2016 general election, voters rejected the repeal measure, preserving capital punishment in the state. Nebraska currently has 12 inmates on death row.

A thrill killing is premeditated or random murder that is motivated by the sheer excitement of the act. While there have been attempts to categorize multiple murders, such as identifying "thrill killing" as a type of "hedonistic mass killing", actual details of events frequently overlap category definitions making attempts at such distinctions problematic.

"Nebraska" is the title song of Bruce Springsteen's 1982 solo album. The stark, moody composition sets the tone for the LP, the content of which consists mostly of songs about criminals and desperate people, accompanied only by acoustic guitar and harmonica. The song has been covered by other artists, including Steve Earle, Chrissie Hynde, and Aoife O'Donovan.

<i>Murder in the Heartland</i> American TV series or program

Murder in the Heartland is a television miniseries that aired on ABC in 1993. It was based on the 1957–58 murder spree carried out by 19-year-old Charles Starkweather throughout Nebraska and Wyoming. Starkweather is played by Tim Roth. The first half of the miniseries covers the murders. The second half covers the trials of Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, his 14-year-old girlfriend accomplice. Their increasingly disparate versions of events are contrasted as the trials unfold.

Beverley Gail Allitt is an English serial killer who was convicted of murdering four infants, attempting to murder three others, and causing grievous bodily harm to a further six at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital, Lincolnshire between February and April 1991. She committed the murders as a State Enrolled Nurse on the hospital's children's ward.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sydney River McDonald's murders</span> 1992 murder at a fast food restaurant in Sydney River, Nova Scotia, Canada

The Sydney River McDonald's murders was a shooting spree and armed robbery that occurred on May 7, 1992 at a McDonald's restaurant in Sydney River, Nova Scotia, Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Goudeau</span> American serial killer and rapist on death row

Mark Goudeau is an American serial killer, kidnapper, thief and rapist. Goudeau terrorized victims in the Phoenix metro area between August 2005 and June 2006; coincidentally, Goudeau was active at the same time as two other Phoenix serial killers, jointly known as the "Serial Shooter.”

The Wichita Massacre, also known as the Wichita Horror, was a week-long violent crime spree perpetrated by brothers Reginald and Jonathan Carr in the city of Wichita, Kansas, between December 8 and 15, 2000. Five people were killed, and two people, a man and a woman, were severely wounded. The brothers were arrested and convicted of multiple counts of murder, kidnapping, robbery, and rape. They were both sentenced to death in October 2002. Their vicious crimes created panic in the Wichita area resulting in an increase in the sales of guns, locks, and home security systems. It is the deadliest mass shooting in Kansas history.

<i>The Sadist</i> (film) 1963 American exploitation film by James Landis

The Sadist is a 1963 American exploitation film written and directed by James Landis, and stars Arch Hall, Jr. The film was distributed by Fairway International Pictures of the United States and Prima Film of Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nebraska Correctional Center for Women</span>

The Nebraska Correctional Center for Women (NCCW) is a state correctional facility for the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services. Located just west of York, Nebraska, it is the only secure state facility to house adult women.

This is a list of notable overturned convictions in the United States.

In the United States, life imprisonment is the most severe punishment provided by law in states with no valid capital punishment statute, and second-most in those with a valid statute. According to a 2013 study, 1 of every 2 000 inhabitants of the U.S. were imprisoned for life as of 2012.

<i>Outside Valentine</i> 2004 debut novel of American author Liza Ward

Outside Valentine is the 2004 debut novel of American author Liza Ward, the granddaughter of two of the victims of spree killer Charles Starkweather. The book was first published on August 12, 2004 through Picador and is told from the perspective of Caril Ann Fugate, Starkweather's accomplice, the son of two of his victims, and the son's wife.

Infamous Murders was a documentary television series shown on The History Channel in the U.S. and the U.K. The U.S. edition was narrated by Don Peoples. In the U.K. edition the narrator is uncredited.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harry N. MacLean</span> American lawyer

Harry MacLean is a writer and lawyer living in Denver, Colorado, who writes true crime books and won an Edgar Award for his book In Broad Daylight (1988).

<i>Stark Raving Mad</i> (1981 film) 1981 American film

Stark Raving Mad is a 1981 American crime film directed by George F. Hood, written by Don Gronquist, and starring Russ Faust and Marcie Severson. It depicts a fictionalized account of the Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate killings of the 1950s. It was released in January 1983.

John Stevens Berry Sr. is an American attorney and the founder of Berry Law Firm in Lincoln, Nebraska. He is notable for a number of high-profile cases including the defense of Green Berets in Vietnam.

References

  1. ↑ "Fugate v. State".
  2. 1 2 Cawthorne, Nigel (2007-01-01). Serial Killers & Mass Murderers: Profiles of the World's Most Barbaric Criminals. Ulysses Press. ISBN   9781569755785.
  3. ↑ Rule, Ann (2004). Kiss Me, Kill Me: Ann Rule's Crime Files. Simon and Schuster. p. 224. ISBN   978-0-671-69139-4 . Retrieved October 22, 2010.
  4. ↑ Wishart, David J. (2004). Encyclopedia of the Great Plains. U of Nebraska Press. p. 462. ISBN   978-0-8032-4787-1 . Retrieved October 22, 2010.
  5. 1 2 "CARIL FUGATE IS FOUND GUILTY, GETS LIFE TERM". St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Main ed.). Associated Press. November 21, 1958. pp. 1, 15.
  6. ↑ Duggan, Joe (April 2009). "Friends of murdered teens wonder what might have been". Lincoln Journal-Star. Retrieved October 18, 2019.
  7. ↑ "Fugate". The Gazette. 1973-10-31. p. 22. Retrieved 2022-03-25.
  8. ↑ "Caril Fugate leaves prison after 18 years", AP report in Chicago Tribune, June 21, 1976, p. 1
  9. ↑ Flowers, R. Barri; H. Loraine Flowers (April 2005). Murders In The United States: Crimes, Killers And Victims Of The Twentieth Century. McFarland. p. 176. ISBN   978-0-7864-2075-9 . Retrieved October 22, 2010.
  10. ↑ "Caril Ann Fugate Clair critically hurt in I-69 crash | Former girlfriend of Charles Starkweather was convicted in 'Badlands' murders".
  11. ↑ "Caril Ann Fugate, Infamous 1950s Murder Spree Convict, Critically Injured In Crash That Killed Husband". HuffingtonPost.com. August 7, 2013. Archived from the original on March 3, 2016..
  12. ↑ "Notorious killer Charles Starkweather's ex-girlfriend denied pardon by Nebraska". NBC News. 19 February 2020. Retrieved 2020-07-10.
  13. ↑ Parks, Chris (1983-02-22). "Starkweather companion feels 'vindicated' - UPI Archives". UPI. Retrieved 2023-02-23.
  14. ↑ "Criminal Minds Recap: The Thirteenth Step". CBS.com. October 14, 2011. Archived from the original on October 22, 2012. Retrieved August 10, 2012.
  15. ↑ "The 12th Victim (Official Series Site) Watch on Showtime". SHO.com. Retrieved 2023-02-23.
  16. ↑ Finn, Natalie (2023-02-18). "The 12th Victim: The Truth About the Murder Spree That Inspired Every Onscreen Killer Couple". E! Online. Retrieved 2023-02-23.
  17. ↑ Campione, Katie (2023-01-24). "'The 12th Victim' Showtime Docuseries Re-Examines Murder Conviction Of Caril Ann Fugate In 1958 Killing Spree". Deadline. Retrieved 2023-02-23.
  18. ↑ Beaver, Ninette; Ripley, B. K.; Trese, Patrick (1974). Caril . Lippincott. ISBN   978-0-397-00997-8 . Retrieved 22 October 2010.
  19. ↑ McArthur, Jeff (2012). Pro Bono: The 18-Year Defense of Caril Ann Fugate. Bandwagon Books. ISBN   978-1479108374 . Retrieved 15 February 2017.
  20. ↑ O'Hagan, Sean (2011-12-01). "Christian Patterson goes on the trail of America's natural born killers". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 2023-02-23.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.