Charles Starkweather

Charles Raymond Starkweather (born November 24, 1938 in Lincoln , Nebraska , † June 25, 1959 ) was a serial killer .

The case

On December 1, 1957, Starkweather robbed a gas station and kidnapped the gas station attendant Robert Colvert. He drove Colvert to a secluded location and killed him with several headshots.

On January 21, 1958, he committed a triple murder in the house of his girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate: After a quarrel with her parents, he shot the two of them and then stabbed Caril Ann's two-year-old sister. Starkweather hid the bodies in various places outside the house. He and Caril Ann stayed at the house for six more days, sending visitors away on the pretext that they all had the flu . But Caril Ann's grandmother became suspicious and called the police. When it arrived on site, Charles and Caril Ann had already disappeared. The following week, Starkweather stabbed seven people. Over 1,200 police officers and National Guard members searched for the couple and were eventually able to arrest them in Douglas , Wyoming . Starkweather initially claimed he held Caril Ann hostage , but dropped it after she called him a killer. He was executed on the electric chair in Nebraska State Prison on June 25, 1959 . Caril Ann Fugate, although only 14 years old at the time of the crime, was sentenced to life imprisonment , pardoned in 1976 and now lives under a different name.

Charles Starkweather was buried in Wyuka Cemetery in Lincoln, Nebraska.

The case in popular culture

Starkweather was the inspiration and main character in Bruce Springsteen's song Nebraska , which was originally to be called Starkweather . The murders were also picked up by Terrence Malick for his film Badlands - Shattered Dreams . He is also featured in Billy Joel's 1989 song We Didn't Start the Fire , as well as the song Badlands (Charles Starkweather & Caril Fugate) by the Japanese stoner and doom rock band Church of Misery (on the album The Houses Of The Unholy ). In the computer game Manhunt , a director of snuff films is called Starkweather. The film Natural Born Killers by director Oliver Stone also makes use of the incidents. In 2004, Starkweather's story was filmed in the film Starkweather by Byron Werner with Brent Taylor and Shannon Lucio in the leading roles . Stephen King names "a red-haired bow-legged boy named Charles Starkweather" as a schoolmate of Randall Flagg in The Stand . Furthermore, John Katzenbach takes up the name Caril Ann Fugate in his psychological thriller Das Rätsel , published in 1997, and uses it as an alias for one of his main characters, who is in a similar situation to its namesake. The English singer Morrissey uses a photo of Starkweather on his “I am not a dog on a chain” tour 2020 as a stage background motif for his track “Jack the Ripper”.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Starkweather in the Internet Movie Database (English)