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Charles Starkweather

Active
1957–1958
Region
Lincoln, Nebraska, USA
States
NE, WY
Kind
Spree
Status
Executed
Victims
11

Charles Starkweather, 19, killed eleven people in Nebraska and Wyoming between December 1957 and January 1958, most of them during an eight-day spree with his 14-year-old girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate. After killing a Lincoln gas-station attendant in December, he killed Fugate's mother, stepfather and two-year-old half-sister in their Lincoln home in January, then a farmer and two teenagers near Bennet and three people in a Lincoln mansion, as police searched the city house by house and the governor called out the National Guard. The pair fled west, where Starkweather killed a traveling salesman before being captured near Douglas, Wyoming. Convicted of first-degree murder, he was executed in the electric chair in 1959; Fugate was convicted as an accomplice and paroled in 1976.

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Victims

We remember the people whose lives were taken.

Timeline of locations

  1. November 30, 1957
    Gas station, Lincoln (Abduction, approximate area)

    Starkweather robbed the gas station where Robert Colvert worked and took him to a remote area outside Lincoln, where he killed him.

  2. January 21, 1958
    Bartlett home, Lincoln (Crime scene, approximate area)

    Fugate's mother, stepfather and baby half-sister were killed in the family's Lincoln home.

  3. January 27, 1958
    Meyer farm and storm cellar near Bennet (Crime scene, approximate area)

    August Meyer was killed at his farmhouse near Bennet. Robert Jensen and Carol King, who stopped to give the pair a ride, were killed at an abandoned storm cellar nearby.

  4. January 28, 1958
    Ward home, Lincoln (Crime scene, approximate area)

    Clara Ward, her housekeeper Lillian Fencl and C. Lauer Ward were killed in the Wards' Lincoln home, which set off a house-by-house search of the city and a National Guard call-up.

  5. January 29, 1958
    Highway near Douglas, Wyoming (Arrest, approximate area)

    Needing a new car, the pair found Merle Collison asleep in his Buick by the highway outside Douglas, and Starkweather killed him. After a car chase with officers, Starkweather surrendered near Douglas.

  6. May 23, 1958
    Lancaster County court, Lincoln (Court / trial, approximate area)

    Tried for the murder of Robert Jensen, Starkweather was convicted after 22 hours of jury deliberation and sentenced to death on May 23, 1958. Fugate was convicted as an accomplice that November.

  7. June 25, 1959
    Nebraska State Penitentiary (Prison)

    Starkweather was executed in the electric chair here at 12:05 a.m. on June 25, 1959.

Watch, listen, read

Watch

  • Badlands (film, 1973, Terrence Malick (inspired by the case))

Sources

Each location also lists its own sources in the data file.