8/4/2023 0 Comments Memories of a murderer quotesIn Caril’s case, maybe she was all three. She was not the feminine ideal, she was the woman scorned, the crazy woman, the promiscuous woman who was no good from the start. Was she bad, sad or mad? If she could be shown to be any of those things, then the crime began to make sense. Historically, violent crimes committed by women have always required an explanation: how could a woman deviate so far from normal, expected feminine behavior? And the explanation boiled down to three possibilities. She said that she and Charlie never done anything more than French kiss. It seemed a hell of a thing, for a 14-year-old girl to embark on, especially when she swore she’d broken up with Charlie the week before. That she didn’t know her family was already dead, and the only reason she participated in the crimes-holding a gun on a victim, or helping Charlie to acquire supplies-was because she was ordered to, and was terrified that if she disobeyed or tried to get away, Charlie would place a call to his gang back in Belmont and they would kill her family.Ĭaril Ann Fugate was convicted as a willing accomplice, but I always wondered whether that was really the case. Caril has always maintained her innocence, stating that she was Starkweather’s hostage. I was fascinated in particular by Caril: fourteen, about the same age as I was at the time I learned about the murders. I grew up in a small town in rural Minnesota, and movies like Murder in the Heartland (starring Tim Roth and Fairuza Balk in the Starkweather and Fugate roles) and Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers (Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis in inspired-by depictions) made sure I was familiar with the case from an early age. They were two kids from the wrong side of the tracks, whose love story ended in violence and bloodshed, and inspired films starring major Hollywood players, and even a song by Bruce Springsteen. To Charlie, Caril was his girl, younger than he was and pretty. To Caril, Charlie was a James Dean stand-in, the older boy with the cool coat and a cigarette perpetually hanging from his bottom lip. It looked like a 1950s version of Bonnie and Clyde: two young criminals on the run, fed up with the straight and narrow of school and small town jobs, looking to ride into the sunset in a blaze of glory. In the eight days that followed, seven more people would die along the route of Starkweather and Fugate’s sex-fueled teenage crime spree, including two fellow teenagers-Robert Jensen and Carol King-whose murders would eventually land Charlie on death row, and Caril in a Nebraska penitentiary for life. On Januin Belmont, Nebraska, 19-year-old Charlie Starkweather shot and killed 14- year-old Caril Ann Fugate’s mother and stepfather, and stabbed and beat her two-year-old baby sister to death.
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