He kept the James Dean swagger to the end. As the cops covered him with their guns, he got out of the car. They ordered him to put up his hands, but he ignored them. They shot at the ground and ordered him to lie down. He ignored them. Then he put his hands behind his back. Thinking he was about to pull a gun, they fired another warning shot at his feet. Finally he got the message and brought his hands back into view. All he had been trying to do was to tuck in his shirt so that he would look right for the arrest.
The mug shot would be an iconic teen image. Starkweather was bloodied and in chains; stubble was on his chin and a cigarette dangled nonchalantly from his lips. He wore a black leather biker’s jacket and tight jeans with pointy-toed cowboy boots.
Right to the end Starkweather continued to show the poor judgment that had characterized his short life. He had the choice of being tried in Wyoming or Nebraska. The difference was that in Wyoming he would go to the gas chamber, while in Nebraska he would face the electric chair. He chose the chair. Had he elected to be tried in Wyoming he would have received a life sentence, as the governor was vehemently opposed to the death penalty. The governor of Nebraska had no such qualms.
Fugate claimed that she was an unwilling captive, forced to go along with Starkweather because he had threatened to kill her family. This defense had a flaw; she had been there when her family had been killed, right at the start of the killing spree, and she had helped clean up after the event. But once Starkweather realized his beloved Caril was abandoning him, he began the same game. He claimed that she had been the most trigger-happy person he had ever met and was the chief killer.
Both were convicted. They were only tried for one killing, that of Richard Jensen, the teenager they had killed at the start of the two day spree. Starkweather received the death penalty. Because of her age (at fifteen she was the youngest female ever tried for first-degree murder), Fugate was sentenced to life. She was paroled in 1976, making a new life for herself. In 2013 she was seriously injured in a traffic accident which killed her husband. She is still recovering from those critical injuries.
Starkweather went to the chair at Nebraska State Penitentiary in Lincoln at 12:04 a.m. on June 25, 1959. To the end he was defiant. When asked to donate his eyes after his death, he said, “Nobody ever did anything for me when I was alive. Why should I help anybody when I’m dead?”
The day before his execution he gave a brief interview, in which he said, “I don’t know why I killed folks. I don’t have an answer for that. The people were just there and I killed them and I don’t know why.”
Asked had he any regrets, or would he do anything differently, he said, “Not really, ’cos my life has been a failure and if I could go back in time I am sure I would do the same thing all over. I know I am crazy. I know I am a monster. People laugh at me and tell me how ugly I am, all of my life. I just got mad. All that anger inside of me, all my life it has been building in me. I just despise people and I hate people because they just laugh at me and call me ugly names. I just had to kill them. If I could go back into time I would kill as many more people as I could because I hate people. I know they are going to kill me in the electric chair and I don’t really care, because I am going to be famous for all time just like my idol James Dean. I am looking forward to dying so that I can go to heaven and meet my idol James Dean.”
Minutes before the execution, the doctor who was meant to pronounce death suffered a fatal heart attack. But that did not delay proceedings. The execution went ahead as scheduled. Afterward, Starkweather got his final wish. With six films and a television miniseries inspired by his story, he did become famous for all time.
LEON CZOLGOSZ ANARCHY IN THE USA
William McKinley was a popular president. The twenty-fifth man to hold that honor, he was a veteran of the Civil War and successful lawyer before entering politics for the Republican Party. A native of Ohio, he did well in Congress but lost his seat in the Democratic landslide of 1890. The following year he changed direction, being elected governor of Ohio. He gained a reputation for fairness and moderation, appealing to both the laboring classes and the moneyed classes. This proved a springboard for a presidential bid in 1896.
The country was in the depths of an economic depression. He campaigned on a commitment to retaining the gold standard and promised protective tariffs against foreign competition which would support business and restore prosperity.
He won the election and his policies slowly saw a return to prosperity. He also won the Spanish-American War of 1898 decisively, gaining the territories of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. The United States also annexed the independent Republic of Hawai’i. With those achievements behind him and being a popular figure, he had no difficulty winning a second term in the Oval Office in the 1900 election. He looked forward to continuing his economic policies and his overseas expansion.
Like all politicians, he had to keep an eye on the future. He listened carefully to public opinion, and often his policies were formed on that basis. A man of the people, he liked to mingle and press the flesh at every opportunity. He was not a difficult man to approach.
Following his inauguration in March, McKinley went on a tour of the nation, traveling by train with his wife and team of advisers. The trip would end in Buffalo, New York, at the massive Pan-American Exposition. It was a great success. No president had ever officially toured the west and he was rapturously received. But he canceled the last leg of the tour when his wife became ill and returned to Washington. After taking care of some state business he retired to Canton, Ohio, to prepare for an important public speech he would still give in Buffalo. Now the visit was not the end of his nationwide tour, but part of a ten-day trip which included a visit to Cleveland to visit an army camp.
On Thursday, September 5, he arrived in Buffalo and was paraded through the fair. The plan was to deliver a major speech that day, and then the following day he would visit the Niagara Falls before returning to the fair for a meet and greet at the Temple of Music in the Exposition. His security people were unhappy with the meet and greet, feeling it would be difficult to guarantee his safety.
“No one would wish to hurt me,” he assured them.
The gates of the fair were opened at six o’clock on the morning of Thursday, September 5, and the crowd began to gather early, eager for a glimpse of the popular president. Of the 116,000 who passed through the gates that day, at least 50,000 of them filled the space in front of the esplanade to see the president deliver his address. After a brief introduction and a call for silence, he began to speak.
Not everyone in the crowd was a supporter of President McKinley. That is the nature of politics. The audience had a fair sprinkling of Democrats, a few socialists, and an occasional anarchists. One of the anarchists was there with a purpose.
Leon Czolgosz was a native of Ohio, like McKinley. But he had not been born into privilege. Born in 1873, he was the son of a poor Polish Catholic emigrant who had arrived in the United States a decade previously. When he was five, the family moved to Detroit, and by fourteen he was working in a glass factory in Pennsylvania. At seventeen he switched employment, joining the Cleveland Rolling Mill Company, but during the economic crash of 1893 the workers went on strike and Czolgosz found himself out of work. At times of great stress, people often fall back on their ethnic community but Czolgosz found no comfort among the Polish Catholics. Instead he began to associate with members of the labor movement, joining a workingman’s socialist club. But they were not radical enough for him, so he moved on to the Sila organization, where he was introduced to anarchism. Anarchism was always more popular in Europe than America. They advocated overthrowing the existing government, often by violent means, and returning power to the people. In the United States, the anarchist movement was dominated by people of recent European descent. There is no doubt that Czolgosz held radical views, but he was also an awkward man trying to fit in. This often led to him appearing desperate, which aroused the suspicion of the secretive
anarchists.
Czolgosz attended a number of strikes, showing his support for the workers. But he developed a respiratory problem and had to curtail his activities. He retreated to the farm in Ohio that his father had purchased. But his new beliefs often clashed with the more traditional Catholic views of his family, and the time he spent on the farm was a tense one. He became reclusive, burying himself in his socialist books. In 1901, the radical heroine of the anarchist movement, Emma Goldman, delivered a speech in Cleveland. Czolgosz was in the audience and approached Ms. Goldman afterward, speaking to her briefly. She introduced him to some local socialists.
But his social awkwardness, his shifty ways, and his indiscreet inquiries about the movement aroused the suspicion of some. In fact, an Anarchist newspaper, Free Society, issued a warning about him: “The attention of the comrades is called to another spy. He is well-dressed, of medium height, rather narrow shoulders, blond and about 25 years of age. His demeanor is of the usual sort, pretending to be greatly interested in the cause, asking for names or soliciting aid for acts of contemplated violence. If this same individual makes his appearance elsewhere the comrades are warned in advance, and can act accordingly.”
Czolgosz did not fit in, even among the marginalized. But he wanted to be taken seriously by the anarchist movement. He had to make a big statement.
By the summer of 1901, he was living in Buffalo and when he heard the president was visiting, he knew this was his opportunity. On September 3, he went to Walbridge’s Hardware Store on Main Street and bought a small 32 caliber Iver Johnson revolver for $4.50. Two days later he was waiting when the presidential train pulled into the station. As the locomotive slowed, a canon was fired in salute but the canon was so close to the track that it blew in the windows of the train. Luckily no one was hurt. At the station the crowds were too big to allow Czolgosz any sort of shot, so he abandoned that plan. But not the idea as a whole. As he later stated to police, “It was in my heart. There was no escape for me. I could not have conquered it had my life been at stake. There were thousands of people in town on Tuesday. All those people seemed to be bowing to the great ruler. I made up my mind to kill that ruler.”
Later that day the president gave a speech before thousands as scheduled. Czolgosz tried to elbow his way to the front of the crowd where he could get a clear shot, but he never got close enough. There was no point in firing randomly towards the stage; he wanted to hit his target. After the presidential speech McKinley went backstage and Czolgosz tried to follow him but was blocked by security guards. He had to go back to his boarding room that night with the job undone.
The following morning, Friday, September 6, he was at the fair early, but McKinley boarded a train for a tour of the nearby Niagara Falls. The assassin waited impatiently as the hours passed before the presidential party returned. Finally, McKinley was back in the grounds of the fair—but could Czolgosz get close enough this time?
At three thirty in the afternoon, McKinley stopped for refreshments before proceeding to the Temple of Music, where he was to do a meet and greet, shaking hands with as many people as he could in the brief time allocated. He could shake fifty hands a minute and was scheduled to be there for ten minutes, so five hundred people in the crowd would get to press the presidential flesh. Czolgosz stood in line, his hand wrapped in a handkerchief as if it were injured. Unknown to the security detail, the bandage actually concealed his revolver.
Security was tight. Police were at the doors and detectives lined the aisles. A dozen soldiers in full dress uniform were not there for decoration. McKinley took his place at the top of the aisle that had been blocked off for the reception and the crowd began to stream by as the organ belted out “The Star-Spangled Banner.” After five minutes the doors of the room were closed to cut off the crowd, and the remaining people streamed in a line past the president, most getting just a few seconds and a radiant smile. One twelve-year-old girl, Myrtle Ledger, asked for the president’s red carnation, which he cheerfully handed over. The Secret Service watched carefully as a tall, scowling man approached, but he shook hands grimly and moved on. At 4:07 p.m. Czolgosz reached the top of the line. Seeing his injured hand, McKinley instinctively reached out his left hand to shake, to spare the man pain. But Czolgosz violently struck away the proffered hand and drew up his bandaged hand to reveal the revolver.
Before anyone could react, he fired off two rounds, striking the president twice in the torso.
As McKinley staggered back Czolgosz prepared to take a third shot. But an African-American man next in line, James Parker, bravely rushed forward and slammed into the assassin, making a grab for the gun. Two of the security detail rushed in as the men struggled and soon Czolgosz disappeared beneath a pile of men, many of whom were getting in blows with fists and rifle butts. As the beaten man muttered, “I have done my duty,” the swarm of people were infuriated and the beating increased.
McKinley had staggered but was caught and guided to a nearby chair. Believing he was not seriously injured, the president immediately assumed control of the situation, calling for a halt to the beating that was going on a few feet from him. But as Czolgosz was being led away, an agent struck him to the ground with a single punch. Blood was running high.
As the panicked crowd attempted to flee the Temple of Music the president was put on a stretcher and taken out back to where an ambulance was waiting. He was rushed to the hospital. On the way, he loosened his suit and a bullet fell out. It had been deflected by a button and had only grazed him. Unfortunately, the other bullet had entered his abdomen, causing considerable damage.
Today McKinley would have been on his feet in a matter of weeks. The wound was serious but not life threatening. The bullet had torn through his stomach and lodged in the muscles of his back. But the big problem was infection. In the days before penicillin an abdominal wound generally meant a lingering death from gangrene. An operation was performed which closed the holes in McKinley’s stomach, but the surgeon was unable to locate and remove the bullet, in part due to McKinley’s obesity. For a day or two it appeared McKinley was recovering. His strength returned and he was able to sit up and chat with visitors. Despite being nearly sixty and overweight, he had a very strong constitution. But gangrene was creeping slowly along the path of the wound, infecting his stomach and other organs. It was only a matter of time.
Within a few days McKinley was eating lightly but suffering terrible indigestion. This was the effect of the infection on his stomach. A day after this he was drifting in and out of consciousness, and at 2:15 a.m. on Saturday, September 14, he passed away. Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt was sworn in as the twenty-sixth president of the United States. He said, “When compared with the suppression of anarchy, every other question sinks into insignificance.”
The whole country was horrified. Czolgosz was transferred to Auburn State Prison to await trial. Justice moved swiftly; on September 16, the grand jury indicted him on a count of first-degree murder. The only thing of note about the indictment was that Czolgosz refused to talk to the lawyers appointed to defend him—sticking to his anarchist principles of refusing to recognize the court and its officers. When it came to trial—just nine days after President McKinley succumbed to his injuries—Czolgosz pleaded guilty and then ignored the court. The judge, Truman White, did not accept the guilty plea and entered a plea of not guilty on the assassin’s behalf.
Even if he had spoken to his defense team, nine days was hardly sufficient time to prepare an adequate defense. In the absence of any communication from their client, his lawyers were left with no option but to plead insanity. They presented no witnesses and Czolgosz said nothing on his own behalf. This left the field open for the prosecutor to play up the anarchist angle.
The insanity plea did not wash and the jury took just an hour to convict, returning their verdict on September 24, 1901. From fatal shot, to death of the president, to trial and conviction had taken less than three weeks, unseemly haste by modern standards. Two days lat
er, the jury was asked to consider punishment and recommended the death penalty. Asked if he had anything to say, Czolgosz still would not speak, just shaking his head.
The execution was scheduled for October 29—just forty-five days after his victim’s death. There were no last-minute appeals and no postponements. He entered the death chamber between two guards calmly and unafraid. The time was seven o’clock in the morning.
Witness Charles R. Huntley told the Buffalo Commercial:
Czolgosz did not show any signs of fear and he did not tremble or turn pale; he walked into the death room between two men, and walked with a firm step. He stumbled as he came into the room but did not fall, nor did his knees weaken. I was quite surprised at his demeanor, as was everyone else, I should say. He was perfectly strong and calm. He just slid himself into the chair exactly as a man might who expected to enjoy a half hour’s repose. The fact that in a moment a death current was to be forced through him did not seem to perturb him in the least.
He spoke very plainly and in a voice which did not waver in the slightest degree. He said first that he was not sorry for having killed the President, and, as the straps which bound his jaws were put in place, he said that he was sorry he could not see his father. It was a general surprise to hear his voice after the men had begun to affix the electrodes. The witnesses were somewhat startled and were amazed at the man’s calmness. But the men at work beside him and in front of him did not pause. They kept on affixing the appliances. There was no spirit of bravado manifest at all. He said a few things just as if he felt it his duty to say them …
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