Killers - The Most Barbaric Murderers of Our Time

by Nigel Cawthorne

  The only witness to what happened next was Starkweather. He claimed that, as they got out of the car, Colvert made a grab for the gun.

  ‘I got into a helluva fight and shooting gallery,’ he said. ‘He shot himself the first time. He had hold of the gun from the front, and I cocked it and he was messing around and he jerked it and the thing went off.’ Colvert was hit and fell, but he was not dead. He tried to stand up. Starkweather reloaded the shotgun. He pressed the barrel to Colvert’s head and pulled the trigger. ‘He didn’t get up any more.’

  Although Starkweather had been nervous before, the killing filled him with a feeling of serenity he had not experienced since childhood. He felt free, above the law. The robbery had earned him just $l08. Five months later, on 24 April 1958, Robert Colvert’s widow Charlotte gave birth to a daughter.

  When Starkweather picked up Caril later that day, he told her about the robbery, but claimed that an unnamed accomplice had done the shooting. That evening he threw the shotgun in a creek. A few days later he fished it out, cleaned it and put the gun back in Sonny’s garage. It had not even been missed.

  During the police investigation, several of the other service station attendants mentioned Starkweather’s name, but no one came to visit him. He paid off his back rent, had his car resprayed black and spent ten dollars on second-hand clothes, paying with the loose change he had got from the till in the petrol station. The owner of the store was suspicious and reported the matter to the police. But no effort was made to question him.

  The fact that no one seemed even to suspect him of the robbery and murder gave Starkweather a great deal of satisfaction. It was his first taste of success. Until then he had always been the underdog. Now he had showed that he could outwit authority.

  ‘I learned something, something I already knowed,’ he said. ‘A man could make money without hauling other people’s rubbish.’

  He stopped turning up for work and was fired. He spent his time going to the cinema, reading comics, playing records, working on his car and practising shooting and knife-throwing. The money from the robbery did not last long. He got behind with the rent again and ended up sleeping in his car in a garage he had rented. But it did not bother him. He knew he could get cash again as soon as he wanted. And the idea of killing again did not bother him one little bit.

  On Sunday 19 January 1958 there was a terrible row. Caril was putting on weight and her family feared she was pregnant. When Starkweather turned up, Caril told him that she was sick of his wild ways and that she never wanted to see him again. He did not take her seriously. He had already arranged to go hunting jackrabbits with Caril’s stepfather, Marion Bartlett, two days later, and he figured that he would see her then.

  On the morning of 21 January 1958 Starkweather helped his brother Rodney out on the rubbish round, then went to check that his room was still padlocked. It was. His hunting rifle was inside and he had to borrow Rodney’s, a cheap, single-shot, .22 bolt action rifle. He took some rugs he had scavenged from his rubbish round with him to Belmont Avenue and gave them to Caril’s mother, Velda, as a peace offering. Velda was not appeased. As Starkweather sat cleaning his brother’s rifle in the living-room, she told him that her husband Marion was not going hunting with him and that he should leave and never come back. When he did not respond, according to Starkweather: ‘She didn’t say nothing. She just got up and slammed the shit out of me… in the face.’ As Starkweather ran from the house, he left the rifle. A few minutes later, he returned to collect it. Caril’s father was waiting. ‘The old man started chewing me out. I said to hell with him and was going to walk out through the front room, and he helped me out. Kicked me right in the ass. My tail hurt for three days.’

  But that was not the end of it. Starkweather walked down to the local grocery store and phoned the transport company where Marion Bartlett worked. He told them that Mr Bartlett was sick and would not be in for a few days. Then he drove his car over to a friend’s house nearby, left it there and walked back to Belmont Avenue. Caril and her mother were still yelling their heads off when Starkweather turned up. Velda accused him of making her daughter pregnant and began slapping him around the face again. This time he hit back, knocking her back a couple of steps. She let out a strange cry – ‘a war cry’, Starkweather thought. Marion Bartlett came flying to the rescue. He picked Starkweather up by the neck and dragged him towards the front door. But Starkweather was younger and stronger. He kicked the old man in the groin and wrestled him to the ground. Bartlett managed to slip from Starkweather’s grasp and went to look for a weapon. Starkweather thought he had better do the same.

  As Starkweather hurriedly slipped a .22 cartridge into his brother’s hunting rifle, Marion Bartlett ran at him with a claw hammer. Starkweather fired, shooting the old man in the head. Velda Bartlett grabbed a kitchen knife and threatened to cut Starkweather’s head off. Starkweather reloaded the rifle, but Caril grabbed it from him. She threatened her mother, saying she would blow her to hell. The older woman did not take her daughter’s threat seriously and knocked her down. Starkweather grabbed the rifle back and shot the old woman in the face. He hit her with the butt of the gun as she fell, then hit her twice more.

  Caril’s two-and-a-half-year-old sister Betty Jean was screaming. Starkweather hit her with the rifle butt too. She screamed all the louder, so Starkweather picked up the kitchen knife and threw it at her. He said he aimed for the chest, but the knife pierced her neck, killing her. Caril then pointed out that her stepfather was still alive in the bedroom. Starkweather went through and finished Marion Bartlett off, stabbing him repeatedly in the throat.

  The house fell quiet. Starkweather reloaded his gun and sat down to watch television. ‘I don’t even remember what was on,’ he later told police. ‘I just wanted some noise.’ That evening he and Caril wrapped the bodies of her murdered family in rugs and bedclothes and dragged them out into the frozen backyard. They stuffed Velda’s body into an outside toilet. Betty Jean’s body was placed in a box on top of it. Marion Bartlett’s corpse was hidden in a disused chicken coop.

  Back in the house the two teenagers tidied up as best they could. They mopped up some of the blood and mess with rags and splashed perfume around to hide the smell. Then they went into the living-room to watch television together.

  Caril later claimed that she had not been present during the slaughter of her family. She had come home to find Starkweather there with a gun and her family gone. She said that he had told her that he was planning a big bank robbery. Her parents had found out and the family had been taken hostage by the rest of the gang. He had only to make one phone call and they would be killed, unless she cooperated. Starkweather said that Caril had participated in the slaughter of her family, egging him on.

  The young couple settled down together for what Starkweather would later describe as the best week of his life. They were alone together with no one to push them around. Certainly he had no conscience troubling him. Later he confessed: ‘Shooting people was, I guess, a kind of thrill.’

  In Starkweather’s eyes they were now living like kings. With money taken from Marion Bartlett’s pockets he made the occasional run to the local grocery store to stock up on chewing gum, ice cream, potato chips and Pepsi. Caril claimed that he tied her up when he went out. Starkweather denied it.

  They lived, for the first time, as man and wife. The two of them played cards, watched television a lot and tended the family pets – two parakeets, a dog called Nig and a puppy called Kim which Starkweather had bought for Caril. Everything would have been idyllic except for the bodies in the backyard.

  Visitors were warned off by a sign on the kitchen door saying: ‘Stay away Every Body is sick with the Flue [sic].’ Caril told those who knocked that the family was sick and they were in quarantine, while Starkweather hid in a room off the hall with his rifle cocked.

  Then on Saturday, 25 January Caril’s sister Barbara came to visit with Bob von Busch and their newborn baby. Caril spotted her
sister before she was halfway up the pathway. She called out that the whole family had the flu and that the doctor had said no one should come near the house. But Barbara, who was concerned that her mother had not been in touch, kept on coming. Fearing the game was up, Caril screamed: ‘Go away! If you know what’s best you’ll go away so Mother won’t get hurt.’

  Barbara stopped, turned around and went back to Bob’s car. Something in her sister’s voice scared her. Once the baby was safely home, Bob von Busch and Rodney Starkweather returned to the house to find out what was going on. Again, Caril sent them away. Her mother’s life would be in danger if they did not go, she said.

  They reported the matter to the police and a patrol car was sent out to Belmont Avenue that evening. Caril gave the officers the regular story about the family having the flu. She also mentioned that her family did not get on with Bob von Busch – that was why he had called the police. Noting that Caril was calm and controlled, the policemen left their inquiries at that.

  After the police had left, Starkweather took his brother’s rifle to the house of a mutual friend. He called Barbara von Busch to reassure her. He had bought some groceries for Caril’s family, he said, and he left a message for Rodney, saying that he should go and pick up his gun at the friend’s house. When Rodney went to collect his rifle, he noticed it was damaged. The butt plate had been knocked off.

  The next day, Starkweather’s sister Laveta arrived at Belmont Avenue. She was not put off by the story of the flu. She was one of Caril’s few friends and, when she would not go away, Caril pulled her close. Her brother was inside planning a bank robbery, Caril confided, and that was why she could not come in. Laveta went home and told her father what had happened. He did not believe a word of it. But next day he began to get concerned.

  On Monday morning Velda’s mother Pansy Street was also getting worried. She turned up at Belmont Avenue and shouted until Caril showed herself. When Mrs Street refused to believe the flu story, Caril reverted to the story about her mother being in danger. Mrs Street went straight to the police station. While she was there, Guy Starkweather phoned, relating the story Laveta had told him. The police sent a second squad car out to Belmont Avenue. When they knocked on the door, they got no answer. So they broke in.

  But Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugate had already figured that the game was up. Caril had packed a bag with some clothes and a few family snapshots. Starkweather had wrapped his hunting knife in a blue blanket, along with Marion Bartlett’s shotgun, the barrel of which he had sawn down, and a .32 pistol he had found in the house. And they slipped out of the house the back way. By the time the police turned up, everything was neat and tidy. With nothing to excite their suspicions, they took Pansy Street home and let the matter rest.

  Bob von Busch and Rodney Starkweather were not so easily satisfied. At 4.30 p.m. they went over to Belmont Avenue to check the place out for themselves. Almost immediately they found the Bartletts’ bodies. The hunt was now on, but the young fugitives had several hours’ start.

  After picking up two spare tyres from Starkweather’s garage the couple stopped at the Crest Service Station to fill up with petrol and buy maps. Then they turned south, out of Lincoln, on to the open highway, heading across the frozen farmlands of the Great Plains. They stopped at the small town of Bennet, where Starkweather bought some ammunition at a service station and they ate a couple of hamburgers. Starkweather often came to Bennet to spend time in the surrounding countryside. An old family friend, 70-year-old August Meyer, had often let him hunt on his land in return for half the kill.

  Meyer lived two miles east of Bennet, down a dirt track. Starkweather thought they might be safe there, for the night at least. But there had been a six-inch fall of snow and the track was muddy. Their car got stuck. Nearby was a derelict schoolhouse with a cyclone cellar, where the children would have taken shelter from the tornadoes that tore across the Great Plains every spring. Starkweather and Caril went down into the cellar to warm up before traipsing up to Meyer’s farm on foot, ostensibly to ask the old man’s assistance in shifting the car. However, at the farmhouse Starkweather shot Meyer and his dog. He later claimed that he had shot Meyer in self-defence when, after a heated argument the old man had gone into the house to get a coat, but came out on the porch firing a rifle.

  ‘I felt a bullet go by my head,’ Starkweather said. But Meyer’s gun had jammed after the first shot. ‘Meyer started running back in the house, and I shot him at almost point-blank range with the sawn-off.’

  He also blamed the incident on Caril: ‘Caril got pissed off because we got stuck,’ he said. ‘She said that we ought to go up and blast the shit out of him because he did not shovel the lane.’

  Caril said that Starkweather had simply asked Meyer if he could borrow some horses to drag the car out of the mud, then shot the old man as he went into the barn.

  Starkweather dragged Meyer’s body into the wash-house and covered it with a blanket. The two of them ransacked his house for money, food and guns. Their total haul was less than a hundred dollars. It included a pump-action, .22 calibre repeating rifle, some socks, gloves, a shirt, a straw hat and some jam and biscuits. They took a brief nap before trudging back to the car. After an hour or two of digging they managed to shift it. But it slid off the track into a ditch and Starkweather damaged the reverse gear trying to back it out. Eventually they were rescued by a farmer, a neighbour of Meyer’s, who towed the car out with his truck. Starkweather insisted on giving the farmer two dollars for his trouble.

  They drove up towards Meyer’s farmhouse, where Starkweather planned to stay the night. But Caril insisted they turn back. When they did, the car got stuck in the mud again. It was already dark so they abandoned the car and headed back to the derelict school, intending to spend the night in the cyclone cellar. On the way they were offered a lift by 17-year-old Robert Jensen, the son of a local store-owner, and his fiancée, 16-year-old Carol King. When Starkweather explained his car trouble, Jensen offered to take them to the nearest service station where they could telephone for help. As they got in the back seat, Jensen asked why they were carrying guns – Starkweather had the .22 and Caril the sawn-off shotgun. Starkweather insisted they were not loaded.

  Starkweather later claimed that, at this point, he toyed with the idea of ringing the police and turning himself in. But when they reached the service station, it was closed. On their brief acquaintanceship, Starkweather had already decided that these two high-school kids were exactly the sort of people he hated – clever, popular at school, conservative, middle class. Jensen was a football player. King was a cheerleader, drum majorette and a member of the school choir. They planned to get married once they graduated. It struck Starkweather that if he turned himself in, Jensen would get the credit. He could not bear the thought of this chubby, all-American boy being fêted as a hero.

  He put his gun to the back of Jensen’s head and told him to hand over his wallet to Caril, who emptied it and handed the money to Starkweather. He then ordered Jensen to drive them back to Lincoln but after a couple of miles, he changed his mind and told him to drive back to the derelict school where they had been stuck earlier that day. He said he was going to leave Jensen and King there and take their car – a dark blue, souped-up 1950 Ford with whitewall tyres.

  When they got there, Starkweather left Caril in the car, listening to the radio, while he marched his prisoners off at gunpoint As they walked down the steps into the cellar, Starkweather shot Jensen from behind. Later he claimed that Jensen had tried to grab the gun but, when the body was found, there were six shots in the left ear. Starkweather made several conflicting statements about how King died. He was alone with her for 15 minutes and claimed to have shot her when she started screaming. Later he claimed that Caril had killed her.

  Carol King was killed with a single shot from behind. When their bodies were found the next day, Jensen was found lying on his stomach in a pool of blood at the bottom of the stairs. King was partly nude a
nd lying on top of him. Her coat had been pulled over her head, her jeans and panties were round her ankles. And her back was scratched and streaked with mud as if she had been dragged across the floor. She had been stabbed viciously, several times, in the groin, The autopsy found internal damage to the vagina, cervix and rectum. It had been caused by a rigid, double-edged blade that could not have been Starkweather’s hunting knife. But doctors found no semen and no indication of sexual assault. Starkweather at first said that he had raped King, but later admitted only to having been tempted to rape her and pulling down her jeans. Caril, he insisted, had then murdered and mutilated King in a fit of jealousy.

  Starkweather closed the heavy storm doors on the cellar and went back to Jensen’s car. But it, too, was stuck in the mud. He and Caril managed to dig it out by about 10.30 p.m. Starkweather claimed that he was now determined to abandon his killing spree and give himself up to the police, but Caril talked him out of it. They headed back to Lincoln to see if the Bartletts’ bodies had been discovered yet.

  Squad cars lined Belmont Avenue and Number 924 was crawling with policemen. Starkweather slowly drove by. Then he headed west out of Lincoln with the vague idea of finding refuge with his brother Leonard who lived in Washington State, over a thousand miles away. But after about three hours’ driving, before they had even crossed the state line out of Nebraska, they turned back and headed for Lincoln once more. Starkweather was tired, had a streaming cold and the car was not running too well. The idea was to rest up in one of the wealthy mansions in the country club area of town, steal a new car and make a run for it again the following night. Starkweather knew the area well. He had collected rubbish there and deeply resented its affluent residents. It was 3.30 a.m. when they arrived back in Lincoln. They parked up in the secluded street and took a nap. When they awoke in the early morning they began cruising the streets, hunting for a suitable property. Starkweather pointed out several possibilities before they settled on the five-bedroomed mansion belonging to millionaire industrialist C. Lauer Ward. It was just down the street from the garage Starkweather rented.