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Caril Ann Fugate

Caril Ann Fugate (born 1944) was the fourteen-year-old accomplice of spree killer Charles Starkweather.

She lived in Lincoln, Nebraska, and in 1957 she started dating Charles Starkweather. He was four-years her senior, a school dropout and garbage collector. On January 21, 1958, Fugate came home to find that Starkweather had shot her parents to death during a row. Caril Fugate went to make some lunch whilst Starkweather choked to death her baby sister.

After seven-days, relatives became suspicious as to why Starkweather and Fugate were turning away all visitors, so Starkweather and Fugate left the house and fled, driving across Nebraska on a spree of robbery and murder that claimed seven more lives before they were arrested.

Starkweather was executed in the electric chair in 1959. He insisted that, although he had personally dispatched all the victims, Caril was a culpable as he was and that when he went to the chair she should be sitting on his lap.

Caril Fugate was convicted of her role in the murder spree and sentenced to life-imprisonment, the jury not believing her claims to have been held hostage by Starkweather, given that she had plenty of opportunities to escape.

She was a model prisoner and was paroled in 1977 after serving eighteen-years. She now lives in Michigan and works as a medical assistant. She had never married and reportedly refuses to discuss the case.

Last updated: 09-03-2005 18:37:12