Book Review: Starkweather

The 1958 killing spree by Charles Starkweather and his fourteen-year-old girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate ushered in our modern era of senseless mass murder. That, at least, is a premise of Starkweather: The Untold Story of the Killing Spree That Changed America, by Harry N. MacLean.

Whether MacLean makes his case, and how much of the story really is untold, is debatable. But I did learn a few things from reading this book. Before, I had only a vague sense of these horrific crimes. I’d thought that 19-year-old Starkweather killed a few people in Lincoln, Nebraska for no apparent reason, and then he and his young accomplice fled by car across several states, murdering others along the way: a hitchhiker here, a guy with a flat tire there, and so on.

What really happened is that one day, Starkweather murdered Fugate’s mother, stepfather, and two-year-old sister. Then he and Caril hid out at the Fugate home for the next five or six days, before fleeing on their cross-country rampage. Only then did Starkweather murder seven more people, most of them in the Lincoln vicinity. Both were in custody within a few days.

The real question is: did Caril Ann Fugate participate in the murders? She insisted she did not – that she hadn’t even known her family was dead. But the legal system didn’t believe her, and gave her a life sentence. Starkweather got the electric chair.

In spite of this book’s title, Starkweather is at least as much about Fugate, and perhaps moreso. She always maintained her innocence, and MacLean presents evidence for and against her. Though she was never exonerated, Caril Ann Fugate was released from prison after serving eighteen years. As of this writing she is still alive, but in declining health, living in a nursing home.

There are flaws in Starkweather, clumsy ones. This susprised me, because according to a jacket blurb, Harry MacLean is a prizewinning writer of True Crime stuff.

In spite of this credential he fails to explain certain things, and the book suffers for it. During that five to six day period between the first murders and leaving on their cross-country spree, for example, Starkweather and Fugate stayed at the Fugate home (the initial victims stashed in a shed behind the house). On several occasions people came knocking on the door, but Fugate got rid of them, explaining everyone inside was ill.

Among those calling were two cops. They left with the crimes undetected – but why were they there in the first place? MacLean doesn’t explain. Even in the context of a more innocent time, would two experienced cops really buy an “everyone is sick” story?

The book also throws a lot of names and details at the reader, but there is no index. It is hard, in places, to keep everything straight. An index would be invaluable. The same is true of citations: there are no end notes, no footnotes, no page references – only a brief Author’s Note at the end.

If there is anything missing from MacLean’s telling of the crime saga itself, it is motive. But it seems to be beyond us, at this late date. Starkweather gave conflicting accounts of why he did what he did, then went to the chair. Surviving records provide nothing conclusive.

All that said, readers interested in a detailed account of this horrific murder case will not be disappointed by Starkweather.