Original subtitles

[Film reel ticks]

Upbeat music

[woman vo] This is a story that everybody has heard before.

The loner type from the wrong side of the tracks...

Meets a younger girl.

He's the type of guy she's been warned about.

But she lets him get just close enough...

That they get stuck together.

It's first love...

And forbidden love.

But sometimes, when two people mix...

The alchemy isn't right.

There's a reaction.

An explosion.

[Gunshots]

So, their story is told over and over...

And it's made pretty or ugly...

[Gunshots]

Evil or tragic.

But it's never true.

Because the truth is far too complicated.

And so, whatever is on a screen will be the truth.

[TV flicks on]

This is the most terrible thing that's ever happened in Lincoln.

Her hands were bound in front of her,

and there was a gag on her mouth.

[Man vo] It was the first of its kind,

these rebels without a cause killing people for no reason.

You could feel the fear, just on the TV itself.

[Man vo] Charley starkweather saw himself as James Dean.

I think he's crazy.

[Man vo] Caril always wanted to be somebody.

She wanted to be a star.

[Woman vo] I thought, "oh, wow, is she a hard-lookin' broad..."

[Man vo] I see, really, a scared little girl.

[Man vo] The only two people who witnessed what went on were

Charles starkweather and caril fugate,

and everybody else is dead.

[TV flicks off]

[Man vo] Wowt 6 news.

The teenager who many believed helped Charles starkweather

during his Nebraska killing spree in the 1950s asks the

state for a pardon.

Today, the 76-year-old asked for a pardon.

A 1950s killing spree that shook the city of Lincoln at the

time was revisited today, as caril Ann fugate...

[Man vo] Caril Ann fugate...

[Man vo] Caril Ann fugate...

[Man vo] Asked for a pardon for her role in the crimes.

Now, 60 years ago, fugate accompanied her boyfriend,

Charley starkweather, on one of the nation's most notorious

killing sprees.

[Man vo] Fugate said that she was a hostage,

not an accomplice to starkweather.

Lord knows that i'm innocent and I know it.

The people who are involved in it know it.

There's been books, movies, and songs...

All towards this case.

We can't come in and alleviate the burden that she feels for

this case.

[Man vo] Caril fugate, vowing to clear her name for 60 years.

[Man vo] With nobody really knowing her role in the crimes.

[Dead air]

Ominous music

December 1st, 1957, a body is found along the side of the

highway, and it turns out to be the body of a gas station

attendant, a young man named Robert colvert.

They had first thought that he maybe had been hit by a car or

something, and it turned out he had been shot.

[Man vo] The body of 21-year-old Robert g colvert,

an attendant at Mitchell's service station on the outskirts

of Lincoln, was found in the middle of a lonely,

rural road near the city.

It was discovered by a farmer en route to town shortly before

dawn.

The murderer took mr colvert out and killed him and left him

in a ditch, and stole a few dollars.

I think it was, like, $20 or something;

it was a very little amount of money.

And that was apparently the motive was the money.

Any murders were just maybe one a year,

if that.

It was so out of the normal experience of people,

they just couldn't imagine that something like that would happen

here.

[Man vo] Police say the investigation will be continued

by a team of detectives, but at the moment,

there are no clues to the killer or killers.

[Man vo] There was the garbage man.

He would hang around that filling station where colvert

worked quite often.

That was Charles starkweather.

[Man vo] Charles starkweather.

[Woman vo] Charles starkweather.

[Man vo] Several people had pointed out,

"hey, there's this guy going around spending change.

It's the exact same guy who had been sleeping a lot of nights

outside the gas station."

Even his own family is going to the police and saying,

"you need to check this out."

You know, there were plenty of reasons to be suspicious of this

guy, and yet, they hadn't even followed it up at all.

[Man vo] Charles starkweather had a difficult upbringing.

He was a product of the depression,

one of seven children.

He had a birth defect that caused him to have bow legs,

and coupled with a speech impediment,

fiery red hair, and being only 5'5,

it was very, very difficult.

[Man vo] Charley was a garbage man,

high school dropout, and he had an IQ of,

like, 70.

He had all these issues.

Back in Nebraska in 1958, people weren't paying attention to

sociology or anything like that.

They just wrote him off as, you know,

"he's kind of a bad egg and that's that."

[Man vo] Lincoln was very peaceful coming into that.

It was assumed that the killer was not a lincolnite.

Most people assumed it was somebody that had come and gone,

the intruder in the night or the guy that was passing through.

It kind of went out of the minds of people,

and we went right back to being what somebody called "the soda

fountain era."

Lollipop, lollipop, oh, lolli-lolli-lolli

lollipop, lollipop, oh, lolli-lolli-lolli...

Well, Lincoln, a city of about 100,000 people.

A friend of mine says, "Lincoln, Nebraska: Two degrees of

separation," 'cause everybody knows everybody else.

[Man vo] Crime was almost nonexistent.

The police force had one night patrolman for the entire city.

No one gave any thought to it.

[Man vo] People didn't lock their doors.

People weren't concerned, weren't worried about different

things.

A lollipop

ominous music

there's no question Charley's world

revolved around this young girl.

Caril was the only person that cared about him,

the only sign of love in his life.

Charles starkweather and caril fugate,

their relationship was boyfriend and girlfriend.

She actually thought he was cool,

and nobody else really thought he was cool.

[Chuckles]

She had known him through her sister,

so she trusted him a little bit more.

He loved caril, caril loved him.

He hated his red hair because people used to make fun of him,

so she pulled one of his red hairs out of his head,

and she said, "I love every hair on your head."

She was in kind of a poor home and things here in Lincoln.

I mean, they weren't well-to-do or anything.

[Man vo] She came from... People would say... the wrong

side of the tracks.

Her folks were divorced.

[Woman vo] Before her mother left her biological father and

remarried, there was a lot of domestic turmoil and strife.

So she just wanted to get out...

And find a better life, and that's probably what

he promised her.

[Man vo] She thought she was top-of-the-world,

you know?

Because somebody older paid attention to her.

"I'm better than everybody 'cause I got an older man that's

really lookin' out, I get to ride around in his car and all

this stuff."

She thought she was big shit!

[Woman vo] Her mother really didn't like him.

She just didn't like his personality and didn't think he

was right for caril.

[Man vo] They thought he was worthless, no good.

They told him that quite often.

They wanted him to stay away from caril and that eventually,

he would get her pregnant, if she wasn't pregnant already.

[Woman vo] This was taken in '57.

My mother said that this was the last time she's seen Betty Jean

and velda.

Eerie music

January 21st, 1958, which is about a month or so after the

colvert killing...

Velda bartlett, caril Ann fugate's natural mother,

wanted Charles starkweather to bring some used rugs over

to the house.

[Scrawling]

[Charles on recording] I went down to the bartlett home

about 1:30 in the afternoon, and me and velda got into a fight

over caril.

See, they'd been wantin' caril to break up with me so she could

go with somebody else.

And she said for me not to come down anymore to see caril.

And I said somethin' to velda that she did not like,

and she hit me about three times.

Velda got me so mad, I hit her back.

And she let out a loud cry, and I ran into the other room and

put a bullet in the gun.

Suspenseful music

Charley and caril kind of settle in for the next few days.

To have these two teenagers playing house

for a few days and thinking through what they wanna

do next.

[Dog whining]

[Knocking]

You have several people showing up... you have a milkman,

you have neighbors...

And they are all greeted at the door by caril.

[Man vo] They were turned away every time by caril.

They family was sick, you couldn't come in to visit them,

please go, don't come back.

[Man vo] Caril puts a note in the door that says,

"everybody's sick with the flu.

Go away."

[Woman vo] Caril's grandmother went to the police station...

And said, "something's very, very wrong in that house."

[Siren]

[Man vo] They knocked on the door,

and caril came to the door and said no,

they couldn't come in, to stay away.

[Man vo] These police officers took caril's word that

everything was just fine and left.

Caril's grandmother said, "okay,

but the next time I come, there'll be a search warrant and

we're gonna get down to the bottom of this."

[Dead air]

Dark dramatic music

[Charles on recording] Caril's grandmother said she was gonna

get the cops, so I told caril to come.

We walk up to my car, change the flat tire,

got gas, and headed for Bennet, Nebraska.

Now, everybody told the police, "something's wrong,

go check it out,"

and the police were like, "ehh."

Until finally, Charley's own brother had to crawl in,

go around, and look.

Eerie music

dramatic music

and then found the bodies.

[Siren]

[Man vo] We interrupt this program with an emergency

news bulletin.

Lincoln police are at the scene of a gruesome triple slaying in

the city's belmont section.

The police found three bodies hidden in out buildings behind

the home.

A relative has identified the victims as Marion bartlett,

his wife, velda barlett, and the couple's three-year-old

daughter, Betty Jean barlett.

Autopsies will be performed, but police say it appears the bodies

have been there for approximately one week.

[Charles on recording] At the time me and velda got into this

fight, I had my brother's gun with me.

Marion came in.

He was just about ready to come down with the hammer,

so I let him have it.

[Gunshot]

[Man vo] Charles gets the gun and shoots mr bartlett.

[Gunshot]

Turns the gun also on mrs barlett.

The child, Betty Jean, is yelling...

[Child shrieks]

Loud enough that the neighbors can hear.

Charles takes the butt of his rifle and strikes this child.

[Woman vo] People were devastated by it,

they were appalled by it.

It was something that had never happened in Lincoln before.

It was, pfft, you know, this unprecedented thing!

It was a pretty horrific scene.

He drug velda bartlett out to the out house,

stuck her as far as he could down into the toilet,

put Betty Jean into a cardboard box,

set her on the toilet seat...

And then drug Marion bartlett out to the chicken Coop.

Ominous music

On the day after the bartletts' murders,

they actually mentioned the colvert murder in the newspaper,

as it's kinda similar.

The reporting was actually starting to question the role of

the police.

The whole situation at the bartlett house was a total

embarrassment for the police.

A police officer came out there, there was suspicious activity.

Up to 14 people went to that house,

knocked on the door, some more than once.

They were turned away.

The police, on two separate occasions,

went to the house.

[Man vo] Police say that part of the reason they didn't

respond or take the complaints seriously is that this was a

home where there had been calls more than once.

It was obviously just a shrug that something else is going on

at the bartlett house.

Now, if that had been people from the other side of the

tracks... the rich side of the town...

Might the investigation been different?

Charley was immediately suspected at the beginning,

'cause they were actually in that house for six days.

People were only seeing caril, and she was acting all weird.

So when these bodies are found, it's immediately...

"Charley probably did this" and "where's caril Ann fugate?"

[Man on radio] Police are seeking 19-year-old Charles r

starkweather of Lincoln and the bartletts' daughter,

caril Ann.

Starkweather is believed to be driving his 1949 black Ford with

a missing radiator grill.

Anyone spotting this car is asked to contact the Lincoln

police department or your nearest law enforcement agency.

Do not approach the suspect.

Ominous music

[woman vo] Charley was...

[Sighs]

Oh, I wanna say a weird kid.

[Man vo] He really wanted to emulate James Dean.

He started combing his hair in that fashion,

acting like that character.

All right, you asked for it and you got it.

What is it?

Trouble.

He was quick to anger, he would take something on the playground

and just literally [chuckling] beating another kid to a pulp

and rubbing his face in the gravel until he was bleeding

all over his face, and then just walking away.

[Man vo] He was a violent cat.

He was filled with rage.

I mean, he hated everything.

The only thing Charley starkweather liked was caril

fugate and guns.

There's a romantic true crime, like a Bonnie and Clyde.

The romance was at the key of it.

If it wasn't for caril's parents saying "Charley,

you can't see our daughter anymore."..

There wouldn't have been, you know,

the starkweather murder spree.

Deep ominous music

at the bartlett house, it's not until four o'clock in the

afternoon that the bodies are found,

and by then, Charles and caril are already down in Bennet.

It's January, there's snow, dirt roads,

their car gets stuck.

[Charles on recording] We drove into the drive and got stuck in

hard.

And we worked about two hours, couldn't get it out.

Then, we walk up to meyer's farmhouse.

I told him I wanted him to pull me out,

and he said, "okay."

He walked into the house.

[Indistinct radio chatter]

[Man on radio] We have reports of that vehicle matching the

description of Charles starkweather's car.

[Tires screeching and siren]

[Man on radio] Nebraska highway patrolmen and sheriff's deputies

have surrounded at Bennet farmhouse of 79-year-old August

meyer, where 19-year-old Charles starkweather and his female

companion, caril Ann fugate, are believed inside.

[Man vo] Because August meyer hadn't come and Charley is

missing, they came to the conclusion "well,

Charley must be in there."

Threw gas bombs and slowly went up to it,

and crashed into the house.

[Glass shattering]

And then found August meyer's body dead there.

Been discovered near his house outside Bennet,

Nebraska, 16 miles from Lincoln.

Authorities say the victim, August meyer,

was killed by a shotgun blast.

And then again, it was like,

"okay, where's caril's body?"

'Cause they just kept expecting to find her,

you know, dead somewhere.

Ominous music

[man vo] If you look at starkweather's family,

they're not really all that abnormal!

They had a number of kids; They didn't do this.

I think the family did the best they could with all of their

children, and the only one that turned out really abnormal

was starkweather.

The other kids turned out okay, basically.

[Glitching static]

Do you think something just might have snapped?

I think something may have snapped.

After the...

The first three, I would...

I didn't think much about them.

But after that, then I thought that he had gone.

Was he... as pictured in many of the news reports... a wild...

No.

He liked a good fight, but that's...

Normal with boys, you know, to get out and wrestle and...

But he took care of himself?

He would take care of himself; He could take it and he could

dish it out.

[Film reel clicking]

Late 1950s america was seemingly a very tranquil place,

but also, a lot of parents were concerned about rock 'n' roll

music and, you know, Elvis and...

In retrospect, it all seems benign,

but it was starting to happen then.

Moody ambient music

I believe with all of my heart that it is a contributing factor

to our juvenile delinquency of today.

I 100 percent believe it.

[Cheering]

Why I believe that is because I know how it feels

when you say it.

I know what it does to you.

And I know of the evil feeling that you feel when you sing it.

For a lot of people, there was a sense that...

Things are going bad.

I would say, where "we are pure and innocent and virginal"

became more part of a kind of performative American story we

told about ourselves and probably because...

We saw the ending coming.

And so when this little monster appears... this little punk,

bowlegged red-headed peckerwood appears

and kills people for no reason... yikes!

Tense ambient music

[woman vo] He gave that town a nervous breakdown.

I first heard about it on the television.

You know, that there was this murder.

[Man vo] This was the first time that somebody who was

accused of murder was being broadcast on television.

The press was all over the place.

The local news station, they literally had just gotten their

cameras in when this murder spree began.

At the time when they first started learning about these

murders happening, the crew was looking over their

newly-acquired cameras and going,

"okay, how do we use this thing?"

You see it on the news and they're going...

"We're all gonna die!"

You know, "they can't catch this guy!

What are we gonna do?!"

Businesses closed,

people went and took their kids out of school.

[Woman vo] It was very scary.

Starkweather was a garbage man,

and he was my mom and dad's garbage man.

My dad had this '53 oldsmobile that he liked really well.

Charles, he would come and talk to my dad about it when he'd be

on the route, so my dad, that was another reason he was kind

of afraid; He was afraid he'd come there and get that car.

I remember him and my grandfather getting their

guns out.

I'd never seen anybody do that before.

Nebraska was genuinely afraid... that is not overblown,

that is not exaggerated...

Because the police are so far behind

in picking up on this that everything that they're

learning is a couple hours... Even a full day... behind the

killings that are taking place.

They were processing crime scenes while a whole 'nother set

of bodies were being discovered.

[Charles on recording] I was going to stay overnight.

I pulled into this field.

I got a feeling something was wrong so...

I was going to get out.

I got stuck in.

We walk about four miles there.

As they're walking, a car pulls up,

and inside are Bobby Jensen and Carol king.

[Man vo] Jensen and king represented the average high

school couple that were in love, going together,

and probably on the road to getting married.

[Charles on recording] And these two people came in a

'54 Ford blue.

I told 'em to drive.

It turned out that the most popular couple in Bennet,

Nebraska had just picked up the two most wanted criminals in the

state of Nebraska.

Charley and caril get in the car.

They ask Bobby Jensen to turn over his wallet.

And at some point, starkweather pulled the gun on him...

[Hammer clicks]

And drove them to that cave.

Romantic '50s pop music

[Charles on recording] And I said for them to get out

of the car.

And they walk up to the hole, as I said,

and begin to walk away.

Now, he come after me.

I didn't wanna shoot him or her.

Caril was listening to the car radio.

[Gunshots]

[Male reporter vo] Later that day,

searchers peered into an abandoned storm cellar and

turned away sickened.

The bodies of king and Jensen were found riddled with bullets.

Here was this fresh-faced, innocent,

good-hearted, good samaritan kids, right?

All-American, apple pie...

Accosted, at random, by their dark evil twins.

[Man vo] Those pictures are extremely graphic.

They're just...

Breathtakingly gruesome.

A lot of people were just aghast.

Ominous ambient music

[man vo] I have never seen the photos.

I have never even wanted to read the descriptions of 'em.

[Man vo] Charley did some gruesome,

gruesome things to Carol king.

[Charles on recording] I pulled her jeans down,

but I didn't screw her.

I tried to but...

I couldn't get to the point; It was colder than hell that night.

And sitting there looking at her...

I left her there...

And left.

To get a bit graphic here, he took a knife... after shooting

her, he took a knife and he stabbed her up the vagina

multiple times, to the point where it went halfway up her

torso.

[Woman vo] They had found debris and sticks and rocks

and dirt that he had inserted into her vagina.

That was just too horrific to even contemplate

back then in the '50s.

It was so out of the normal experience of people that you

just couldn't imagine that something like that would happen

here in Lincoln.

[Man vo] There was a certain "you can't make it up" fictional

quality to it.

It's the nice teenagers who were trying to help out who get raped

and killed by the bad teenagers.

[Applause]

[Man vo] Friends...

Many people today do not really understand our times because

they're too close to them.

Eerie ambient music

do we understand the signs of our times?

What do they portend?

To know, we have to have a standard.

And the outside standard...

Is god's way of judging things.

And I wonder what he thinks of our times.

I think he would weep at our times.

[Clears throat]

[Guy vo] I just can't believe he did it.

[Male interviewer vo] You can't believe he did it?

[Guy vo] Not as gruesome as it was, no.

[Male interviewer vo] I think you said something about Charley

acting differently after, uh, he met caril.

Yes, he was different.

[Male interviewer] Changed boy.

Yeah, just a little bit changed.

Sparse eerie music

caril...

Just did not get along with... with people.

That's just the way she was.

She looked like an angry young lady...

And couldn't care less about anybody else.

She looked like she'd bit through a lot,

and I thought, "oh, wow, is she a hard-lookin' broad..."

[Man vo] Caril always wanted to be...

She wanted to be a star.

She wanted to be somebody.

[Woman vo] She wanted to get away from her home.

He was gonna take her away from that,

and that's why she did what she did.

Tense music

[siren]

[Man vo] When they're leaving Lincoln,

they stop at Tate's conoco station 'cause he wants to have

his tired fixed.

While he's there in the service station,

he sends her across to bricky's caf and told her to buy some

hamburgers.

The waitress that waited on her was named juanita bell.

[Juanita on recording] She was coming toward the caf

rather rapidly.

As I gave her the hamburgers, Charley gave her a $10 bill...

[Thunder rumbling]

Tense ambient music

in Nebraska, you get these gigantic thunderstorms that

stretch out for miles.

So when I was a little kid, my parents would help me feel a

little better about it by telling me,

"count from when you see the light to when you hear the

thunder and that's how you'll know it's getting further and

further away."

You would see the light, then it'd be like,

"okay, count with me.

One, two, three."

[Thunder rumbles]

[Woman vo] [Whispering] Shh, it's okay.

Shh.

And then, it's like, "okay, wait for the next one,"

and then the light, and then "one,

two, three, four."

[Thunder rumbles]

[Woman vo] [Whispering] It's going away.

"See?

It's going further and further away.

You're safe."

This crime spree had been like these thunderstorms;

it had been getting further and further away.

People thought, "oh, it's going out into the countryside.

Now, it's getting to Bennet.

Now, it's going beyond that.

It's no longer something we have to deal with."

And then, it hits the wards and it's just like...

The lightning storm has crashed right into the middle of them.

[Thunder rumbles]

The wards lived in a country club neighborhood of Lincoln.

They were well-to-do.

[Man vo] He was an executive of the steel company.

[Man vo] The wards were a very prominent family,

and they were tied into all of the very prominent families of

Lincoln, very well-known, very well-liked.

He was very big and very powerful,

making a lot of money.

He had that big, huge packard, which very few people had then.

I knew Mike ward, their only son.

But the thing of it was the last year of school,

he went to private school.

So when this all happened, he thank god... wasn't home.

Tense ambient music

[man vo] So after killing Robert Jensen and Carol king,

instead of going further out of town,

they went back into Lincoln.

It was January in Nebraska, it's freezing cold outside.

Cars at that time were not exactly known for their good

heating.

So at a certain point, Charley was just like,

"well, we have to hole out somewhere."

So he drove along this winding road right by the country club

where his garbage route often was.

I picked out the one on 24.

There were two persons there: A lady and her maid.

[Chuckles]

They about had dropped dead when I said I was gonna

spend the day there.

They said they would be nice...

And nothing would happen like calling the cops.

They were...

'Til about two that afternoon.

The one lady was upstairs.

Was there about 20 minutes.

I went on up to see her.

My grandmother was in her nightgown.

She went upstairs, asked if she could change her clothes.

Starkweather said she took a shot at him...

But no bullet was ever found.

And then, he stabbed mrs ward.

[Woman vo] He told caril to clean the knife,

and she did so.

Caril stood at the dining room window waiting for my

grandfather to come home from work.

He had stopped by the governor's office and visited

with the governor.

[Woman vo] And when she saw the headlights,

she yelled, "here he comes."

So when my grandfather came in, he met starkweather and knew

exactly who he was facing, because he had just been talking

about him with the governor.

[Siren]

[Male reporter] Police chief Eugene masters.

Well, uh, chief masters, can you tell us what you've

found inside this ward home?

I found the bodies of mr and mrs ward and the maid,

uh, Lillian fencl.

Uh, mr ward's body was laying inside the front door,

and mrs ward's body was, uh, between,

uh, the beds in the south bedroom on the second floor.

Uh, she was... her arms were bound behind her and she had a

gag on her mouth.

And the maid, uh, Lillian fencl, was in the,

uh... in the, uh, northeast bedroom.

Her hands were bound in front of her and her feet were bound,

and there was a gag on her mouth.

Dark ambient music

[man vo] Both Clara ward and her maid her stabbed multiple

times in very personal ways, and what I mean by that is not just

simply stab-to-kill but in very private areas,

in very aggressive ways.

[Woman vo] It was horrifying; He kept stabbing her over and

over again.

[Man vo] When you look at what he did,

he engaged in what's called "overkill."

It's far beyond what is necessary to commit the crime...

To kill the person.

Overkill shows an enormous amount of inner rage.

The level of anger that starkweather had goes right to

the core of his personality.

He was terribly, terribly jealous of anybody who was

important or successful.

And he said something interesting;

he said, "when you're dead, everybody's equal."

That's how he saw it in his mind: "If I kill this guy...

Look at him there; I'm the one who killed him.

He's not such a big-shot, look at me."

[Woman vo] Starkweather would have these dreams of death.

And death was nice, death was good,

death was nothing to fear.

[Thunder rumbles]

[Charles on recording] She comes in a dream.

She told me, "don't be in no hurry.

I won't let you forget."

One time, death comes to me with a coffin and told me to get in.

Then, the coffin sailed away with me in it 'til it come to a

big fire.

The coffin sorta... melted.

And I was down there on the street,

with great flames of fire on each side of me.

But it wasn't hot, like i'd always thought hell would be.

[Thunder crashes]

It was more like...

Beautiful flames of gold.

And I woke up...

To see her standing there in the window.

And all I could see would be the part from... from the waist down.

It was kinda half human and half bear,

only it didn't have no neck, it didn't have no arms or no ears.

It was close and loud at first,

but it got further and further away.

The sound became...

Mournful and sad 'til I couldn't hear it no more.

[Thunder crashes]

For about a minute or two, I couldn't move my arms or legs.

As I sat there in silence...

I said to myself that some day, I'd pay them all back.

I wanted revenge upon the world...

And this human race.

Tense ambient music

indications inside the ward home would cause us to believe

that the girl is still with, uh, starkweather,

or at least was still with him in the ward home.

Uh, a jacket with the letters of Bennet... presumably Bennet high

school and presumably a girl's jacket were found inside the

house, and there are other indications.

Law enforcement was initially searching for Charley and

expecting to find caril's body; They thought that she was

probably one of his victims, that she was probably murdered

as well.

In the ward home, Elmer scheele found Carol king's jacket left

behind.

Meanwhile, Clara ward's jacket went missing.

And from that moment forward, it went from being an investigation

of "what has Charley done?"

And looking for her body to believing she was his

accomplice.

[Male reporter] What is the next phase of the investigation

now, mr scheele?

Uh, autopsies are going to be performed immediately on the

three bodies, which we hope will definitely establish,

uh, information that will assist us in the investigation.

When you look at the case, I think it's important to point

out two men that were on it from day one:

Sheriff merle karnopp...

And Lancaster county attorney Elmer scheele.

Typically, people think of a prosecutor,

they think only of the person who's in charge of the trial,

but he got involved much earlier and was involved in the

investigation.

[Man vo] Because of the murder of the wards,

the police were under mounting pressure.

[Chuckling] No society will allow the equivalent of

poor people to go to the rich side of town and kill the most

prominent citizens, especially one that was having lunch with

the governor that day.

One can only imagine the governor and everybody was

saying, "why are you not getting these guys?

You're not doing your job."

Lancaster county officials have just discovered the ninth body,

and sheriff merle karnopp, what have you just done, sir?

Mayor Martin and I have made an appeal for all adjoining

counties, including Omaha, to send all available help they can

to Lincoln.

We want to cover Lincoln block to block.

Energetic tense music

[man vo] When that happened, the whole city just kind of went

into a frenzy.

The schools were shut down.

The governor called out the national guard.

Radio and television were blasting out all day long

bulletin, bulletin, bulletin.

People were in severe lockdown I mean real lockdown... to

the point where you moved furniture in front of the doors.

That kind of a criminal murderer,

who doesn't follow any sort of a method,

is really the most difficult to do it.

I mean, who would have thought they'd go from her family in one

part of town, then kill a farmer who was in his 70s,

then a couple of young teenagers,

then come back to Lincoln and kill one of the most prominent

families in Lincoln?

And then, then they just disappear.

[White noise glitching]

Dark tense music

[man vo] He had stolen lauer ward's big packard.

They had travelled clear across the state of Nebraska and well

into Wyoming.

For the ward vehicle that they were in,

and so Charley decided, "okay, we're gonna switch cars."

He sees somebody stopped along the side of the road.

This is merle collison.

[Man vo] And this guy refused to open the door.

So he shot the man through the window.

[Gunshot]

Sides.

[Man vo] Caril's still in the packard.

She sees a police car, but the police car can't see what's

happening in the middle of the road.

[Man vo] So that's when she got out of the car and ran to the

deputy's car.

[Man vo] And when she jumped into the police officer's car,

the police officer had no idea what she was saying,

he just heard this girl completely frantic,

couldn't tell what she was saying,

finally just understood the word "starkweather!"

And she pointed towards him.

[Man vo] Charley sees that a police officer sees him,

and so he runs back to the packard,

jumps in, and drives off.

We met him, uh, five miles west of town,

and we turned around and chased him back through town,

caught him three miles east.

[Man vo] The officer shot through the back window and

nicked starkweather in the ear.

Starkweather started bleeding.

That apparently scared starkweather enough that

starkweather pulled over and stopped and got out.

[Male reporter] Chief, at the time that he stopped and you

pulled up to the car, what did you fellows say to him?

Well, we stopped about 100 yards back of him,

told him to get out with his hands up.

He stepped out and then leaned back in,

like maybe he was reaching for a gun or something.

So I dropped a shot at his feet then.

He then put his hands back up, got about halfway up to us,

and then started tucking his shirt tail in,

so we dropped another shot at his feet.

[Gunshot]

He just stood there and glared at us,

so we dropped another shot at his feet.

[Gunshot]

He then laid down and put his hands behind his back,

and we handcuffed him and put him in the police car.

[Film reel ticking]

[Male reporter] What's been his attitude since his arrest?

Well, he's been very quiet; He won't answer no questions.

[Male reporter] Does he seem like he's a mean teenager or a

mean fellow?

Well, he's a sullen type.

I wouldn't say that he was mean;

he didn't show that as soon as...

He didn't have the best of it.

[Male reporter] Okay.

[Male reporter] Caril, right here, right here!

[Overlapping shouting]

[Male reporter vo] Outlaw Charles starkweather and his

girlfriend caril fugate are both in custody,

riding separately in a convoy of cars bound for Lincoln.

Sheriff merle karnopp will ensure starkweather cannot

escape justice, while sheriff karnopp's wife gertrude will

escort fugate.

[Woman on recording] Gertrude drove her home with caril.

Caril's family was a terrible family.

Her parents were divorced, and then caril just hated her

stepdad and the little girl.

And gertrude said that she was the fire and Charley was the

match.

When caril got in the car, she was wearing mrs ward's coat.

[Camera snaps]

And she looked over at gertrude and said,

"isn't this a nice coat?"

Gertrude just...

"Oh my god!"

You know?

"That was somebody I knew who's been killed,

and this is her coat!"

[Film reel ticking]

This young girl who had just watched her mother,

her little half-sister, the ward family,

all these people who had been really slaughtered...

And there was no emotion there at all,

just sort of...

You know, phased out.

[Man vo] The nature of our judgment could be something

like this.

We've fissioned out minds; We called it "psychoanalysis."

Instead of using synthesis to bring our minds to unity,

to bring them to god, we've torn them down,

reduced ourselves to the beast, to ids,

to libidos, and to subliminal urgings that equate us with the

animals of the fields.

Ominous theme music

[male reporter vo] In the cattle town of Douglas,

Wyoming, end of the trail for a smart-Alec gunman,

a three-day spree until Charles starkweather,

19, landed behind prison bars.

With him on his 600-mile reign of terror was caril fugate.

[Male reporter vo] The sullen teenager... with a certain

degree of pride... Confessed to the murders.

[Male reporter vo] Nebraska is extraditing the pair.

Suspenseful ambient music

[woman vo] This was the biggest thing that ever hit

Lincoln, Nebraska.

It was just a circus, and it was on TV every night.

The press were able to get this onto the people's minds that

it's the new Bonnie and Clyde.

Starkweather looked bad.

We seem him walking around with the sheriffs on each side of

him, has a cigarette dangling out of his mouth and a black

leather coat.

I don't think he looked too remorseful at all!

[Woman vo] He was this celebrity.

He was quoted as saying, "i always wanted to be an outlaw."

He loved that; He loved the attention.

I think he truly felt like the world was supposed to know the

name "Charley starkweather," and on some level,

he kind of realized, "the only way I'm gonna get the fame that

I deserve is gonna come in the form of infamy."

Eerie ambient music

Charles starkweather was one the early patient zero versions

of "yeah, I'm going to express my rage and kill a bunch of

people, and it'll make me famous.

People will now understand my story;

they're gonna read my story."

And it's one of those reasons that this set of crimes and

these characters stayed in the national memory.

[Woman vo] Americans love outlaws;

we always have.

We love guns.

We love sexuality, romance.

And we love people who just say "fuck you" to the establishment.

[Gunshots]

[Woman vo] It's an American disease.

We love sex and we love violence and we love young forbidden

romance.

It was a dramatic story, but it wasn't one of those arcs.

You know, like "oh, they were lovers and they were on the run,

and he killed everything in sight because he just loved her

so much."

It was none of those things, and so it doesn't fit into our myth,

and it needs to be undressed and torn apart.

[White noise glitching]

[Woman vo] People can drag you in to the point where you didn't

know that they were evil when you first met them.

And it's scary; It's very scary.

I think that's what it was with starkweather and caril.

[Man vo] There's a remarkable photo of caril sitting on a cot

in the county jail.

Her expression is still stone-cold and she looks angry.

But in that photo, she looks like a teenager.

And she just looks tiny.

You could read it 10 different ways.

You can read it as guilty or you can read it as innocent.

But the photo itself: To see this little girl in this big

jail cell, and she's all alone...

And it's over for her.

[Man vo] The interesting thing about caril was her age.

She'd just turned 14.

Charley was 18.

That's a huge gap.

She was a eighth grader at whittier junior high

at the time.

It was a pretty difficult situation to be in if you're a

14-year-old... to be on a killing spree with your

boyfriend.

So the question becomes "how much did he just pull her along,

and she just did, you know, his bidding because he was older?"

So first thing, when they take her into custody...

The first thing she says is "can I call my parents?

Where are my parents?"

Which is kind of a curious thing to say.

Ominous music

[man vo] Wasn't she there?

Didn't she know that they were dead?

Wasn't she involved in killing them?

[Woman vo] How could she not not have known her parents

were dead?

I could not imagine being holed up in a house for five days

not knowing that your parents are dead.

And I thought, "this isn't right."

It just didn't stack up from what I knew about...

Girls.

How culture has taught us to obey and agree and just go along

with stuff.

It felt like there was something wrong with the story.

[Metronome ticking]

[Sniffles]

[Weeps]

Eerie ambient music