Two Officers Down in El Segundo: The Cold Case Murders of Richard Phillips and Milton Curtis

 

Fingerprints and a Signature Crack a 45 Year Old Case 

It was Sunday night, July 21, 1957 in Hawthorne, California.  Bob Dewar was 17 years old and had attended a summer party with three friends earlier in the evening.  It was before midnight when the quartet, consisting of two boys and two girls, decided to make a stop at the local Lover's Lane on Van Ness Avenue.  After parking, Bob rolled the window of the 1949 Ford down - and that's when the barrel of a gun poked through.  A voice told him "This is a robbery."  Bob initially thought someone was pulling a prank on them but it was all too real.   All four handed over watches, jewelry and cash.

Armed with a flashlight, the robber had also brought surgical tape which he used to cover the teenagers' eyes, before forcing them to undress and then binding them.  One of the girls, only 15 years old, was raped by the man after he moved from the driver's side of the car to the passenger side.

Bob later remembered that the man asked them to get out of the car and then said, "I think I'm going to kill you.  I want you to march out into the field."  The girls were crying and Bob figured it was the end of the line for all of them - when they heard the car door close and the Ford take off.  The four were left, bound and taped, naked and helpless but alive.  Officers Richard Phillips and Milton Curtis would not be so lucky.

The Crimes

El Segundo in the 1950s was a quiet, safe and well-to-do suburb of Los Angeles.  The night shift usually consisted of traffic stops of impatient or intoxicated people.  Officers Richard Phillips and Milton Curtis were working the graveyard shift, sitting in their patrol car at the intersection of Sepulveda and Rosecrans.  Phillips was 28 years old, a veteran who served in the Air Force during the Korean War and was known to be an excellent marksman.  He had been with the department for nearly three years.  He was married and had three children.  Curtis was 25 years old, a rookie who had just graduated from the academy in Riverside and had been in uniform only two months.  He was married and had two children.

It was somewhere between 1:15 a.m. and 1:20 a.m. on Monday, July 22, 1957 when the two officers, with Curtis at the wheel, noticed the 1949 Ford pull up to the intersection and stop at the red light before then proceeding through it.  Neither Phillips nor Curtis knew about the robbery, assault and rape that had taken place in the hour before when they decided to pull the car over.

Phillips had gotten out of the patrol car and pulled his citation book out, as another patrol car with Officers James Gilbert (Milton Curtis' partner until two weeks previous) and Charlie Porter drove by.  Seeing Phillips writing in his citation book and Curtis behind the wheel and phoning it in, it appeared to be a routine traffic stop with no need for any kind of backup and so Gilbert and Porter drove on.  They had no idea that other than their killer, they would be the last people to see Richard Phillips and Milton Curtis alive.

The call that Curtis made, requesting that the plates on the Ford be run came through around 1:28 or 1:29 a.m.  Only seconds later came a call over the radio from Officer Phillips requesting an ambulance and saying that he and his partner had been shot.  Porter and Gilbert raced back to the scene, where they found Phillips, mortally wounded on the ground beside the patrol car, with three gunshots in his back.  His service revolver lay next to him, emptied of bullets.  His citation book was on the hood of the police car, with only the date filled in.  Phillips died before he could get to the hospital.  Curtis, still in the driver's seat of the patrol car, was dead from three gunshot wounds: one to the upper right chest, one to the right side, and one to his right forearm.  Both men had been shot with .22 caliber short rounds.  The killer was gone.

A woman by the name of Margaret Osburn had been heading home from work on westbound Rosecrans Avenue and had stopped for the signal.  She noted the patrol car that Phillips and Curtis were sitting in and also noted a Ford pull up in the left lane next to her, briefly stop for the light and then run it.  She saw the officers take off in pursuit of the Ford and once the light had changed, she proceeded through the intersection, continuing on Rosecrans.  She saw the police car, with the Ford, pulled off the road at Rosecrans and Palm.  She recalled seeing the driver standing outside the car and one of the officers shining a flashlight into his face.  Osburn said the driver was taller than the officer, with "husky" shoulders.  She estimated him to be around 25 years old, with either curly blonde or light brown hair and wearing a red plaid shirt with the tailed pulled out of, rather than tucked into, his pants.  

Nineteen-year-old Alan King had also been traveling on Rosecrans that night and had seen the patrol car, with its lights and siren on, coming up behind him.  He had pulled off to the side and watched the car speed by him.  Having just finished his shift at a local gas station, he continued on to his home on Poinsettia, around the corner from where Phillips and Curtis pulled the Ford over at Rosecrans and Palm.  King later claimed to have seen from the back porch of his house Phillips and Curtis forcibly remove the driver from the vehicle, where there was a brief "struggle," before the driver quieted down and Curtis returned to the patrol vehicle and talked into the radio mic.  King then went inside, running back outside when he heard gunshots.  He saw the driver get into the Ford and "speed down Rosecrans." 

The police car of the fallen officers, with Officer Phillips' citation book on the hood
(photo source) 

The Investigation

An immediate BOLO went out for the Ford, starting what would be the greatest manhunt in California's history at the time.  The four teenagers from Hawthorne were discovered on the street and they, along with Alan King, Margaret Osburn, and Officers Gilbert and Porter, helped to develop a composite sketch of the killer.  

With hundreds of officers from El Segundo and the neighboring communities scouring the area, the Ford was found fairly quickly, roughly four blocks west of the crime scene.  It had been struck with three gunshots, thanks to Richard Phillips.  A bullet hole was noticeable in the trunk.,  Two bullet holes were easily visible in the back window.  Two rounds were recovered inside the vehicle, leading investigators to hope that the killer had been struck by one of the bullets.  Two latent lifts (fingerprints) were taken from the steering wheel; they were later determined to be left thumb prints.  The skirts belonging to the teenaged girls that had been assaulted several hours earlier were found on the back seat and floorboard.

Once again, the killer was gone.

Milton Curtis with his wife and children (photo source)

The fallen officers were buried on July 26, side by side, at Inglewood Park Cemetery (in April of 1958, Richard Phillips' remains would be moved to Spokane, Washington).  The hunt for their killer went on.   Several promising leads surfaced, as well as a multitude of tips, but led nowhere.  In 1958, the case was featured in True Detective magazine with a plea for public help to solve the murders.  Two years later, in 1960, a man pulling up weeds at his home on 33rd Street in Manhattan Beach discovered a watch and a chrome-plated revolver; the location was a mile from the crime scene.  A second watch was found after a search.  Both watches had been taken from the Hawthorne teens in July of 1957 by the killer that had since obtained the nickname of "The Lover's Lane Bandit."  It was theorized that after he dumped the bullet-riddled car, he had run through the yards off Rosecrans, dropping not only the items he had stolen, but the murder weapon as well. 

Richard Phillips' widow and children (photo source)

Having been on and in the ground for three years, no prints were able to be lifted off the nine-shot Harrington & Richardson .22 revolver.  Ballistics tests could only say that the weapon was "consistent" with the bullets that had killed Officers Phillips and Curtis; the poor condition of the gun made it impossible to be more conclusive than that.  The gun was able to be traced to a Sears store in Shreveport, Louisiana and had been purchased for $29.95 on June 18, 1957 by a man using the name of G.D. Wilson and a Miami address (the address turned out to be fictional).  Assuming the man was not from Shreveport, investigators began searching nearby motels and hit pay dirt at a YMCA, where a George D. Wilson of Miami had checked in on June 16, 1957.  Detectives would not know it then but the accompanying signature would eventually help to break the case four decades later.

The Shreveport connection also confirmed the investigators' suspicions that their killer was not from California.  The Hawthorne teens had mentioned that he had an accent, possibly southern, and that he had been almost polite in the midst of the assault.   

The police worked hard to track down every George D. Wilson in the United States but ultimately realized the name was a fake.  The case went cold once again.  Although the case moved on to the back burner as the years ticked by, Richard Phillips and Milton Curtis were not forgotten.

A Break in the Case

In September of 2002, the El Segundo Police Department received a phone call from a female claiming to have information on the case.   She said that her uncle had bragged that he was responsible for killing the two cops in El Segundo.  With a new suspect, the fingerprints lifted back in 1957 were sent to the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department crime lab, along with information on the suspect.  Specialists Dale Falcon and Don Keir found that the new suspect was not a match to the 1957 fingerprints - but they decided to use modern science in an attempt to solve the case.  Following the terror attacks of 9/11, the FBI had created a nationwide database of fingerprints containing convicted criminals from every state in the country.  Falcon and Keir cleaned up the original fingerprints, digitized them and loaded them into the system.  And just like that, they got a match.

A young Gerald Mason (photo source) 

Gerald Fiton Mason had been born in Columbia, South Carolina in 1934 into a family with four other sons.  He served time in the Army in the early 1950s before being honorably discharged.  In 1954, he had spent a semester at the University of South Carolina, where he studied business.  He had his first brush with the law in April of 1956 when he was arrested for burglary and larceny.  Sentenced to three years incarceration, it was suspended to one and Mason served eight months.  

In 1960, Mason married his wife Betty and the couple went on to have two daughters and grandchildren.  He had owned and operated several service stations in the Columbia area before retiring in the 1990s.  

Investigators were stunned that the match was not to a career criminal.  In fact, his record did not have a violent offense on it.  Further searches revealed that Mason had not gotten so much as a parking ticket after April of 1956.  

The old YMCA records were pulled out and the handwriting for George F. Wilson was examined by forensic expert Paul Edholme who found the Wilson sample "identical" to samples of Gerald Mason's handwriting.  Armed with the fingerprint match and Edholme's assertion that he was "99.9% certain" that Mason and Wilson were one in the same, California detectives felt assured they had their man.  

Arrest and Conviction

Mason had been put under surveillance in December of 2002 as detectives waited to make their move.  On his last day of freedom (although he wouldn't have known that), Tuesday, January 28, 2003, he played golf.  On Wednesday, January 29, around 7 a.m., he was arrested at his home.  The large number of officers present for his arrest reportedly shocked Mason and he inquired where they were from.  Told they were from the El Segundo Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office, Mason replied, "You're homicide detectives?  I think I need a lawyer."   He was then informed he was being arrested for the murder of two police officers in 1957, to which Mason said, "My god, you're here for that?  That happened so long ago.  I can't believe you're bothering me with that."    

Booking Mason into the local jail while awaiting a request for extradition, a decades-long question was at long last answered.  Officer Richard Phillips, after being shot three times in the back, lying on the ground and dying, had managed to pull his service revolver out and fire six shots at the Ford as it sped away.  Three of those shots hit its target.  Finding only two rounds in the car, investigators hoped against hope that Phillips had managed to wound his killer.  Detectives in 2003 noted a bullet-shaped scar on Mason's back, one he eventually admitted came from a bullet fired by Phillips.  Richard Phillips had marked him for life and nearly 46 years later, the scar remained there to prove it.   

Mason in court (photo source) 

Following a judicial hearing in South Carolina, Mason agreed to return to Los Angeles to answer for his crimes.  Officer Howard Speaks, who had lifted the fingerprint from the Ford that eventually was linked to Mason, attended the hearing, remarking, "I've been waiting for this date a long time, but the wait was worth it."   Officer Charlie Porter, who along with his partner James Gilbert, had seen not only Mason but Phillips and Curtis in their last moments alive, said "You can run, but you cannot hide.  Kill an officer and we'll get you, no matter how long it takes." 

Under a plea deal, rape, robbery and kidnapping charges were dropped against the 69-year-old Mason, who pleaded guilty to murdering Richard Phillips and Milton Curtis.  According to his attorney, he did so to spare "the victims" the pain of testifying.  He had told detectives that he had been intoxicated on the night of July 21-22, 1957 and had stumbled across the teenagers in Hawthorne by chance and didn't remember why exactly he had assaulted them and raped one of the girls.  When the police officers had pulled him over in El Segundo, just east of Hawthorne, for running the red light, he figured they would soon find out he was in a stolen car and what he had done.  So "If I don't get them, they're gonna get me."  According to Mason, when "the officer turned away from me, I shot both officers, got back in the car and drove away."  (That officer was likely Phillips, who had put his citation book on the hood of his vehicle to write the ticket.)  

Also in the courtroom were children of Richard Phillips and Milton Curtis.  Mason asked them for forgiveness for the killings, saying "Please believe I am still looking for ways to express my remorse for the horror I have caused."    Carolyn Phillips, Richard Phillips' daughter, told him "Your cowardly act shattered our lives forever . . . there is no way to describe the emptiness and anguish we have felt all our lives without Dad . . . we cannot and will not forgive you."  

Keith Curtis, Milton Curtis' son, said, "Gerald Mason, your family may be shocked but my family has been devastated."    

On March 24, 2003, a tearful Gerald Mason was sentenced to life in prison, a sentence he was allowed to serve in South Carolina so that he could be close to his family.  "At no other time in my life have I intentionally harmed anyone," he said.  "I don't know why I did this."   One of his daughters stated that even though she couldn't possibly describe the range of emotions their family had gone through as a result of his crimes, she couldn't have asked for a better father.  

Mason was turned down for parole in 2009, with a recommendation of the maximum 15-year wait before the next parole hearing.  He died on January 22, 2017, nine days before his 84th birthday.  He had served 14 years for his crimes.  

The final resting places of Officers Curtis and Phillips

Sources:

CBS (March 25, 2003). 1957 Cop Killer Asks Forgiveness.

CBS News (March 15, 2005).  The Ghosts of El Segundo.  

Criminally Intrigued (July 29, 2017).  El Segundo Cop Killing Cold Case.

GoUpstate.com (February 10, 2003).  Neighbors Wonder How Friend Could Be in Jail.

The Los Angeles Times (March 25, 2003).  Man Sentenced to Life in Two 1957 Police Murders.

The Los Angeles Times (July 22, 2007).  Death in El Segundo.  

Murderpedia (2021).  Gerald Mason.

The New York Times (January 30, 2003).  After 45 Years, an Arrest in the Killing of 2 Officers.

Wikipedia. (2021).  Gerald Mason.

   

The Murder Spree of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate

In recent years Hollywood has glamorized and romanticized Charles Starkweather and his rampage that took 11 lives at the end of 1957 and beginning of 1958, with cinematic depictions in Badlands, Natural Born Killers and Kalifornia.  Rather than being some kind of hero, as the fictional film portrayals suggest, Starkweather was nothing but a cold and cruel murderer.

He was born into a working class family in Nebraska, the third of seven children.  He had been born with a slight birth defect that caused his legs to be misshapen and, as a schoolchild, suffered with a speech impediment.  Being teased and bullied by other children, both due to his legs and his speech impediment, caused him to harbor a tremendous amount of rage which he eventually began to unleash on those he didn't like.  Coming  from a working class family, along with his diminutive size, led to an intense envy and hatred for those who had what he wanted and felt was his due.

Charlie dropped out of school during his senior year in high school and gained employment at a warehouse near Whittier Junior High School, where his new girlfriend went to school.  Caril Ann Fugate was thirteen; a petite and pretty girl, her older sister had been the girlfriend of one of Charlie's friends.  Caril Ann inadvertently led to Starkweather's being banished from his family home after she crashed his vehicle into another.  Charlie's father, the legal owner of the car, had to pay the damages and an altercation between the two erupted, ending with father kicking son out of the house.   Charlie quit his warehouse job in favor of employment as a garbage collector; his new job would give him the opportunity to scout out homes for robberies.  It was also during this time that he decided he wanted to be a criminal and that dead people were all on the same level.  He began to yell "go to hell," and other obscenities at strangers and persons he encountered on his garbage route.

Starkweather considered himself a brother of sorts to James Dean, a rebel without a cause -- although his personal cause was to create fear in others and alleviate his always smoldering anger.  He took to wearing a black motorcycle jacket, black and white cowboy boots and covering his naturally red hair with black shoe polish.

Robert Colvert

Photo:  Murderpedia

On November 30 - December 1, 1957, his antisocial behavior turned murderous.  Robert Colvert was 21 years old, recently discharged from the U.S. Navy.  Bobby had married his high school sweetheart a year earlier and the two were expecting their first child.  He worked nights at the Crest Service Station in Lincoln, pumping gas.  He was later described as a loving and caring man who, like his father, enjoyed carpentry.  He was easygoing and quick to laugh.  Unfortunately he crossed paths with a brewing killer.

Starkweather had gone to the Crest Service Station looking to buy a stuffed animal for Caril on credit.  Bobby had refused him.  Enraged, Charlie left but returned around 3 a.m. with a shotgun.  He demanded money from the register - - nearly $90 in bills and $10 in loose change - - and then abducted Bobby Colvert.  Starkweather drove him to a spot on Superior Street where some type of squabble occurred.  Bobby, likely figuring that Starkweather would not leave him alive, had fought for his life and was injured in the process.  It was then that Starkweather put the shotgun to Bobby Colvert's head and pulled the trigger.

Later on that Sunday, December 1, while Bobby lay in the field where he died, Charlie Starkweather went to a thrift shop where he bought shoes,  a jacket, shirts, undershirts, and jockey shorts.  He paid for them with the $10 in loose change he had scored from his robbery.  Rather than being scared by his slide into murder, Starkweather felt empowered.  He believed he had a new existence, a new reason for being, and that he could kill with impunity.  Perhaps coincidentally, his first murder and decision that killing was his reason for being happened the same week he turned nineteen.  He also confessed to Caril that he was the perpetrator of the robbery.

Police initially suspected that Bobby Colvert had been killed by a transient and, as a result, their investigation into his murder was minimal.

On December 12, 1957, after a service at the United Methodist Church, Bobby was laid to rest at Beaver Crossing Cemetery.

From left: Velma and Marion Bartlett; Betty Jean Bartlett

Charles Starkweather's high from his first murder would last until January of 1958, when he lost his job.  On Tuesday, January 21, he went to Caril Ann's home, reportedly looking for her.  (She was at school.)   Caril's stepfather, Marion Bartlett, 57, and mother, Velda Bartlett, 36, were home with their 2 year old daughter, Betty Jean.  Neither parent cared for the moody and malevolent Charles Starkweather and ordered him to stay away from Caril.

Later on, Caril would claim she had broken up with Starkweather on Sunday, January 19.  She would also claim that her family was dead when she arrived home and Starkweather, after telling her they were being held for hostage, told Caril herself she would be killed if she were not cooperative.

Marion Bartlett was shot in the head.  Velda Bartlett was shot in the face and bludgeoned with the rifle.  There is a dispute as to exactly when Betty Jean was killed.  Some say she was initially spared but her crying got on the nerves of both Starkweather and Fugate; Starkweather threw a knife at her, which struck and killed her.  Others say that Starkweather bludgeoned, strangled and stabbed Betty Jean before Fugate returned to the home.  Regardless of the death order, all three bodies were placed in outbuildings around the home -- Marion in the chicken coop, Velda in the outhouse and Betty Jean with some trash.

August Meyer as a young man

Photo:  FindaGrave.com

The teenage couple would then live in the house for the next six days, living like "kings," according to Starkweather.  The proximity of three dead bodies seemed not to concern them.   Caril turned away visitors and concerned family members, including her grandmother, sister and brother-in-law, and even Charlie's own brother, by claiming the entire family was sick with the flu.  She left a note on the door stating as much, signing it as "Miss Bartlett" and underlining it twice.  She would later claim this was a signal for help, as the only true "Miss Bartlett" in the home was her 2 year old half-sister.

It was only when Caril's grandmother threatened to call the police that Starkweather and Fugate decided to leave.  In Charlie's car, the two drove fifteen miles out of Lincoln to the small town of Bennet where a Starkweather family friend by the name of August Meyer lived.  Starkweather's car got stuck in the mud and he and Fugate headed to the farmhouse on foot.

August Meyer was a lifelong bachelor, a quiet and gentle man who lived simply as a farmer.  He offered his horses to assist Starkweather in pulling his car out of the mud and it was while the teenagers were following the 70 year old man to the barn that Starkweather shot and killed August Meyer and then beat Meyer's dog to death.  The beating caused the shotgun to break.

Fugate would later say the brutality of August Meyer's death and the beating of his dog convinced her that her only option was to obey Charles Starkweather.

Carol King and Robert Jensen

Later that same night of January 27, 1958, a kind and unsuspecting couple picked up Starkweather and Fugate, who were walking.  That couple was Robert Jensen, 17, and Carol King, 16.  Starkweather was at first charming but once he got in the couple's car, with Fugate in tow, he turned vicious.  He ordered Jensen to drive to an abandoned storm cellar in Bennet and the couple were forced from the car and into the cellar.  Robert Jensen was shot in the back of the head six times by Starkweather, who then turned his attention to Carol King.  An attempt at rape was unsuccessful.  She was shot once in the head before being stabbed in the abdomen and pubic area.  Starkweather would later claim that while he killed Jensen, it was Fugate who, in a jealous rage over seeing Starkweather's attention to the pretty King, killed her.  Fugate claimed she stayed in the car while Starkweather did all the killing.

C. Lauer Ward

Photo:  Lincoln Journal Star

 Starkweather and Fugate left Bennet in Robert Jensen's vehicle and headed back to Lincoln.  The plan was to find a suitable house in which to hide out.  It was now January 28, 1958.  The home of C. Lauer Ward, a wealthy industrialist, in the Country Club area of Lincoln, was chosen by Caril.  Lauer Ward and his wife Clara were the parents of Michael, who was away at school.  Like Caril Ann Fugate, he was just 14 years old.

Clara Ward

Photo:  Murderpedia

Starkweather and Fugate tied up Clara Ward, 46, as well as her deaf maid, Lilyan Fencl, 51.  They took turns sleeping, so their prey would remain guarded.  At some point, Clara Ward and Lilyan Fencl were killed.  Clara was stabbed in the neck and chest; Lilyan was tied to a bed and stabbed.  When Lauer Ward, 47, returned home, he was shot to death.   They became the eighth, ninth, and tenth victims.

Before leaving Lincoln in the Wards' 1956 Packard and with stolen jewelry from the house, Starkweather snapped the neck of the family dog.

He would later claim that while he threw a knife at Lilyan Fencl, it was Caril who had inflicted multiple stab wounds on the woman, killing her.

The plan had been to head for Washington state, where Starkweather's brother lived.

Lilyan Fencl

Photo:  Murderpedia

The discovery of the Wards' bodies and that of Lilyan Fencl created outrage in the community.  Law enforcement agencies throughout the region banded together, performing house by house searches, looking for the perpetrators.  When that failed to find any suspects, block by block searches of the city went underway.  Several citizens reported sightings of Starkweather and Fugate.

Starkweather realized that the Wards' Packard was hot and, some ten hours after fleeing Lincoln, began looking for a replacement car.  Traveling salesman Merle Collison, 37  and from Great Falls, Montana, was discovered sleeping in his Buick outside of Douglas, Wyoming.  Starkweather tapped on the window, awakening him, and demanded he leave the vehicle, firing a shot into a side window, before unloading on the man.

Starkweather would later claim that his gun jammed and it was Caril that issued the kill shots to Merle Collison, some nine in total.  

Merle Collison

Photo:  Lincoln Journal Star

Starkweather stalled Collison's Buick and attempted to restart the engine.  Passing motorist Joe Sprinkle, seeing the two cars stopped, pulled over to help.  Starkweather, confused by the new parking brake that came equipped on Collison's Buick, asked Sprinkle for assistance.  Sprinkle noticed Collison's body stuffed under the dashboard and was confronted with Starkweather's gun.  Larger by Starkweather by a good half foot, Sprinkle decided to put up a fight and managed to wrestle the gun away from the teenage killer.

It was then that Natrona County Deputy Sheriff William Romer came up on the scene.  As Romer exited his vehicle, Caril jumped out of Collison's car and ran toward the lawman, screaming, "He's going to kill me!  He's crazy!  He just killed a man!"

Starkweather, now unarmed, jumped into the Wards' Packard and headed back toward Douglas.   Romer, upon being told by Fugate that the escaping man was Charles Starkweather, stayed behind and radioed for help.  A roadblock was immediately set up at the Douglas city limits; Starkweather blew through it, leading authorities on a 100-mph chase through the streets of Douglas.  Officers fired shots at Starkweather's vehicle, finally striking it just east of town.  With the back window shattered, Starkweather slammed on the brakes of the Packard, coming to a screeching halt.  He sat that way for a few stressful moments, while the officers issued threats and fired more shots, before giving up.

Flying glass from the shattered back window had nicked Starkweather's ear and right hand, leading him to believe he had been shot.  The cold, indifferent killer who had no value for the lives of others apparently valued his own enough to surrender when death confronted him.

He would later state he gave up because he was out of ammunition.

The next day, January 29, 1958, Charles Starkweather appeared before a Wyoming justice of the peace to be charged with Merle Collison's murder.  Governor Milward Simpson had already publicly stated that were Starkweather to be convicted and sentenced to death by a Wyoming jury, he would commute his sentence.  Simpson was stalwartly opposed to the death penalty.  Faced with what they considered a dilemma, the Wyoming D.A. let it be known that he would defer to Nebraska prosecutors.  Even Simpson, as anti-death penalty as he was, agreed to sign extradition papers for Starkweather to be returned to Nebraska, a state that had no such issue with the death penalty.


On January 31, 1958, Starkweather was returned to Nebraska to face trial, which began in May.  Against his wishes, his attorneys offered an insanity defense.  The jury, however, didn't buy it and on May 23, 1958 he was found guilty and sentenced to death for the murder of Robert Jensen.

Caril Ann Fugate's journey through the legal system wouldn't be as straightforward.  Nervous, upset and said to be in a state of shock at the time of her surrender, she was sedated at the jail in Douglas.  The following morning, she cried for her mother and wondered why she wasn't allowed to call her parents.  Converse County Sheriff Earl Heflin, who had been one of the lawmen to fire shots at Starkweather and whose shot had shattered the back window of the Packard, initially believed that Caril had no idea her family was dead.  On Friday, January 31, the same day Charlie was sent back to Nebraska, she was told her family had been killed and she was reported to have broken down.

Starkweather told law enforcement at this stage that Caril was a hostage and had nothing to do with the crime spree.  Natrona County Sheriff William Romer -- the man Caril surrendered to -- disputed this.  He stated that Caril had admitted to him that she knew her family was dead and had watched them die.  The sheriff of Converse County, Earl Heflin, backed up these claims by saying that when she was finally taken into custody, Caril had clippings in her pocket of her family's murders.   Nebraska prosecutors responded by charging her with murder.

By the time Caril went to trial, Starkweather had changed his story, now claiming that she was an active participant in the killings and had personally murdered some of the victims herself.    When her trial started in November of 1958, she became the youngest female in U.S. history to be charged with first degree murder.

Starkweather was brought from prison to testify against his former girlfriend.  Despite Caril's claims that she was an innocent victim, neither the judge overseeing her trial nor the jury believed her.  Caril was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison on November 21, 1958.

At 12:04 a.m. on June 25, 1959, Charles Starkweather was executed in the Nebraska electric chair.  He went to his death believing that if he deserved to die, so too did Caril.

Starkweather was buried in Wyuka Cemetery in Lincoln.  Five of his victims -- Marion Bartlett, Velda Bartlett, Betty Jean Bartlett, Lauer Ward and Clara Ward -- also count Wyuka Cemetery as their final resting place.

Caril in prison

While incarcerated, Caril Ann Fugate was considered a model prisoner.  She was paroled in 1976, after serving nearly eighteen years and left Nebraska for Michigan.  She worked as a janitorial assistant and chose to live quietly.  With the exception of a 1996 radio appearance she made after the state refused to pardon her, she did not speak of the events of 1958.  Sheriff William Romer continued to believe in her active participation and guilt in the crime spree.  He recalled that once in custody, Caril had told him that she and Charlie made up a story to make her look good, to evade punishment.  They even "planted" rope burns on her wrists, by tying her up and rubbing the ropes good, so she would look as if she had been restrained.

She married in 2007 and was widowed in 2013 when she and her husband were involved in a single vehicle accident.  She survived but suffered serious injuries.

In 2012, a copy of an investigative file on the Starkweather case was unearthed.  Belonging to Robert G. Anderson, a Lancaster County deputy sheriff in Nebraska, the file indicated that Starkweather and Fugate had come to a service station near Roca, Nebraska on January 27, 1958 around 1 p.m.   While Starkweather had been conversing with the mechanics about repairing a tire, Fugate had sat in the attached diner, waiting for her order of four hamburgers.  According to the waitress, the teen watched her intently but never indicated she had been kidnapped or was in any distress.  The waitress recalled that during the fifteen or so minutes Caril Ann Fugate sat at the diner counter, there were at least three men that were also sitting at the counter.  She said nothing to any of them; she only watched the waitress intently.  That morning, August Meyer had been murdered and after Starkweather and Fugate left, Robert Jensen and Carol King would become victims.

The Starkweather-Fugate killing spree was the first of its kind in the new era brought about by television.  Reporters and journalists flooded Wyoming and Nebraska, broadcasting to its viewers the horrible details of the violence Starkweather left in his wake.  With the help of these news broadcasts, Nebraska and its surrounding regions lived in a state of fear for the week or so Starkweather was loose.

Unlike many other murderers, Charles Starkweather wasn't particularly interesting, nor was he an enigma.  He wasn't particularly smart; he felt inferior to many people as evidenced by his courting of a thirteen year old girl.  He killed out of anger brought on by that inferiority and envy.  He despised those he targeted for their comfort, their normality but he also wanted that for himself.   He wanted to be seen as a tough guy but the first time he lost control, he gave in.  In the end, he was nothing more than a bully who enjoyed inflicting pain on others.

Caril Ann Fugate's part in the crimes was much more complex.  She was barely fourteen when the deadly rampage started and had been involved for months with the manipulative Starkweather.  She could have left Lincoln with him as a desperate means to stay alive, after watching him slaughter her family, as she asserted.  But she also could have been a willing participant, so long as they evaded arrest.

She claims she broke up with Starkweather on January 19, 1958.  He killed Bobby Colvert on the night of November 30 - December 1, 1957.  She claims she only knew about Starkweather robbing the service station but Colvert's murder would certainly have been in the newspapers and it would have been spoken about around town.  Why didn't she immediately break it off with him?  Why didn't she go to authorities then?  Ten lives would have been saved if she had.

The biggest question for me with regard to Caril is why she didn't flee when she had the opportunity.  According to her, she waited in the car while Charlie took Robert Jensen and Carol King to the abandoned storm cellar in Bennet to execute them.  She was left alone.  If he left the keys in the car, why didn't she take off?  Even without the keys, why didn't she run on foot?  On their return to Lincoln, they slept in shifts throughout the day in the Ward house.  Why didn't she run then, while he was asleep?

Did she play any part in the murders, other than Bobby Colvert's?  She says she did not but there was and is no one else alive to confirm or deny her statements.  Charlie Starkweather at first said that Caril was innocent in the crimes and then changed his story.  Not uncommon for a killer.  He admitted to those murders he did commit so was he telling the truth about the part Caril played?

The guilt or innocence of Caril Ann Fugate divided Nebraska, and the country, in 1958 and continues to be divisive today.  Even while incarcerated, she had a loyal and strong group of supporters who believed she had been a living victim of Charles Starkweather, that she had been young and impressionable and rallied for her parole.  There were also those, including the judge and jury in her trial, who did not believe she was a hostage and was fully complicit in the killings.

What do you think?  Was Caril Ann Fugate a victim of Charles Starkweather or a victimizer? Was her sentence just?