Charles Starkweather
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Charles Raymond Starkweather (November 24, 1938 – June 25, 1959) was an American spree killer who murdered eleven people in Nebraska and Wyoming between November 1957 and January 1958, when he was nineteen years old. He killed ten of his victims between January 21 and January 29, 1958, the date of his arrest. During his spree in 1958, Starkweather was accompanied by his fourteen-year-old girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate. Both Starkweather and Fugate were convicted on charges for their parts in the homicides; Starkweather was sentenced to death and executed seventeen months after the events. Fugate served seventeen years in prison, gaining release in 1976. Starkweather's execution by electric chair in 1959 was the last execution in Nebraska until 1994. Criminologists and psychologists have analyzed the Starkweather case in an attempt to understand spree killers' motivations and precipitating factors. It also became notorious as one of the earlier crime scandals that reached national prominence, much like the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh's son, with the media outlets covering the case at the time openly condemning Starkweather. Starkweather’s crime spree has endured in popular culture, most notably as the inspiration for the 1973 film Badlands and Bruce Springsteen’s song “Nebraska.”