![]() ![]() ![]() He almost certainly had a learning disability and his eyesight was poor. If anything, in some ways, he might have been spoiled. He was born to parents of modest means but he does not seem to have been abused. The Odd Coupleįew crimes have shocked a community and even an entire region the way Starkweather’s did. Had anyone thought to commit a mass school shooting in 1958, Charlie would have been the guy to do it. Fourth, because of the way he selected his victims. He wore his hair like Dean, he strutted about with a pack of cigarettes rolled up in his tee-shirt sleeve, his jeans rolled up a bit, and with a cigarette dangling from his pouting lips. ![]() A short, pugnacious, nasty, bow-legged, banty rooster of a teen, he posed as Lincoln’s answer to James Dean. Third, because it symbolized to many a troubling undercurrent in the new rock and roll, rebellious youth culture that Charlie seemed to embrace and embody. Second, because he was accompanied (willingly or unwillingly) by his 14-year old girlfriend. First, because he is considered one of the fist of the modern spree killers and mass murderers. The Starkweather case is notable for a number of reasons. Patty Hearst is a famous example of this syndrome. The only real question that remained through the trial, which persists to this day, is whether Caril Ann Fugate, whose family Charlie murdered, accompanied him willingly during his spree, whether she cooperated in or even committed some of the murders, or whether she was a hostage (as she later claimed) and suffered from Stockholm Syndrome wherein, in order to survive captivity, one comes to sympathize with one’s captors. Certainly, when “Charlie” (as he was known) was captured after a shootout in Douglas, Wyoming there was little doubt and by the end of his trial it was certain that he had committed a shocking and brutal series of murders in and around what was then a sleepy college town and state capitol, Lincoln, Nebraska. On this date in 1959 the state of Nebraska executed the death sentence upon Charles Starkweather, an admitted, notorious spree killer and mass murderer. ![]()
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