Caril Ann Fugate

Caril Ann Fugate (born July 30, 1943) is the youngest female in United States history to have been tried and convicted of first-degree murder.

In 1956, at age 13, she formed a relationship with Charles Starkweather, a high school dropout five years her senior.

They met through Caril's sister, Barbara, who was dating Starkweather's friend, Bob von Busch.

She was the adolescent girlfriend of spree killer Charles Starkweather, being just 14 years old when his murders took place in 1958.

She was convicted as his accomplice and sentenced to life imprisonment.

On January 21, 1958, Starkweather shot and killed Fugate's stepfather, Marion Bartlett, and her mother, Velda.

Starkweather then clubbed to death Fugate's two-year-old half-sister, Betty Jean.

Fugate claimed she came home to find Starkweather there alone, waiting for her with a gun.

She said he told her that her family was being held hostage and that if she did exactly as he said, her family would be safe.

During the next six days, Starkweather kept Fugate in the house and turned away all visitors, which made Fugate's relatives suspicious.

The bodies were found later in outbuildings on the property.

Starkweather and Fugate then fled, driving across Nebraska and into Wyoming on a murder spree that claimed seven more lives, plus those of two dogs, before they were arrested.

She admitted holding a .410 gauge shotgun on a young high school couple, Robert Jensen and Carol King.

She maintained her innocence in the 1958 slayings and requested a pardon to "alleviate the burden" of being known as a convicted killer.

Her pardon was denied because the role of a pardon is to restore a felon's rights and because her request was too broad for the parole board.

Starkweather was sentenced to death and executed in the electric chair on June 25, 1959.

He insisted that although he had personally killed most of the victims, Fugate had murdered several as well.

Although she continued to maintain her innocence, she was tried and convicted for her role in the murder spree.

Based on the evidence presented that Fugate had opportunities to leave her captivity and Starkweather's own testimony, the jury found her testimony that she was Starkweather's hostage not credible.

She was sentenced to life imprisonment at the Nebraska Correctional Center for Women in York, Nebraska.

The Starkweather–Fugate case inspired the films The Sadist (1963), Badlands (1973), Kalifornia (1993), Natural Born Killers (1994) and Starkweather (2004).

In 1973, the Nebraska Board of Pardons commuted Fugate's sentence to 30–50 years, making her eligible for parole.

Governor J. James Exon and Secretary of State Allen Beermann voted in favor of the commutation, while Attorney General Clarence A. H. Meyer dissented.

In 1976, she was paroled after serving 18 years.

Fugate lived in Lincoln, Nebraska, with her mother and stepfather.

She attended Whittier Junior High School in Lincoln and was an intelligent student who was well-liked by her peers.

Considered to be a model prisoner, Fugate was paroled on June 20, 1976, from York Women's Reformatory in York, Nebraska, after serving 18 years incarceration.

She lived for a time in the Lansing, Michigan, area after being paroled.

Following her release, Fugate worked as a janitorial assistant and a nanny.

She has since retired.

Stark Raving Mad (1981), a film starring Russell Fast and Marcie Severson, provides a fictionalized account of the Starkweather–Fugate murder spree.

Fugate appeared on a 1983 episode of Lie Detector hosted by F. Lee Bailey.

Fugate was portrayed by Fairuza Balk in the made-for-TV biographical film Murder in the Heartland (1993), with Tim Roth starring as Starkweather.

The 1996 Peter Jackson film The Frighteners features central plot elements with characters almost identical to Starkweather and Fugate, who commit a murder spree.

In 2007, Fugate married Fredrick Clair, a machinist who also worked as a weather observer for the National Weather Service.

Their most recent city of residence was Hillsdale, Michigan.

Fugate was seriously injured on August 5, 2013, in a single-vehicle accident near Tekonsha, Michigan.

Her husband, who was driving their sport utility vehicle when it went off the road and overturned, died at the scene.

Fugate, going by her married name of Caril Ann Clair, was denied a pardon by the Nebraska Board of Pardons in February 2020.

Relatives of the murder victims supported her pardon application.