Even with the World

At 19, Charles Starkweather still seemed to grasp only simple things. Guns, guitars and hot-rods were good; snakes, schoolbooks and recurrent headaches were bad; the right trim to his long copper hair and the proper cant to his cigarette made him look like James Dean. Beyond these, Chuck Starkweather accepted just two constants: 1) the world was against him, 2) when somebody's against you, fight back. This he learned in home town Lincoln, Neb. at Saratoga Elementary School, where the other boys made fun of his bandy legs, his myopic green eyes, his thick spectacles and a speech defect that made him say "wowse" for "house" and "awong" for "along." They backed off when Chuck bore in with fists flailing; they fled when he opened a knife.

Recently Chuck Starkweather's world began to close in again. He was fired for laziness from a $7-a-day job on a garbage truck, locked out of his rented room until back rent was paid, forbidden to see chubby, 14-year-old Caril Fugate, to whom he had proposed at least three times. Last fortnight Starkweather decided to get even. Before he was stopped, he had shot, stabbed or clubbed ten people to death, and Lincoln (pop. 120,000) shivered through a two-day panic.

"Everybody Is Sick." Starkweather's battle started at the one-story frame house in Lincoln's rundown Belmont section, where Caril lived with her mother, stepfather and two-year-old half sister. For several days relatives noticed an unnatural stillness around the house; twice they came to find out why. Caril turned them away at the door, reported the family ill. Detectives called to investigate, found no one home, a note on the door: "Stay away. Everybody is sick with the flu. Miss Bartlett." Still concerned, the family came back. A search turned up not sickness but murder. Wrapped in paper in a chicken house was the body of 57-year-old Marion Bartlett. In an outbuilding lay the bodies of Caril's mother. Velda Bartlett, 35, and little Betty Jean Bartlett. The child had been clubbed to death, the adults shot in the head.

Police flashed a pickup for Chuck and Caril, and for Starkweather's prize possession, a souped-up 1949 Ford. The message went out too late. Four hours earlier the couple, in blue jeans and jackets, drove into a service station on Highway 77, bought 45-c- worth of gas, a box of .410 shotgun shells and two boxes of .225. They sped on toward the farming hamlet of Bennet (pop. 350), 16 miles southeast of Lincoln. Starkweather needed a hideout, knew that two miles outside Bennet nestled the neat white farmhouse of 70-year-old August Meyer, an old family friend who occasionally allowed the Starkweathers to hunt on his property.

Home from the Capitol. It was early evening when.Chuck's car got stuck in the mud on a road leading to Meyer's farm. Up drove a second Ford; Bennet High School Junior Class President Robert Jensen, 17, was out on an early school-night date with Classmate Carol King, 16. They stopped to help. Starkweather shot both through the head with his .22 rifle, pushed their blue-jeaned bodies into an abandoned storm cellar near by. He drove up to Meyer's house, killed him with one .410-gauge shotgun blast, stuffed the body in a washhouse. Then he and Caril headed back to Lincoln, tossed Jensen's schoolbooks out the car window as they rode.

Back in the city. Starkweather had a new idea. As a garbage collector he had come to know the city's exclusive southeast side and its well-to-do homes. He eased into the driveway of a handsome French provincial house on South 24th Street, pulled into the garage, forced his way into the home of C. Lauer Ward, president of the Capital Steel Co. Starkweather prodded Mrs. Clara Ward, 46, and Housekeeper Lillian Fend, 51, to the second floor, bound and gagged them, then stabbed them to death. About 5:30, after a conference with Nebraska's Governor Victor Anderson at the Capitol a few blocks away, Lauer Ward, 47, came home. When he opened his front door, Starkweather was waiting in the hall. Ward never got his topcoat off; he was shot in the temple and neck, stabbed in the back when he fell. Starkweather and Caril traded Jensen's Ford for Ward's 1956 black Packard, headed west out of Lincoln on Highway 2.

Good Samaritan. Behind them they left Lincoln gripped in fear. Mothers pulled toddlers indoors, took older children out of school. Neighbors checked in and checked out with each other, paralyzed Lincoln's telephone circuits with the heaviest traffic since V-J day. District court was recessed. Business firms booked downtown hotel rooms for employees who worked late. The governor mobilized National Guardsmen to stand watch at the National Bank of Commerce when reports got around that Starkweather intended to rob it. Sheriff Merle Karnopp called for a posse, and 100 men armed with deer rifles, shotguns and pistols were soon milling around his office in the white Victorian Lancaster County courthouse.

While the posse waited and the city barricaded doors, word was flashed that Starkweather had struck again, 500 miles away. A dozen miles outside Douglas, Wyo. (pop. 2,500), he was ready to change cars again, sighted a new Buick parked beside Highway 87. Shoe Salesman Merle Collison, 37, had pulled off the road to sleep. Caril got into the back seat of Collison's car; Starkweather yanked open the driver's door and shot Collison nine times. Before he could drive off, another car pulled up. Geologist Joe Sprinkle, 40, thought there was an accident, stopped to help. Good Samaritan Sprinkle found a rifle at his head. He rushed the gun, grappled with Starkweather, got the rifle just as Deputy Sheriff William Romer happened by. Caril Fugate leaped out of the car and ran screaming to the deputy. In the confusion Starkweather climbed into his stolen Packard, sped away as Deputy Romer radioed ahead for a roadblock. Starkweather raced through the roadblock at better than 100 m.p.h. with the cops in hot pursuit, stopped when a police rifle bullet ripped through the Packard and shattered the windshield.

A Fast Slow Boy. Charlie Starkweather and his girl, their faces puffed with fatigue, were locked up in Douglas' four-cell jail, both charged with murder. Caril called wildly for her dead mother until a doctor gave her a sedative and she cried herself to sleep. Starkweather grinned at newsmen, airily admitted the killings and agreed to extradition, confessed also that two months before he had committed an eleventh murder. His first victim: 19-year-old Lincoln Service Station Attendant Robert Colvert, who was held up, taken to a lonely road and shot in the head.

At week's end Lincoln's fear had given way to funerals; Lincoln's citizens were trying to figure out what made Chuck Starkweather kill eleven people. Psychiatrists attributed it to mild paranoia, Starkweather's friends mentioned the fact that his plans for marriage had been opposed by both families; his father guessed it was mainly a slow boy growing up too fast. Home again and locked in a special cell at the Nebraska penitentiary, Chuck himself showed signs of realizing that in the end the world had beaten him. He had been gay and insolent earlier; now, in ultimate defeat, he blinked his myopic eyes and became sullen and silent.

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