Killers_ The Most Barbaric Murderers of Our Time - Cawthorne, Nigel [1]
Like Brady and Hindley, couples can become so deeply involved that they will kill anyone who gets in their way – even family members. Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend Caril Fugate killed her family, before going on a killing spree which has inspired several films. No one is sure how many people were murdered by Fred and Rosemary West as they usually picked on transients who no one would miss, and the case of Dr Harold Shipman, who killed at least 215 people proves that sometimes you cannot even trust your own family doctor.
Emanuel Tanay, a professor of psychiatry at Wayne State University, pointed out that murder is not the crime of criminals, but that of ordinary citizens. The great majority of murders are family affairs, committed by outwardly ordinary people who never murder or commit any other crime – except on the one fateful occasion. And when the psychotic killer strikes, the result is often wholesale slaughter.
Killers details these shocking cases and takes you inside the minds of the people who committed these horrendous crimes. Are they inhuman beasts who are beyond compassion or understanding? Or are they human beings just like us, but who have simply overstepped a line? You decide.
In the meantime, be on your guard. Anyone around you could be a potential killer. There may even be one lurking inside.
Chapter 1
Natural Born Killers
Name: Charles Starkweather
Accomplice: Caril Fugate (the youngest woman ever to be tried for first-degree murder in the US)
Nationality: American
Number of victims: 11 killed
Favoured method of killing: Shooting, stabbing
Born: 1938
Reign of terror: December 1957
Stated motive: ‘general revenge upon the world and its human race’
Executed: 25 June 1959
Charles Starkweather was born on 24 November 1938 in a poor quarter of Lincoln, Nebraska. He was the third of eight children – seven boys and a girl. His father, Guy Starkweather, was a convivial man who liked a drink. A handyman and a carpenter, he suffered from a weak back and arthritis, and could not always work. His wife, Helen, a slight, stoical woman, worked as a waitress and, after 1946, became practically the sole provider for her large family.
Although the Starkweathers knew little of their roots, the first Starkweather had left the old world in the seventeenth century, sailing from the Isle of Man in 1640. The name was well known across the mid-West and there was even a small town called Starkweather in North Dakota. Somehow the name Starkweather seemed eerily redolent of the wind sweeping the Great Plains.
Charles Starkweather had happy memories of his first six years, which he spent playing with his two elder brothers, Rodney and Leonard, helping around the house with his mother and going fishing with his dad. But all that changed in 1944 on his first day at school. When they enrolled at Saratoga Elementary School, all the children were supposed to stand up and make a speech. When it came to Starkweather’s turn, his classmates spotted his slight speech impediment and began to laugh. Starkweather broke down in confusion. He never forgot that humiliation.
Starkweather soon gained the impression that the teacher was picking on him, and he believed that the other children were ridiculing him because of his short bow-legs and distinctive red hair. Later, from his condemned cell, he wrote: ‘It seems as though I could see my heart before my eyes, turning dark black with hate of rages.’ On his second day at school he got into a fight, which he found relieved his aggression. He claimed to have been in a fight almost every day during his school life, though his teachers remembered little of this.
Despite his high IQ Starkweather was treated throughout his school career as a slow learner. It was only when his eyes were tested at the age of 15 that it was discovered he could barely see the blackboard from his place at the back of the class. He was practically blind beyond 20 feet.
Starkweather felt that life had short-changed him. He was short,