Killers_ The Most Barbaric Murderers of Our Time - Cawthorne, Nigel [4]
On 1 December 1957 a new attendant named Robert Colvert had just taken over. Colvert was 21 and just out of the Navy, where he had been known as ‘Little Bob’. He was nine stone, and around five foot five. Earlier that year he had got married. His wife Charlotte was expecting and he had taken the night job at the petrol station to support his growing family. He was new to the job and barely knew Starkweather, though they had had a row the day before when he refused to give Starkweather credit on a toy dog he wanted to buy for Caril.
It was a freezing night and a bitter Nebraskan wind was blowing in from the plains, when Starkweather pulled into the service station around 3 a.m. Colvert was alone. Starkweather was nervous. He bought a pack of cigarettes and drove off. A few minutes later he came back. This time he bought some chewing gum and drove off again. The coast was clear. It was now or never.
Starkweather loaded the shotgun he had stolen from Bob von Busch’s cousin, Sonny. He pulled a hunting cap down over his red hair and tied a bandanna around his face.
Back at the petrol station, Starkweather pointed the shotgun at Colvert and handed him a canvas money bag. Colvert filled the bag with the notes and loose change from the till. But then Starkweather’s plan went badly wrong. Although he knew the station’s routine and how much money was kept there overnight, the new man did not know the combination of the safe and could not open it. Starkweather forced him into the car at gunpoint. Colvert drove. Starkweather sat in the passenger seat, the shotgun trained on Colvert. They headed for Superior Street, a dirt road a little way north, used by teenagers as a lovers’ lane.
The only witness to what happened next was Starkweather. He claimed that, as they got out of the car, Colvert made a grab for the gun.
‘I got into a helluva fight and shooting gallery,’ he said. ‘He shot himself the first time. He had hold of the gun from the front, and I cocked it and he was messing around and he jerked it and the thing went off.’ Colvert was hit and fell, but he was not dead. He tried to stand up. Starkweather reloaded the shotgun. He pressed the barrel to Colvert’s head and pulled the trigger. ‘He didn’t get up any more.’
Although Starkweather had been nervous before, the killing filled him with a feeling of serenity he had not experienced since childhood. He felt free, above the law. The robbery had earned him just $l08. Five months later, on 24 April 1958, Robert Colvert’s widow Charlotte gave birth to a daughter.
When Starkweather picked up Caril later that day, he told her about the robbery, but claimed that an unnamed accomplice had done the shooting. That evening he threw the shotgun in a creek. A few days later he fished it out, cleaned it and put the gun back in Sonny’s garage. It had not even been missed.
During the police investigation, several of the other service station attendants mentioned Starkweather’s name, but no one came to visit him. He paid off his back rent, had his car resprayed black and spent ten dollars on second-hand clothes, paying with the loose change he had got from the till in the petrol station. The owner of the store was suspicious and reported the matter to the police. But no effort was made to question him.
The fact that no one seemed even to suspect him of the robbery and murder gave Starkweather a great deal of satisfaction. It was his first taste of success. Until then he had always been the underdog. Now he had showed that he could outwit authority.
‘I learned something, something I already knowed,’ he said. ‘A man could make money without hauling other people’s rubbish.’
He stopped turning up for work and was fired. He spent his time going to the cinema, reading comics, playing