To a Dumpy New Life

"You've got hope and you've got life." Such was the consolation offered to 15-year-old Caril Ann Fugate 17 years ago by her grandmother just after the sobbing teen-ager was sentenced by a Nebraska court to life imprisonment. The court had found her guilty of aiding Charles Starkweather in one of the most savage and sensational crimes of the 1950s: a two-day rampage of murder and violence that trailed blood across two states and left ten dead in its wake. True to her grandma's sage prophecy, Caril last week was given her freedom.

The Starkweather murder spree, which inspired the 1974 movie Badlands, began in January 1958, in Lincoln, Neb. For no apparent reason, the 19-year-old bandy-legged high school dropout shot to death Caril's mother and stepfather and clubbed to death her two-year-old half sister in the family's rundown frame house. The two teen-agers quickly went from killing to killing, all without motive. The victims: a 70-year-old bachelor farmer, a teen-age couple, a well-to-do industrialist, his wife and his maid, and a traveling salesman. The epidemic of shootings turned Lincoln into a horrified city under siege. People were afraid to go to work or even take out the garbage. Some townsmen were armed and deputized to patrol the streets. Eventually authorities nabbed the two desperadoes in Wyoming.

Loaded Guns. Starkweather was the first to stand trial; he was found guilty of murder and was executed on June 25, 1959--the last person to be electrocuted by Nebraska. Throughout her trial, Caril pleaded her innocence, insisting that she was held hostage by the crazed boy and feared for her life if she tried to leave him. Charlie, however, told the jury that she was a willing participant in the killings and could have escaped a number of times when he left her alone with loaded guns. The jury apparently agreed with Starkweather.

While Caril's attorneys filed petitions requesting a new trial, she busied herself at the Nebraska Center for Women, completing her high school education, reading more than 1,000 books, getting instructions in sewing, and writing a regular "Dear Gabby" column in the institution's paper. Her spotless record earned her the privilege of going bowling, swimming and (occasionally) shopping in the town of York. After exhausting her remedies for retrial, Caril began seeking a reduction in her life sentence. Three years ago, the Nebraska Parole Board, citing "her age at the time of the tragic event," recommended commutation of the sentence; it was later cut to 30 to 50 years, thus making her eligible for the parole that was granted last week.

At Caril's recent hearing, there were no objections to her petition for freedom. Testified the Nebraska Center's Superintendent Jacqueline Crawford: "Whether she's guilty or innocent is irrelevant. Nebraska has got its pound of flesh." It took the board only ten minutes to reach the decision that Caril is to be released on June 20. Dressed in white, her brown hair freshly curled, she cried as she walked into the room, while the small audience applauded. Caril will settle in Clinton County, Mich., where a family has promised her assistance and a clerical job. She will report regularly to a parole office in St. Johns and if necessary, assume a new identity. Her ambition in her new life? As she told the board last week, "I'd just like to settle down, get married, have a couple of kids, dust the house, clean the toilet, be just an ordinary little dumpy housewife. That's all I want to be."

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