HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know, entertainment used to be easier.
BEN KISSEL
I don't think so.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I completely disagree.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, entertainment used to be easier.
BEN KISSEL
Everyone died driving.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, I'm not talking about life.
BEN KISSEL
Or flying.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Lives were harder.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But doing songs and and TV shows were easier because we're going through this whole series, every song from this time period is like, (singing) 'Whoa, it's the ice cream dance!'
BEN KISSEL
Well but that was very unique for the time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was like, (singing) 'You gotta get yourself a scissor, you gotta put your hand on the construction paper, make a little turkey!' That's all they do.
BEN KISSEL
Well it was very difficult to be the first to do it though.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I guess.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You just had to have a crew cut and have a big fat face.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean it's better than the 40s, every song in the 40s was about a train or a train line. (singing) 'Gonna go on the Great Pacific Railway.
BEN KISSEL
Well what's wrong with that? I love train music.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The charleston started in 1925?
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic. Welcome to the Last Podcast on the Left everyone. I am Ben hanging out with the inspiring Henry Zebrowski.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's me.
BEN KISSEL
And Marcus Parks.
MARCUS PARKS
Hi.
BEN KISSEL
Today's episode, now this is going to be really funky and really fresh. He has the last name of a businessman who has a briefcase full of photocopies of his own buttocks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What?
BEN KISSEL
But he is indeed much worse than that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're just talking about Tony Stark first of all. That's the first half of the joke.
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed. And much like Tony Stark, in this story it weathers bullets.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
BEN KISSEL
Anyway we're onto Charles Starkweather Part One. Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I thought we were supposed to be better after break.
BEN KISSEL
No, much worse. Oh I'm sorry, I'm getting the weather report. It's a chance of bullets. That's good. It's a plane, it's a bird, it's bullets.
MARCUS PARKS
Charles Starkweather was an American mass murderer from Lincoln, Nebraska who murdered 11 people at the age of 19 years old. According to the courts, 10 of those murders were committed with either the assistance or the blessing of his 14 year old girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Old Caril Ann. And she's gonna be coming up a lot. She is an interesting controversial figure in true crime. She's still out there, 78 years fun.
BEN KISSEL
Is she? Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. So hopefully she will respond and we can talk to her after this and see what her analysis of our analysis is.
BEN KISSEL
(old lady voice) I still think the election was stolen.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're very close. You're very, very close.
BEN KISSEL
There's something horrifying about a 14 year old giving you their blessing. It's like what are you, a witch?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Kill, kill.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But this story is something that we've wanted to do for a long time. We covered this I think a little bit when we did spree killers a million years ago.
MARCUS PARKS
Briefly. I mean that episode was mostly just rereadings of the Richard McBeef play.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
It was a different kind of show back then.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes it was. But now Charles Starkweather, of all of the characters in true crime too, I think is interesting how many movies and how much shit it has inspired, this story has inspired Natural Born Killers, the movie Badlands, Nebraska the album.
BEN KISSEL
No kidding?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's very bleak.
BEN KISSEL
Isn't that something?
MARCUS PARKS
Specifically Nebraska the song, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
That was Bruce Springsteen's finest work in my opinion.
BEN KISSEL
I love that song.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm gonna get a lot of shit for that, I got a lot of shit for saying it on the suicide series on No Dogs In Space.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love that album.
BEN KISSEL
I love Bruce Springsteen. He's the boss.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're Bossheads.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Marcus is sensitive.
MARCUS PARKS
You know what I finally figured out? I figured out that it's not Bruce Springsteen that I dislike, it's the E Street Band.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What?!
BEN KISSEL
What the fuck?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What the fuck?
BEN KISSEL
Marcus!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa, whoa, whoa!
BEN KISSEL
This is a rare chance where Marcus should be edited. He needs to be edited. Clarence? Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm just saying I like Bruce Springsteen better when it's just him and a guitar.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Unbelievable. Wow.
BEN KISSEL
You are just simply the worst.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. Cloudy with a chance of hatred.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what he is. The weatherman, bringing the bummers.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Starkweather's killing spree technically took place in multiple locations over two months but while the first murder took place on December 1, 1957, the other 10 murders all occurred in a week long rampage in late January of the following year.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
His is the ultimate example of a rampage where the two of them had no order. It was not well planned.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This isn't like a bunch of guys in militia gear planning. It is actual childlike chaos with guns.
BEN KISSEL
All right, not Matt Damon, Ben Affleck. It's not The Town.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're right.
MARCUS PARKS
You're right, correct. Now Starkweather's murder spree was the cause of much consternation in America when it occurred but not just because of the sheer volume of murders. Instead it was a confirmation of what was already a grave concern in this country. See America in the 50s was going through a moral panic concerning the perceived rise in juvenile delinquency.
BEN KISSEL
No!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can you imagine your daughter wearing pants? Can you imagine eating peanut butter in the evening?
BEN KISSEL
Whoa! Delinquency.
MARCUS PARKS
And Charles Starkweather fit the bill of a stereotypical juvenile delinquent perfectly. He had a bad attitude, he couldn't or wouldn't hold a job, he raced hot rods, he smoked, and he was a fucking moron. And it was all done with a practiced James Dean pose.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he's not exaggerating. He would spend most of his days practicing which used to be like very pop culture, everybody knew the James Dean pose, you've seen it in Bugs Bunny cartoons and shit.
BEN KISSEL
When he's laying on the side of the road as a corpse?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's this, it's the... You gotta get hands in your pockets.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the eyebrows up and the head completely turned to almost 240°. You're trying to tell me how to be a kid? I was born in a gutter!
BEN KISSEL
It's a horrible way to drive, brother.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is.
BEN KISSEL
That's all I'm saying.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which is why he crashed his car on that fateful, fateful night.
BEN KISSEL
I know. I've been making references to that.
MARCUS PARKS
Well similarly Starkweather's alleged accomplice, 14 year old Caril Ann Fugate, she became a symbol of youth corrupted by youth, an example of how strong a bad influence can be even in the face of parents who tried to steer their child in the right direction.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can you imagine a 17 year old thinking about voting?
BEN KISSEL
That's disgusting.
MARCUS PARKS
However the narrative was not as simple as all that. Caril Ann Fugate was basically neglected by her mother and stepfather and her overall guilt or innocence in at least 10 of the 11 murders is not cut and dry one way or the other.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Of all the couple killers that we have covered, especially just recently doing Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo, you really see when the research goes in, once we start opening the case up, once we open her up and check under the hood, we start to see that in Karla's case she was definitely way more guilty than I had even thought than when we began the process of researching the show.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This the more I research really shows it is very, very gray about Caril Ann Fugate's involvement in all this, mostly because she was fucking like 13 years old.
MARCUS PARKS
14. She was 14.
BEN KISSEL
Right, forget about it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean they're all the same. You're just a blob.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Until you're 35 years old, you don't count.
BEN KISSEL
Yep. That's true.
MARCUS PARKS
Now in a macro sense, the Starkweather murders were doubly shocking to America because it was felt that if they could happen in Nebraska, then it could happen anywhere.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa.
BEN KISSEL
Ooh, it's like New York City.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it's Nebraska.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
However what many of these people either didn't know or willfully ignored was the fact that the Midwest in the 50s was the scene of some of the most infamous and gruesome murders of the entire decade.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh we know now. I feel like that has become such a meme, that's such a thing now about how dangerous the Midwest is. I think it's important to remember that LA is also dangerous, okay?
BEN KISSEL
It is dangerous.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you can get shot here.
BEN KISSEL
It's different.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh, come to the Midwest, that's where we're eating all the kids' fucking pussies.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Everyone's making a bone altar, isn't that fun? We still do fucked up shit in LA.
BEN KISSEL
Well yeah, nothing to be proud of I don't think. But in the Midwest it is overwhelmingly kinder for the most part but it's just a few offbeat characters that cause massive amounts of damage.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh this is about an offbeat character.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
That's how you're describing John Wayne Gacy or Jeffrey Dahmer, it is an offbeat character. A bit of a nut.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. A crazy guy. He's that crazy guy.
BEN KISSEL
Okay hold on, you're telling me that John Wayne Gacy isn't offbeat?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. So you're saying they're all the neighbor from Empty Nest?
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Remember him?
BEN KISSEL
Of course.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I remember him.
BEN KISSEL
Also I think he was just gay and they're like, 'Something's wrong with that guy.'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's crazy.
MARCUS PARKS
No, he had a bit of a James Dean pose.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
He did.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like this. And now I'm just gonna try and talk the whole rest of the show just like James Dean. You don't understand me, dad. I need a leather jacket because it's cold.
BEN KISSEL
Actually you know what? It's so funny you're asking me if I need a ride. You know what? I'm actually gonna walk it. I'm gonna walk it. Thank you. I'm not gonna be driven by James Dean.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yes. He died in a tragic car accident for those of you under the age of 40.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Everyone knows that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know if they do.
BEN KISSEL
Whatever.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Some people don't even know the holocaust happened.
BEN KISSEL
Yes, they do. But they just pretended it didn't so they can feel better about their political views.
MARCUS PARKS
No, kids don't know the holocaust happened. They really don't know. It's crazy.
BEN KISSEL
Well congratulations kids, it did.
MARCUS PARKS
There's kids that say they didn't know about the Holocaust until they listened to our Josef Mengele episode. It's not taught.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's not good.
MARCUS PARKS
Well in addition to Starkweather's reign of terror, you also had the mass murder of the Clutter family in Kansas a few years later in 1959, of course that was the subject of 'In Cold Blood'.
BEN KISSEL
That was a mess.
MARCUS PARKS
Even more famously, the 50s was also the time of Ed Gein, whose crimes in Wisconsin were discovered the same year Starkweather committed his first murder. And that was just 500 miles away, a paltry distance in the Midwest.
BEN KISSEL
Wait, hold on a second. Miles are the same.
MARCUS PARKS
It's relevant.
BEN KISSEL
No, there's no difference.
MARCUS PARKS
It's absolutely. Have you ever tried driving 500 miles from New York City to down south and driving 500 miles from Milwaukee to fucking Lincoln, Nebraska?
BEN KISSEL
You've never been dumber. It is the same.
MARCUS PARKS
No, it's not. One takes longer. One takes longer. And distance is relative, my friend.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is called coastal elite math. This is coastal elite math and he's in it now, we have to break him out of it.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm not in it at all. I'm talking from Texas perspective. I can do 500 miles in Texas easy. 500 miles on the east coast, that's a different matter altogether, my friend.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He wrote the script.
BEN KISSEL
I know.
MARCUS PARKS
However serial killing wasn't the big concern in the 50s like it was in the 70s, nor was mass murder the main concern like it is today. Instead the twin enemies of the American way of life during that decade were communism, naturally-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No!
MARCUS PARKS
And the aforementioned juvenile delinquency.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can you imagine putting a soft toed shoe on to go outside?
BEN KISSEL
Unbelievable. It sounds a lot like today as well, doesn't it?
MARCUS PARKS
Now that's an old man statement.
BEN KISSEL
I'm 41.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, technically. This is when I think once you hit 41 you can start calling people delinquents.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. And I'm actually flipping it and reversing it, I say get on my lawn, let me see ya! Hey kids, get on my lawn, all right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Let's not go to the eager man's house anymore, Billy.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
See concerning the scourge of juvenile delinquency in the 50s, the alarm had been sounded years before Charles Starkweather murdered 11 people. In the summer of 1954 a gang of teenage boys in New York City beat one man to death and drowned another seemingly just for the thrill of it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's because the dudes lost the rumble and it's so hard once you get in the middle of that tap circle, if you can't do that (drumroll). You can't do that, you lose. Then you have to volunteer to be raped and drowned by that group of boys.
BEN KISSEL
Gangs aren't like West Side Story.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah they are.
BEN KISSEL
No, they use guns.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Me and MS-13 have been working on their choreography for a minute now.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I'll tell you what, South Street Miguel, he's incredible and the light that comes from him when he's the Music Man? I think it's going to turn the whole gang around.
BEN KISSEL
You act in jest but I think that could actually help.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I keep trying to offer theater classes to the gangs and they keep saying we're not ready.
BEN KISSEL
It's almost like you're not Michelle Pfeiffer.
MARCUS PARKS
Well these two murders in Brooklyn led the local press to unimaginatively nickname the group the Brooklyn Thrill Killers. See during that summer, authorities in Manhattan had been cracking down on what they called the undesirables. This was code for homeless people, gay men, and alcoholics. So when the persecution came from up top, the targeted individuals fled to Brooklyn.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is that why Brooklyn is this way?
BEN KISSEL
So cool and fun?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, like it's fun?
MARCUS PARKS
But when they arrived they discovered that the Brooklyn Thrill Killers had already been on patrol quote "cleaning the streets of bums" as they put it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's not good.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
However the Thrill Killers' activities had mostly at this point been limited to dousing homeless men in gasoline and setting them on fire or chasing women around the streets with whips.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Obviously it's a terrible crime to do.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But when they say cleaning up the streets, I feel like that's the opposite of cleaning the streets. I feel like a burning human actually makes the streets very dirty.
BEN KISSEL
Very messy, horrible. Absolutely. That reminds me of the first season of the first episode of The Flash where they were killing homeless people and The Flash had to stop them from doing that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
By running fast?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah and doing a series of other different kind of weird things.
MARCUS PARKS
Henry, he's also a police scientist. He knows what he's doing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What?
MARCUS PARKS
He's a police scientist.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He brings a fucking microscope out to the crime scene?
BEN KISSEL
He can.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What does that even mean?
BEN KISSEL
He's The Flash.
MARCUS PARKS
He's a police scientist. I don't know how else to describe it to you.
BEN KISSEL
He's a cool guy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But then he just runs fast?
BEN KISSEL
You know what The Flash does.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I've never understood The Flash. No, I don't. That's what The Flash does, he runs fast.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah he runs fast but he also uses science to make situations happen. He can wave his arms really fast and it creates wind.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's Bill Nye the fast guy?
MARCUS PARKS
Well after this group of four boys killed two men and were arrested for their crimes, the media had a field day with these juvenile delinquents and made up for the somewhat dull nickname of the Brooklyn Thrill Killers. Once the boys hit the newspapers, one outlet referred to them as quote "those terrible youth".
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel like it's my mom going, 'Oh those terrible youth.'
MARCUS PARKS
And a true crime magazine went even further, calling the ringleader the quote "Boy Hitler of Flatbush Avenue".
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Kill him!
BEN KISSEL
Boy Hitler, wow.
MARCUS PARKS
The adventures of Boy Hitler!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ah yes, look at him. It's the final solution to eat all of the red jelly beans.
BEN KISSEL
Sounds like the documentary the old man was watching in Up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I also feel like again in Brooklyn, is that where the hairstyle comes from?
MARCUS PARKS
The Boy Hitler? Yeah, I guess it did come from the Proud Boys.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The nazi cut is real big down there.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it really is. There's a lot of them here in the neighborhood.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's a lot like VICE as an entity, it started ironic and then it just turned into bigotry.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Weird.
MARCUS PARKS
Well this Boy Hitler nickname came from the suggestion that the boys were neo nazis due to their obviously fascistic techniques. This was also highly ironic considering how all four boys were Jewish. But as far as where Boy Hitler had obtained those whips they had used to chase around women-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, where do you get some of those?
MARCUS PARKS
He'd ordered them from ads in the back of either a horror or a true crime comic book.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah dude, this really comes all the way back around to comic books.
BEN KISSEL
Interesting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's really strange. You could just get a whip from a comic book back then.
BEN KISSEL
Can we add to our merch page?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I tried.
BEN KISSEL
That would be awesome.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Apparently need a license to sell whips.
BEN KISSEL
No!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean that's what I was told one time I left my fly down out by the beach.
BEN KISSEL
You are too much tonight.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I'm feeling it.
MARCUS PARKS
And as it just so happened, the court psychiatrist for the Brooklyn Thrill Killers trial was the infamous Dr. Fredric Wertham.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We don't know. We don't know.
BEN KISSEL
Oh!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow! Yay!
BEN KISSEL
Ooh!
MARCUS PARKS
Now in the true crime world, Wertham really is one of the architects of the 20th century. This guy is massively influential.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Now in the true crime world Wertham is best known as the man who was charged with determining the legal sanity of serial killer Albert Fish.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not only is this man sane but I am his best friend!
BEN KISSEL
You'll have to recuse yourself.
MARCUS PARKS
And Wertham is the reason why we know so much about the bizarre life of Albert Fish prior to his capture, the life filled with needles, paddles, monkeys, and peewees.
BEN KISSEL
Ugh, my gosh.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ugh. A lot of people say oh, Dr. Wertham, what is your superpower that allows you to be so good at your job? And it's because I do not suffer from a sense of ickiness.
BEN KISSEL
Oh you don't?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Tell me about what you put in your penis again.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness. You can just see him being like, 'I'm also a stud finder.' And then he just points right to Albert Fish's butt.
MARCUS PARKS
But in pop culture, Dr. Fredric Wertham is best known as the author of a book called 'The seduction of the Innocent' which claimed that comic books were the number one cause of the wave of highly violent juvenile delinquency sweeping the country in the 50s, adding that Batman and Robin were super gay for good measure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He wasn't entirely wrong.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he was. He was saying that Batman was a pedophile and that Robin was his groomed boy. That's not true.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's not true?
MARCUS PARKS
No!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's how I viewed it.
BEN KISSEL
They never had sex. Not that I know of.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I felt like it was a beneficial relationship and in the end I'm glad that Robin in the end, he enjoyed his position.
BEN KISSEL
Well he turns into Nightwing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now he did.
BEN KISSEL
They're trying to make a Nightwing movie but then they realized nobody cares.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nobody gives a fucking shit about Robin.
BEN KISSEL
Isn't that too bad?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm sorry, Fernando. He's very pro-Robin.
BEN KISSEL
I know. I like Robin.
MARCUS PARKS
There's a whole Robin thing going on right now that you just stepped into that you need to step out of right now.
BEN KISSEL
Step out of it!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whatever you nerds want. Whatever you want.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm just saying you need to back off of Robin right now, bro. I'm telling you this for your own fucking good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm backing away. My hands are up!
BEN KISSEL
Nightwing. It's kind of exciting.
MARCUS PARKS
Well in the Brooklyn Thrill Killers' trial, Wertham said that Boy Hitler's actions were partly motivated by a graphic BDSM crime comic called Nights of Horror which featured torture, humiliation, bondage, flagellation, bloodletting, foot worship, and just a couple of nipples.
BEN KISSEL
Every single thing that will make me hard is in this comic book.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I like it. I love how the 1950s again, there's so much weird shit embedded in that decade.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I don't wanna be in that one, I don't like that decade very much.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's very dark.
MARCUS PARKS
It's dark.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The 1950s feels very dark.
BEN KISSEL
But in the background in all of these living rooms where all of these people are doing these wicked things is Leave It To Beaver. The backdrop is all this pure innocence and it's just weird.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's really weird. You see it in Blue Velvet, he nails it to me, that dichotomy of it where there's so much of that. But also at the same time BDSM, now we know it's like so what you get spanked? So what someone puts clamps on your nipples?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. You have a red bottom right now?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Rosy-cheeked podcaster found strangled to death in latex bubble.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness.
MARCUS PARKS
Interestingly Nights of Horror, that BDSM comic, it was drawn by Superman co-creator Joe Shuster at a low point in his career. This was not too long after a court ruled that DC owed him and Jerry Siegel nothing for the creation of the most popular superhero of all time because they take technically signed the rights away in the 30s for the paltry sum of $150.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Worth it.
BEN KISSEL
They made Superman for 150 bucks?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think later on, didn't later on they got some settlement where they got paid out like $100,000 a year but it was like nothing?
BEN KISSEL
Even then.
MARCUS PARKS
It was like in the 90s or the 2000s or something like that. And even now trying to use Superman in a comic book is really difficult because you have to go through the Siegel and Shuster families.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But concerning Joe Shuster's post Superman work, Nights of Horror was used as evidence of Boy Hitler's quote unquote "sexual perversion" and was actually used partly to convict him and one of the other boys for murder.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now they did commit murders.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
I am here, I am the defense attorney for these children. Can we stop calling him Boy Hitler please? I find it is making the jury think of him as Hitler that's not necessarily beneficial.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well honestly I would be down and we all would agree to stop calling him Boy Hitler if he'd put the arm down.
MARCUS PARKS
Overruled.
BEN KISSEL
Oh okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Boy Hitler was certainly some sort of psychopath because while Nights of Horror was more masturbation material, his worst crimes were actually inspired by superhero comics because he saw himself as a crime fighting hero who was actually helping police in their quest to clean the streets of undesirables.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they didn't do anything to refute that by allowing it to continue and saying actively that he was helping clean up the streets.
BEN KISSEL
Interesting indeed. I wonder what his superhero name would be.
MARCUS PARKS
Boy Hitler.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Boy Hitler.
BEN KISSEL
Oh.
MARCUS PARKS
But as far as causing murders and the like, crime and superhero comics merely gave the Brooklyn Thrill Killers a template to work from, because had these types not had the comics or the movies or the TV shows, the urges would come out one way or another.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Humans are very creative.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well if anything the argument should be that crime comics destroyed imaginations rather than morals because as far as I know Albert Fish didn't read any jolting tales of tension told in the EC tradition.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He invented them.
BEN KISSEL
Get on my lawn. Please god, get on my lawn.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what he did? You know Albert Fish did that none of you guys have the fucking guts to do that complaint on the internet? He went out and made his dreams real.
BEN KISSEL
Nightmares to be fair. Also oh my god, look at the moon. Is that a small Hitler stache? Boy Hitler must be around .
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's here!
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I'm so glad this year they're finally revamping the whole thing with Girl Hitler.
BEN KISSEL
I think that's fantastic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just think it's so brave of them.
BEN KISSEL
Representation.
MARCUS PARKS
One man who did love horror and true crime comics however was Charles Starkweather.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's me! I like them! I like them violent and I like them with the tits out and I like them with vroom vroom. I like them when everybody's smoking cigarettes. I like them!
BEN KISSEL
That's fine, it's artistic. Just, you know, they're fiction.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah fiction to get me some dinner, you bitch.
BEN KISSEL
Okay, very rude.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Starkweather's favorite genre was quote "comics with knives".
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I hate comics with spoons. What is this some kinda soup restaurant?
BEN KISSEL
That sucks. Yeah, I hate soupy comics.
MARCUS PARKS
In other words, Starkweather was as I said a bit of a moron.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
And he wasn't really there to appreciate say the artistry of a solid Wally Wood story.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm going to do some readings today that's really going to show the thinking level of Charles Starkweather, where he's at. Because one thing I will say about all of these crimes especially now more and more I read about Caril Ann Fugate's story too, I do feel sympathy for her. But everybody was very fucking stupid in this story that was not murdered. All the murdered people are innocent, blah, blah, blah.
BEN KISSEL
Not blah, blah, blah. They are victims of a madman.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well her family, there's two different sides of stories about her family and what happens, why they got murdered, right.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But Charles Starkweather stupided his way into being one of the most infamous names in true crime.
BEN KISSEL
And that is the scariest thing of all.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
It can all come to an end no matter how hard you work, someone dumb with a gun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's all. Just somebody with no skills, no viable career.
BEN KISSEL
True fear.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No happiness, nothing inside of them but rage and stupidity and comic books.
BEN KISSEL
Drop out of school now, stop everything. It all ends. No, I'm just joking.
MARCUS PARKS
Well while Fredric Wertham's 'Seduction of the Innocent' panic occurred before Charles Starkweather's spree, a thick file was certainly found amongst Fredric Wertham's effects after he died concerning the Starkweather-Fugate murders.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wish that we could have spent some time together because I do believe we would have enjoyed a hamburger, me and Charlie Starkweather, just enjoying each other in the summer afternoon, having sex with a little girl together. I love being a doctor for serial killers.
BEN KISSEL
Just one hamburger, just you and Charlie splitting it and then your lips kiss in the middle over a tomato.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Lady and the Tramp.
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I tried to do that with Natalie with a burrito the other day and she said no.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. It's disgusting.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh god. From the beginning of the burrito? Like you gotta chomp through the entire-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Ugh.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You guys both get a knuckle.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But before we get to those murders, let's acknowledge our source for this series. Today we've got 'Wasteland: The Savage Odyssey of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate' by Michael Newton. It's another solid and well researched true crime narrative. Recommended.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I also was reading from Caril Fugate's entire storyline, it's 'The Twelfth Victim' by Linda M. Battisti. And it's it's very pro Caril Ann.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
She's got her supporters definitely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She does.
BEN KISSEL
I also read from something called Wikipedia which I think is a pedophile who hunts kids that can read. And it was very interesting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's why it's safe to be dumb.
MARCUS PARKS
And so without further ado, let's get into the story of Charles Starkweather and his alleged accomplice Caril Ann Fugate. Now if I were to compare Charles Starkweather's general demeanor and outlook on life to anyone, I'd choose Joel Rifkin because both men blamed every bad thing they ever did on the relentless bullying that they received growing up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well it's just something about listening to the testimony of an older man constantly just being like, 'If everything, honestly my whole life turned to ship when I was 4.'
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It sounds like you never had a chance, dude.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Well they had a chance not to become serial killers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
We were all bullied. It's tough, it is hard to overcome.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's about being hyper focused on this perceived thing that then became your entire personality.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
While Rifkin was adopted, Charles was raised by his birth parents Guy and Helen Starkweather. Born with conspicuous red hair in 1938 as the third of seven kids, Charles was raised in a perfectly average lower middle class household and was considered a normal child until he entered preschool.
BEN KISSEL
Red hair is beautiful.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Red hair is fine.
BEN KISSEL
Red hair is gorgeous.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
When I was a little boy, the pictures of me as a little boy I'm just so fucking evil looking because I have the red hair. The red hair does make you look like a little fucking demon.
BEN KISSEL
No, it doesn't. It doesn't.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It does.
BEN KISSEL
No. Problem Child really set the redheads back quite a bit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It did. But Charlie Starkweather also didn't help.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. That year though, the year that Charles entered preschool, he was playing cowboys and Indians when he fell and hit his head on a washtub which puts him on the ever growing list of killers who had childhood head injuries.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That one wasn't that bad.
MARCUS PARKS
It wasn't that bad. It wasn't too terribly traumatic. It's nothing compared to say the blackouts and seizures suffered by John Wayne Gacy in his childhood.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's just because he was a fucking little chubby bitch.
BEN KISSEL
He was offbeat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But Starkweather fell apart when he entered school and the bullying began. See like Joel Rifkin, Charles Starkweather had a safe place that existed before he had to interact with the rest of society. Starkweather called his-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The enchanted forest!
BEN KISSEL
Oh that's not creative, everyone had the enchanted forest.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You don't know me! I'm out there, me and them trees have a special relationship because you see that one over there?
BEN KISSEL
What?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's got a hole in it.
BEN KISSEL
Why?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's my wife.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness.
MARCUS PARKS
It was just a wooded area behind his house that he played in before he encountered the relentless bullies of elementary school.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because both of them have the same bullshit thing of like the halcyon days when I was two years old. You don't remember. You just moved. Yeah I'm sorry you moved, bro. It's not that fucking traumatic.
BEN KISSEL
Well it can be traumatizing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah whatever, dude. Get over it. Don't kill a bunch of people.
BEN KISSEL
Don't kill a bunch of people.
MARCUS PARKS
Well besides the red hair, Charles was terribly shy and awkward in addition to having a speech impediment that caused him to switch his Hs with his Ws. For example, he would say 'wouse' instead of house.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again, he was a target for a reason in many ways as a child because I've never heard of that speech impediment.
MARCUS PARKS
I haven't either. It's bizarre.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Never heard of that.
BEN KISSEL
It happens. It's Nebraska.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's Nebraska.
MARCUS PARKS
During a speech in front of his class in which the kids giggled at his strange speech patterns, Charles had a panic attack which quickly turned into the raging hatred that would spew forth from Starkweather for the rest of his short life. The speech impediment and red hair however weren't the only sources of bullying. He had a trifecta here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Starkweather was also massively bowlegged, wide enough where in Charlie's words, a pig could run through without touching the sides.
BEN KISSEL
See that's cool!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We now know that moseying is cool because pop culture made it cool.
BEN KISSEL
Mosey around.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. And mostly it's just because pop culture, we see these things, all the cowboys, that's cool. At the time it made him a victim of everyone else because he was massively bowlegged. Actually that's what is interesting is that he was correct, he did have oval legs and anything could squirt between there.
BEN KISSEL
Well it's kind of nice in case you're in a rodeo or something, have to avoid kind of a horse or a bear or a bull.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Or crawl in mother.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, it's kind of good like that.
MARCUS PARKS
With all this put together, Charles would later say that his first day of school made him rebel against the entire human race.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's like him and fucking GG Allin.
BEN KISSEL
I understand where he's coming from. He's quite upset, people were too mean to him.
MARCUS PARKS
Well he did later at least admit that this wasn't a great excuse for murdering 11 people.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's a lot of better excuses like going to war, you can kill many people over there, it's a great excuse. If somebody touches your car.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You cut his hand off, you bash his head in. Fuck you, that's my car, that's my second home!
BEN KISSEL
I'm not sure if he had the opportunity to go to war. Is this Korean wartime here? 50s?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he would have been able to go to the Korean War I think.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, he could have done that bowlegged, he could have gotten on one of those little bombs.
MARCUS PARKS
Nah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They didn't want him.
MARCUS PARKS
He woulda been 4F, he would have been bowlegged. You can't get in the army if you're bowlegged.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But the thing is, isn't that easier to ride the turret of a tank?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That'd be kinda fun on the outside, then you're the lookout.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I see the other guy, he's over there!
BEN KISSEL
Perfect.
MARCUS PARKS
Well back then Starkweather used this anger as motivation to beat the other kids whenever he felt a hint of bullying. And since he was also a moron, he had that special kind of easily confused, violent sensitivity that can be particularly dangerous.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's just the type of guy that will fight you if you bump into him at the bar. He is that type. He became at the age of 5 ready to fight anybody within arms distance of him.
BEN KISSEL
Right. And blaming everybody else for all of his qualms.
MARCUS PARKS
Charles would also create provocation when none was present and for this he was called a brute and a beast. But since he was also a bit of a worm, his classmates' favorite name to call Charles was quote "redheaded bowlegged peckerwood".
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I find it again to be long.
BEN KISSEL
It is long.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know how many times people say that, they yell that at me. But by the time that they're done with it I'm gone.
BEN KISSEL
That's very true. Or you're punching him or something.
MARCUS PARKS
It was more of a chant like (chanting) redheaded bowlegged peckerwood! Redheaded bowlegged peckerwood! And then they'd chase him around and they'd say it over and over again.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And he'd cry and cry.
BEN KISSEL
(chanting) We're creating a demon!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're doing it, we're helping him. They did call him woodpecker too which is funny.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Woodpecker, wood. I like it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again I feel like if you lean in, that's how you become a cool guy.
BEN KISSEL
It's really not that bad of an insult.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You gotta lean in and people call you woodpecker, you start calling yourself woodpecker.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're gonna be a stunt cock in a stag film.
BEN KISSEL
You could do that. I pecked your mom last night. Sure I'm a woodpecker, I pecked your mom last night. Something like that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa, throw it back at them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa.
MARCUS PARKS
And by the time he's 20 his name's just Woody and all of a sudden he's Woody Starkweather. I'd fucking hang out with Woody Starkweather all night long.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Suck it, suck it. Talking about hot rods, gum, all our favorite songs, the ice cream dance, the hot dog dance, there is the cornpop shuffle.
BEN KISSEL
Oh you're gonna love that. Cloudy with a chance of come.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh man. Bring your umbrellas.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There is a 20% chance of come.
BEN KISSEL
Woody Woodpecker, he could go by Woody Woodpecker and that could be embarrassing too. He may have just been a failure no matter what.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I think he was set up for it. But on the other hand it's also possible that Charles wasn't telling the whole truth about how tough he was when he was a kid because as we'll see again and again, the word of Charles Starkweather cannot be trusted.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I'll put Charlie, this motherfucker partially not only the words can't be trusted, it's not just because he's some kind of master manipulator, he's a fucking moron.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I sometimes actually think that he just doesn't know what happened to him, you know what I mean?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's so truly, probably these days you'd say he had some form of mental learning disability.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because he can't think.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he also had severe myopia. So he also couldn't really see without coke bottle glasses which of course he never wore because that made him look like a nerd.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
So he's just this literally bumbling moron bumping into people and getting into fights because he can't see them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's blind and then he gets into fights because he's bumping into you.
BEN KISSEL
Right. Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Well school records showed only five instances of disciplinary actions throughout Charles' entire time in school. And while it's possible that most of the fights happened off school grounds, it's more likely that Charles fabricated his fighting persona to fit the teenage rebel image that he created for himself by the time he was caught.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'll always remember my gang. It was me, Rocky Marciano, Bugs Bunny, and this floating checkerboard.
BEN KISSEL
Really? No kidding?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I was like yo, king me, king me! To this checkerboard, right.
BEN KISSEL
To the checkers, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And no one else saw it. Crazy gang I was a part of.
BEN KISSEL
It sounds like it. It's tough to sweep his leg I bet cause of the bowleggedness. And he's a weeble wobble, I bet you he doesn't fall down.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's our power with low centers of gravity.
MARCUS PARKS
Really Charles was just another oddball scorned by society in the vein of so many killers before and after who chose the easy road of turning that rage into violence rather than finding a more suitable outlet. Now when the bullying at his first school got to be too much, Charles transferred to another school and immediately got into a fight with a kid named Bob Von Busch, the first of many people in the story with highly colorful names.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's good names in this episode.
BEN KISSEL
I do like that.
MARCUS PARKS
But even though they fought, Bob and Charles became fast friends because Bob considered Charles to be quote "the roughest guy he'd ever fought" and a hell of a lot of fun. Just rough, a rough man, very rough man.
BEN KISSEL
These are sixth graders, right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I hung out with girls. I like girls, I don't like all the tugging and the wrestling and the men slapping each other. Why do men do that?
BEN KISSEL
You toughen it up, you toughen up the tush.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Why you always grabbing each other? All the men are slapping and it's always like oh you punched me the hardest, Dave, you're my best friend now. And then they spend all day going (grunting) I'm gonna get you, I wanna kiss.
BEN KISSEL
We used to see how long we could put each other in wrestling moves like the Sharpshooter and Figure Four.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See that's cool but again it's butt on butt.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Kids would get tied up a lot when I was growing up, like hogtied.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what BTK, that's what he fucking did, that fed into his whole brain.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah but we'd do it to each other and then you'd squeal and you'd squeal and you'd really freak out, then all the kids would laugh and they finally untie you and you do it to another kid and they'd squeal and squeal.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And then all of a sudden two hours are gone and you got an afternoon there.
BEN KISSEL
Boom, a full afternoon. It's a vicious cycle of somebody else suffering and you're just happy it's not you.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But you know that they did that to Dennis Rader and then they had to stop playing the game because every single time they tied him up, he'd get a little fucking erection.
BEN KISSEL
Well that's also a test.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well yeah, that's the problem is that all the boys have to go wee-wah, oh I didn't know the turkey was gonna finish once we tied him up.
MARCUS PARKS
Perhaps what brought Bob and Charles together most though was hotrods. With this obsession Charles pretty much became the epitome of the 1950s juvenile delinquent cliché, all dungarees and cigarettes and gasoline.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Vroom vroom, honk honk. He loved that shit. And guess what he was bad at? Driving.
BEN KISSEL
I could see it, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Guess what, he was really bad at it. We're gonna get into this now but they tried to make him a mechanic.
BEN KISSEL
He didn't like it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was stupid. Because the thing is that actually being a mechanic is a really complex job.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely it is. Now you have to be a computer scientist.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
See in the mid 50s, Bob Von Busch and Charles Starkweather began stealing cars for fun and profit. And Charles started participating in games of chicken, proudly boasting that he never once swerved first.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what he always says, that's what everybody who is chicken says.
BEN KISSEL
Really stupid.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what they all say. I never swerved.
MARCUS PARKS
But he couldn't see so he didn't know when to swerve.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was his secret power. No one knew. What they don't know is I can't see shit! I can't even see the danger, so I don't feel it.
BEN KISSEL
Right, okay. Kind of a superpower in its own right.
MARCUS PARKS
Now as such, Charles gained the admiration of a whole new set of peers, the hot rod set.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa, cool.
MARCUS PARKS
This however wasn't enough to fix his overall state of being, that of a timid, withdrawn, sullen, and resentful teenager who was prone to temper tantrums and extreme acts of cruelty. In one fight that Charles started, he pushed the loser's face into a gravel driveway, grinding it into the rocks until the kid was shredded and bloody. The school nurse who witnessed the fight and apparently did nothing until it was over said that Charles did it with all the passion of a man changing a flat tire.
BEN KISSEL
I would like to point out I am the nurse, I am not a referee. I show up at the end.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm not doing a 10 count, I just wipe up blood.
BEN KISSEL
That's it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is all in retrospect, right. They're talking about him as a boy.
BEN KISSEL
Is that not true? Did he even really do that?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, there was a report about that. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that one he did. But again they add all the things afterwards cause now you know he's a mass killer.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I feel like at the time they all just assume well this kid is gonna literally stupid himself to death.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like he is going to back his car, accidentally it's gonna be in reverse, he's gonna start the car, he's gonna go off a bridge.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A pallet of bricks is gonna fall on him at a construction site. He's going to fall through a sewer grate, down an open elevator shaft. He's gonna die that way. He's not going to be a criminal, he's not gonna make it to being a criminal.
BEN KISSEL
I mean 1950s Nebraska, half the way to pass time is just to rub your face in gravel anyway.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well it's like Ben said earlier, it's extraordinarily easy to die in a car accident in the 1950s. There's a whole genre of songs that's just about people dying in car accidents.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, Dead Man's Curves.
MARCUS PARKS
Leader of the Pack.
BEN KISSEL
Yep. I Can't Drive '55.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
My Boyfriend's a Grave. Rudy Tooty Had a Miscarriage in my Hoody.
BEN KISSEL
That's a bad one. That one's crazy. I didn't even know she was pregnant. It's a surprise ending there. The River actually by Bruce Springsteen has a little car scene in it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) We'd go down to the river, we'd go down to the river.
BEN KISSEL
It's a very sad, sad song. If anyone is listening to the lyrics of that song, if it is your parents favorite song, they hate each other. Cause that entire relationship is-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's about killing a woman next to a river.
BEN KISSEL
It's miserable.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Charles Starkweather's inner life was all about obsessing over constant failures.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I have a good quote. I have the exact quote, can I read it?
MARCUS PARKS
Sure!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because he was obsessed with this, right, and he believed that he failed in life and the reason why he failed was because "I haven't ever eaten in a high class restaurant, never seen the New York Yankees play or been to Los Angeles or New York City or other places that books and magazines say are wonderful places to be. There hadn't been a chance for me to have this opportunity or privilege for the best things in life."
BEN KISSEL
What? It's not Narnia, they're real. You just go there. You just gotta go.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wait a second, I thought a dwarf had to show up with a ring, like a magic ring, a guy with hairy feet. And you guys go down there like oh we better do something, there's a dragon in New York City!
BEN KISSEL
You're dumber than Boy Hitler.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he's smart.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's smart.
MARCUS PARKS
He believed that he constantly failed just because life wasn't fair, it was the classic loser's excuse.
BEN KISSEL
He just didn't like growing up in Nebraska.
MARCUS PARKS
No, no.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
But he thought that growing up in Nebraska was something that was done to him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again, he's a baby. He's a fucking shithead.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
His whole thing is that everybody wronged him because he has red hair.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well as such, Charles dropped out of high school at the age of 16 and got a job with his brother Rodney as a garbage man for $35 a week.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Ooh, not bad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But they had to fire him because he kept harassing people on the route, he'd yell at people about their garbage and stuff.
BEN KISSEL
What would he yell about their garbage?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're putting all this stinky fucking bullshit out here for me!
BEN KISSEL
I got nothing but respect for you, garbage man, but you're the garbage man, you gotta pick up the garbage, man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You put doodies in this bag.
BEN KISSEL
No, I have dogs. The dog shat in the house.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You disgust me.
BEN KISSEL
No, you get paid fairly well.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Am I some kind of doody fucking sleigh man?
BEN KISSEL
I didn't make you a garbage man! It's a good job, you gotta work for 25 years and then you can retire forever.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I didn't know that.
BEN KISSEL
Then you go to Florida.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I shouldn't have quit then, right?
BEN KISSEL
I know, then you go to Boca Raton.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I made so many mistakes, I'm never gonna get to the World's Fair.
BEN KISSEL
No you won't.
MARCUS PARKS
Well after he quit, he got a job at a newspaper warehouse baling papers and unloading trucks. Even though the warehouse job was extremely low skill, his boss is still described him as let's use the word mentally challenged, let's use that phrase. They used a different word.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They were old medical terms that we don't use anymore.
BEN KISSEL
Intriguing.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well from what his bosses said, you'd have to tell Charles two or three times how to do something before he'd finally get it. It earned him the title the dumbest man the newspaper ever employed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, question here, question here. What are we printing here? What is this? Are these menus?
BEN KISSEL
It's the news. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Of course, of course. Can I ask you a question?
BEN KISSEL
Classifieds.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey boss, can I ask a question?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What are the squiggles on the papers?
BEN KISSEL
Those are words.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh. Now I have another question. Someone asked me should I return the newspaper because when you talk to the little man in the square, he doesn't say anything back.
BEN KISSEL
Right, it's a picture.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is he frozen? Does that mean he doesn't go to heaven?
BEN KISSEL
No he's still alive, it's just someone took a picture of somebody. As a matter of fact remember that duck segment when they ran the world's weirdest duck?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I hated him. He creeped me out.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah indeed. Quack-a-long, quack-a-long. Yeah. You didn't read that article, did you?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What horrible business am I in?
BEN KISSEL
It's the newspaper business.
MARCUS PARKS
Concerning Charles stupidity, he once fell asleep at work under a sunlamp and burned half his face. And he'd often order car parts and charge them to the company to have the cost taken out of his paycheck. But since he couldn't do math, he would come constantly order more car parts than what he was paid. So they had to tell him to stop doing it. Another time the handle on a baling machine slipped out of Charles's hand and struck him so hard in the face that he was knocked cold. And as a result he suffered frequent blinding headaches for the rest of his life.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Here's another quote from Charlie Starkweather. "At the newspaper union the people was always watching me. They had me numbered for the bottom. I tried to do work as good as anybody ever, done things by myself the two of us should have done, all right. I used to think now no more hating, no more fighting, I've done what is right and something would happen to take it all out of me. I used to wonder why no goods like some I know was getting praised for doing what they've done. I guess it's because they talk better than I did because they had better places to sleep at night. They made me hate, then they couldn't make me like them without their changing and then they wasn't gonna change!"
BEN KISSEL
To be honest Charles, we had no idea this was all going on in your head. Everyone was just kind of doing their thing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You didn't see my watercolors? I left them out, it was a cry for help!
BEN KISSEL
I didn't know that, I'm sorry.
MARCUS PARKS
Well around the time that Charles dropped out of high school, he saw a movie that confirmed the shallow teenage rebel image he built for himself. In 1955 Charles Starkweather saw a Rebel Without a Cause and he made an idol out of James Dean. See Charles loved James Dean in the film because Dean not only captured the brooding dickhead personality Starkweather cultivated but because Dean's character was named Jim Stark, which was kinda like Starkweather.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's my name.
BEN KISSEL
And I love that scene where James Dean goes to the bathroom with his big bowlegs and has his leg accidentally sit down on the other side of the old urinal there and he gets a blow job.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the one thing I don't understand is that Jim Stark is supposed to be me, why doesn't he have bowlegs?
BEN KISSEL
It's because he's not you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah but why am I watching?
BEN KISSEL
He's actually an actor, he's kinda actually strangely tiny.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah but my thing is why does he got my name, or got half my name?
BEN KISSEL
He doesn't.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah but he's got half.
BEN KISSEL
No, he has half of your last name.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Why is he living my life?
BEN KISSEL
It's a movie. He doesn't even live that life. James Dean was living a miserable life.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I actually never really understood, I thought I was looking through a big window.
BEN KISSEL
That's the screen. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I got one of those in my house. Keeps the bugs out.
BEN KISSEL
It's a little different.
MARCUS PARKS
But from the Jim Stark character Starkweather found a pose and a style. And according to his sister he spent hours in front of the mirror rehearsing his James Dean pose, perfecting the way Dean hung a cigarette from his lips.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ow, ow! I keep burning my chin. Ow! How does he do this?
BEN KISSEL
It's pretty remarkable. I always wanted to have a cigar like the dude in the wheelchair from the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, Franklin.
BEN KISSEL
But you chew the cigar.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's disgusting when it's all wet.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, it's gross.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's bad. Yeah for years I thought that was a sausage.
BEN KISSEL
Nope.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, it's not. I thought it was as well. I never understood why it wasn't smoking but we're not cigar men.
BEN KISSEL
No we're not. Actually I've had a couple of cigars recently.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You like cigars.
BEN KISSEL
I've been getting into them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah I know but do you suck on them when they're not lit? Do you go home at night and take a half of a wet old cigar, put it in your mouth, and just sit there being like, 'I wish I could have saved that girl.'
BEN KISSEL
I'll tell you I don't put it in my mouth. But it is funny, there's this new movie that is basically Five Nights at Freddy's that Nicolas Cage stars in.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Willy's Wonderland.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's good fun, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And then there is one of the detectives that he just has a piece of jerky in his mouth the whole time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's because he's trying to quit smoking, it's character choice.
BEN KISSEL
It's a character thing.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But completely unrelated to Dean's performance, it was around this time that Charles' fantasies of the aforementioned enchanted forest were overtaken by increasingly strong and violent fantasies involving a physical representation of the grim reaper. Charles would later say that he would experience personal visits from death who would bring along a coffin and order Charles to climb inside.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I do have a direct reading of his fantasy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah? Go for it, Go for it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"She comes to me in a dream. She told me don't be in no hurry, I won't forget. One time death came to me with a coffin with it all folded for me to get in. Then the coffin sailed away with me in it to come to a big fire and the coffin sort of melted I guess. I was down there on a street with great flames of fire on each side of me but it wasn't hot like I always thought hell would be."
BEN KISSEL
This is a dream.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No! "It was more like beautiful flames of gold. And I woke up."
BEN KISSEL
All right. So it doesn't sound like it was a nightmare, it sounds like he really enjoyed it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he loved his visits from death.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
But his death was not the typical black robe skeleton type. To him death was a half human, half bear with no neck, no arms, and no ears.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They asked him. They're sitting with a psychiatrist, obviously all these quotes all come from after the fact, trying to figure out all this kind of shit.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so they're asking him like so okay, so death comes to you Charles. That's incredible. It's fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. But what does death look like? And he's like literally some kind of bear, half man, he's got a woman's tits, right? He's got a bear head, right? So it's got an open pussy, no arms or legs. It was kinda like a snake.
BEN KISSEL
Okay. So it's like ManBearPig from South Park.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
No, it had an a pointed head that tapered off into a chest with big tits. It was a woman somehow, for some reason.
BEN KISSEL
You're not very creative are you, Charles?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think actually I'm quite creative.
MARCUS PARKS
I think it's very creative.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No one's ever once thought of that once.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The thing is what a lot of doctors have said to me is that Charlie, you're so stupid, you're unique.
BEN KISSEL
That is true.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I was like that's amazing.
BEN KISSEL
Right. No, he just fantasized about having big tits with no arms and no legs so it can't get away from him or fight him off.
MARCUS PARKS
No, it had legs. It had legs.
BEN KISSEL
It had legs?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. So it was sauntering around.
MARCUS PARKS
But it was half a bear, it had like bear's legs I think. And then a bear woman head but it was pointy and no ears.
BEN KISSEL
No ears.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can guarantee that he never thought of it once until they asked him what does death look like and then he just made it up on the spot.
BEN KISSEL
Interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
Well eventually Charles claimed that this bear woman would visit him in waking fantasies accompanied by a whistling sound that announced her arrival. In these daydreams Charles imagined himself as the hero of fantastical adventures and these fantasies always ended with Charles murdering his enemies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's interesting that he did view death as a whistle because I'm certain he had no clue about the Aztec death whistles or any of that type of shit.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he said that's what it sounds like. I find that to be fascinating.
BEN KISSEL
Okay. And again these are just fantasies, so who doesn't want to murder their enemies in fantasy?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
People do.
BEN KISSEL
Murder them in other ways emotionally.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Jesus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
These murders were always justified in Starkweather's mind because Starkweather had conditioned himself through years of aggressive behavior to justify any violent action. He'd pick fights with strangers that he said were asking for it, they were asked for by the way they were dressed or the way they combed their hair or because they looked at him cross eyed as he put it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is rude though.
BEN KISSEL
I hate that. What are you looking at?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh! Like Harpo, when people give me Harpo face, I go nuts.
BEN KISSEL
Oh absolutely. Jerry Lewis? Come on.
MARCUS PARKS
While this is a way of living that would repel most people, it was actually attractive to Starkweather's future partner in crime Caril Ann Fugate.
BEN KISSEL
Look at that.
MARCUS PARKS
Now there's a lot of speculation as to whether Caril Ann was a willing accomplice in the murders to come and modern interpretations usually tend to absolve her of any blame.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mostly I think because of her age and the nature of the crime. But I think that there's a gray area inbetween that we're trying to waddle in.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I think it comes down to a reality that exists somewhere between two scenarios. The first possibility is that Caril Ann fell in love with a bad boy, quickly got in over her head when the fantasies became real, then went along with the mass murder because she was scared of what Charles would do if she didn't go along with that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
The second option though is that Caril Ann was more like Karla Homolka. In that situation the extreme violence starting with Caril's parents activated a hidden desire to kill. This is the Mickey and Mallory scenario, although Starkweather and Caril Ann never left anyone alive to tell the tale.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The more research I do, the more I'm starting to believe that she did not have anything directly to do with any sort of violence except for the violence against her family and that everything else was separate and that Charles Starkweather kept it separate.
MARCUS PARKS
Could be.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But then tried to blame it all on her which we'll get to.
BEN KISSEL
All right. Natural Born Killers perhaps.
MARCUS PARKS
Concerning the former possibility though, Caril Ann was only 12 years old when she met Charles Starkweather. She'd gone on a double date with Starkweather and Caril Ann's sister Barbara, who at the time was dating Starkweather's best friend Bob Von Busch.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now yeah, this is old timey dating. This is old timey dating because you remember the Fugates actually just broke up because she had a stepfather, blah, blah, blah. There's a little bit of backstory here because the father was weird. The original Fugate left town and they're kind of like a hardscrabble family trying to put it together. But it is weird to be like, 'You should date by 12 year old sister, fellow adult.'
BEN KISSEL
Well again 1950s, the guy blew a Fugate, he had to get out of there. Nice.
MARCUS PARKS
Well from what the author wrote, Caril was 12 but could have easily passed for 17 in both looks and attitude, which isn't all that hard to see considering how everyone in the 50s looked like they were fucking 35 by the time they were 15 years old.
BEN KISSEL
By the way, check out Orphan: First kill. Not too shabby.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's good!
BEN KISSEL
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
It's not too shabby?
BEN KISSEL
Not too shabby.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The twist in it is pretty great. It's great.
MARCUS PARKS
All right. Interesting cause I figured there were no more twists left.
BEN KISSEL
Oh there's a twist!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's a twist.
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed.
MARCUS PARKS
But concerning Caril Ann, she was rebellious, quick tempered, wore dungarees and a men's shirt with the sleeves rolled up, she swore like a sailor, and she already knew how to drive a car.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She was aping the idea of being a bad girl. Again she was 12. So she didn't really know.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Like Charles though, Caril Ann was also a bit of a dullard and had been held back in elementary school. Unlike Charles though, Caril Ann was neglected by her mother following a divorce and a remarry and Caril Ann grew up in utter poverty.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
From the book 'The Twelfth Victim' there was an example of why the mother actually disliked the original father because William Fugate, her father, he was not around a lot but he was considered to be a little bit inappropriate in his humor. And he used to write poems for his daughters to make them laugh. And one of the poems was, 'Oh I took my girl a skating, I sat her on my knee. She lit a fart, broke my heart, and shit all over me. Oh it ain't gonna rain no more, no more.' That was the poem that he used to say.
BEN KISSEL
That's funny.
MARCUS PARKS
That's funny.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And the kids used to laugh and love it.
BEN KISSEL
That's a funny one.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But Barbara was giving side eye.
BEN KISSEL
That's not bad, it's not nearly as bad as it could be.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Obviously yeah, he could have molested everyone.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Well after Caril Ann and Charles went out on one date, he was so smitten that he actually threatened to kill another boy who tried asking her out.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And the pair would date for the next two years. See Caril, she didn't care about Starkweather's speech impediment, his bowlegs, or his intense myopia.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Love does that, doesn't it?
BEN KISSEL
I guess.
MARCUS PARKS
All she saw was a tough rebel with a hotrod whom she considered handsome, even though Charles Starkweather is about one of the weirdest looking dudes I've ever laid eyes on. He's somehow both moonfaced and square headed at the same time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well what he is is hot and cool to a 12 year old. You understand? Things don't change. Again he was giving her a lot of attention. He was five years older than her.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now we know the term love bombing, he was doing that too. He pulled out all the stops. Whatever money he had he gave her and he was obsessed with her. So she felt very special.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. See in Caril Ann's eyes, Charles could do no wrong. And once he had someone to share his world with, he could, in author Michael Newton's words, break from society completely. For Charles quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"Something worth killing for had come." Yeah, now it's just not meaningless killing.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now I can do it and it's nice. I got a reason, I gotta casus belli.
BEN KISSEL
I mean it's kind of romantic if it was written by Shakespeare but it's not.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's not. Well it's because he's an asshole and again it's about now I have somebody that likes me for me, which is I'm a horrendous asshole and now you like me for being one.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And I did do a little snooping on Mr. Charles there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's called research.
BEN KISSEL
Snooping. And he's not that unattractive. I'm gonna say he's a 6.5.
MARCUS PARKS
6.5 really?
BEN KISSEL
Got an actor's head.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Kissel is just being generous today. I don't know why he's choosing to be generous with Charles Starkweather but he is.
MARCUS PARKS
But things didn't immediately start with murder and death. It took a while for both of them to warm up to the idea but once Charles got a taste for it and since he wasn't that great at thinking about the future, he found that murder solved problems in the very short term.
BEN KISSEL
Eureka!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
BEN KISSEL
So tell me Charles, what was your aha moment?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
When I realized that you just kill and kill and kill and kill and everybody just give you things and you win, you're number one.
BEN KISSEL
That's great. Do you want to sit down with Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil to talk about it on their show?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh my god am I gonna see the yellow brick road?
BEN KISSEL
Yep. Catch me outside.
MARCUS PARKS
Those problems however mostly involved Caril Ann. In a fight with his father over whether or not Caril should be allowed to drive Charles' car when she was just 13, Charles slapped his father and his father slapped back, sending Charles flying backwards into his car's side window, breaking it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He literally threw him out of a window.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness gracious.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's how small he was. But his father was a nice guy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
By all accounts his father was a hardworking honest man that freaked out.
BEN KISSEL
He got into a slap fight with his kid. That's a slap fight.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. That's the thing, there were seven kids, the other six were just fine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they were just hanging out. He got all the recessive genes.
BEN KISSEL
That's too bad, too bad.
MARCUS PARKS
Charles was subsequently kicked out of his house and he moved in with Bob Von Busch and Caril Ann's sister Barbara, who since marrying Bob had become Barbara Busch.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yay!
BEN KISSEL
Whoa!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But not Bush war criminal, Busch bad beer.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yep. Soon after though Charles moved in with his brother Rodney and focused on Caril, spending most of his paychecks on buying her useless junk.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
And even though he needed money, he quit his job at the newspaper warehouse because in Charlie's estimation his boss had hired a bunch of college boys, made Charlie train them, then he promoted them to higher paying jobs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's because they all could think and he could not think.
BEN KISSEL
Well he thought well enough to train them, did he not?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He didn't. That's Charlie saying he was training them. I don't think they were sending him to train. I don't think so.
BEN KISSEL
All right, all right.
MARCUS PARKS
But his bosses, they were about to fire him anyway because he was dumb and he had a bad attitude.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You can't be both.
MARCUS PARKS
That's the thing, you can either be mean or stupid and still hold a job.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
But you can't be both and expect people to want you around.
BEN KISSEL
Right. As a matter of fact if you're kind of stupid but really nice, you'll be loved.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what I need! That's what I crave!
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Nevertheless Charles returned to the life of a garbage man, this time for $42 a week, got a $7 a week raise.
BEN KISSEL
This is good money.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Technically it is very good money for the time period.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah!
MARCUS PARKS
But it wasn't enough to shower Caril with gifts and pay rent.
BEN KISSEL
You're fucking missing the point, Charles. You're the garbage man, start sifting through it. You got a gift every damn time you go to work!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know where my bread is buttered.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And where my bread is buttered is on the body of this 12 year old girl.
BEN KISSEL
This is disgusting. Garbage men get some of the best of the best of the best.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean if you've got a good eye.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
But that's the thing, since he couldn't have the gifts and the rent, he just stopped paying rent.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. What you gonna do, make me not live here anymore? I'm saving it up!
BEN KISSEL
Seems like his priorities aren't really in order.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It seems like he has a thinking issue.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It seems like he has a prioritizing issue.
BEN KISSEL
Because if you don't have a house, you have no place to put the things that you're buying.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
But as it was always destined to go, things finally came to a head in 1957 when a rumor started circulating that Charles had gotten Caril Ann pregnant.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What they don't know that she was skipping the rope the other day and she fell down on her belly and it's just a fucking bruise.
BEN KISSEL
There you go. Thank you, Charles.
MARCUS PARKS
Now even though Caril Ann was mostly neglected following her mother's divorce and remarry, Caril Ann's mother Velda and her stepfather Marion, they weren't too jazzed about having Charlie Starkweather as a potential son-in-law.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're just sitting in your living room, living a normal life. Because honestly Marion Fugate was fine, or Marion whenever his last name was.
MARCUS PARKS
Bartlett. I think it was Bartlett.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's fine, right. He was just normal. She said, according to the Caril Ann Fugate book, it's all like she had a perfect life and then oh! I feel like it's too far in the other end where mostly it just seems like Marion was fine, they lived a normal life, and then all of a sudden your 12 year old shows up with Charles Starkweather.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then he is exactly as ordered.
BEN KISSEL
What a nightmare.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
When he arrives, everywhere he goes is a circle of chaos and idiocy.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because he just sucks up every single thing that he touches and he's bad to have in the living room.
BEN KISSEL
Right, yeah. You might want to kick him out there.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. So they refused to allow Caril to marry Charles, saying that if they tried they'd annul the marriage and charge Charles with statutory rape.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I didn't touch a single fucking statue! I was just having sex with your daughter.
BEN KISSEL
No Charles, it's really much worse than that.
MARCUS PARKS
And with this Marion and Velda became the specific scapegoat for all of Starkweather's failures. Suddenly he decided that they were working night and day to keep what he deserved out of his reach.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my gosh.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I have an idea that Charles was a virgin throughout this whole thing because they talk about how he didn't know what to do with women. And Caril Ann says straight up we just kissed.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She knew she couldn't be pregnant because they never had sex with each other.
MARCUS PARKS
Eventually though, Charles settled on a solution. He began to imagine himself as the hero of what he called his shooting movies.
BEN KISSEL
Oh wow, what a clever name.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. That went along with the stabby books.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I got shooting movies, I got my sharp ass books. Oh I'm the most dangerous guy at the library.
BEN KISSEL
What does the devil look like again?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh ice cream and I don't know. Sometimes he's got long blond hair. Sometimes who's that, Pat Sajak?
BEN KISSEL
Oh wow. I'm surprised you know who he is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Time isn't linear.
BEN KISSEL
Isn't that something?
MARCUS PARKS
Well Charles imagined himself to be the man killing the evil villain standing in his path. And this was all in the pursuit of whisking away his beloved to a better life. At the same time, Charlie's bizarre half bear vision of death was slowly replaced by Caril Ann herself. And according to Charles, the two of them, Caril Ann and himself, they began planning their violent escape together. But Caril Ann of course denies that she knew anything about the rampage to come.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Caril Ann says in the book that he never once mentioned ever wanting to rob anything which is not true. I think that's completely fake.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But she said that what he had was that he told her the story is that, 'You know actually before you met me, I was a sheriff in Texas. I actually gotta go back because the bureau has been looking for me. I gotta go.'
BEN KISSEL
Yeah? Young sheriff.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Literally that's what she said was his fantasy is that they're going to escape and go back to where he's a sheriff in Texas. Which I just don't think that that happened. I think that they fantasized about robbing a bank together.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And she just didn't think it was gonna happen.
BEN KISSEL
Sounds like they're just really young and very stupid and he probably talked about it so much that she forgot that he was talking about it at all.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, truly. Yes. Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Well before Charles got around to enacting that fantasy of whisking her away to a better life, he needed money.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah like that job that you had, remember when you had a job?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was a misstep, huh?
BEN KISSEL
That was a right step.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What if I go digging for gold?
BEN KISSEL
You know what? Fine. That's at least a mission.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
In here, I'll find them in here.
BEN KISSEL
No, that's you're picking your nose. Fantastic. You're a child. I'm a child. Maybe we shouldn't be together.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Caril, you look fantastic.
BEN KISSEL
Thank you.
MARCUS PARKS
He needed a lot of money fast. And he figured the easiest way to do that was to rob the gas station where he hung out on his days off, bumming sodas and cigarettes.
BEN KISSEL
That's great. So everyone knows who you are and then as soon as you show up they'd be like hey, Mr. Starkweather.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, they're gonna be like finally you're robbing here. We've been waiting for you to finally free us. Free us from this job.
BEN KISSEL
We know who you are, you know that right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They key is if you rob somebody's job, you free all the employees cause they're forced to be there.
BEN KISSEL
Oh I see.
MARCUS PARKS
Now for about two weeks Charles cased the gas station, noting the movements of the attendants while hanging out with one of the attendants, a guy named Robert McClung.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Literally. And they're all like what's Charlie doing out there? Seems like he's casing the joint.
BEN KISSEL
Yup.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It might as well have been he told them essentially.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well Charlie figured as he watched more and more that it wouldn't be a problem if he had to kill the attendant. But at the end of November in 1957, a petty and very stupid argument guaranteed the attendant's death.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh.
MARCUS PARKS
On that day, and this wasn't the guy that Charlie knew, but on that day Starkweather tried buying a teddy bear for Caril Ann on credit.
BEN KISSEL
I love a gas station teddy bear.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm good for it, you know me, plushy business everywhere.
BEN KISSEL
If you have to buy your girlfriend a teddy bear as a gift, you're dating someone way too young.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a child.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. She just really wants this LEGO set. How old is she?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Actually Natalie likes the LEGO sets but nowadays they're like $400.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
They're very expensive.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're very adult.
BEN KISSEL
They have advanced ones now.
MARCUS PARKS
And when attendant Robert Colvert told Starkweather that he only accepted cash, Charles got mouthy, he left in a huff, and decided that maybe killing the attendant could be a feature of the robbery, not a bug,
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Let me have a fucking bear. Let me have a bear.
BEN KISSEL
This is all over a teddy bear.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they're just watching him fume about the teddy bear in the store.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Watching him just sit in a car across the street.
BEN KISSEL
Right. There's no scene like that in Rebel Without a Cause.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, there isn't.
BEN KISSEL
I don't remember that one. James Dean's just like give me that goddamn teddy bear!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, between James Dean and Sal Mineo, the famous 'let me have the teddy bear' scene.
BEN KISSEL
Please let me have the teddy bear.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ah, come on! You know I'm good for it, come on!
BEN KISSEL
Again, he was a former garbage man. You know how many people throw away their teddy bears? Come on.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know how many teddy bears I've seen in the garbage?
BEN KISSEL
So wash it off and give it as a gift.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh you're right actually. Oh I made a lot of mistakes.
BEN KISSEL
You did!
MARCUS PARKS
And so that night Charles Starkweather stole a 12 gauge shotgun from Bob Von Busch's cousin and he cleaned and oiled it before taking Caril out to watch and participate in one of his many demolition derbies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's not bad. He wasn't bad at them.
MARCUS PARKS
He was great. He won most of the time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the only skill he had.
BEN KISSEL
To be honest, it's is the, let's see here, how do I phrase this? If you're really dumb you might be good at demolition derby.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Because the whole point is that you don't drive well.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. If you're dumb and you can't see.
BEN KISSEL
It's perfect. Fearless.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he's never gonna hesitate because he can't.
BEN KISSEL
He can't.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can tell I'm winning by all the crash noises.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh that's me?
BEN KISSEL
You're the winner. You won, you hurt the most amount of cars.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's cool right? They're just sitting there.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well that night Charles won 20 bucks and he celebrated by blowing a bunch of cash at a steakhouse before taking Caril Ann to see a submarine movie called The Enemy Below starring Robert Mitchum. Yeah. Mitchum, underrated actor.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love him.
MARCUS PARKS
The Night of the Hunter, great movie.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Night of the Hunter, panned when it came out.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Charles then dropped off Caril. He then had a couple of beers at the bar and then he went home with a bottle of Wild Turkey and spent a couple hours practicing his aim by pointing a shotgun at the TV.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Got you, Groucho Marx!
BEN KISSEL
Whoa, whoa!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I got you, Steve Allen!
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, maybe Steve Allen.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jack Paar?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, maybe Jack Paar.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Got you, Jack Paar!
BEN KISSEL
You got him pretty good there. 20 bucks really went a long way back then, huh?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It really did.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. No, no, he had a thick porterhouse smothered in onions, big baked potato. Then at 2AM he grabbed the shotgun, a pair of leather gloves, a canvas bag, a hunter's cap with ear flaps, and a red bandana before leaving for the crest gas station where the much hated Robert Colvert was working.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're gonna give me a goddamn teddy bear, I'm coming in with my flaps on! You're never gonna know what hit ya when I got the flaps around my face.
BEN KISSEL
I bet you it's like 50 cents, you coulda bought it with the $20 that you won.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Let's just say I'm late this month.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Charles didn't immediately walk into the store brandishing a weapon. Instead he went inside and bought a pack of camels for a quarter.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I'll take some cigarettes.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because you could tell he did it super like, 'Not gonna rob it! Let me get me some cigarettes. That'd be great, thanks.'
MARCUS PARKS
Then he returned and bought some gum.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, just going to the store.
BEN KISSEL
Why are you back?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just looking around, just browsing the store that I basically live in. I'm here everyday.
BEN KISSEL
Are you gonna rob the store?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm just trying to see if you got anything new. I've been over here for like 10 minutes.
BEN KISSEL
You were here 15 minutes ago.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah I know but then I realized what if I went back?
BEN KISSEL
Charles are you thinking about robbing the store?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm thinking about...
BEN KISSEL
Okay, great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's not a lie if you omit the truth.
MARCUS PARKS
These two visits of course garnered a suspicious look from Robert Colvert and that's when Starkweather's paranoia kicked into high gear. And since he figured Colvert might call the cops, Charles parked a short distance away and turned off his lights, waiting for the cops to show up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The key is maybe if I roll up... He really did, he was like I'm gonna drive back with the lights off and then I'll surprise the gas station!
BEN KISSEL
This is the dumbest thing I have ever heard in my life.
MARCUS PARKS
But when they didn't, Starkweather pulled back into the station, tied the red bandana around his face and put on the hunting cap.
BEN KISSEL
I know it's you! Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
Thinking this would somehow work as a disguise despite the fact that Colvert knew him personally and had already seen him twice in the last hour.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He is legitimately almost a carbon copy of Flattop from Dick Tracy.
BEN KISSEL
Who is this?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's an extremely distinctive looking person.
BEN KISSEL
Who is this bowlegged woman with a babushka?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh, it's me.
BEN KISSEL
What's your name, ma'am? Charles?
MARCUS PARKS
Sneaking up behind Colvert who was by then working on a car in the garage, Starkweather shoved the shotgun into his back and ordered him to put the money from the register in the canvas bag. He got about 200 bucks at most.
BEN KISSEL
Okay. It's a pretty good haul.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, between 100 and 200 bucks, it's a month's pay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was big for him at the time, it was a big haul. And again they're like he's going deeper now.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Charles then demanded the money in the safe but Colvert claimed to not have the combination. So Charles Starkweather took Robert Colvert for a ride outside of town. After driving northeast at gunpoint, they turned onto an unpaved road called Superior Street which was then a bit of a lover's lane for the local teenagers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I always think about how the cops used to watch all the kids make out.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Even when I was in high school they used to do that.
MARCUS PARKS
They did?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You'd go and all the kids, there was like a makeout area and you'd go out there and then the cops would always come sweep it, looking for kids having sex with each other or whatever. And I don't understand why they sent that man out there or did he choose to go?
BEN KISSEL
It was just people that had friends and relationships with other people and you were lonely and sad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah but then the cops would come.
BEN KISSEL
Get outta here, kids!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, why did they come and look at us kids?
BEN KISSEL
Shake it up. They didn't look at you, they wanted to shake it up, get outta here, kids.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, get outta here. We didn't have a lover's lane, since it was a rural town we had a bunch of back roads, called it backroading.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's how you save a girl keeping her virginity.
BEN KISSEL
There you go, good work Henry.
MARCUS PARKS
Going backroading, yeah. And you'd have your little space that you'd pull up into. But then the cops would come, they'd go on the back roads looking for teenagers out there drinking beer and they'd shine a light and go, 'Get out of here! Stop doing this!'
BEN KISSEL
They'd shine ya.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Why?
BEN KISSEL
To get you out of there.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
What do you mean why?
MARCUS PARKS
I didn't own the land.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah sure, that's different, it's private property.
BEN KISSEL
We used to drink in a place called the dead end which was a dead end. Then cops come and say get outta here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, mean that makes sense.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I guess, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well after driving down Superior Street, they then drove past the house of a woman named Bloody Mary who would fire a shotgun filled with rock salt at teenagers until she finally switched to buckshot in the 60s and ended up actually killing a teenager.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the problem.
BEN KISSEL
She's funny though.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was a funny thing until there was death.
BEN KISSEL
Well get off her lawn. Come hang out on my lawn.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, go to Kissel's.
BEN KISSEL
Get on my lawn.
MARCUS PARKS
Well about a mile past Bloody Mary's place, Charles and Robert stopped and Starkweather ordered Colvert out of the car. Now according to Charles, Colvert tried grabbing the shotgun and after a scuffle Colvert got a hold of the gun and somehow shot himself in the chest.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know how he did it!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, you don't know how he did it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nope!
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Then when Charles got the gun back, the gun went off again somehow and blew off the back of Colvert's head. In reality though, Colvert was first shot in the chest point blank, then again point blank in the back of the head. That means that Starkweather probably ordered him out of the car and simply executed Colvert after what was I'm sure a pathetic little speech about how he should have sold him the teddy bear.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Somewhere there's a girl and as she sits on her embroidered pillow with C and C next to each other, she has an open space in her arms that should be the home of a teddy bear.
BEN KISSEL
This is all over a teddy bear?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But then one man stands in the way of justice.
BEN KISSEL
I would've given you the teddy bear.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
One man stands in the way of fate. And that man is you.
BEN KISSEL
It's just so stupid. I didn't even do anything.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And me, I'm the guy that does the fate!
BEN KISSEL
God, I can't believe I'm gonna die at the hands of such a moron.
MARCUS PARKS
But either way, Starkweather drove off after the murder, leaving the body behind and he threw the shotgun into a creek. Now about an hour or two after Starkweather abducted Colvert, a police car stopped off at the gas station to find it unattended. And coincidentally Colvert's body was found by sheriff's deputies at about the same time after neighbors had called in the discovery of a dead body. Now since Charles hadn't left anything behind, there were no leads and the cops never came close to Charles Starkweather for the murder until after he killed 10 more people. For his part though, Charles was thrilled when the news hit the radio the next day but he still went about his regular schedule of demolition derbies and cheeseburgers. Won 10 bucks on the second one.
BEN KISSEL
Oh not bad. He won again.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But that was the thing is that he spent all night worried. He's like oh, the papers are gonna know in the morning. Meanwhile you worked at the newspapers Charlie, you know it takes a second for the news to come out.
BEN KISSEL
Right. He doesn't know much.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
No. In other words, the plan to take Caril Ann away from Nebraska was well on its way, even though Starkweather was dumb enough to immediately deposit the money from the robbery into a bank account.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yes, crisp stolen $200.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very good. Someone found this missing money. Very good.
MARCUS PARKS
But while that was classic moron behavior, Starkweather was actually smart in the way he covered up the rest of the crime. He changed the tires on his truck in case the cops cast tire prints from the unpaved road where the murder occurred, he painted it black in case anyone had seen him, and he even retrieve the shotgun from the creek the day before cops searched it for the murder weapon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
He's kind of smart but it's also like wow, what a coincidence.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well him getting the shotgun before they searched, that was a coincidence.
BEN KISSEL
That's smart.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But that also was truly just he got there in time.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But the rest of it he learned from true crime magazines.
BEN KISSEL
I guess.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But then about 10 days after the murder, once Starkweather felt he was free and clear of the crime, he drove Caril Ann to the gas station he'd robbed and made a big show of buying the teddy bear he had previously been denied.
BEN KISSEL
Oh god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
One teddy bear, please!
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Let me go into my wallet and make sure I have... Oh, it seems I have a plentiful amount!
BEN KISSEL
Interesting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, ladies! 15 cents for one teddy bear.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Meanwhile she's like, I don't even like this.
BEN KISSEL
Oh you better like that damn teddy bear at this point.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thanks Charlie but I don't need it. Thanks Charlie.
MARCUS PARKS
But of course this was merely the beginning of Starkweather blowing all of the money he gained from the robbery that was supposed to go towards a new life for him and Caril Ann.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
He bought Christmas presents for his family and again showered Caril Ann with gifts. The couple also went to the movies as often as they could and Starkweather bought of course a whole bunch of comics featuring knives.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He loves 'em!
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
Starkweather's depression and headaches even went away once he finally got what he felt he was owed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is me now.
BEN KISSEL
Okay, nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is me, happy to help.
BEN KISSEL
Cool, calm, collected.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I've done it, I've fixed it. What a life we're gonna lead.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
But when the money ran out in January, a little over a month after the robbery-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ooh, I should have thought a little bit more about the budget.
BEN KISSEL
It's really not that much money. I mean it was good for a little while.
MARCUS PARKS
Charles fell behind on rent and got evicted. He slept in his car during a cold Nebraska winter and the dark moods and violent fantasies returned with a vengeance.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) He goes down to the river, down to the river he runs.
BEN KISSEL
Great song. Should never have gotten married, that couple.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Starkweather limply tried returning to the workforce but gave up quite quickly, blaming his old bosses at the garbage haulers for quote "putting him on a blacklist".
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There definitely was a garbage haulers blacklist at the time.
BEN KISSEL
It would be his third time trying to be a garbage man after he quit the first two times.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they gave him a raise.
BEN KISSEL
So they probably wouldn't want to hire him again to be fair.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he was a visible moron with a bad attitude. That cannot be stressed enough.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I'm an asset to the company!
BEN KISSEL
You're really not. You're really not.
MARCUS PARKS
Now to get around this Starkweather figured that if he was a married man, a place of business would have no choice but to hire him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh no.
BEN KISSEL
Why?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know.
BEN KISSEL
Why would you think?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's very stupid?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He just thinks we'll normalize.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what? Maybe we're too fringe. You know what we gotta do is we gotta bring it together, a nice white wedding. We all come together.
BEN KISSEL
She's still 12.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah but she won't be 12 in 6 years.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
By then me, I'll be here.
MARCUS PARKS
By this time she's 14 years. This is two years later.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's so much better. It's much better.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm just stating the facts here.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Well because Charles Starkweather figured hey, if I get married everything will be better, he went to Caril Ann Fugate's house-
BEN KISSEL
Oh the dalliance of ignorance amongst our youth.
MARCUS PARKS
He went to Caril Ann Fugate's house on January 20, 1958 to plead his case to Caril Ann's mother and stepfather. Now Marion and Velda's hatred for Charles Starkweather had only grown over the two years he'd been seeing Caril Ann. So after a brief and terse conversation about marriage, Marion grabbed Charles by the collar and literally threw him out of the house.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause he's also a foot taller than him. And at this point this was like the third time where they're like Charlie's not coming back in this house.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They kept being like he's not coming back.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And every single time he'd show back up but he'd always come with different schemes. He'd show up being like all right, so I feel like we could flip your whole industry.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's saying all this stuff. And you're like Carlie, you're a fucking moron. Get the fuck out of my house.
BEN KISSEL
It seems like the parents really were trying to do the best they could.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. That night Charles claimed he dreamed of giant snakes squeezing him to death and when Charles woke up screaming and soaked with sweat, he finally decided that Caril Ann's parents had to die.
BEN KISSEL
Because of the dream?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Snakes.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They sent the snakes to my dreams!
BEN KISSEL
I don't know, buddy.
MARCUS PARKS
The next morning Charles joined his brother on a garbage route to earn a little extra cash. And after the route was done, Charles borrowed his brother's .22 rifle, saying he was going hunting with Caril Ann's stepfather Marion. By 1PM Charles had shown up at Caril Ann's house with the .22, two boxes of ammunition, and some carpet samples he'd picked up on his garbage route.
BEN KISSEL
See at least he's starting to learn.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well this is the thing. He picked a bunch of stinky carpet samples out of the garbage.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then this whole time being like because you know Caril Ann's mother, she's been wanting a new rug.
BEN KISSEL
A new carpet. Here's some samples.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But he goes in and he just throws them on the floor being like, 'Ah that's nice. Oh that nice puke green. Ah, that's just some puke.'
BEN KISSEL
That's a nice one.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Let me scrape that off for ya.
BEN KISSEL
What about that poopy brown?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It started as a mauve.
BEN KISSEL
Oh isn't that nice? Just imagine if you were the size of a mouse though, this could actually be good enough for a living room.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It could be good.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I mean he planned to use the scavenged carpet samples as a peace offering as Henry said because Velda mentioned she wanted new carpet for their home.
BEN KISSEL
He's a cat.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now you see this tiny little piece of soiled carpet?
BEN KISSEL
That's really great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Imagine hundreds more of these pieces.
BEN KISSEL
Soiled carpets.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The thing is that I only have this one piece.
BEN KISSEL
Just that one. How do we get the whole thing?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What's nice about this carpet is that it's perfect for kneeling on with one knee.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's perfect.
BEN KISSEL
It's just we need a lot more carpet.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
No, not going to happen.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, that's all I got.
BEN KISSEL
That's all you got. Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is your carpet.
BEN KISSEL
That's just a little bit though.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's enough to get a taste of a carpet.
BEN KISSEL
I see.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the new company I think you guys can start called A Taste of Carpet.
BEN KISSEL
Oh I see.
MARCUS PARKS
We used to steal carpet from the back dumpster of a carpet warehouse to line the walls of our practice spaces with so we wouldn't go deaf practicing in a metal storage space.
BEN KISSEL
There you go.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's fucking awesome.
BEN KISSEL
Really cool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. But he also showed up with a rifle and he does the thing where he walks up to Marion and he's like hey, you wanna go fucking hunting today? Like he just shows up with the rifle and then he's just like, 'Uh no.'
MARCUS PARKS
Well Marion wasn't awake yet. When Charles showed up to the door with the rifle and the carpet samples, Velda was a little hesitant. But I suppose the carpet samples worked because she reluctantly let him into the house after he explained that he wanted to ask Marion if he wanted to go hunting. And so Charles sat on their couch, working the bolt of the rifle in and out in and out, over and over and over again.
BEN KISSEL
Awesome.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Charlie, I know we might have had a discussion about you coming over unannounced and maybe we can continue that discussion where you could leave.
BEN KISSEL
You're gonna wanna check out those carpet samples.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm looking at all of them and smelling them.
BEN KISSEL
Pretty cool, right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They just seem to be like they have a smell-o-vision style to them.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, yeah. We got them out of the trash.
MARCUS PARKS
Now at this point Caril Ann was still at school but in the house was Velda, her two year old daughter Betty Jean, and Marion who was napping in the bedroom. After Charles was given a polite yet terse tour around the house, he left the .22 rifle in Caril's bedroom and went to the kitchen. There Velda stopped being polite and started getting real.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh.
MARCUS PARKS
She angrily revealed that she'd heard the rumor that Caril Anne was pregnant. She then slapped Charles, telling him that she hated him for even the possibility of Caril being pregnant. On the second slap though, Charles blocked it and skittered out the front door.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And if you ever want to make your mom angrier, you catch that hand before the slap hits you.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do remember that? If you want to get hit extra, you stop the first hit.
BEN KISSEL
You just gotta get hit sometimes by mama.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
My mother never hit me.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whatever, bro.
BEN KISSEL
Marcus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're not as strong as us!
BEN KISSEL
Your mother your mother encouraged your more I'm going to say raccoon-like things that you like to do like scavenging for carpets.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh thank you, when you'd leave the dead mice by her bedroom door, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
She was very supportive.
MARCUS PARKS
If I were to say who encouraged my scavenging more, it would be my father. Who do you think I learned it from?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow. Yeah. It's a house of skeletons.
BEN KISSEL
Isn't that something?
MARCUS PARKS
Well Charles started driving away but remembered that he'd left the rifle, so he returned to the house and knocked again. Zelda opened the door and Charles pushed her aside but Marion was now awake from his nap.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh.
MARCUS PARKS
But Charles was a slippery little fella.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's small.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my.
MARCUS PARKS
So he ducked past Marion.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Marion however was also quick and he managed to kick Charles in the ass, knocking him to the ground. He then picked him up by the collar again and threw him out of the house.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Right now at this point, this is a Heathcliff storyline.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I mean we do have one murder under his belt.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
So this man is still very, very dangerous.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But they don't know yet. They don't know that this tiny pain in the ass is actually a maniac.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Well it's at this point that we can see that Charles had definitely decided to kill Caril Ann's parents. He drove to Marion's place of business and told the operator that Marion wouldn't be in for a few days which of course would buy Charlie some time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again, 1950s is just easier. You can walk in and say this to somebody. Meanwhile people are like who are you?
BEN KISSEL
I guess.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Why are you telling me that this other employee... Like what's happening? They just go okay, well put Marion down, he's off the schedule.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
He then drove back to Caril Ann's house to do the deed. But once he got there Velda refused to even open the door. So Charles stayed outside and played with the family dog for an hour until Caril Ann got out of school. Once Caril Ann arrived she immediately got into a shouting match with her mother about Starkweather, so Charles snuck in through the back kitchen door. Velda however heard him come in and she resumed the slapping. This time though Charles hit her back and knocked her to the ground. And this is when things start getting a little rough.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Tense.
MARCUS PARKS
Marion then joined in, grabbing Charles by the neck and throwing him to the ground where they wrestled their way into the living room. Marion then got up and went to another room to find a tool to finish the job, so Charles went to Caril's room to grab the gun. Just after he loaded it though he claimed that Marion came at him with a claw hammer, so Charles fired the rifle and shot Marian in the head. Velda, Charles claimed, then came at him with a butcher knife, screaming that she was going to chop off his head. Caril supposedly then grabbed the rifle and threatened to shoot her mother if she didn't leave Charles alone. Then Charles grabbed the gun back and shot Velda in the face. This however didn't stop her, so Charles hit her with the butt of the rifle over and over until she finally stayed down. Meanwhile the two year old toddler Betty Jean was screaming and Caril began screaming in turn for Betty Jean to shut up. So Charles slammed the butt of the rifle into the toddler's face but not hard enough to kill her. Marion meanwhile was still alive, so Charles picked up the butcher knife and advanced towards him. But Betty Jean was still screaming, so Charles threw the knife and somehow managed to hit her in the neck. According to one account I read, Charles then pressed the barrel of the gun against Betty Jean's throat until she died. Charles then picked up a hunting knife with the intention of finishing off Marion who was struggling to stay alive back in Caril's bedroom. Taking the knife, Charles tried stabbing it through the flesh and sinew of Marion's throat but the knife wouldn't go in.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah because it was just on the wall, the knife wasn't even a usable knife, it was some bullshit.
BEN KISSEL
Antique, a decorative knife.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A souvenir, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. So Charles slowly pushed the knife in with his palm several times until Marion finally bled to death. Then from what Charles said he turned to Caril and said that they sure got themselves into a hell of a mess, to which Caril supposedly replied quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"Well it's what we always wanted."
BEN KISSEL
Well you guys want to change what you want.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean that's the idea.
BEN KISSEL
God dang brutal.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And there's a lot of talk. Was Caril Ann even there?
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because according to her she showed up after after the fact.
BEN KISSEL
Afterwards?
MARCUS PARKS
We're going to get to all that on the next episode.
BEN KISSEL
Ugh, this fucking asshole. So he has now four people that he has killed and in relatively quick succession, right? Because the robbery was just a couple of days before.
MARCUS PARKS
No, the robbery was about a moth and a half, two months before.
BEN KISSEL
Two months? Oh my goodness.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, now this is when it kicks off.
BEN KISSEL
I see, okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is the Natural Born Killers storyline.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right. Well of course they make Mallory's father Rodney Dangerfield, a horrible person. In this case it's just very sad because it seemed like they were good parents.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
They were just like leave my daughter alone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You have to remember that somebody can be so, so stupid they can be very, very dangerous.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. I think people know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And so after watching TV for a little while, Charles got to the business of getting the bodies out of the house. He wrapped them with rugs, sheets, and house wrap. Betty Jean however was still bleeding, so Charles tossed the body in the sink until the rest of the blood drained out. Velda and Betty Jean's bodies were then dragged to the outhouse where Charles engaged in possibly the dumbest body disposal I've ever encountered. See Charles figured that he could dump the bodies down the shithole starting with Velda and no one would be the wiser.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Think about this. He thought that he could put the bodies in the toilet and then they would disappear.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, this is not a huge outhouse I can't imagine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think it's panic and being clinically stupid.
BEN KISSEL
Unbelievable.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But when he tried shoving Velda's body in head first, it got stuck. So he figured good enough and left the body halfway in, halfway out.
BEN KISSEL
What do you mean good enough?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It wasn't.
BEN KISSEL
You don't think detectives are going to notice?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, it wasn't good enough.
MARCUS PARKS
He then laid the body of Betty Jean on the outhouse seat next to the hole and closed the door. Charles then tried removing Marion's body but found it was too big to fit through the screen door. So Charles removed the door from its hinges, dragged the body to the back of the chicken coop, and for some reason laid the screen on top of the body.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There you go, no bugs get it.
BEN KISSEL
So stupid.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There you go. Oh it's a little door. No one will see that!
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that's really great hiding.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that transparent door. After the bodies were out of the house Charles and Caril Ann cleaned up the gore, straightened the mess, sprinkled perfume over the furniture to mask the copper scent of blood, and used the rug used to wrap Velda with one Charles found at the dump. Now he's using his head.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I should have just brought this whole rug.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that would have been nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Maybe I could have avoided this whole afternoon.
BEN KISSEL
It seems like it was kind of needless.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah well anyway, it's the Lone Ranger!
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Then they left the house, bought three bottles of Pepsi and a bag of potato chips at the store, and allegedly spent the next six days happily playing house in the same place where Caril Ann's entire family was murdered.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And according to Charlie-
MARCUS PARKS
According to Charlie-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The best week of his life.
MARCUS PARKS
And that's where we'll pick back up next week with the rest of Starkweather's rampage as well as Caril Ann's side of the story as to what really happened to her family on that gray January afternoon in Nebraska.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh God, it's down in Nebraska.
BEN KISSEL
Down in Nebraska.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's so far away, so far away down in the dark depths.
BEN KISSEL
And I want to remind y'all we'll be in Omaha, I'm just joking.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, we already were. We were.
BEN KISSEL
I know, we were already there. Nebraska is a great place, it's not representative of the entire people.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow, really good.
BEN KISSEL
Yes, no problem.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Really good. But guys next week we're getting to the full rampage and then this month we're getting weird with it. I'm really excited, we're gonna get weird. Very excited for the topics coming up. And we will be in your town if you are in Buffalo or you're in, what's the Ohio city?
BEN KISSEL
Northfield.
MARCUS PARKS
Northfield? Yeah, Northfield.
BEN KISSEL
Northfield. It's a casino I believe.
MARCUS PARKS
Outside of Cleveland.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're gonna crush it. No way it's gonna be bad. And then my second hometown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
BEN KISSEL
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
MARCUS PARKS
Pittsburgh. Always a fun time in Pittsburgh.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can't wait.
MARCUS PARKS
And always a fun time in Buffalo, we played Buffalo a few years ago and it was great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, Kissel got kicked out of that weird bar.
BEN KISSEL
That's right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. We'll figure it out this time.
BEN KISSEL
Also Northfield, never been but I'm sure it'll be a fun time. And then don't forget Beacon Theater New York, we have a couple of tickets left, so grab those.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
But they're going fast and we're not just saying that because they're not going fast.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
BEN KISSEL
One of my favorite thing is that people would be like almost sold out and then you call them on the phone being like hey, really doing good with the shows. I've sold 4.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I've sold 4. No, it's actually going very well. We can't wait to see people, man. I can't believe we're here! We're back in, baby!
MARCUS PARKS
We're having at it.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. All right everyone, well thank you so much for listening. Thanks for supporting all the shows here on the Last Podcast Network and never forget, hail yourselves!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hail Satan!
MARCUS PARKS
Hail Gein!
BEN KISSEL
Megustalations everybody.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) And a hubba-hubba-hubba do the ice cream dance. Put the raspberries in your shoes!
BEN KISSEL
What a great beat to murder a family to.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's easy!