HENRY ZEBROWSKI
My beautiful wife, she tells me she's leaving town for the weekend because she was doing this stunt intensive, like oh that's fun. And then she tells me what she's doing. You know what she's doing?
BEN KISSEL
What?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She's in a field setting herself on fire.
BEN KISSEL
What? Wait what?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is the whole weekend.
BEN KISSEL
What's the stunt?
MARCUS PARKS
Wow, did she tell you that after she left the house? Did she call you from the field and say hey, I'm about to set myself on fire?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, just her being like (screaming).
BEN KISSEL
How bad of a husband are you if your wife wants to go relax by being set on fire?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She says it's a skill.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're gonna learn a lot that actually it does take quite a bit of skill to get set on fire.
BEN KISSEL
It really does. Is that the beginning now?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic. Welcome to Charles Starkweather Part 2. I mean last episode, contentious. I would say the biggest bone of contention was Marcus demeaning the the E Street Band.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
BEN KISSEL
Now of course Bruce Springsteen, you did get some support. I want to push back a little bit more on you because one of the things that I did not mention, drumming, which is something that Marcus does.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We talked about this in the van.
BEN KISSEL
You know who the drummer was? Max Weinberg from The Conan O'Brien Show.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah sure. I did not once demean the E Street Band.
BEN KISSEL
Yes you did.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes he did. That's exactly what he did.
MARCUS PARKS
I merely said my personal preference. I said my personal preference is that I prefer Bruce Springsteen over the E Street Band, I don't dislike Bruce Springsteen, I dislike the E Street Band.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
And it's just dislike, that's not demeaning. One can say they dislike something in this workaday world without being set on fire.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Unless you paid for it and you go through an intensive and choose to be set on fire.
BEN KISSEL
All right everyone, well let's light the podcast world on fire. Is there a window? Can we make this building higher? Can I jump out of something? Charles Starkweather Part 2!
MARCUS PARKS
So when we last left Charles Starkweather, the 19 year old former garbage man-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you. Former garbage man.
BEN KISSEL
Also I'm sorry to interrupt again so early but I got multiple DMs from garbage people, they were all men. But one guy, he got two TVs, he got a full audio system.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, we know. We know.
BEN KISSEL
Multiple gifts for the family.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We've talked about this many times about being a garbage man has a hidden economy, there's benefits. It's technically the first version of crypto.
BEN KISSEL
It's perfect.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Charles Starkweather had just murdered his 14 year old girlfriend's entire family. However there is much speculation and debate as to whether said girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate, bore any responsibility for that mass murder and the further murders to come.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
After the wipe out of the Fugate family, there was a turn that we're going to see where things get a little bit... I mean the first half of this is all about idiots being idiots, doing idiot shit, and getting into idiot trouble. Right?
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This second half is really about the massacre, right. And I actually will take from the book 'The Twelfth Victim', I'm gonna lift a term that they use which is Charlie's massacre. And I do believe that that's what you'd call the second half of this story is Charlie's massacre.
BEN KISSEL
Starkassacre.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Perfect radio.
BEN KISSEL
Thank you.
MARCUS PARKS
Starkassacre.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Well after Caril Ann was arrested, she claimed that she came home on the day her family was massacred to find the house completely empty save for Charles Starkweather. Allegedly Charles told her that he had kidnapped her entire family and had hidden them away somewhere and if she didn't do whatever he said, he'd somehow slaughter each and every member.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's with literally what he said, his hidden network of bandits.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And what do we know about Chuck? We gotta call him Chuck.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
During the rest of this.
BEN KISSEL
I actually think Chuck is too cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, way too cool.
BEN KISSEL
I'm hanging out with Chuck, he's got a cool mullet dude, it's always party time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But Caril Ann called him Chuck.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So this is all Chuck's idea. So Chuck, he's got a line on an intricate network of goons that will all do his bidding for him.
BEN KISSEL
Okay, I don't think so.
MARCUS PARKS
Well it was just like John Wayne Gacy used to say, (Midwest accent) 'Hey, I know some guys in Chicago that if you don't do what I say, I'm gonna call those guys and they're gonna take care of you.'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it turned out that John Wayne Gacy was just talking about the two 15 year olds that he was paying to help him.
BEN KISSEL
But I bet you Gacy maybe had a couple of guys that owed him a couple of favors because they did a couple of quiet things behind an outhouse.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just think they were just sucking each other's dicks.
BEN KISSEL
Exactly.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Caril Ann said that she believed him and therefore went along with everything that came after, all in an attempt to save her family because she believed that her family was still alive until after she was arrested. However this claim is like many things in this story nonsensical for a number of reasons, even if it was coming from a teenager still in shock from witnessing at least seven murders. That's if we give her the full benefit of the doubt.
BEN KISSEL
Jeez.
MARCUS PARKS
See if you'll remember after Charles decided to kill Caril Ann's family that afternoon, he drove to the workplace of Marion Bartlett, Caril Ann's stepfather, and told them that Marian wouldn't be in for a few days. Charles however did not do so covered in blood.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's mud!
BEN KISSEL
Is that right? It looks kind of red and crusty. It almost looks like blood.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah that's because you need to get your eyes checked, old man.
BEN KISSEL
I actually do. But there's so much of it I think I can actually see it. Also you smell like Centrum Silver.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This actually might mostly be blood.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
See the Bartlett murders were extremely brutal and bloody no matter how you slice it, a fact based on the autopsies. And Caril Ann said during one of her many stabs at the truth that she thought her family was still alive and not brutally massacred.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
As we go through the rest of this episode, you're we're going to see none of the stories match the forensics that come out.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And one thing that really truly surprised me as we'll go through the rest of this is how brutal they were. I kind of thought that everything was shooting murders when I first heard about the story.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, it's not like that.
MARCUS PARKS
Well that means that Charles Starkweather, who couldn't hack a warehouse job loading newspapers into a truck, he would have had to kill two adults and a toddler, dragged the bodies to the two outside structures where the bodies were found, then clean up three separate murder sites by himself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He could not operate a forklift. You know what I mean?
BEN KISSEL
Well that's not the easiest to do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You can train it but I'm just saying every person he ever worked for said the one thing that Charlie was bad at was everything. He was bad at cleaning up, he was bad at discipline, he wouldn't show up, he didn't give 110%. And if you look at going from you arriving into your home and it's pristine, it's like you just left it. And just Charlie there with his butler outfit just being like, 'As you can see, I just did a once over in your wonderful family home.' Like no, it didn't happen.
BEN KISSEL
Well perhaps Charlie was quietly quitting, only doing the work he was getting paid for like a true American hero.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
BEN KISSEL
I would ask this though. I've been fired from multiple jobs, Wendy's, Burger King, Pizza Hut, the list can go on and on and on.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Last Podcast Network.
BEN KISSEL
I've not been fired. But technically still successful at one thing. But if you talk to our former employees, for all of us, they would say they're huge losers, they're never gonna make it. So this might just be where Starkweather shines.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
In cleaning up? I mean that's the thing, he would have had to have done it in an hour, two hours at most. Because if you look at the timeline, the cleanup would have had to have happened efficiently and smartly, two qualities not in the Starkweather repertoire.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And it's one full stab into the neck, a couple of head shots, and then the brutal beating of a child to death which is again, one way you could say it is it's not a clean job.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Now this doesn't mean that Caril Ann was a willing and enthusiastic accomplice in all of the murders and crimes to come. All we're saying is that it is worth noting that Caril Ann's story even beyond the murder of her family has a lot of holes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The book 'The Twelfth Victim' posits that Caril Ann's story now solidified from the future is that she did not have a single bit to do with anything and everything was a surprise.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I think that we'll see that both spectrums can't be right. Charlie's stories are not correct either.
MARCUS PARKS
No, absolutely not.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The idea that she was the ringleader, she was the one telling him what to do, that she held a gun to her mother.
MARCUS PARKS
Charles Starkweather doesn't even know himself what happened.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Exactly. He's not even the ringleader of his own crimes, right.
BEN KISSEL
Jeez.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because it's all impulse driven, he's a child. But when you watch your whole family and then sort of be involved in it, the whole murder of your whole family, again she's in shock. She's all fucked up.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it happens fast.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it happens really fast. And I do believe there is a point because again, she didn't know that he had murdered before. And then he shows up and it's this whole drama.
MARCUS PARKS
Well I don't know if she didn't know that he murdered. I don't know about that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We don't know.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, we don't know. Because I think Caril Ann would have had to be quite dense to not put two and two together when a service station worker shows up dead outside of town and Charles Starkweather suddenly has a whole bunch of money to spend. If she doesn't put two and two together, I don't know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again she's 13 and not at the time, not a high active 13 year old.
BEN KISSEL
I mean she's 13 years old. Again, this is why I'm introducing kung fu for toddlers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh so good.
BEN KISSEL
Because I think that would be fantastic. Goes along with my guns for feet program.
MARCUS PARKS
Well she's 14 at this point, not 13.
BEN KISSEL
Not the toddler. Oh yes, the toddler's a toddler.
MARCUS PARKS
Caril Ann is 14 at this point, Caril Ann is 14. But Charles as I said, he's no help in clearing any of this up because like Caril Ann, his confessions, he made seven different confessions between his arrest and his execution and usually his admitted degree of responsibility depended on how warmly he was feeling towards Caril Ann at that time. If he liked her, then Caril Ann had nothing to do with it and he would say that she was either kidnapped or just along for the ride.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But if he was feeling lukewarm, he'd say they at least planned to kill her family together. But if he was totally off her, then he would say that Caril was a trigger happy banshee who finished off her mother with a knife, clubbed her baby sister to death with a rifle butt, and later mutilated the genitals of a fellow teenager with a stiletto knife.
BEN KISSEL
Officer, hear me out. Now what if we play more of a choose your own adventure? Now you guys decide what you guys want.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Actually it's incredible, we were gonna do that anyway.
BEN KISSEL
Awesome.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's interesting though because we'll see she was in this fantasy, right. Bad boy, he keeps showing up, she kind of likes that he makes her parents upset.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's rolling in and out.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's a 14 year old's idea of what's super cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he could be attracted to her because he's mentally 12 years old and he doesn't understand cause he's also a fucking delinquent and a moron, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so you can get fed up on this fantasy and then all of a sudden it comes real and you realize that it's too real to be enjoyable because now it's done. And so now you're sitting in your house with the ghosts of your family all around you and it's going to change you. And this is where you see the turn.
BEN KISSEL
Could be a fun haunting though but most likely not. Too real to be enjoyable needs to be on your tombstone which would be kind of fun. My question is this, would her parents still be alive had she never met Charles Starkweather? I say yay.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah, absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah! It's all Starkweather.
BEN KISSEL
So he is the main man here.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The main thing, to keep hitting it, she's 14 years old and she doesn't fucking know shit from Shinola.
BEN KISSEL
Right!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he's 18 years old and technically legal enough to go fight the Jerries over in the European theater.
BEN KISSEL
That's where he should have gone then.
MARCUS PARKS
He was 19 and he was too bowlegged to go fight in the Korean War, he would have been 4F.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He literally couldn't even dance.
BEN KISSEL
That's sad.
MARCUS PARKS
As far as the actual truth is we'll never know. But most likely as we said in the first episode, what really happened probably lies somewhere in the middle of complete innocence and full culpability, although we can say with some certainty that fear played a big role in how Caril Ann Fugate reacted over the following two weeks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We'll watch it build.
MARCUS PARKS
Now after the murder of Caril Ann's family, Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate spent a week together at the Bartlett home playing house. Charles described this as the best week of his life, the only time that they didn't have to obey any quote unquote "stupid rules".
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, like going to bed! Yeah, I went over there and I went over the yellow line in my car!
BEN KISSEL
That's really cool. Yeah because there's nothing like having no rules like home ownership, it's just so easy, there's no bills, they don't constantly just pile up because you're too afraid to open them because I have a fear of the mail.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's playing adult.
BEN KISSEL
Wow, it's so fun and lighthearted.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But Chucky said they lived like kings.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, they lived like kings. In his mind living like kings meant that they could eat potato chips and ice cream for dinner, they could drink as many bottles of Pepsi as their little tummies could handle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's you guys! You and Carolina like that!
BEN KISSEL
I mean sadly they are living like an American president.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
They could read as many comic books with knives as they wanted, they could watch Abbott and Costello movies all night long and maybe they had sex but maybe not. It depended on which one of them you asked.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, well again this story is so wild, the two different versions of the story that both of them say.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Jeez.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because they were both opposite different stories, none of them touch reality. But if you ask Charlie what that time was like, he's like, 'Oh yeah, we were doing it, all sorts of sexual activity.'
BEN KISSEL
Yeah you know that's illegal, right? It's statutory rape, you don't wanna be admitting to that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not if I marry her and then direct a series of acclaimed comedies. See? When we were getting in there, I'm always making love with her.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because you know how it's done, right?
BEN KISSEL
I do. I'm an adult with a wife and three children, I'm a detective. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
How?
BEN KISSEL
Yes well first of all...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So you tell me so I remember what I was doing.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. How are you this dumb?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
How is sex done?
BEN KISSEL
I'm not answering that. You'll find out in prison.
MARCUS PARKS
But Caril Ann said that he once stuck in the tip once.
BEN KISSEL
Ugh, I don't even want to hear this! Why did you include that? I would rather have heard about the baby being killed in that one story that we didn't go into the baby being killed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, they did not. I really believe up to a point that he barely touched her.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He barely touched her. He didn't know what to do. He was frozen. They were both acting. It's almost like he regressed with her where he became even more childlike to meet her, where the two of them were just throwing knives at shit and eating candy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah but she was 14. She wasn't like 9.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey man, 14 is real young.
MARCUS PARKS
I know 14 is young but-
BEN KISSEL
So he's 18, dim-witted moron.
MARCUS PARKS
You can have a job at 14 years old.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I did.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. As did I.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, what was that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I was a homicide detective. It was incredible.
BEN KISSEL
For pierogies? You circled the little perogies on your plate, that one died.
MARCUS PARKS
But that week it wasn't all just Pepsi and bubblegum. During the week that Caril Ann-
BEN KISSEL
Disgusting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was their entire week. It was TV, Pepsi, and bubblegum.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
With corpses rotting outside.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah and isn't the mom's legs literally up facing the heavens in the outhouse?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They were just already in their little fantasy world trying to act as if maybe it didn't happen.
BEN KISSEL
Where did they go to the bathroom?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know.
MARCUS PARKS
No they had a bathroom indoors at that point. Yeah because a lot of places like that, they did have indoor plumbing installed but you still have the outhouse out back because it's cute. You got a little structure out there with the moon cut in, there's like ancient shit down in the bottom of that hole. But I don't think that was still in use because the story did describe Charlie as hiding in the bathroom a lot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, that's where he'd go hide, he'd go tuck in upstairs and then Caril Ann kept saying... It's interesting, she kept saying every day I'd wake up imagining that it wasn't happening, thinking that all this was a fantasy, that we were in a dream. And so she's already kind of living in that world, getting it all done so fast, the flurry of violence and then immediately putting the bodies away kind of allows them to sort of live in that fantasy for a hot second.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
During the week that Caril Ann and Charles spent in the Bartlett family home, Caril Ann had to run interference almost every day to keep friends and family from discovering what had happened. Again and again, everyone from Caril Ann's friends to her neighbor Mrs. Yordy kept knocking on her door for eggs or milk or just to say hi.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God, exhausting.
BEN KISSEL
Made you a pie!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And she's like leave me alone!
BEN KISSEL
Made you a pie!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Why are you coming here, ma'am?
BEN KISSEL
It's your least favorite, it's rhubarb!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Get away from my family!
MARCUS PARKS
Mrs. Yordy would come and buy extra chicken eggs from the Bartlett home. But then of course Caril Ann, when she answered the door and saw Mrs. Yordy or her friend Barbara, whoever, she'd yell stay the fuck away because everyone inside has the flu.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
And every time Caril Ann tried to shoo someone away, Charles would scurry to the back bedroom clutching his .22 rifle, just in case the enquiring minds decided to push their way past Caril Ann to see the supposedly sick family for themselves.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again technically at this point it's like a heist movie comedy where he was like, 'No, you get the door!' And then he'd run up there just hide and then be like, 'What'd they say? Oh they want eggs, that fucking bitch?'
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again, like it's a role playing thing that they're playing out.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Doesn't seem like it can last very long.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
No. Well the people who eventually put the hard press on Caril Ann and Charles to let them inside, that was actually Charlie's people. First Charlie's buddies Bob and Barb von Busch, they came by and asked after the Bartlett family. But after they got the flu story, Bob got suspicious and went to the police. Now the cops agreed to go in and check on the Bartletts. But after Caril Ann stopped them with the flu story and told them that Bob von Busch was just an old busybody, the police said fine and put in their report that Caril Ann was poised and didn't appear nervous.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Things are fine.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god, it is almost on par with Chris Farley and David Spade in Tommy Boy, just being like, 'Follow me. Bees! Bees!' Hey man, I'm allergic to bees. Get out of here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. They were like that 14 year old's definitely running that house. All right let's go.
BEN KISSEL
Let's get out of here, I can't have the flu, man.
MARCUS PARKS
Well 14 had a lot more responsibility in 1958 than it does in 2022.
BEN KISSEL
Covering up a double triple murder, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a lot of responsibility.
BEN KISSEL
It's hard.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the cops saying good enough was enough for Bob to say good enough. But then Starkweather's father Guy got suspicious. So he sent his daughter Lavida to check on the Bartletts and therefore Charlie.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We haven't heard from Charlie for a long time. Time to send in Lavida.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah! (screaming)
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(screaming)
BEN KISSEL
It's living Lavida loca, she's not happy. Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Go get him, Lavida.
BEN KISSEL
Hurricane Lavida.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(screaming)
BEN KISSEL
I've never seen a hurricane full of more wine spritzer in my life.
MARCUS PARKS
Again Caril said everyone had the flu. But when Lavida returned hours later to tell Caril Ann that she thought she was lying-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm gonna tell you something, Caril Ann! I've come from the outskirts of town to bring sense of justice (yelling). Name's Lavida!
BEN KISSEL
Lavida, Hurricane Lavida.
MARCUS PARKS
She said hey, you're lying, something interesting happened. Reportedly Caril took Lavida aside and whispered that Charles and a gang of teenagers were holed up in the house with tommy guns and they were planning to rob a bank. Now naturally Lavida returned to her father, the elder Starkweather, and told him what Caril Ann said. But instead of going to the police, Guy Starkweather decided to quote unquote "sleep on it".
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
He just took a little nap with it.
MARCUS PARKS
Overnight. Sleep on it, you gotta sleep on it and look at it with fresh eyes in the morning.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause unfortunately-
BEN KISSEL
Does he wanna be a part of it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, he doesn't. Because again this is obviously a lie because Charlie doesn't have any friends. There's no gang around Charlie. He has been thoroughly disowned by anybody that is anywhere, he has burned many bridges. The one guy at the gas station.
MARCUS PARKS
No, he's got Bob von Busch.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. He already came by. So that's the guy that would be his friend.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He has no gang. And so the idea you show up, you go in the house, you don't hear a gang. But it's more just like why wasn't she like oh Caril Ann needs some help?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If she indeed said this. But then Lavida, god knows what's going on inside Lavida's mind.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
Now had Guy Starkweather gone to the cops that night, the carnage of the next six days would have most likely been prevented. Although when you consider the upcoming laziness of the Lincoln Police Department, it's hard to say. But either way, while Guy Starkweather was sleeping on it, Caril Ann's maternal grandmother, a woman named Pansy Street-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And according to 'The Twelfth Victim', you knew pansy because her lap was wide enough to fit every grandchild.
BEN KISSEL
Aw, that's nice. Pansy is an old school name. A friend of mine had a mom named Pansy and I'd never heard it before but now that I hear it, I do like Pansy. It sounds like someone that's very sweet and someone that makes a lot of cupcakes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's your transitional name.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Pansy came by the Bartlett home because Bob von Busch told her that the family was not only sick but was refusing to see or talk to anyone. So I suppose Bob really was a bit of a busybody.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
But when Pansy Street arrived at the front door, she found a misspelled message written on a yellow building permit saying to quote "stay a way or risk the flue" spelled F-L-U-E.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
These guys are not Kurt Vonnegut.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god. Wait a second, hold on a second. Oh my god. Okay so she misspelled a three letter word?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. And he didn't help. It's not like Charlie is the one who knows how to spell.
BEN KISSEL
They didn't do away as one word, they said stay a way.
MARCUS PARKS
No, it was two words. Stay a way.
BEN KISSEL
Oh man. I mean this is more of an indictment of the American education system isn't it? That's really the problem.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean this is in a time period when it was a little bit more voluntary.
BEN KISSEL
I guess so.
MARCUS PARKS
But Pansy called out anyway until Caril Ann came to the door, pale and agitated, repeating the sickness story again and again. And so when Pansy Street called out for her daughter and other granddaughter and got no response, she left and went to the police station. But even though the cops said they'd already checked it out-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We did it. We did it. We did it!
BEN KISSEL
We did it. Is Holden McNeely a detective in this? We did it already.
MARCUS PARKS
We did it. They reluctantly agreed to return when she was insistent. Meanwhile though Pansy had spooked Charles Starkweather who at the very least had a good instinct for when things were about to turn south because things had gone south for Charles Starkweather many times in the past.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Caril Ann, Caril Ann, let me just tell you something. Okay.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly, let's just say a lot of people have been mad at me.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I kind of know when they're the most mad because that's when you get fired, they take away your car.
BEN KISSEL
It sounds like you've disappointed a lot of people.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very much so.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's actually the one thing I'm good at.
BEN KISSEL
Is knowing when people are so pissed they want to beat you up?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
You know what they gotta do? Take it from Clue. They need to set up the family, pretend they're still alive, and then they have the detectives walk through. These detectives don't give a shit.
MARCUS PARKS
No. I mean this kind of sixth sense that Charles Starkweather had-
BEN KISSEL
It's not a sixth sense, Marcus!
MARCUS PARKS
It is, no. Dude, it's the moron's curse. It's constantly fucking up but having just enough wherewithal to remember what it feels like when you're about to get into trouble again.
BEN KISSEL
Okay, I've seen the movie The Sixth Sense and I'm pretty sure that wasn't the superpower.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can feel it though.
BEN KISSEL
No, I think I'm about to go to the principal's office. Yeah because you took a shit on the crayons!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They say this quite a bit. Look at fucking Bonnie and Clyde, that was the thing. The one thing that they had was like do you remember all the times we got shot?
BEN KISSEL
Yes but that's just because they know that they're fucked!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel that in the air again, I think we're about to get shot again.
BEN KISSEL
I just feel like we're overusing the term sixth sense. The third eye? No, it's just they know how fucking stupid they are and at some point adults are gonna come and solve the problem.
MARCUS PARKS
Now as soon as Pansy was gone, Caril Ann packed up a few things in a red swim bag and Charles grabbed a hunting knife, a .32 caliber revolver, and a sawed off shotgun before both walked over to Starkweather's Ford and drove off. Meanwhile the cops had arrived at the Bartlett home and made their way inside. And even though the house was suspiciously clean-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the thing.
MARCUS PARKS
Especially for a place that was supposed to be full of sick people, the cops decided everything's fine despite the fact that the whole house was very suddenly empty.
BEN KISSEL
Well did they not wonder where the sick people went?
MARCUS PARKS
Nah. Wasn't their problem.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It takes some time to build. It's not their problem, man.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god. It is their problem.
MARCUS PARKS
Now while this was happening, Guy Starkweather finally called the cops and told them that his son and a few other guys were supposedly planning an armed bank robbery at the Bartlett house.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Your son? Famous Chuck No Friends Starkweather?
BEN KISSEL
I don't believe it.
MARCUS PARKS
Bob von Busch also showed up at the police station while Guy was calling in the tip just to see if anyone had any news on the Bartletts. But instead of the cops saying dude, I think there's some bad ship going down at the Bartletts, the captain in charge at Lincoln PD, he got frustrated that everyone was telling him what to do. And he told Bob to leave it alone because everyone at the Bartlett house was fine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're fine! Well I do believe at this time period right, They have not had anything like a homicide in any way, shape, or form. I'm not giving them any credit.
MARCUS PARKS
It's Lincoln, Nebraska. They're having homicides.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But again, it's not like this.
MARCUS PARKS
No. They're not having mass murders.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, they are used to in many ways allowing households to handle their own issues, right.
BEN KISSEL
Well of course.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They all think like oh, this is a bunch of squabbles between these people doing something, some kind of drama. So for me, my thing is I'm trying to have a Thursday. And you know what it is about Thursdays is that it's the new Friday.
BEN KISSEL
Oh I do believe that.
MARCUS PARKS
Are you saying that the Lincoln PD is a bunch of no drama llamas? So they're just not fucking hanging out with it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Blah, I'm not trying to get into that Facebook mess.
BEN KISSEL
It just seems like there's a little bit of suspicious activity going on.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There is, yes.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
And so since the cops refused to go check it out, Bob von Busch and Starkweather's brother Rodney went back to the Bartlett house themselves to do more than a cursory glance. Within minutes they found Velda's corpse stuck halfway down the shithole, they found her toddler daughter's body sitting next to it, and Marion's carcass presumably pecked half to pieces under a screen door in the chicken coop because chickens are savage.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I bet.
BEN KISSEL
Okay. Small chicken hate. Small chicken hate going on.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He knows.
MARCUS PARKS
No, one chicken starts bleeding, all the rest of the chickens are gonna peck it to death.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa. What is this Twitter?
BEN KISSEL
That's a good one. It's good information, thank you for that, Marcus. That's great.
MARCUS PARKS
And so finally, after days of friends and family ringing alarm bells loudly and constantly, the Lincoln PD issued an all points bulletin for Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate. Charles and Caril Ann however were already on their way out of Lincoln. Specifically the couple were headed to the town of Bennett, 15 miles south. There on the outskirts was the farm of one August Meyer, a Starkweather family friend. Charlie figured that he could lay low on the Meyer farm while they were planning their next move.
BEN KISSEL
It really was like Grand Theft Auto then where if you just got to a random garage in a slightly other area it'd be like no more stars.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. Yeah! Scot-free. You could literally have a whole new life. You could just call yourself another name. But the key is Kissel I do think you have to have a skill.
BEN KISSEL
True.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You have to be able to fit into that new society in some way.
BEN KISSEL
Although if you do have a skill and all of a sudden who is this new hot guy? He's really good at welding.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the wild welder of Cincinnati, Kentucky!
BEN KISSEL
It's not right. So maybe I mean no skill is the best to make you a broad figure.
MARCUS PARKS
But Charles, despite being a hot rod enthusiast, he couldn't keep a car going for shit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah man, I'm a sneaker enthusiast, I don't know how to fucking sew one.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. It'd be like if we actually made Jay Leno fix a car, I would love to see that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He does, he does.
BEN KISSEL
Does he? Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's just a regular guy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he's just a regular guy.
BEN KISSEL
I know he's a regular guy just like us. Comes into the green room, reads his own car magazines.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He sits right there, he brings his own magazines.
BEN KISSEL
No I know. He's a great guy. He only makes money off of his stand up, you know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're the only ones who know this inside joke.
BEN KISSEL
I know.
MARCUS PARKS
One of Starkweather's tires were bent and that was causing the car to shimmy and the transmission was starting to act up. Because actually when Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate first went on the run when they left the house, they found that Charles had a flat tire so we put the spare on but the spare was bent. So the whole time they're driving the fucking car is shimmying along.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He is such a fucking moron. Honestly they had six days.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They had six days to sit and plan and figure this out. If this was the one thing that they wanted to do, if they thought that they were going to kill a family or specifically Chucky, if he thought they were gonna kill this family and have freedom, you figure that he would think like the freedom part.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like what do we do with the next part? But he didn't even think. He's a moron.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But the tire, that wasn't the first thing he had to fix. He had to fix the transmission. He could drive with a shimmy tire. So he stopped at a service station to get the transmission fixed. Caril meanwhile later claimed that she wrote a note that said 'help police don't ignore' with the intention of passing it to service station owner Dale Smallcomb.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the equivalent of the email I get from the Biden administration.
BEN KISSEL
Oh from the DNC?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Being like don't delete! And I delete it immediately.
BEN KISSEL
Why are all the emails from the DNC, it's too late? I don't understand.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Delete it immediately.
BEN KISSEL
I had one that said Ben, what was it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sorry this is late.
BEN KISSEL
Yes. Something like this. They were mad at me!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, they always are. However no evidence of said note to the service station attendant was ever found. And even though Dale Smallcomb later said that he quote unquote "smelled trouble" from Charles, he fixed the transmission and sent the young couple on their way without incident.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well he was walking around, smoking, staring, being like what have we done? What have we done? What have we done? And then walking around, staring down the road. He was real antsy.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then we'll see is the thing is that Caril Ann goes too far in the other to prove her innocence by saying well at every point I was always thinking of a way out of there. And it was like I understand that you were paralyzed, you were paralyzed. You were stuck in that car because she wanted to see what it was like going up in the system. Cause she actually stayed in the car while it got jacked up to the ceiling like they do at the mechanics.
BEN KISSEL
Oh that's kinda fun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because it was fun. But she just stayed up there kind of I think to be away from Charlie because now he's just running around like a crazy person.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's a different kind of amusement ride but all right.
MARCUS PARKS
Next Starkweather and Fugate stopped off at Old Homer Tate's Conoco Station so Charles could get the bent tire repaired.
BEN KISSEL
No, no gas here. All those, that's full of piss. Well yes, I'm sorry, you want to fill your car with piss?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just feel like all they're doing is making witnesses.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well at that point, Caril Ann walked by herself over to a nearby diner and got four hamburgers to go but didn't tell anyone what was happening for whatever reason, I don't know why. But from what Charles later claimed the hamburgers were kind of shitty and Caril Ann overreacted. From what Charles claimed she said the burgers tasted like dog food and suggested they go back and shoot up the place for serving shitty burgers. Caril Ann of course denies this Mallory Knox-like behavior.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes because there's the witnesses that say that Caril Ann at that point, it looked like she was bossing Charlie around which is kind of a dynamic they were having. She was yelling at him, being intense, which I can maybe see because Charlie is also trying to keep her happy too.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because up until this point he was love bombing her, he got that 200 bucks from the gas station and they have been living in a fantasy world and now everything fell apart within a bunch of hours. But I think she's just trying to talk like him.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, you think so?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Trying to be a tough guy, juvenile delinquent?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Trying to be a tough guy with him, trying to get in there with him.
BEN KISSEL
It was a strange episode of SpongeBob when Caril Ann went into Krusty Krab and just shot everybody.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's brutal. That's actually really brutal and harrowing. Even you just saying that weirdly sent a shiver up my spine.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Can't kill SpongeBob.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It feels like a creepypasta.
BEN KISSEL
The only thing that can kill SpongeBob is drying him out. You can dry him out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're right.
MARCUS PARKS
You could dry him out, yeah. Y'all ever see that SpongeBob porno?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep. Yes I did. I loved it.
BEN KISSEL
It was just so bizarre because it's very clean when you have sex with a sponge. Remember that episode of Seinfeld?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Let's move on.
BEN KISSEL
Okay. Sponge?
MARCUS PARKS
What we do know however is that Charles Starkweather loaded up on ammunition at Homer Tate's Conoco Station and it was with two fully loaded guns that he and Caril Ann continued onto the farm of August Meyer. Now remember this was January, so when Charles turned onto the unpaved road covered in snow melt, his car sunk down into the nasty Nebraska mud down to the axles. According to Charles Caril Ann again suggested murder in response to this relatively minor annoyance.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
BEN KISSEL
For who?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know. God.
MARCUS PARKS
August Meyer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah we have to kill August Meyer for the road.
BEN KISSEL
For the road. Oh I see.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, for letting the road get all shitty.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She's starting to sound like me.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I'll kill that motherfucker. But the way Caril Ann told it, Starkweather had developed a taste for killing by this point because he was four victims in. And after a week of lying low, he was ready for another thrill. So they decided to walk to the Meyer farm to do the deed. Since it was still January in Nebraska though and since Charles was probably wearing his cool guy outfit instead of warm clothes-
BEN KISSEL
He's a cool guy.
MARCUS PARKS
They stopped off at a set of ruins that Charles knew from his childhood. Anyone who's grown up in a rural area knows that the ruins of old structures like school houses and churches are everywhere. And anyone who grew up in Tornado Alley in particular, like say Nebraska, you know that a lot of these ruins have storm cellars.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They do. And that's fun though. Storm cellars are cool.
MARCUS PARKS
It is. Storm cellars are the best.
BEN KISSEL
They are cool.
MARCUS PARKS
I spent the majority of my childhood playing around in storm cellars. I love storm cellars.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wait, did you say that they kept you down there? You grew accustomed to it in a way?
MARCUS PARKS
No.
BEN KISSEL
Like Jacob's Ladder?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
No. I would say it was the place where I went to go hide from the rest of the world and it was very nice down there with the spiders. Just me and the spiders.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Good. He's allowed to have that. That's good, that made him who he is.
BEN KISSEL
That's an origin story for a supervillain.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what he is, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's Dirtman. Dirtman is down there amongst his people and the cobwebs, he used cobwebs as money. A spider is his girlfriend.
MARCUS PARKS
It's underground, it was very hot in Texas at that period of time and it's always cooler underground.
BEN KISSEL
Where's Marcus? Oh he's just hanging out with the spiders again.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's why that's why corpses never sweat.
BEN KISSEL
I don't even know if that's true. They're very glassy I think. I was gonna give a winter tip for clothing, just wear long johns, you can still dress fashionably.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's fantastic.
BEN KISSEL
We're gonna do that. Down there with the spiders again, he's probably kissing the spiders.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's allowed.
BEN KISSEL
Hey mommy, mommy! Did you know you could milk a spider?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's allowed.
BEN KISSEL
Hey Marcus, why don't you just go back and hang out with the spiders?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was where he could safely read books.
MARCUS PARKS
That's right. Well as it was on the August Meyer farm, there was indeed the foundation of an old schoolhouse. The storm cellar contained therein was known to locals as the cave. And since August Meyer was a Starkweather family friend, Charles had been there many times throughout his childhood. So Charles and Caril Ann climbed down into the dank recesses of the cave to warm up before continuing on. Now August Meyer was an old man, almost 80, a well liked lifelong bachelor which ain't as uncommon as you might think in rural communities.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Not a large dating pool, some guys just missed the boat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. And you're only different if you were the guy that played the piano for all the local musicals. Then you're like that's a different type of bachelor.
BEN KISSEL
Sure, sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because they're really well kept and they have nice clothes on. This is a man who probably just didn't have much. I think the term is he didn't have much game.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It was either that, somebody died, or just the one that got away. Back in the day if you didn't meet her in high school or if she decided to go with quarterback Stu, you're screwed. It's done.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But that's just to say that when Caril Ann and Charles walked up to the Meyer home that afternoon it was only August and his dog on the homestead.
BEN KISSEL
Now what was weird was the dog was wearing a dress and lipstick. And that's the one thing where it's like you don't have to...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Dude, why does he have that big congratulations sign on the thing, it's been up? And there's all these cans tied to his car.
BEN KISSEL
Did you marry your dog, bro?
MARCUS PARKS
Now as with every murder during the Starkweather rampage, there are multiple versions as to what happened. According to Charles this murder and every murder after was self defense.
BEN KISSEL
Oh please.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jerk off motion.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. He said that he and Caril Ann were warming themselves in Augie's barn when August came out with a gun and started yelling. He then refused to let Charles and Caril Ann inside his house and when they tried pushing past, August fired a shot and missed.
BEN KISSEL
Also that wouldn't fall into self defense, that would be falling into you trying to make a home invasion.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, you broke into somebody's house. Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Augie's gun jammed on the second shot but when he went back into the house to get another, Charles says that's when he shot him. And indeed August Meyer was killed by a shotgun blast to the back of the head. It was however done at point blank range which suggests something more akin to an execution style murder.
BEN KISSEL
Oh brutal.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's absolute garbage. According to Caril Ann, she saw that the dog came out, she had a version of it where she thought maybe the dog spooked him or she thought that August came out with the gun thinking that maybe he didn't understand why the dog was barking and that maybe Charlie was reacting to August with the gun. I think all of it's horseshit. I think that he went out, because he left her in the car, I think he went up to... There's a lot of creative psychological forensics I'm gonna be throwing around here, all right. So just follow me for a second.
MARCUS PARKS
All right, all right.
BEN KISSEL
Does that mean lies or...?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No!
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Storytelling with no factual because there is no facts to talk about, right.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because it's all in the ether, there's no way to find out objectively what happened.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But from my read, from reading the material that I've read-
MARCUS PARKS
Let's call it educated storytelling.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you. Edutainment.
BEN KISSEL
Edutainment!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is truly edutainment.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I think what happened was that he understood, we talked about this on our production call, he's immediately understanding that he gets shit from killing things.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If he can kill something that it's an easy way for him to fix problems. In his mind he thinks maybe I can just get away with all this, we'll just get out, we're gonna bug out of town anyway.
BEN KISSEL
Well is it possible that if they kill this guy, they can just kinda take his house?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Maybe.
BEN KISSEL
It's the middle of nowhere, right?
MARCUS PARKS
I mean put in a different way, it's not necessarily that it solves every problem, it's that it solves every argument.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. He doesn't have to worry about it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Because every single murder that Charles Starkweather commits, it's all about an argument for one reason or another. This one is an argument over like hey, let me in your house so I can warm up. No, boom. And it's as simple as that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that's garbage too.
MARCUS PARKS
He has no long term thinking whatsoever. It's just that killing solves an argument. Because as he said, dead people are all on the same level.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. But again there was no argument, there's nothing. He came out, he knew him his whole life, he knew Charlie, he knew him since he was a little boy. He saw him, he said hey, me and my girlfriend are stuck outside. He doesn't know what's going on. He definitely invited them into the house. I believe that entirely. And that when he turned his back to walk back in the house, he said fuck it and just shot him in the back of the head because I've already killed four people. I've already done it, I'm now going to need to do this because then we're going to try to move into this house and then we're gonna move on from there. But the problem is again, it's temporary.
BEN KISSEL
This is why as I said on the last episode, when I'm an old man I'm gonna have little signs that say get on my lawn. Because you gotta make them scared.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then it's just a sign of you sitting down in a chair but there's a bunch of grass on your lap.
BEN KISSEL
It might be a mannequin but it'll freak... Get on my lawn!
MARCUS PARKS
But no matter how it went down, August Meyer like Caril Ann's mother Velda, he got dragged to the outhouse, although Charles did learn his lesson. Instead of trying to stuff the corpse down the hole, Charles covered the body in a white sheet and shot Augie's dog just to be a dick.
BEN KISSEL
What in the world?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the first time he reacted. That's the first time Kissel reacted with an emotional reaction.
BEN KISSEL
No that's not the first time I've reacted. No, I've had emotional reactions. It's just this couple, therapy may be needed. Maybe some therapy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Charles and Caril then searched the house, finding 100 bucks, some Jello, and a couple of cookies. They then walked back to their car with a shovel and Augie's .22 rifle so they could dig out Starkweather's Ford. And after about an hour of digging Charles did manage to get the car free, but since he was an idiot the car immediately slid into a ditch.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he's the worst getaway. The idea of even saying the term getaway artist, what's the opposite of that?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah. Just a getaway driver. Just driver. This is the first time he gets stuck in the mud. This is just the first time. We're gonna be talking about getting stuck in the mud a lot over the next 15 minutes.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god. Yeah, I'd like to do that. Get on my lawn.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Different kind of mud.
BEN KISSEL
Oh I see.
MARCUS PARKS
When Charles tried back in the car out of the ditch, the transmission gave way and stripped the reverse gear. But while Charles cursed his luck, he and Caril saw headlights coming down the road. This time it was another farmer named Howard Genuchi. And Genuchi only saw a young couple stuck in the mud needing help. Surprisingly though once Howard pulled the Ford free, Charles just gave him $2 and drove back to the Meyer farm.
BEN KISSEL
Okay. And then he just took his gnocchi and went home.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
Once they got back to the Meyer farm though, the white sheet used to cover Augie's corpse was gone. And Charlie got sent into a panic as to whether someone else was on the property.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sheets don't move unless it's ghost clothes!
BEN KISSEL
Whoa! Honestly that is kinda scary.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Caril Ann though was obsessed with this idea. That's why they left because she was like his ghost is gonna come back.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She was very scared of August Meyer's ghost. She kept saying we better not be in there because the ghosts of coming, the ghosts are gonna come! I'm sorry, I just turned into Charlie. Also I got some criticism about my Charlie voice because they said he's not from New York, I made him sound like a New Yorker.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I dunno, it just happened. But also guess what? Nebraska has no accent. I looked it all up. I tried to create a character.
BEN KISSEL
They got the little Wisconsin accent.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're all lying to your fucking selves if you think he got one. Because I looked it up. I was like this is the purest example of a Nebraska accent. And it's just like going hey, how you doing there? Yeah, corn certainly is rising, isn't it?
BEN KISSEL
That's there.
MARCUS PARKS
He's gonna have a hint of a hick accent. Like I'm gon' go out and I'm gon' kill myself a couple of ladies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Go on, get.
BEN KISSEL
Well that's not a hint but yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is that what you want me to do?
MARCUS PARKS
No, no. I specifically requested that you use that specific voice for this episode.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See? He asked for it.
BEN KISSEL
I know. Don't cede the haters.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa, good words.
BEN KISSEL
Thank you.
MARCUS PARKS
Well because they were both scared about ghosts, they got back into the car and returned to Old Homer Tate's Conoco Station. There Charles bought more ammo for his new .22 and asked employee Marvin Kruger if he had any maps of Kansas.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See, oh yeah! Cause he's got 'em, he's got 'em. You got any maps for the planet of Mars?
BEN KISSEL
Each state got their own map back then.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well that's the thing man, he's not going to Kansas.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's it, man. Yeah dude.
BEN KISSEL
Man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
4D chess, dude.
MARCUS PARKS
He's not fucking going to Kansas.
BEN KISSEL
And totally redeem yourself. Get 17 miles a gallon on this hog. What a fucking idiot.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he's not going to Kansas, he's just thinking that if the cops catch up to him up to this point and they say hey, did you see Charles Starkweather? And the guy would be like yeah man, he fucking bought a map to Kansas.
BEN KISSEL
They might be going to Kansas.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then he bought this hat that said 'go huskers'. He's going down, he said something about you should see the real Paris, it's in Kansas.
BEN KISSEL
Kansas, yes. He couldn't stop singing about Kansas.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. Going to Manhattan. Well since Charlie's behavior was extremely suspicious, Marvin Kruger called the cops to see if they were interested in two teenagers quote "buying ammunition and acting funny".
BEN KISSEL
What a fucking idiot. So for all the gas station attendant knows, he's just a dude.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh sure.
BEN KISSEL
So they're just wearing all of what they've done on their faces.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There already was an APB out for both of them.
BEN KISSEL
Right. But this guy doesn't know.
MARCUS PARKS
But the thing is when he called the cops they knew because there was an APB out on two teenagers who had just massacred an entire family. But the cops still said who gives a shit?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Teenagers love bullets. They love 'em.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, some things never change.
MARCUS PARKS
Meanwhile Charles and Caril went back to the Meyer farm but Charles lost his nerve thinking that maybe, just maybe, someone was still there. So he turned around but got stuck in the mud again.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They were almost gone. Each time they're just about to leave town then he's just like we got to go back, I think I might have left my socks. Like what? And you just see that he's not wearing pants, no sock, just shoes and a shirt.
MARCUS PARKS
Rightfully thinking that his Ford was now a total loss, Charles and Caril Ann started hiking back towards the abandoned storm cellar to camp out, light a fire, and come up with a plan. But at the last second Charles led them back to the highway so they could hitchhike.
BEN KISSEL
Just stay at the house.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She won't.
MARCUS PARKS
But the house is haunted. The ghost is there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
August Meyer's ghost is there.
BEN KISSEL
You can't deal with that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I guess not. Even though you just made ghosts.
BEN KISSEL
You made the ghost number one.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You created the ghost.
BEN KISSEL
That's all you have to deal with and then you have a free house.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But this time when someone picked up Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, Charles would not be as generous as he was with Howard Genuchi. Early in the evening, two teenagers named Robert Jensen and Carol King were out running errands when they decided to head out to August Meyer's farm for a little parking and heavy petting as it was called back then.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. We called it inner petting.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic. Must have been a very nice car full of fantastic music.
MARCUS PARKS
Because of Carol King.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Carol King, wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Tapestry, very good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Love that album.
MARCUS PARKS
It's a good album. It's fine.
BEN KISSEL
I'm starting a new show called All Dogs in Space.
MARCUS PARKS
Put them all up there so they can maybe colonize and then once we get to Mars it's going to be super cute.
BEN KISSEL
That would be a great idea.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm voted against it. I voted against the space dog show because honestly a lot of those space dogs died of asphyxiation.
BEN KISSEL
They all did.
MARCUS PARKS
All of 'em did.
BEN KISSEL
I don't think one of them lived.
MARCUS PARKS
No, none of them lived. No, Laika's corpse is still orbiting the earth right now.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God bless her.
BEN KISSEL
Is that right?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Probably doesn't Laika that too much.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's stupid.
MARCUS PARKS
I love it. I love it. I'm just saying I love it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the best joke he's had in 15 years.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. It's Russian too, it's a Russian joke.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But just before they got to the turn off, just before Robert Jensen and Carol King got to the turn off where they were just going to go make out like a couple of regular teenagers, they saw a fully armed, mud-covered couple and decided to stop.
BEN KISSEL
No!
MARCUS PARKS
They probably thought they're out hunting, it's rural Nebraska. They're out hunting, they got into a bit of a bad spot, let's go and help them out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah there was a sharknado, they fell down into a...
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Remember the mud you can sink into?
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Quicksand?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So scary.
BEN KISSEL
It is scary.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a real threat.
BEN KISSEL
It truly is.
MARCUS PARKS
And coincidentally another reason why they may have stopped, Robert Jensen actually knew Charles Starkweather from the hot rod scene, although it is not known whether Robert pulled up and said hop on in or saw Starkweather and thought oh no, not this fucking idiot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
From what the book says, because we're reading a little bit of 'Waste Land', it did seem it was a mixture of the two.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because again, he had a reputation of being the Charles Starkweather of the hot rod community.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No matter where he goes, he's still Chuck. He has that special flair where he just makes everybody really upset.
BEN KISSEL
But at that point he's just an annoying kind of douchebag. They were like let's be nice to him, pick him up.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But then you find out.
MARCUS PARKS
Either way, Charles and Caril Ann climbed into the backseat of Robert Jensen's car and took a ride back into town. Eventually though Charles pressed the muzzle of his .22 into the back of Robert's skull and said that if he followed directions, nobody would get hurt. So instead of going to the nearest town of Bennett, Starkweather instructed Jensen to go back to Lincoln for some reason.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
But again Charles changed his mind and told them to return to the Meyer homestead, particularly Starkweather wanted to go back to the cave. Now Charles told his prisoners that they were just gonna leave them there and take the car. And Robert Jensen believed him enough where he gave Starkweather advice on how to drive his hot rod without fucking it up like Charles had done with his own car.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You gotta hug her to the curves but you got a shift her with the shifters. It's like that kind of stuff where you're like what? I don't know what that means.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. No, it's stuff like don't go over bumps fast because you'll bottom out, you'll break the axle, stuff like that. Because he knew how Charlie drove.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. See that fucking mud? Avoid it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah you know how your fucking car, you drove directly into that? Swerve around it.
BEN KISSEL
It does remind me when I was in high school I was driving my Thunderbird and there was a snowbank and I'm real stupid. I crashed into it like 10 times. And I would see it and I'd be like I gotta slow down but then I just didn't. And I would just always crash into it and I was like come on Ben, you gotta figure this out.
MARCUS PARKS
But again here's where things get muddled and I think that's for good reason because the murders of Robert Jensen and Carol King are by far the worst committed by Charles Starkweather. Now from what Starkweather later said, Fugate almost immediately got carried away once they arrived back at the cave. He said that she pointed a gun at the couple and robbed them, then threatened to kill Carol King. And indeed it did admit to committing armed robbery that night.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I buy this.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I believe that when they're in the back seat they're driving, he hands her a gun, she takes it. So she had a gun on Carol King and he had a gun on the back of Robert Jensen. And they were coming back around to where they were going to get them out and were gonna walk them over to the cave. But I think this is where her involvement immediately stops because then she stayed in the car. And he's like I'm gonna take them this way over here. And then he took them to the cave and he was gone way longer than he should have been. And then she heard the series of shots from the car.
BEN KISSEL
I mean she knew what was gonna happen.
MARCUS PARKS
But as far as at least the murder of Robert Jensen went, Charles said that it was again in self defense. Starkweather claimed that Robert tried grabbing the gun and in the scuffle Robert lost balance and Charles shot him. This however does not explain why Charles shot him nine times and shot him nine times in the head.
BEN KISSEL
It's also not self defense.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
None of it is self defense. It doesn't really make any sense.
BEN KISSEL
That's not what self defense is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You had the gun. It's this idea that anybody would believe that every single time anybody was dead around Charles Starkweather that it always involved some Air Force 1 style like fighting over a gun and each one of them died with him going whoa! And then the rifle spinning up in the air and falling and then accidentally discharging nine times in the back of his head.
BEN KISSEL
Hear me out. Face off.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But that's not how shit works.
BEN KISSEL
No it doesn't.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was shot nine times execution style in the back of his fucking head.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Charles Starkweather has that sociopathic thing of they forced me to do it, this is their fault. If they would have just done what I said then I never would have had to kill them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Society.
MARCUS PARKS
It was all their fault.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It started with society and not this is a microcosm of society.
BEN KISSEL
Okay, wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. In his mind it is self defense.
BEN KISSEL
I mean technically it started with James Dean.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It did.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Again either way Robert's body was then dragged to the storm cellar and thrown down the stairs into the dark. As far as Carol King went, there are multiple versions to that as well and none of them are good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
In one version King was left alive in the storm cellar with her boyfriend's body while Charles and Caril tried driving away but once again they got stuck in the mud for the fourth time.
BEN KISSEL
They got stuck in the mud. Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
So while Charles got the car unstuck, he said he told Caril Ann Fugate to guard Carol King. But while Charles was digging out the car, he said he heard a gunshot and found Caril Ann standing over Carol King's dead body. Allegedly Carol King had tried to run and Caril Ann too told Charles that she had no choice but to shoot her. Her body was then taken to the storm cellar and that was that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sorry I'm gonna have to give that a whammy!
BEN KISSEL
Whammy!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whammy! I don't agree.
MARCUS PARKS
Again the evidence tells a different story. Carol King's body was indeed found on top of Robert Jensen's corpse in the storm cellar but her coat had been pulled over her head and her pants were pulled down around her ankles. She was covered in mud and blood stains from her torso to her knees and she had been found shot in the head below the ear execution style. And while there was no semen found, her genitals and rectum had been stabbed multiple times by a narrow double-edged blade. Now Caril Ann said that Charles raped King but Caril Ann also said that Charles left King alive, which doesn't match a soviet style execution gunshot wound to the back of the ear. Charles meanwhile initially confessed to the rape but later claimed that he only said that to cover for Caril Ann's mutilation of King's genitals.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think all of that is absolute garbage.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that he shot both of them together, again just fucking Occam's razor it and really look at it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She sat in the car. Because one story she says is that she was just in the car.
MARCUS PARKS
Caril Ann sat in the car, you seem to mean.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Caril Ann sat in the car, heard the series of gunshots, and he came back way later than he wanted. And then maybe she came out and looked at the corpses, I'm not certain. But as soon as she saw that Carol King was undressed and bleeding, she freaked out. And I believe this, I believe that they went and she saw the evidence of what happened because this is what really shows he was fucked up. Because he sat with corpses for a second.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then he looked at a woman, a naked woman's body, and then Charles Starkweather decided to experiment like we have seen with serial killers.
BEN KISSEL
Oh you think he's a necrophiliac?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, it's the curiosity. How do you say it's curiosity?
MARCUS PARKS
It's the childlike mutilation. It's the sort of thing that a sociopathic kid does with a rabbit. But because Charles Starkweather is a sociopath, he sees no distinction, he just sees flesh that he can experiment with.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He gets to do something with it. He has this moment and all of these crimes escalate. Everything gets worse and worse and worse because he is becoming, over an 8 day period, he's becoming a serial killer.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I see that in his head. He's already doing that thing where he's now following his darkest impulses because the cat is out of the bag.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well after the murders, the door to the cellar was covered with garbage and Charles got back to work getting the car unstuck from the mud. By 10:30 he was successful and the couple returned to Lincoln having committed three more murders in two locations in a matter of hours. On the way to Lincoln though, Caril Ann tossed some of Robert's old textbooks out the window, later saying that she did it in the hopes of leaving a trail for the cops. Charles meanwhile was heading back to the Bartlett place like an idiot, possibly half hoping that they could just return to the kingly week they spent together immediately after killing Caril Ann's family.
BEN KISSEL
They are incredibly stupid.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because there's this mixture according to Caril Ann story, she says that he promised to take her home. He said all right, this is over. I'm gonna take you home. And I actually kind of see this in a weird way where he actually maybe did say something like that, like we're just gonna go home, we're gonna go home.
MARCUS PARKS
Maybe.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This has all gotten out of control, we're all going nuts, we're gonna do it. But he doesn't understand. Again it's that fantasy extension of like you can't go home.
BEN KISSEL
Right. No buddy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You've fucked it all up, it's all over. You've murdered fucking seven people.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
But at the last second he again changed his mind, deciding instead that the best plan would be to hide out with his brother Leonard in Washington state. Before that could happen though, Starkweather decided that they needed a more reliable form of transportation which could most likely be found amongst Lincoln's wealthier residents.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Listen, listen, Caril Ann. I know I've been bad. You know all this has been bad, right.
BEN KISSEL
Right, it has been really bad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Listen, I've heard the Oscar Mayer wienermobile is parked in Lincoln right now.
BEN KISSEL
Is that right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm thinking about you and me baby, hot dogging our way across this great country of ours!
BEN KISSEL
I do love it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm beeping the horn, shooting ketchup at the cops, fucking on mustard.
BEN KISSEL
I do like that idea. It is an awesome mobile, I got a hot dog from it one time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Apparently the transmission is a mess though, I'm gonna have to drop it at the shop before we go.
BEN KISSEL
That's great. You don't think you'll get that stuck in the mud, do you?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No!
BEN KISSEL
No cause it seems bigger than all the other cars, it seems more difficult to drive.
MARCUS PARKS
Meanwhile Robert's textbooks were indeed found on the side of the road by Tuesday morning and by noon the next day the whole of Bartlett, Nebraska was searching for Robert Jensen and Carol King. Pretty soon a neighbor named Merle Bolt found Charlie's 1949 Ford stuck in the mud up to its axles in the middle of a field. Merle went and told a neighbor named Hubert Beecham-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh lord.
MARCUS PARKS
And they figured that the Ford belonged to wanted criminal Charles Starkweather.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, fucking Hubert and Merle are the only two people in the story with a fucking brain.
BEN KISSEL
Hubert and Merle sound like it though. Honestly.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because they're like, it look like the getaway car of that murderer? Yep.
BEN KISSEL
Yep.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You can tell right there because of the swerve to the side, he must have been driving pretty fast, right?
BEN KISSEL
Yep.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep. Yep. Yep.
BEN KISSEL
Case solved, closed, done!
MARCUS PARKS
Well once the cops were notified, 25 men were sent to August Meyer's farm. Once arrived, they tear gassed Augie's house before searching it.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you just see the ghost fly out.
MARCUS PARKS
They didn't find Charles Starkweather but they soon found the body of August Meyer in the outhouse. Meanwhile another farmer checked the storm cellar known as the cave on a hunch and notified police when he found two bodies down in the dark. By 4PM over 100 cops had arrived on the Meyer farm and Charles Starkweather had another three bodies attached to his name, bringing the total to 6. At around the same time Guy Starkweather, Charlie's father, told Bob von Busch that Charles had called and said he was coming back to Lincoln via Highway 6 to kill Bob for his trespasses.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's so stupid. There's some question about whether or not that was a prank call or not.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But instead of calling the cops, Bob and Charlie's brother Rodney rode out to Highway 6 with a length of rope, hoping they could intercept and hog tie Charles so they could hand him over to the cops.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That would be fun.
BEN KISSEL
They're gonna hog tie the car?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well they're gonna get a gun in there.
MARCUS PARKS
They're gonna go out there and they're gonna hogtie him and he'll be like (squealing) and freaking out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Damn it, you got me, you got me.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Charles of course never showed because by the time everyone had found the bodies of August Meyer, Robert Jensen, and Carol King, he'd already killed two more people in Lincoln.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because they found out the ultimate way to hide from the cops. You sleep when the cops sleep because they only had like three patrol cars at the time, that was the whole thing. And so you'd just go to sleep. Once you go to sleep at 3AM, everyone's asleep. Cops go to sleep too then.
BEN KISSEL
Okay. All right.
MARCUS PARKS
See after arriving back in Lincoln in the wee hours of January 28th, just after they had killed the two teenagers, Charles and Caril Ann slept in the car they'd stolen until 7AM, then started cruising the wealthier neighborhoods for a suitable getaway car.
BEN KISSEL
Hold on baby, we're gonna wait until it's light outside. Fucking idiots.
MARCUS PARKS
Eventually they settled on the home of wealthy businessman and lawyer. C. Lauer Ward. Somewhat like the LaBianca house chosen by the Manson family, the Wards were targeted for a tangential reason, Charles had once shoveled snow from their driveway and there really wasn't much more to it than that other than a vague resentment towards Lauer Ward's success.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, this was his whole thing because that's why they went to the fancy neighborhood.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because he's just like all these have somes and else have nots, this is why I'm doing what I'm doing.
BEN KISSEL
Brave.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He believed in some way that he was a working man's hero.
MARCUS PARKS
And so Charles and Caril Ann arrived at the Ward home at 8AM. If you're a working man's hero, you gotta work, you gotta hold a job.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You should have a job, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
(singing) Blew up a chicken man in Philly last night.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Charles went to the front door first with one of his .22 rifles and a hunting knife. But when Charles knocked on the door, it was not one of the Wards who answered but their housekeeper Lilyan Fencl. Charles pushed his way inside and asked if anyone was in the house and eventually Lilyan told him that Clara Ward was upstairs waiting for Lilyan to finish cooking breakfast. So Charles said finish it and watched Lilyan as she worked.
BEN KISSEL
Ooh that's scary.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's really fucked because Lilyan was also mostly deaf.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so he had to do everything being like... Because again he realized he's been like, do what I tell you to do! And then she literally points to her ears like I can't hear you.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. There's also the dog barking, there's a dog barking really loud. A dog named Queenie, a labrador retriever named Queenie barking really loud.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. He's also a dog barking.
BEN KISSEL
Cute dog.
MARCUS PARKS
Eventually he starts writing messages, like writing shit down like who else is in house? And shit like that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you'll get to his spelling, it wasn't very good.
BEN KISSEL
I can imagine.
MARCUS PARKS
After a short period Clara came down and Charles told her that he just needed a place to lie low and if she cooperated, no one would get hurt. Caril Ann was then called inside from the car and she brought the shotgun. Once everyone was in the house, Charles told Lilyan to make him pancakes, then changed his mind to waffles. And after Lilyan made a stack, Charles sat there and ate six waffles while Caril Ann held their prisoners at gunpoint.
BEN KISSEL
To be honest, you don't really hear about stacks of waffles very often, you just think it's kind of just one large waffle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wish that we did. It's like ravioli when you go and get ravioli at the restaurant, they only give you like five. And it's just like I could eat like 57.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah you fat motherfucker, it's not about how much you can eat, it's about the serving size that they're giving you for the amount of money that you paid for it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah it is. I'm here outside, I'm eating at a restaurant. Yeah but still, I can still eat way more of these.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah but they have to buy the goods and then they price it so that they can make a little profit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whatever, I'm here to eat raviolis.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. You're never going to get Henry to unstick the correlation between Italian food and I must eat as much Italian food as possible because that's how I know my mother loves me.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's how I eat it.
BEN KISSEL
At least it's healthy, at least it's good for you. It's not the worst possible thing a person can eat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love it though.
BEN KISSEL
Cheese and carbs. I do love Italian food.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah me too. Had it last night.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wait until we're sitting there having fucking raviolis together and you're gonna look at the pile and you know for a fact both of us are gonna be like oh.
BEN KISSEL
No, well then we'll buy more. We'll buy more.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What are we, man? God, whatever man.
BEN KISSEL
You're such a fucking Queens bitch. I don't wanna buy more!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Serve me up.
BEN KISSEL
You had 15 already.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It ain't enough.
MARCUS PARKS
Well after eating six waffles, Charles Starkweather took a nap and Caril Ann watched the two women as they tried going about their regular day.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they literally sat there and they're like what do you want us to do? And Lilyan at some point turned to her and she's like can we just do our day? And she was like yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so they just lived their day while Charlie went to sleep. This is again, they're kids. They're kids. So there's a scary element because of that. Because also during this time period the entire neighborhood is becoming armed, everybody's buying guns.
BEN KISSEL
Because they're afraid of this story?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're afraid of these kids, they're really afraid of what's happening. The fear is there. I was watching one documentary where the sheriff was like I'll tell you what, not only was there no guns available after the end of the day but I'm pretty certain there wasn't even a bow and arrow that you could find anywhere because everyone was itching to get them hands on them kids. But then he said that the town was ripping itself to pieces. He's like I couldn't possibly believe, I was like we almost lost control that day.
BEN KISSEL
It seems like you did lose control a long time again when you didn't arrest these-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah but we're talking about the law abiding citizens with guns.
BEN KISSEL
Oh okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Well once Charles woke up, he and Caril Ann looked through the newspapers and read stories about the only murders that had been thus far discovered, that of Caril Ann's family. They then cut out the articles and the pictures of themselves as keepsakes. Now as far as how things got out of hand this time, according to Charles Clara Ward got ahold of a rifle of her own while she and Charles were upstairs and Clara took a shot. She did however miss. She then tried running away but Charles claims that he threw a knife which sunk into Clara's back.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause he's Indiana Jones.
BEN KISSEL
He did not do that.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well what Charles actually said is that when they were in the Bartlett house for that week, when they were playing house, he said they spent a lot of time practicing throwing knives.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, you see? And it really is like doing it in action. That's not why guys go to bootcamp for nine months to learn how to kill by from the government.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well that's Charles' tough guy image, a guy just sitting there in front of a tree and throwing a knife and having it stick in.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, tough guy.
MARCUS PARKS
And you grab the knife and you walk back and it sticks in again. You do that for six hours.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Got him again! Fuck you, ant!
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah. Get outta here. I'm gonna really piss off people who love trees.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
BEN KISSEL
Arbor Day.
MARCUS PARKS
It's a big deal.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is in some societies.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Supposedly Charles pulled out the knife and went downstairs for a fucking bandaid. But when he came back, Clara was trying to call the police. He then tore the phone-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(whispering) Call the police.
MARCUS PARKS
(whispering) Call the police.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(whispering) Call the police.
MARCUS PARKS
He then tore the phone out of the wall, tied her up, left her in the bedroom, and that was that. Now the autopsy actually showed that Clara Ward died from multiple stab wounds and at one point Caril Ann Fugate did take responsibility for this murder in particular. She said that she stabbed Clara Ward in the throat with her own mother's kitchen knife that she'd brought with her on the trip.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't believe it either.
BEN KISSEL
She had her mom's kitchen knife with her this whole time?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they already said it would snap.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Then she said she sprayed perfume around the room to mask the scent of blood like she and Charles had done after killing her parents.
BEN KISSEL
Ooh now it smells like the Met Gala.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yaaas.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, blood and perfume?
BEN KISSEL
Do you know the blood on the hands of the people that go to the Met Gala? It takes a lot of perfume.
MARCUS PARKS
However she later said that she never even went into the room where Clara Ward died and instead she hid in the bathroom drinking soda while Charles did the deed.
BEN KISSEL
She just lives like Eric Cartman trying to hide the sugar impulses he has?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's true.
MARCUS PARKS
And indeed the autopsy reported that Clara was killed by a double-edged knife, not something often found in a kitchen drawer. It's just insane, I don't understand why Caril Ann Fugate would admit to this murder. I don't know why she would make up this story.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that what happened, this is my read, this is where it gets really complicated.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because this murder was actually surprisingly brutal.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She was stabbed multiple times from the front, right. She was tied up and stabbed to death on the bed.
BEN KISSEL
Oh man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is basically how it happened. She didn't just die from a random wound from his knife throwing thing. I think there was a scenario where I believe at this point Caril Ann is truly terrified of Charlie more than ever before.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think right now she is terrified.
BEN KISSEL
She could have just killed him when he took a nap after six waffles.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is a lot, right? It's a lot. He's also her entire world now. He's killed her entire family, she has nowhere else to go. This is now her mentor and it's her fucking daddy figure essentially. But they're still equals mentally. So I think what happened was that she was in the room when he was stabbing her to death, maybe holding her down, maybe doing a thing. And then afterwards she saw what happened, she saw her get stabbed but then just she had been kind of caught up between am I responsible? Am I put into this thing? Her brain is freaking out.
BEN KISSEL
Better have some soda.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Seriously.
MARCUS PARKS
Now by 6PM on January 28th, everyone killed on the Meyer homestead had been found. But Clara Ward's husband Lauer had no reason to suspect that he'd have anything to do with it. Indeed when he arrived home that night he was coming from a meeting with the governor. Ward was a bigwig. Now Charles claims again that there was a struggle for the gun as there always supposedly was. But forensics show that Lauer Ward was shot twice in the throat and once in the temple immediately upon entering his own home. Then he was stabbed in the back between the shoulder blades. As far as housekeeper Lilyan Fencl went, she was tied to a bed in the upstairs bedroom and had been stabbed repeatedly in the chest and stomach. Her legs, arms, and hands were covered in defensive wounds and reportedly when the body was found her mouth and eyes were wide open.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. No, it was scary. This is the thing, it got fucked up in that house.
MARCUS PARKS
It did.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Something happened.
BEN KISSEL
That's brutal, man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what I was thinking about last night, where that is where all of the wheels fell off and now they don't know what to do.
BEN KISSEL
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is the true meaning. That's why I feel like in a way this case obviously has been very scary to people for very long, for a very long time. And this is a part of it is because it's what we've talked about in countless other episodes, sometimes that childlike thing that is the disconnect between you and reality, it can make you do a lot fucked up stuff.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And it's also as we've talked about just your life got confronted by two morons and all the work you did is gone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Everything gets ripped to pieces because it's literally just the power of total chaos.
BEN KISSEL
Jeez Louise.
MARCUS PARKS
Jeez Louise.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sheesh. Sheesh.
BEN KISSEL
Louise.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean really when you look at this murder, I mean it's somewhat of a 1950s version of the Manson family.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Exactly.
MARCUS PARKS
Except it's not hippies, it's juvenile delinquents. And there's no cult.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow, that is interesting. It is true, it is very similar.
BEN KISSEL
It is similar.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because they are products of their time. It's such a specific 1950s ideal, that idea of being a moralist rebel, literally a rebel without a cause, like that thing. And then this is what happens to rebels without a cause, they do this type of shit where it's like there is no cause. And the emptiness of it also speaks to something where they got nothing out of it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was just their chaos spreading into all of Lincoln.
BEN KISSEL
Most rebels without a cause just sort of grow out of it and then they go see Rage Against The Machine at Madison Square Garden with better seats than they ever expected to have.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Most of them turned into Republican House of Representatives.
BEN KISSEL
Exactly. Paul Ryan, remember him?
MARCUS PARKS
I'll tell you this, when I did indeed go see Rage Against The Machine at Madison Square Garden I found out why people like Paul Ryan really love Rage against The Machine because while half of the audience was actually singing along to the words, there was one dude behind me and other dudes all around that were just going like da-der, da-der, da-da-der. They were not screaming killing in the name of, they were just singing along to the riffs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Loving the riffs.
MARCUS PARKS
Just loving the riffs man, just loving the guitar.
BEN KISSEL
Without Tom Morello, the man's lyrics aren't as good.
MARCUS PARKS
Well after everyone in the house was dead and the nefarious couple scrounged all they could, they got in the Lauer Ward's 1956 Packard and drove around town aimlessly before again heading toward the Bartlett house.
BEN KISSEL
What?
MARCUS PARKS
But when they saw a car in the driveway they turned around, stopped for gas, then got on Highway 2 through central Nebraska on their way to Wyoming.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're finally leaving town.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah psychologically it seems like their brains aren't capable of leaving.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Like they're not psychologically capable of doing what they have to do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I believe that it's a true fear of the freedom. They don't understand what they've done.
MARCUS PARKS
Now by this point sightings of Starkweather and Fugate spanned four states. And while the mayor of Lincoln offered an obligatory $500 reward, the head of the garbage union ponied up $100 himself, either out of some strange sense of responsibility or just because he hated Charles Starkweather that much.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's the thing with the garbage men. Moral.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Moral.
MARCUS PARKS
But when the bodies of Lauer and Clara Ward were discovered by a cousin, the tone of the investigation shifted. Whereas before Starkweather had only killed those of his own station, he'd now killed two wealthy citizens.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Extra people.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Extra people.
BEN KISSEL
People plus.
MARCUS PARKS
And so instead of just a couple of roadblocks, the governor sent out spotter planes and mobilized 200 members of the Nebraska National Guard.
BEN KISSEL
Hold on now, he killed one of us?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is literally what they did.
MARCUS PARKS
Harumph!
BEN KISSEL
You kill them whores, you kill them whores! You killed one of us?
MARCUS PARKS
Complete with combat gear, M1 rifles, military jeeps outfitted with 30 caliber machine guns.
BEN KISSEL
Jesus.
MARCUS PARKS
Citizens meanwhile went out and bought their own guns then very quickly formed posses.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, people ready to go. It went immediate old west.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, it sounds like it.
MARCUS PARKS
But while the net was closing in around Starkweather and Fugate, their murder spree was not yet at an end. See one possible reason why Charles hadn't been recognized yet was because people were looking for a peckerwood of the redheaded variety. But just before leaving the ward home, Starkweather had slathered his mop with black shoe polish to hide his identity.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So he looked like a wet moron.
BEN KISSEL
What's the kid from Addams Family in the original?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Pugsley.
BEN KISSEL
Or was it The Munsters? Maybe it was The Munsters kid.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, you're thinking of Eddie Munster.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He covered himself in gunk, right. And then he put some hat on, some summer straw hat on. And so then he was driving very conspicuous.
MARCUS PARKS
Very conspicuous, yeah. So when they stopped off for cheeseburgers at around 1AM after killing the Wards, no one recognized Charles Starkweather. But since killing the Wards and their housekeeper, Charles said that something between him and Caril Ann had shifted. His feelings towards Caril Ann had started to change he said and he was very suddenly struck with the near inevitability that he was going to die in a shootout with the cops which he very much did not want. That's important to know about Charles Starkweather, he was not on a suicide mission at all.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He didn't want to die in the process of this.
BEN KISSEL
That almost makes him dumber.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, yes. Because he kind of thought that maybe they could get away with all of it. But also at the same time he's ranting about his dreams of death and how him and death are friends and they go hand in hand.
BEN KISSEL
It'll come for you, don't worry about it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And all this kind of shit.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So Caril Ann is getting more and more reticent as this is going, she is seeing that this is headed nowhere good and he's saying he doesn't want to die in a shootout but guess what? They're headed right for it.
BEN KISSEL
It's like when I say I don't want to die of diabetes and still Uber Eats every night.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well as such when Starkweather stopped for gas about 100 miles from the Wyoming border, he was a little jumpy. In addition he very obviously had hair that was suspiciously gummed up with black shoe polish. So the attendant called the state troopers but again no one came to investigate.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The National Guard was there!
BEN KISSEL
What is happening?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The National Guard. All of these people showed up to stand around and literally they all came and they were like all right, when's the invasion? And then they just see two children covered in shoe polish.
MARCUS PARKS
Again they're 19 and 14, this is 1958. They're not a five and six year old in 2022.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Caril Ann is a child. I'm still putting in Caril Ann's a child and he's basically a child.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Maybe in terms of mental state but just looking at him... I was driving at the age of 11, I was driving to school when I was 12.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is not good Marcus.
MARCUS PARKS
Rural America is different.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know. Caril Ann's picture reminded me that she was a child. When I looked at the picture of her arrest, I looked at her and she's very, very, very small.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. And to be fair Marcus if I saw you driving at 12 to school and I passed you I'd be like there's a child driving that car.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I'd be pissed.
BEN KISSEL
There's a kid driving that car.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I'd be pissed as an adult driving.
MARCUS PARKS
But still it's rural America, shit works differently out there especially in 1958.
BEN KISSEL
I gave a speaking gig at a college that did end up getting the booker fired because I did so great. And they're children. Until you're 40 I don't know what you are.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Exactly.
MARCUS PARKS
So by 1PM, after stopping near the Wyoming border for candy bars and nine bottles of Pepsi which doesn't really help my argument-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, this is what I'm saying.
MARCUS PARKS
Charles and Caril Ann heard on the radio that the Wards and their housekeeper had been found dead. So they decided it would be a good idea to get rid of the Packard. And so just over the border Charles and Caril Ann spotted a brand new Buick on the side of the road that they figured was abandoned. But inside that Buick taking a nap after a long night of driving was an unlucky traveling shoe salesman named Merle Collison.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa!
BEN KISSEL
I thought you were gonna say his name was Michael Jordan's father.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Unlucky shoe salesman.
BEN KISSEL
That's horrible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
His name's Merle Collison.
BEN KISSEL
That is unbelievable.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's another Merle, second Merle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, a lot of Merles.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, Merle's a pretty common name around this time. Now once Charles pulled over and saw Merle in the back, he tapped on the window and told Merle to unlock the doors because they were about to trade cars. When Merle ignored him though, Charles produced his rifle and shot Merle nine times.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
Now there were only two bullet holes in the Buick which implies that some of the wounds were suffered outside of the car. And Charles said that when Merle started talking about how he had a wife and kids, Caril Ann said too bad and finished him off with seven more shots.
BEN KISSEL
Jesus.
MARCUS PARKS
Caril Ann of course denies this.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But after Merle was dead, Charles despite being a so-called hot rod guy, he couldn't figure out how to release the parking brake on Merle Collison's Buick.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god. I fucking hate these people so much.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're not good, they're not good at it.
BEN KISSEL
No.
MARCUS PARKS
And that is when a good samaritan named Joe Sprinkle pulled up to help.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Joe Sprinkle very quickly saw Merle Collison's dead body and surmised that he was in trouble, especially after Starkweather pointed a rifle and said help me release the parking brake or die.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're gonna get me out of this break! Honestly, look at this. All right? I need this emergency brake sprung right now.
BEN KISSEL
I surmise I'm in trouble. Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is a Sisyphean style.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I gotta step on a lever, right?
BEN KISSEL
You're a moron.
MARCUS PARKS
But in contrast to every other story in which Starkweather said that the victim went for the gun, this time Starkweather had a bit of trouble when Joe Sprinkle grabbed the barrel. In fact Charles was so weak that Joe Sprinkle was able to actually drag him into the road by the gun while Charles kicked and clung to the gun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
No, let go mister!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is why if anybody fought him, he was minuscule, they would have wiped the floor with him.
MARCUS PARKS
It's at this moment though that fate stepped in when a sheriff's deputy named Bill Romer just happened upon the scene. Once Deputy Romer stopped, Caril leapt from Merle Collison's Buick and ran towards them yelling quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"Take me to the police! He's killed a man!"
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
And when the deputy asked who he was, Caril Ann dramatically yelled:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"Charles Starkweather!"
BEN KISSEL
Wow. She's not guilty of anything herself, is she?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's one of those things where it was too hot, it finally got too hot. She finally just had to run.
BEN KISSEL
It was also they were about to be busted so this would be the time for her to flip, right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. The thing is that from the readings and the interviews-
BEN KISSEL
She could have shot him in the head when he took a nap after six waffles.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She had none of that, she had none of that in her. She had none of that her. She was not very smart. She went through this whole thing.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She was terrified of him. She was deeply terrified. And then finally she was like I can get out right now. But I don't think she had that much going on in the background, I don't think that she was a plotter. Neither one of them were. Once she got into the confession room she tried to figure out how do I make sure I always position myself as innocent because I know I have to but also at the same time she was vaguely a hostage to this psychopath. And I think that she was doing what she did to get along for as much as she could and then finally was like all right, it's starting to bust open.
BEN KISSEL
What's the name of the old gal there, Stockholm Syndrome, the face?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Patty Hearst.
MARCUS PARKS
Patty Hearst.
BEN KISSEL
Patty Hearst.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very similar.
MARCUS PARKS
Well kinda. Kinda sorta. I mean with Patty Hearst there's a whole can of worms on that one.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can't wait, I can't wait.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, we're gonna get to that one. But Patty Hearst is something entirely different. With Caril Ann Fugate I think it's closer to say like an abusive relationship.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Where you could ask why someone stays with an abusive partner when you say like oh why don't they just leave? It's sort of the same thing with Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate in that house while Charles is taking a nap. Why doesn't she just shoot him in the head? And the answer is because she's fucking terrified of him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
She doesn't know what he's gonna do. In her mind he has taken on very quite possibly, this is just speculation, but in her mind he's taken on this all powerful figure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because all he does is pontificate.
MARCUS PARKS
He's become kind of an all but he's become an all powerful figure where he can do anything. And as Henry said, she's got nobody left. She kills Charlie, where's she gonna go?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where's she gonna go? You know what I mean?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Charlie is the stabilizing point of her life.
BEN KISSEL
Oh that's not good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No!
BEN KISSEL
No, no that's not good at all.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean yeah, does she bear some responsibility?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, she absolutely does. but it's not that simple.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But still you can be a hostage, a victim, and an accomplice all in one.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Do you think no one would have been killed without Charlie?
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Absolutely not. It's him. He's the driving force.
BEN KISSEL
So he's the driving force.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Not a single person. But on the other hand, I also don't think that Karla Homolka would have killed anyone without Paul Bernardo.
BEN KISSEL
True.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But she got a taste. And she was of age, she was at an age that she can make those decisions.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, Karla Homolka, she wouldn't have done it without him but once she got with him, she fucking did it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now at that point when Caril Ann started running towards the sheriff's deputy, Charles let go of the rifle, jumped back into Lauer Ward's Packard, and took off while the deputy through Caril Ann in his cruiser and took off in pursuit. While he radioed for backup, Caril Ann piled everything on Charles, saying that she'd seen him kill 10 people. By the time Caril Ann was done with her story though, a whole pack of police had joined Deputy Romer in the chase and Starkweather, remember he is a hot rod guy, he's doing 100 miles an hour through the town of Douglas, zigzagging through traffic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Finally he's doing something fast!
MARCUS PARKS
And before long Starkweather and his pursuers were on the highway going 120 and cops are leaning out the window, firing their rifles at Charles, the fucking back window of the Packard is shattering.
BEN KISSEL
Wow!
MARCUS PARKS
Finally Charles Starkweather hits a bump in the road, since he's going 120 miles an hour the car flies into the air and comes crashing down completely busted and it rolls to a stop. And at that point Charles Starkweather just steps out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he's like well, it's been fun!
BEN KISSEL
You know what you gotta do after that? You say and scene.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And scene.
BEN KISSEL
All right, let's all go back to normal, everyone's families are alive, zip zap zop, there we go.
MARCUS PARKS
The cops ordered him to put his hands in the air but when he ignored them they shot at his feet and ordered him to the ground. When the cops cuffed him though, Charlie's ear was bleeding because it had gotten nicked when the back window shattered. But instead of just dealing with it, Charles cried out that he'd been shot, then whined that he was bleeding to death.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. And then what was the last statement he said? He's like you know for all the things that we've done at least for a little while sir, me and her, we had us some fun.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god, I'm gonna fucking kill you. And your main injury is the same that every girl gets at Claire's when they get their ears pierced for the first time by someone three years younger than them and they're 12.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, you get that ear hymen. Get it snapped.
BEN KISSEL
That is so gross. Fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
Finally though when Charles calmed down in the backseat of a cop car, he said that Caril Ann had nothing to do with what had happened over the course of those two bloody weeks in January.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
As far as Caril Ann went though, her stories began changing and evolving almost immediately.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Before she even arrived at a police station she told Deputy Romer that her home in Lincoln had been the headquarters for a group of teenage delinquent bank robbers which was the same thing she told Starkweather's sister two weeks before. She said that the others had all chickened out at the last second despite being armed with Tommy guns and when they left, Charles and Caril Ann left too and things just sort of got out of hand from there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
BEN KISSEL
Oh I see.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure, yeah. They were inspired by the gang that was there. Again they just don't know what to say. They were both trying to figure out how do you describe the indescribable? We're talking about the folie à deux, right.
BEN KISSEL
Folie à deux.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's these private moments where it's very difficult to tell what objective truth is. You have two people in a room, no one else knows what happens but those two.
BEN KISSEL
I have a little app game that I can play. I can tell who's the mother of the baby.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah that's different, you have those clear cut answers. Again that's what that provides.
BEN KISSEL
You know what the answer is?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Those games provides stability for you.
BEN KISSEL
It's whoever the baby is looking at.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Couldn't care less. Wow. And honestly I bet you I could go into the room and I could fucking go (barking), baby's gonna look at me. Am I the mother?
BEN KISSEL
No, the babies are going to be looking... Wait.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(shouting) All the babies are gonna be looking at me. Oh I'm Mr. Daddy now? Is that all it takes, to be the loudest in the room?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And then the dog is looking away to protect you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But you can't tell what they do in their time, right. You can't figure out what actually happened because it's just two people's story of a thing no one knows what actually happened. But you know if both is saying that the other one did absolutely everything and they didn't possibly do anything, you know that that's not true either.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know that there is a middle way to reality that is very difficult to figure out.
BEN KISSEL
What if we both say we did nothing? No case there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's it, then you're done. They gotta let them go.
BEN KISSEL
No case there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Gotta let you go.
MARCUS PARKS
When both Charles and Caril Ann got to the station house, they were fucking filthy. Neither had bathed for days on end, Charles was bloody and ridiculously covered in shoe polish and Caril Ann oddly refused to bathe or change her clothes at all which might point towards the possibility that she is fully in shock.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now while Charles immediately admitted to every murder and did so with gusto, Caril Ann kept changing her degree of responsibility after dropping the bank robber story. Sometimes she'd say that she'd been kidnapped and was little more than a spectator, other times she'd admit to a robbery or holding someone hostage or even a stabbing or two. Of course that's not the end all be all, we know how fucking confessions work when once you get into the box.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh of course. Oh yeah, once you're in there.
MARCUS PARKS
Especially people of lower intelligence tend to get convinced that they did things that they actually didn't fucking do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, they're pushing and pulling man, especially with these two.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because they gotta flip one on the other.
MARCUS PARKS
But Caril Ann would also sometimes slip up and admit to knowing things she wasn't supposed to know. One time she told the sheriff's deputy's wife that the papers actually got the order that her family had been killed in all wrong.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
The paper said that they had been killed outside but then Caril Ann was like actually no, they were killed inside and then they got dragged outside.
BEN KISSEL
And that's why this case is all about media.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's about media.
BEN KISSEL
Look at media, look what they're doing to us.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I think another big tell us that they cut out the pictures themselves to keep.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah dude, that's not normal man. Jeez. Anyway.
MARCUS PARKS
No. But anytime Caril Ann realized that the information she had given was incriminating, she'd go silent and would sit there twisting Kleenex tissues into paper dolls until people stopped asking her questions. I think Caril Ann did also play up the child angle quite a bit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure. Might have.
BEN KISSEL
She might have just been married to Mike Huckabee at some point anyway.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh very much so.
BEN KISSEL
She would have been a governor's wife. This is just horrible.
MARCUS PARKS
She did however say enough to get her indicted. So she and Charles were extradited from Wyoming to Nebraska where the death penalty was still very much in play for the both of them. However they had to drive because Starkweather was afraid of flying and for this he was roundly mocked in the press.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, he got one thing right.
BEN KISSEL
I'm surprised that they gave a shit. Who cares?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I'm really afraid of being shot randomly by a child.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I guess would that be considered bad if he requests to not be flown?
BEN KISSEL
Who gives a shit?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't give a fucking shit but is that abuse of a prisoner or something if you don't listen to their needs or you're just doing this for a photo op?
MARCUS PARKS
I have no idea.
BEN KISSEL
The man killed 10 people! 8 people?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think they do it to embarrass them as well.
BEN KISSEL
Just fly.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think they're like all right, guess we'll drive you.
MARCUS PARKS
Let the baby have it, let the baby have what he wants. Yeah, I get it. Now once Charles finally wrote a confession he somehow didn't know how many of each gender that he'd killed. Instead of saying he killed six men and five women, he said he killed nine men and two women. This inability to differentiate between genders or even do basic arithmetic was later used by his defense in part to show that Charles was insane.
BEN KISSEL
Now jury, let's take a look at this penis. Charles, what do you see?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I see a nose between two soft eyes.
BEN KISSEL
Note. Now let's take a look at this vagina. Now Charles, what do you see?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I see a scary place. It's filled with worms and bats.
BEN KISSEL
The man can't tell the difference being penis and a vagina.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. As we know Charles Starkweather, he's just a fucking idiot and he's probably just fuzzy on memory as he was with everything. He truly didn't remember what gender the people were. It was just all a blank.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jumbled.
MARCUS PARKS
I killed 11 people but I don't really remember.
BEN KISSEL
Would that be a tell of a sociopath as well? He doesn't see facial facial expression? I mean is it possible that he literally saw them as entities and not biological humans?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well it happened real fast, this happened over like three days after they were holed up.
BEN KISSEL
That's the crazy thing, this has been a 14 day total span.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wanna say it was 8-10 days.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, 8-10 days, somewhere around there, yeah. Less than two weeks certainly.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It happened very, very fast. I think that's a part of it. And then again the whole time he was stressed, Kissel.
BEN KISSEL
I know. And all the Pepsi.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that didn't help.
BEN KISSEL
No.
MARCUS PARKS
All the Pepsi. Now once the press got ahold of the character that was Charles Starkweather, they were able to reduce everything Starkweather had done to tight blue jeans, leather jackets, James Dean movies, and Elvis Presley singles.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm getting destabilized just thinking about it.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
But while Charles welcomed his status as the nation's number one juvenile delinquent, his defense tried to plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. Charles however hated being seen as crazy, just like Ted Kaczynski aka the Unabomber had been against his insanity defense.
BEN KISSEL
Also members of the jury, let's take a look at this jacket. It's pleather. Indeed my client's never worn leather.
MARCUS PARKS
See Kaczynski hadn't wanted to plead insanity because it would have invalidated his manifesto and therefore all of his intellectual ideals. Starkweather on the other hand believed that an insanity defense would invalidate his place in history as an outlaw. As he put it, quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"Nobody remembers a crazy man."
BEN KISSEL
They do actually.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they actually do quite often.
MARCUS PARKS
Very much so.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We actually have a very famous man, he's known as Weird Al and he's actually become very famous for being weird.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. And of course there's Crazy Al who has the great mattress sales on 9/11.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh these prices are falling, falling, falling.
MARCUS PARKS
Concerning the insanity defense, Kaczynski and Starkweather are two sides of the same coin with one being so smart he's stupid and the other being just plain stupid.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Plain old stupid.
MARCUS PARKS
But in the end both of them pretty much ended up in the same pile.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Touched tips.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's like hippies and republicans on vaccines.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hippies and evangelicals on the vaccines. They touch tips.
BEN KISSEL
That is true. Cute Venn diagram.
MARCUS PARKS
But while Kaczynski is still to this day rotting in Colorado Supermax, Charles Starkweather didn't have to wait long to ride the lightning.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
By the time of his trial he no longer cared whether he lived or died and actually didn't even care if Caril Ann lived or died.
BEN KISSEL
What?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He had crazy hair. If you see all the footage of him in jail, he had big hair. I didn't even think about it. I know it's weird because it's from the time period but it was kind of wild.
BEN KISSEL
Pompadour.
MARCUS PARKS
It's big and square. It's real square. It's crazy square. It's oddly square. It takes a long time to make your hair that square.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Well he did have a lot of time on his hands.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He did.
MARCUS PARKS
But Starkweather's family was likewise somewhat nonchalant about death. When Charles Starkweather was found guilty and sentenced to the electric chair on May 23rd, 1958, his father said this to the press and this is an exact fucking quote:
BEN KISSEL
"The lord giveth and the lord taketh away. Let's call-" This is amazing. "The lord giveth and the lord taketh away. Let's all go out and get a steak."
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
The lord giveth and the lord taketh away, let's all go out and get a steak.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I want that tattooed on me.
BEN KISSEL
I need that. I need that in my life. I mean he's definitely the creator of a total sociopath.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Of course!
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah. No, no, that's very much Midwest dad.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Now up next was the trial of Caril Ann Fugate who at the time had the dubious honor of being the youngest woman in American history to stand trial for first degree murder. But don't worry, we have convicted a 13 year old girl since then.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
America wins!
BEN KISSEL
Horrible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We got her again!
BEN KISSEL
That was the one thing with the awful, I mean obviously the Slenderman stabbing, totally horrible, but the conclusion that they made to try them as adults was the crime was so vicious that no child would do it. But the fact that they believed in Slender Man proves they're children.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're children, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And it just is what it is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Now during her trial Caril Ann would go from being a smiling teenager blushing at compliments one second to a hard faced angry young woman the next. And she often spoke in a clipped brittle voice. She also turned on Charles during the trial, personally and honestly needlessly insulting him by saying that they never went down.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He could use it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah he could use it but I don't see what this has to do with her defense for murder.
BEN KISSEL
Let's see.
MARCUS PARKS
She said we never went dancing because he was too bowlegged.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sad.
BEN KISSEL
Well if I'm the jury I'm like fuck that guy, man. You gotta at least go dancing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fuck that fucking bowlegged nerd. Yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
She came with you on 11 murders. You can go dancing every now and then.
MARCUS PARKS
And she also said that she held no responsibility for anything and that she didn't even know her family was dead until after she was arrested which at the very least is a statement that stretches the limits of credulity.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a very fair way of saying a lie, yes.
BEN KISSEL
That's a lie!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just because you lie doesn't mean you're necessarily guilty of many murders but it's because-
BEN KISSEL
They lived the whole week together.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She's trying to get the fuck outta there, she's trying to figure out what to do.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But look, this is how you dance while bowlegged, you can see on the camera.
BEN KISSEL
Let's see. All right. Oh there we go! Old crackling knees Zebrowski dancing a little bow legged. That's where the fiddle music comes in.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Woo! Yeah, it's bowlegged dancing.
BEN KISSEL
You can do some bowlegged dancing. I was out there with Taylor in San Antonio, I saw a couple of people dancing with bowlegs, they can do it really good. You can shuffle, you can hustle, you can scuttle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Woo!
BEN KISSEL
There you go.
MARCUS PARKS
Great. Great for the podcast.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
Just perfect. Absolutely perfect.
BEN KISSEL
Well it's good for the podcast.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's good to hear the little steps.
BEN KISSEL
You can do the steps and again, it's good for the scuttle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's good for the scuttle.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
Well during Caril Ann Fugate's trial, Charles even came in and testified against her after he'd been sentenced to death saying she was an equal partner in the spree. And by the end of it, the jury somewhat agreed. Based on Caril's damning statements to cops, her conflicting statements, and a quote "snippy attitude" during cross examinations-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep, that's how you get convicted for murder.
BEN KISSEL
Little double standard there, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. She was sentenced to life with parole, narrowly avoiding the electric chair. Charles on the other hand tried ensuring that his story lived on by writing an unreadable 200 page autobiography that he sold to Parade Magazine for $1000.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But that's the only way we know anything about him, about him being bullied and stuff cause that's what he centered it all on. It was all on how he needed to take something back from society.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because he also was a prolific artist. He did a lot of drawings that were crude at best.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
You play the long game, man. You just have to at some point win. You gotta get money, success. That's how you do it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, that's how you do it. That's how nerds win, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Charles' father also cashed in on his son's notoriety, selling Charlie's signature and even locks of his hair, all while he introduced himself to every single person he met as Charles Starkweather's father usually unprompted.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah with a little wink.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god, let's go get a steak.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I actually watched a documentary with the surviving Starkweather family and you wonder where they get it from.
BEN KISSEL
Are they proud of it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They refuse to change their names even though according to them, 'You know those names ruined every single aspect of our lives but we continue it because we ain't gonna cotton to any of y'all telling us, the whole world telling us we're wrong. We ain't wrong.' It's a string of literal Charles Starkweather multiplicity clones.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like in a trailer just being like I ain't changing my name for nothing. Young people come up to me say Starkey, who you gonna murder next? I tell 'em you better lucky it ain't you! Yeah, I'm unemployed and it's only just because of my name, certainly not my attitude or actions.
MARCUS PARKS
In the end though, Charles Starkweather after two brief reprieves, he was sent to the electric chair on June 25, 1959, a little over a year after his conviction. Oddly enough though for his last meal he had a Coke, not a Pepsi.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What the fuck!?
BEN KISSEL
Dude, it's just the guy is a brand. He's not a loyalist to a brand.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Holy fucking shit!
BEN KISSEL
And it's just such a fucking piece of insight into how this man...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Knife in the back!
BEN KISSEL
Unbelievable. Pepsi fueled your entire murder campaign and then you're gonna switch it up to Coke?
MARCUS PARKS
I don't know, maybe it was the prison, maybe he asked for Pepsi at prison and they said we don't have Pepsi, sorry.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Coke all right?
MARCUS PARKS
Sorry, is Coke okay?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you know how many times back in the day, you know what I used say? No it's fucking not.
BEN KISSEL
I can't tell the difference. You can't tell the difference.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah you can, absolutely.
BEN KISSEL
No you can't.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're very different.
MARCUS PARKS
I 100% can. It's extremely easy to tell the difference between Pepsi and Coke.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You can put them in front of me right now and I could still tell the difference and I haven't had it in 10 years.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Yeah. Pepsi puts more of a film on your teeth.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well I actually like Pepsi better because we were a Pepsi family cause my grandfather worked for Pepsi.
BEN KISSEL
I know you're a Pepsi family.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so I learned you get a taste for it. C
BEN KISSEL
We used to just drink the, I think it was called Mr. Cola from Walmart.
MARCUS PARKS
Ah, Dr. Thunder.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is this about classism?
BEN KISSEL
It is about class because you had an inside track to Pepsi and televisions cause your father was a police officer and Marcus grew up in a Coca-Cola family.
MARCUS PARKS
No, we were a Dr. Pepper family. So fuck you both.
BEN KISSEL
Oh interesting. Although I do believe Dr. Pepper is a Coca-Cola product.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is a Coca-Cola product. Mr. Pibb is the Pepsi version.
MARCUS PARKS
No, Dr. Pepper is it's own thing.
BEN KISSEL
Is that right? Diet Dr. Pepper is my favorite.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're like three sentences away from the end of the episode.
BEN KISSEL
Yes I know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're really close.
BEN KISSEL
Well you got a Coca-Cola Classic. Coca-Cola.
MARCUS PARKS
Well after giving no last words, Charles Starkweather was electrocuted to death at 12:04AM. Caril Ann meanwhile ended up serving a little less than 20 years in prison. She was released on parole for good behavior in June of 1976 at the age of 32, saying that all she wanted to do was settle down, get married, have a couple of kids, wash the socks and burn the toast.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love it. I'm fine with Caril Ann being released.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can't believe Karla Homolka got released. That's the one who should have probably stayed in the fucking jail.
BEN KISSEL
She's gonna burn the toast though, why she gotta burn the toast?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's fun.
MARCUS PARKS
It's fun, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
She a Red Sox fan?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's stupid.
BEN KISSEL
She said watch the Sox.
MARCUS PARKS
Wash the socks.
BEN KISSEL
Oh wash the socks.
MARCUS PARKS
Excuse me, warsh the socks.
BEN KISSEL
Warsh the socks, there we go. Now I get it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wash the socks!
BEN KISSEL
I thought she was a Red Sox fan. It would make sense.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She's from Nebraska!
BEN KISSEL
I don't know buddy, she has no loyalty!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah it's true, you're right.
MARCUS PARKS
However she didn't get married until 2007 and her husband tragically died in a car accident just a few years later.
BEN KISSEL
Um? Can I say um? Did somebody cut the brakes?
MARCUS PARKS
No, no, no.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, no.
MARCUS PARKS
Personally I think that Caril Ann Fugate paid her debt to society.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think so as well.
BEN KISSEL
No, I'm not saying that but I'm just saying she could kill again.
MARCUS PARKS
Nah, I don't think.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She never killed, she was never the violent one.
MARCUS PARKS
No, she never killed anyone. No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't think she killed anybody.
BEN KISSEL
Okay!
MARCUS PARKS
No, I don't think so either.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
In fact she's still alive and kicking somewhere in Michigan. She claims as she did during her trial that she bore no responsibility for the murders and in fact she was last heard from in 2020 when she requested a pardon from the state of Nebraska. Her request however was denied proving that the wounds inflicted by Charles Starkweather still run deep.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She still maintains that her innocence was finally proved when she did an episode of a show called Lie Detector in 1978 on television.
BEN KISSEL
Okay. Was that on live TV?
MARCUS PARKS
It was hosted by F. Lee Bailey.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Is that right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. And then she took a lie detector on set.
BEN KISSEL
How'd she do?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She passed.
BEN KISSEL
All right, there you go.
MARCUS PARKS
Actually she answered two out of three questions truthfully but they wouldn't say which two out of the three.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic. Inconclusive. There we go.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But she took that as a definitive.
BEN KISSEL
She may have.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She did take a lie detector test.
BEN KISSEL
I loved her on Pimp My Ride, I thought that was fantastic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, yeah. We put a mud in your car so you can mud while you drive.
BEN KISSEL
There you go. A pro mudding car, Xzibit. I did read or watched a YouTube expose, they said the show is fake and I was like yeah, what do you think? It's a Playstation.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
His name is Xzibit.
BEN KISSEL
He was very good though.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But yeah, that's an exhibition. You know what I mean?
BEN KISSEL
All right everyone, Charles Starkweather Part 2. And that is it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We did it.
BEN KISSEL
What a fascinating tale of mayhem, youthful misdeeds.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You gotta be careful out there.
BEN KISSEL
Spotty police work.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very much so.
MARCUS PARKS
Lazy. I'd say lazy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Today is the day. If you haven't done a room check of your teenager, you go in there today while they're at school and you rip apart that whole fucking place and you look at every single thing that's going on.
MARCUS PARKS
If they have any Pepsi, call the police.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Call the police.
MARCUS PARKS
(whispering) Call the police.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(whispering) Call the police. So next week we'll be at the beautiful Beacon Theater, I can't believe it. Hometown boys. Hometown boys made good.
MARCUS PARKS
Doing it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Doing it.
BEN KISSEL
The Beacon Theater.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, we're very close to being sold out on that so if you want to come, make sure and get your tickets today.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Well this will be good, we got to do the Beacon because that's one step closer to Radio City Music Hall.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So close.
BEN KISSEL
And then we can have the Rockettes open up for us.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, they'll love it.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that's would be really cool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We'll dress them up as serial killers, it'll be real on brand.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, they'll love it just as much as the people who ran Graceland loved us.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They loved us! Oh they were saying they loved us, they loved us being there.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know if you guys remember, they did not like us. The fans liked us.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The fans liked us.
MARCUS PARKS
The fans loved it.
BEN KISSEL
You guys are being sarcastic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I want to say thank you guys. Next week we're gonna get super weird.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
Really weird.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm so excited to finally get back to seeing some old pals of ours, some guys that I really miss, haven't been around a while. And I'm really excited. I want to say hello to them and it's going to be good.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic. And thanks to everyone who came out in Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and in the middle of nowhere Ohio, so Cincinnati-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was Cleveland.
MARCUS PARKS
Between Akron and Cleveland, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And Akron. So whoever came out to that casino show, thank you so much. It was such a great weekend and it always brightens our hearts to see you there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yup.
BEN KISSEL
Let's go get some steak! The lord giveth and the lord taketh away.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Let's go get some steak.
BEN KISSEL
I love it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I get it. Because what are you gonna do if your son is Charles Starkweather? Yeah, like well, everything's fucked now. But I also saw the dude that got the Starkweather getaway car and it was scintillating. It was like yeah, you want to find that old little burnout car and I knew that that was, that was really good. Back in the day we'd call that the getaway car.
BEN KISSEL
Oh fascinating.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. It was sitting over there and people come by and they say what's that over there? That's a getaway car.
BEN KISSEL
It's a getaway. Why is it called a getaway car?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh well that's what they were trying to get away in and unfortunately it was an unsuccessful getaway attempt.
BEN KISSEL
All right everyone, hail yourselves.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hail Satan.
MARCUS PARKS
Hail Gein.
BEN KISSEL
Megustalations everybody.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hail me. Don't trust the teens.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Bye. I'm fine with that.
MARCUS PARKS
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Arrest every teenager. Just one time.