Crime Library: Criminal Minds and Methods

Charles Starkweather & Caril Fugate

And Again

Carol King and Robert Jensen
Carol King and Robert Jensen

Hiding their shotguns, the two of them hitched a ride from seventeen-year-old Robert Jensen and sixteen-year-old Carol King. Within moments, the shotgun was at Jensen's neck and Charlie was demanding their money. He forced Jensen to drive back towards Meyer's farm to an abandoned storm cellar.

There, he put six bullets into Jensen's head. Jensen's girlfriend Carol King was shot once in the head. Her body was left half-naked with her jeans and panties down around her ankles. She had been stabbed repeatedly in the abdomen and pubic area, but there was no evidence of semen in or around her vagina.

While all of this was happening, Caril allegedly was sitting in the car. Charlie attributed the mutilation of King's body to Caril, who supposedly was angry with the dead girl for being attractive sexually to Starkweather. At another time, Charlie claimed that Caril also shot and killed the King girl when he was away from the scene for a few minutes.

The bodies of the two teenagers were left in the storm cellar while Charlie and Caril took off with Jensen's car. Even though they talked about escaping to Washington State to find refuge with Charlie's brother, they actually did something incredibly dumb. They drove back to Lincoln, where everybody knew them and everybody was looking for them.

As if that were not stupid enough, they drove past the Bartlett home to see if the bodies of Caril's parents had been discovered. They got their answer when they saw all of the police cars parked around the property. Eventually, they drove to the most affluent section of town and fell asleep in their stolen car.

The following day, January 28, 1958, Starkweather's car had been spotted in the mud at the Meyer farm. Shortly afterwards, the bodies of Meyer and the two teenagers were found.

A major manhunt was underway but there was more killing yet to come.

 

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