Jania Ashlynn
All eyes will be on Showtime come February 17th as the streaming platform debuts a chilling true crime story. The four-part docuseries The 12th Victim will chronicle the horrific killing spree of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate.
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Innocent Bystander?
This series may come with a particularly harrowing twist as one of its focuses, Caril Fugate, will be depicted as a victim herself.
With interviews from people well-versed in the dealings of the case and archives from local authorities, the documentary will paint a tragic story, positioning Fugate as nothing more than a scared, manipulated young girl brainwashed by bloodthirsty criminal mastermind Charles Starkweather.
Serial Horrors
The spree began in late 1957 with the killing of gas station store manager, Robert Colvert. Starkweather then killed Caril’s mother, stepfather, and baby sister. He then went out to a farm in Bennet, Nebraska, and murdered August Meyer, the owner.
Two teens, Robert Jensen and Carol King were also killed after Starkweather and Fugate hitched a ride with them. They left their bodies in a car on the side of the road along with August Meyer and fled to the wealthy home of C. Laurer Ward. The wife was killed first, along with one of the two family dogs. The housekeeper was held hostage and forced to prepare a meal for the pair. Ward was shot and killed when he arrived home and the housekeeper was slain soon after.
The pair would go on to claim one other life, Merle Collison, before they were eventually caught by police and taken into custody. Starkweather was only convicted of Robert Jensen’s murder and sentenced to death. He was executed in the electric chair in June of that following year. Fugate served 17 years of her life sentence and went on to marry and settle down in Hillside, Michigan.
These events will be recounted in detail in the documentary and the audience will decide if Fugate was either a victim or an accomplice.
