Couples Who Kill: Fernandez and Beck and Starkweather and Fugate

[00:00:00] Content Warning This episode contains discussion of murder, including the murder of a child. So when I realized that we would be releasing an episode on Valentine's Day, I thought it would be a natural to do an episode about couples who kill and talk about a few relevant cases.

[00:00:25] And maybe at the end we can discuss a little bit about why we as a society are so fascinated with couples who kill. Yes. Now before we get into the cases, what counts as a couple?

[00:00:40] As it happens, the cases we talk about today are going to involve heterosexual couples, men and women. But of course you can be in a same-sex relationship and still commit murders together. One example that comes to mind is a case we covered before Leopold Möb.

[00:01:01] Yeah, yep. They were in a sexual relationship with one another. That doesn't ever get talked about. I mean like people are fascinated with the homosexual element of it. People don't talk about them like they're a couple. I think because of heteronormative standards in society,

[00:01:17] we tend to envision the sort of the Bonnie and Clyde archetype of a man and a woman running off together and doing crimes, specifically murders. So there's a bit of a bias in terms of what gets talked about, I think.

[00:01:30] There is. And also I think it's worth noting you don't even necessarily have to be in a sexual relationship to be part of a couple. Because I'm thinking of the case of Juliet Holm and Pauline Parker.

[00:01:46] These were two young women, teenagers who were extraordinarily close. These two girls were very, very close. And this was in like New Zealand, right? Yes. And they maintained later they were not in a lesbian or a sexual relationship. They were just very, very extraordinarily close.

[00:02:05] And they ended up together killing Pauline's mother. And one interesting side note about this that I always found fascinating about it is that one of these girls, Juliet Holm, later became a very well-known and incredibly successful mystery writer. That's so weird.

[00:02:26] When she wrote her book, she wrote the name Anne Perry. I haven't read any Anne Perry books, but a lot of people have. She has a very good reputation for the quality of her writing.

[00:02:37] It's just it's interesting that a person moves from committing a crime like murder to writing about it. Yeah, it doesn't sound like something that happens too frequently. So let's begin in a second and talk about some other cases. My name is Ania Kane. I'm a journalist.

[00:02:54] And I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an attorney. And this is The Murder Sheet. Our program podcast focused on original reporting, interviews and deep dives into murder cases. We're The Murder Sheet. And this is Couples Who Kill, Fernandez and Beck and Stark Weather and Fugate.

[00:03:58] So let's begin by talking about the case of Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck. And this is a case that happened in Brooklyn, New York where you and I used to live. We used to live there.

[00:04:10] I feel the first thing to say about this case before I get into the details of it is it's very hard when you look at pictures of somebody to get a sense really of what that person actually looked like or even how attractive they are.

[00:04:30] And I say that because you look at Fernandez, Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck. You look at these pictures and I'm going to try to choose my words carefully. I don't want to be unkind or ashamed of different body types. They seem like very ordinary looking people.

[00:04:49] I don't really consider them to be really magnetic, at least when you look at pictures of them. But these people, as we will see, had a very strong attraction to each other.

[00:05:05] They were really drawn to each other and in addition to that, other women seem to have been drawn to Fernandez. Which would be fine except that they were killing people.

[00:05:17] So it's definitely, you know, that would almost be nice if they were really attracted to one another and they just got along and went about their business. But unfortunately, they decided to do some pretty awful crimes together. And these crimes actually started before this couple got together.

[00:05:36] Fernandez somehow got it into his head that a great way to make money was by scamming lonely women. And can you give us a sense? Is this a case of the internet age? When is this taking place?

[00:05:50] This takes place in the late 40s, not terribly long after the end of World War II. Like 47. Something about him is women respond to it, particularly lonely women. Maybe part of the reason they respond is not so much because of the way he looks.

[00:06:11] But one thing that can be very, very seductive is when a person pays attention to you. Especially if you're lonely. If a person seems to care about you, wants to find out more about you, that can be very appealing.

[00:06:26] Yeah, there's more to attraction than superficial things like appearance. There's a connection and emotional bond and time spent, you know, thinking somebody is a good person. There's a lot of different things that can go into that.

[00:06:38] And this man must have been a master manipulator to get that many women to be his victims in terms of the scam. So one person he meets relatively early on in all of this is a woman named Jane Wilson Thompson.

[00:06:57] He's able to charm her, romance her and woo her. And then she tells people that the two of them are going to go to Spain together. And not long afterwards, Fernandez returns to the scene and tells people, well, I've got awful news, Jane passed away in Spain.

[00:07:20] And he's not really providing a lot of details how that happened. That's really concerning. But he does mention, oh, by the way, there's a life insurance policy and I'm the sole beneficiary. So he is profiting from this woman's death.

[00:07:36] Now, did anybody in Jane's life react with concern at the time? They did. Yeah. And they were curious, but it's hard to find evidence of murder, especially if it's something that happens in another country. Maybe also it's the pre-internet age.

[00:07:56] It's difficult for law enforcement to communicate with each other from one country to another. And so for all intents and purposes, he gets away with this. Right, because I think this happened today. The local police could contact the FBI, could contact whatever port they left,

[00:08:14] could contact the police in Spain. They could really do an international investigation a little bit more readily now if they were motivated to do so.

[00:08:22] Back then I could see local police maybe being like, well, I guess look wherever she departed from and then have them look into it.

[00:08:30] Like there would be jurisdictional issues that may cow police at the time because there's a lot poor communication between different jurisdictions back then for the most part. So it was really a better time to be a predator actually because... To be a murderer.

[00:08:46] Because you could mean they didn't have the DNA technology. The forensics weren't quite there in many respects, although they did have some forensic science. There were issues like jurisdiction, lack of sophistication among police techniques. So yeah, better time to be a murderer.

[00:09:02] So for the rest of his life there's going to be whispers following him about this case in Spain, the case of Jane. And the assumption is that he killed her and got away with it. And got a nice payday from the insurance company.

[00:09:20] So if you don't have a conscience, maybe this seems to be like a pretty good way to make a living. So he takes the money he gets and he leaves Brooklyn and he goes down to Florida. And this is when he first encounters Martha Beck.

[00:09:38] Martha has a couple of kids from a failed relationship. There is an instant attraction to one another. And before too long they end up in bed together. And at least from Martha's point of view, it's an incredible experience.

[00:10:01] She considers him to be the ideal lover and she promises herself she is never going to leave this man. What's interesting is Fernandez, I'm sure he enjoyed the sex, but he's not feeling quite the level of commitment, at least at this point.

[00:10:21] One thing he doesn't like about her is the fact that she has these kids. He doesn't want to suddenly go from being a single man by himself to being a family man with two kids. And he tells her that. And her reaction is to abandon her kids.

[00:10:43] She leaves them at a Salvation Army Center. Oh my goodness. That's poor kids. Yeah, that's pretty extreme. And it's a pretty good sign of her attachment to him even at this relatively early stage in the relationship.

[00:11:04] Right. So she's making big sacrifices for him and cutting off a relationship with her own children in order to pursue him. So it's obvious that she's willing to go to some pretty extreme lengths to pursue this man. And things get more extreme thereafter.

[00:11:21] They enjoy a few more days of sex and one another's company. And then he lets her know about what his profession is, basically that he wants to scam women. Yes, and he plans to continue to do that.

[00:11:42] And you know, you can't scam a woman and bring her to your apartment and woo her if there's another woman in the apartment who's your girlfriend.

[00:11:52] And so he tells her I'm going to be telling you I'm going to be telling these women that basically you're my sister or maybe my sister in law and you're going to have to sit there and watch me romance and flirt with these other women in front of you.

[00:12:11] Take it or leave it. Wow. Why not just tell her to scram? You mentioned he's not as into her, so tell her to get lost. Here's the thing. Periodically throughout their relationship there were times he told her get lost.

[00:12:32] I don't want anything more to do with you. And she would always leave but then she would come back and he wasn't able to resist her. Okay. So maybe he was into her too.

[00:12:44] Yes, at least at the beginning he's not as into her as she is and at least occasionally he's willing to try to ditch her but he doesn't have it in him to resist her.

[00:12:54] There is something about her that he finds completely irresistible. He is as drawn to her as she is to him.

[00:13:04] So now she knows he's a criminal. I think for a lot of women, for a lot of people that would be, you know, well never mind maybe I need to go back to my old life but she was pretty much fine with that except for the one element of it.

[00:13:22] That it would force other women to kind of come in his path and replace her at least temporarily even if it was part of just part of a scam. Yeah, I can understand that wouldn't be a lot of fun to see.

[00:13:36] No, I mean it certainly wouldn't but you know the thing to do then is to just say this guy's a creep and leave. And that was something she wasn't able to do. Or she was not willing to do.

[00:13:49] I think if you're willing to abandon your children for a man and the man knows this, the man has to know I can get this woman to do anything I want.

[00:14:00] Yeah, but it's not even like that was a wake up call of like I was caught up in this kind of wild love affair and I made a mistake and I'm going to go back and make things right with my children.

[00:14:10] There's an element of like, you know, this man is not a good man. He's told me so and I'm going to still double down on this position. So he starts doing this trying to romance the women and scam them.

[00:14:26] And one interesting thing that happens is if he gets closer to success with some of these women, it drives Martha so crazy that she will often sabotage it. She will tell the women don't trust him. There's a something happening in Spain. I don't know what it is.

[00:14:47] He does this sort of thing a lot and the women would be driven away. See, I can respect that disrupting his schemes. Unfortunately, she took it even further than that.

[00:15:00] She does take it further than that. He gets upset with her for disrupting his schemes. She throws herself into rivers. He fishes her out. She throws herself into rivers. She threw herself into the Black River once. She threw herself into the Black River?

[00:15:15] Yes. And Fernandez runs after her. He fishes her out of the river. He saves her life. I don't want to see you anymore. She leaves, she comes back. It's a very destructive relationship that is just dominated by the sexual passion this couple has for each other.

[00:15:37] Well, I would say it's probably dominated by something a little bit more disturbing than just that, although it sounds like that was certainly not helping things.

[00:15:47] But I would be curious and of course I'm not a mental health professional, but some of what you're describing sounds a bit to me like codependency, where they're essentially, this is a toxic relationship.

[00:16:01] They're both using threats, threats of suicide, threats of, you know, I'm going to ruin your business. You know, he's telling her to get lost but then taking her back mixed signals.

[00:16:15] They're both using different techniques and manipulations to try to control one another so that they can get what they want from the other person.

[00:16:23] What she wants is for him not to just go around with other women, even though he's that's you know, he even though it's just scams.

[00:16:30] And what he wants is for her to stand stick around, keep having sex with him and just deal with it the fact that he's bringing other women around.

[00:16:38] So they're both trying to almost reach out and force the other one to kind of fit into their lifestyle that they want. And they're unable to just say, well listen, this person's obviously not a good fit for me.

[00:16:51] Or maybe I need to stop doing scams if I want to have a healthier relationship with this person. So it's kind of a codependent thing going that they can't really break the cycle of because they're just psychologically entangled and entwined in each other's business to that extent.

[00:17:07] Yeah, I think that's all very well said. Because when you're codependent, it's not just that oh I love this person. I'm really obsessed with them like your entire self worth is derived from your connection with them. You're putting so much pressure on that relationship.

[00:17:21] But then it kind of gets coercive because when they're doing stuff you don't like then you want to control them. So it almost sounds like both of them were like that to an extent. I don't know.

[00:17:30] We can't really diagnose anybody since these people are spoiler alert long dead. Yes. But certainly it just, it's certainly, let's maybe instead of using an official term like codependency, let's just say very toxic relationship.

[00:17:44] I think that'll be a common theme amongst most of the couples we talk about in this running series. I don't think we're going to have any gems or winners here. Yeah, we're not going to sell these two kids. Oh, they really made it work out.

[00:17:55] That's why they're killing people. So now here's where things start to take a turn for the worse. It's when a woman named Janet Fay comes into their lives. She's a woman who has money. He convinces her to agree to marry him.

[00:18:14] She moves in with the pair of them thinking that this, that Martha is Fernandez's sister as she gives Fernandez her checkbook. Now, is it happens because it was in a relatively small apartment without a lot of space?

[00:18:36] And because Janet and Fernandez were not married, the sleeping arrangements were a little unorthodox. Oh no. Martha and Janet had to share a bed and then Fernandez was off by himself. And so this is a recipe for disaster as you can imagine.

[00:19:01] One night when Martha and Janet are in bed together, Janet starts making comments to the effect of like, you know, of course after we're married, it's not normal for the husband's sister to stay in the house and be a part of things.

[00:19:21] So a pretty big fight breaks out between the women. It gets loud and it disturbs Fernandez or Fernandez tells Martha you've got to keep her quiet. People are going to notice and come running and is not going to be good. And Martha happens to notice a hammer.

[00:19:47] Oh God. That is out because really that day Fernandez was hanging pictures and he and she takes the hammer and starts hitting Janet. And ultimately it kills her. That's horrifying. Did Fernandez try to stop her?

[00:20:07] No, actually in fact, at some point in all of that in order to speed up the process, he takes a scarf and uses it to strangle Janet. So now they have a body to get rid of.

[00:20:21] They they they stash it in a trunk and they leave it in the basement of Fernandez's sister's house. This is just horrifying. Yes, it's awful. This woman thought she was getting into a relationship with a man and he was just using her for her money.

[00:20:41] And then on top of that she's murdered for her troubles by this woman who's posing as this man's sister. And it turns out is in a committed sexual relationship with him. I mean, it's just horrifying.

[00:20:56] This whole case is so monstrous because I think we've all heard of those lonely hearts predators where they could. It happens today. I know somebody who is scammed by someone on Facebook saying, oh, I'm I'm interested in you and give me a thousand dollars please.

[00:21:13] And they fell for it. And these things are, you know, as old as dirt. But the fact that you're doing something where you're emotionally manipulating people, lonely people and trying to get something out of them. It's so monstrous.

[00:21:29] But then to add murder to the mix on top of that is even more. It's just it's really it's horrifying. It's like seeing these women is just objects to, you know, try to get sex out of try to get money out of.

[00:21:43] And then when they have, you know, don't have any more utility as far as these people are concerned, just dispose of them. So now things believe it or not are going to get still even worse because the next woman who comes into their path is Delfine Downing.

[00:22:02] 28 year old woman at the time she meets Fernandez. She's had a husband who's been dead for a year and she has a two year old child. Oh, man. So they get into each other's orbit. Delfine eventually starts getting suspicious.

[00:22:25] And so Fernandez and Martha Beck decides the only way we can get out of this is we have to kill her. And so they give her some sleeping pills and then they wrap a gun in baby blankets and use it to shoot Delfine when she is asleep.

[00:22:51] Then they run outside to see if the shot had attracted any attention and it didn't. That's horrifying. What do they do? The baby, this two year old spends a couple of days crying and screaming for its mother.

[00:23:09] The first reaction is to try to buy the puppy or something to distract it. And none of that works because of course, that's not going to work. It's not going to work. And Fernandez tells Martha we have to kill her. I don't have the heart for it.

[00:23:28] So why don't you do it? And she takes the child and she holds its head down in a wash tub of water. And the child struggles so hard that it said that even Martha could barely manage to keep the child's head underwater. And so the child dies too.

[00:23:52] And then after this, the police become suspicious of some of this and they start investigating. They find some bodies and Fernandez pretty quickly confesses and they both get sentenced to death. They're executed in Singsing prison in March of 1951.

[00:24:15] So are there only known victims, those three but then maybe the person in Spain? There were other possibilities of women who went missing. Who went missing either before he met Martha or after.

[00:24:31] So there are the women he scammed, but these were the murders that they were convicted of. It's really scary. Again, because when you're falling in love with somebody, when you're entering a relationship, you're making yourself vulnerable to them to a certain extent.

[00:24:48] You know, men to women and women to men when we're talking about heterosexual relationships. But the fact that a person could be essentially plotting your downfall either financially or in terms of murdering you the whole time.

[00:25:00] I think it's a very scary scenario for a lot of women and I think these cases tend to resonate because even if nobody's tried to scam you or do something horrible,

[00:25:11] you know, I think it's a fear for everyone that you're getting in a relationship with someone who you don't really know. Not because you're being stupid and not asking the right questions, but because you're being lied to completely and shut out.

[00:25:24] It's always a risk to enter any relationship and trust anyone. And it's so upsetting to realize that there are people out there who will try to trick you and take advantage of you.

[00:25:36] And also it's kind of a truism that the more you want something, the less you question it when it seems to come to you. And when you're lonely, maybe you don't ask as many questions about the nice person who suddenly is paying attention to you.

[00:25:55] Yeah, you don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth. You want to just enjoy it and let your guard down and fall in love. And yeah, unfortunately, predators know that and they will exploit that.

[00:26:10] And they do that now? They did that in the 40s. I'm sure they've done that all throughout history. Yes, nothing. There's nothing new under the sun. But certainly in an interesting case, I'm glad they were both busted.

[00:26:22] And this is a case where sometimes in these instances, the women involved in a heterosexual couple that's going around killing people claim that they were not as much at fault as the men. The men are the ones who are the violent ones. They're almost like an accomplice.

[00:26:39] And in this case, Martha seems to have been very much an aggressor and a perpetrator right alongside Fernandez. This is a full partnership as far as the murders go. Yeah, it's always difficult to figure out if two people are involved in something how much responsibility each one bears.

[00:27:01] Another cliche is you don't understand a marriage unless you're a part of it. Or you don't even understand a creative situation like people will argue about Stanley and Jack Kirby or John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who's responsible for what?

[00:27:17] And the same questions arise when we look at couples who kill together. Would Fernandez have committed these crimes alone? Did he need Martha? Was it their passion? Would she have killed people? I'm going to say he would have just from reading these cases with you.

[00:27:36] It sounds like he murdered that woman who allegedly went to Spain with him. It doesn't even sound clear if she got out of the country. So I have a lot of questions about that. That tells me that he was not above killing.

[00:27:47] But I think Martha bears a lot of responsibility for the cases that she was involved in. She was the one willing to kill the two-year-old. So I don't know, that's a pretty violent thing to do. They both sound just like horrible people.

[00:28:06] The fact that she was so willing to abandon her own children certainly demonstrates callousness. A morality. And not even like, oh, I'm going to put them with their grandmother. I'm going to just dump them off at a Salvation Army Depot. I mean, what? That's horrible.

[00:28:23] She didn't even try to make arrangements for them that would maybe put them in a place with relatives or a family that could take care of them. It's just ditching them and going on the run.

[00:28:33] So even in the scope of abandoning children, she did it in a pretty lousy way. I think that they both sound like they would have done some pretty horrible things alone, but maybe they egged each other on.

[00:28:45] And it seems like all these other people who thought that they were the main star in the romance with Fernandez were actually getting cast inside roles and were being discarded then because the real drama was playing out between Beck and Fernandez. Exactly.

[00:28:59] Now you alluded a moment ago to trying to figure out is the woman as responsible? Is she a victim just along for the ride perhaps against her will? And the case of Charles Starkweather and Carol and Fugate sort of revolves around that very issue.

[00:29:18] And I think it's very difficult to try to come up with answers for something like that because we understand now certainly more than we did in the 1950s when this case happened.

[00:29:32] We understand that there is sometimes a tendency when you are with someone and a part of their reality to start to accept their reality somewhat unconsciously. We saw this a little bit with Patty Hearst for example, who famously was kidnapped by what I'll call a terrorist group. Yes.

[00:29:54] And then ultimately starts committing crimes for that group. Being sexually assaulted and held captive in a closet for a long time.

[00:30:02] And I think in just trying to be empathetic with the person in that situation, I think there would be a tendency to kind of adopt your captors' worldview as a survival technique. Perhaps it's easy for us to second guess that later.

[00:30:17] And it certainly doesn't, I think, completely absolve you of wrongdoing of what you do later in service of that. But I tend to think it makes it a lot more understandable.

[00:30:27] If you're experiencing the terror of being held captive and forced and that's your way of winning over your captors. I don't know, I could really see how that... This is not a psychological term but like messes with your mind a lot. Yes.

[00:30:43] I don't like my... This is maybe a bias I have. I don't like letting people off the hook for what they've done, even if they're extenuating circumstances. Because it's ultimately there's you have to bear responsibility for your actions.

[00:30:55] But when there's extreme situations like that, I think it's important to keep that in mind when discussing it. Because you have to ask would this person have done this if they didn't have any concerns about their own safety or whatnot?

[00:31:08] Should we at least keep that in mind as a mitigating factor? I think it's very much worth having those discussions and having an understanding that our understanding of the psychology writ large has shifted and changed over time.

[00:31:22] And it's important to look at that and to look at things maybe through the lens of what is somebody doing to survive a very bad situation.

[00:31:31] And as you say it's also very, very easy to second guess and say in a situation, oh this person claims they were being held captive and basically being forced to engage in bad acts.

[00:31:46] But they had a chance to escape and they didn't take it therefore they're lying and they were just as evil. It's easy to say things like that from a distance. But when you're in it, I'm not sure things are quite that easy.

[00:32:01] I think for instance of Elizabeth Smart who again famously is kidnapped from her home and sexually abused and assaulted by a couple of people who hold her for a period of months. And during that period there were certainly opportunities where she could have escaped.

[00:32:24] But it didn't feel that way to her because she was so beaten down. And her feelings are valid. She went through a horrific trauma. She was a child. She didn't deserve any of that.

[00:32:36] When people criticize her and oh well she should have done this, it's like maybe have a little bit of empathy, an iota of empathy. It always blows my mind when people say that she did what she needed to do and guess what she survived. So good for her.

[00:32:50] That's your job in that situation to try to survive and she did it. So she should be commended and people who go on about that are just unbelievably callous in my mind.

[00:33:03] I'm going to tell you this. This Fugate case is a little bit more complicated though because she was at the very least involved in a partnership that led to the deaths of many innocent people.

[00:33:16] If I were a member of their families, if I was a member of the survivors' families in this case, I think I would be. I think I could understand being less inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt.

[00:33:29] Because perhaps if she had done things differently in the minds of these families, their loved one would not have been viciously murdered. So with all that in mind let's cover some of the basics of the case.

[00:33:42] Keeping in mind the entire time, there are two different tracks, two different versions of a lot of these events depending on whose account you trust.

[00:33:54] And I want to tell you this from looking into this case and looking at your notes and kind of having a sense of this. I have a very narrow opinion, a very specific opinion that I've fallen.

[00:34:06] So I'll be curious to get yours at the end of this as well. And it's kind of one of those opinions that you think I'm going one way but I'm actually going to swing back around. Really?

[00:34:17] Yeah, I wonder if I'm going to be surprised because I think I know who you well enough to guess. Oh, I'm curious. You think you know... See, this is couples in action. Yes. Couples who talk about killings. So this story begins on January 21st, 1958.

[00:34:35] 19 year old Charles Starkweather is involved in some sort of a relationship with 14 year old Carol and Fugate. He goes on the 21st of January to the Fugate home. And Fugate's mother and stepfather tell him to go away. We don't want you here.

[00:35:00] And at that point, he shoots them, kills them both. He also beats to death their two year old daughter. Oh my goodness. And then he hides the bodies behind the house. So in one version of events, Carol and Fugate is there when this happens and sees it all.

[00:35:25] And I guess is okay with it. But what Carol Ann says happens is that she comes to the house after the murders have happened. And Starkweather tells her, your family's being held hostage and they are going to be killed

[00:35:46] unless you do whatever I say and basically become my prisoner. Now can I ask you something? Please do. This is truly a case of he said she said that she's saying this is what he told me and he's saying this is what she saw.

[00:36:01] Do we have any evidence that backs up one or the other? There's a bit of evidence out there about this particular situation, not just generally who's telling the truth.

[00:36:12] The key thing here is he tells her your family's alive and they will be safe if you do what I say. And then they stay in the house for a couple of days or have her long and then they leave, they flee.

[00:36:25] And if you believe her she doesn't know her family is dead. Even though they're not in the house where could they be? Who are these other mysterious hostage takers? And during the crime spree that we're about to discuss she is known to have kept a scrapbook of sorts

[00:36:42] which contains newspaper stories which mention the killings. She's lying. That's everything about this, her story does not add up. But I'm going to share some more nuanced thoughts on that at the end here but I'm going to tell you

[00:37:02] her version of events does not make any sense as far as the evidence of what she knew and when she knew it. Fair enough. Yeah. Sorry. I'm just being, but we're not even talking about kind of final judgment on her. It's just that that doesn't make any sense.

[00:37:25] So they ultimately flee the Fugate house together. They end up at a nearby farm owned by a man named August Meyer. This guy is in his 70s and they, well Starkweather kills him with a shotgun.

[00:37:42] They also kill the man's dog and then they drive off their car ends up getting stuck in mud. A couple of teenagers who I guess don't recognize them or don't know that they are wanted stop to give them a lift help them out of this situation.

[00:38:04] Dark weather shoots. It's a teenage couple, a guy and a girl. Starkweather shoots the man, the boy in the back of the head. He then tries to rape the woman is unable to carry that out and so he shoots her too.

[00:38:21] Well at least in one version he shoots her in another version. Fugate is the one who shoots the girl Starkweather says Fugate committed that murder. Is there any evidence that she knew how to handle a weapon and that she did commit any of these murders versus him?

[00:38:42] I think that ultimately comes down to what he said. She said because we have four people there. Two are dead.

[00:38:51] It's in this situation Fugate obviously has a pretty strong motive to lie and say she didn't do it if she did and Starkweather would have a good motivation to lie and incriminate her. To disperse blame. Right.

[00:39:06] So next Fugate and Starkweather take this dead couple's car and drive to a wealthy part of a town in Nebraska, Lincoln. They enter the home of Chester and Clara Ward. Starkweather stabs the maid to death. Again there's a dog in the house. They kill it.

[00:39:31] The Clara Ward arrives home. She is stabbed to death. Starkweather and Fugate again dispute who is ultimately responsible for that death. And then when Chester Lauer Ward finally comes home that evening he is shot and killed. This is what I referred to earlier.

[00:39:51] While Starkweather and Fugate in their house newspapers come. It has articles about Starkweather, Fugate and the murder of Caroline's family. And they cut these articles out. That certainly seems to indicate a level of knowledge of what happened in the Fugate home.

[00:40:12] Yeah that blows up at least the basics of her story. I don't think it necessarily means that she killed anybody but it definitely means that she knew her family was dead. Yes. But she's lying. She continues to lie. She maintains that lie for a long time.

[00:40:28] So that's concerning. So next they're driving around in the car belonging to this family that they have just slaughtered. And obviously they are aware that police are looking for this car so they need a different car. And they happen upon a traveling salesman named Merle Collison.

[00:40:51] He is sleeping in his car. And so they... He is killed. He is shot. And again there is a dispute about who did it. Fugate says it was Starkweather and Starkweather says that she was the one that killed him.

[00:41:13] Now is it happens this man's car had a parking brake. Starkweather was thrown by that and we know how to operate the parking brake. And started having trouble driving it. This attracts some attention and so the couple are finally caught. This is when the stories come out.

[00:41:36] Starkweather first says yes Fugate did not know about any of this. He says that he did this because he was trying to protect her. Then later on he says no I'm going to tell the truth she was involved.

[00:41:46] The judge at the time, Judge Spencer indicated he did not believe that she was a hostage or a captive because she had opportunities to escape. As you said our understanding of what it means to be coerced has evolved since then.

[00:42:03] We do know that Fugate herself admitted to at least holding a gun in one of the crime scenes. Yes. So it's not like she said I didn't do anything but she denied shooting anybody.

[00:42:15] I'm going to be honest like I'm not convinced that she killed anybody based on all of this. But I guess if it comes down to he said she said it's hard to say. She's now, she ultimately was released from prison. After like 17 years? Yeah he was executed. Yeah.

[00:42:31] She's held in prison, released in the mid 70s has led an understanding life since then. She's asked for a pardon she doesn't want to be known as a murderer. That's been denied.

[00:42:43] Yeah I don't think, I think pardon should be reserved for people who you know were wrongfully convicted I guess. So you said you had a take on this that we would all find surprisingly nuanced? Well okay. Of course we expect you always to be very blunt.

[00:42:58] I think she's lying about not knowing her family is dead. If you're lying about that what else are you lying about? Her story doesn't make any sense and I think it's nonsense. That being said she's 14 at the time okay.

[00:43:10] I mean I could see a 14 year old, a child, their violent boyfriend has just murdered their whole family. And maybe at that point you're just gonna do what he says. So I don't think he needed to threaten her for it to be a coercive situation.

[00:43:29] I don't think he needed to say I'm gonna kill you next unless you do what I say for it to be a coercive situation. I think her age and the fact that he had just perpetrated this crime against her family could do that

[00:43:44] and could switch her into a survival mode that would explain some of her behavior. I don't necessarily think that it was good that she served 17 years in prison.

[00:43:54] I think perhaps there could have been more of a consequence that involved maybe a stay at some sort of psychiatric place to rehabilitate and move on.

[00:44:06] And I think though it kind of erases what the victims in this case went through to act as if she was in their position. I don't see her as fully a victim or fully a perpetrator.

[00:44:20] I see her as a kid who was in a really bad situation and needed help and was victimized and perhaps maybe if there was a consequence, a psychiatric stay, trying to figure out what would make you go along with this

[00:44:33] to the extent that you did while understanding that trauma could inform that and helping to move past from that trauma, I guess. Yeah, that's where I am. Often in the criminal justice system because of the nature of how things work, you have to make binary choices.

[00:44:49] Somebody is either not guilty or they're guilty, no in between. You're either a victim or a perpetrator, no in between. And I think sometimes in life, life isn't in the in-between place. I think Kira Fugate is somewhere between guilty and not guilty.

[00:45:05] And to me if she was 18 when this happened, if she was a young adult, maybe I would feel differently. But her very young age, being 14 at the time to me,

[00:45:17] that takes away some of the culpability here because I don't feel like a young teenager is equipped to make what we would all want to be the correct decision in a situation like this.

[00:45:30] The fact that she was in a relationship with such an older boy too is just concerning. The whole thing is such a mess and I think that maybe with some better understanding psychologically or psychiatric input in a situation like this,

[00:45:46] there should have been something that acknowledged that she participated in this horrible thing, but perhaps treated her with more understanding. I would have loved to see a mental health professional in a situation like that,

[00:45:58] working with her to admit the level of involvement and kind of be honest about that because the fact that there's kind of... It's like she almost had to fit into the binary so it became like, well I was just kidnapped, I didn't know what was going on.

[00:46:12] Didn't see anything even though that's impossible based on what happened and you were literally scrapbooking about this. Like that's pretty cold. And that points to she's lying,

[00:46:26] but I think maybe the lie comes from understanding that I need to either be the perfect victim or I'm a horrible monster and I really don't feel like a kid that age should be held to the same standard as dark weather.

[00:46:40] It's not because she's a woman, it's because she's a kid. 14 years old. Yeah, 14 years old. I mean Jesus, that's incredibly young and I think 17 years in prison is... That's not the kind of... I don't think that serves rehabilitation and perhaps what you would want out of this situation,

[00:47:00] at the same time I can very much understand why the victims' families might feel differently. 14 years old is certainly old enough to know right from wrong, but I think it also is young enough to be very cowed and very scared after something very violent happens

[00:47:15] and to just go along with it because you don't want to get hurt. I don't think he had to threaten her, I don't think he had to say. I don't think the hostage situation needs to take place for it to still be very coercive. Yeah, I agree.

[00:47:26] I also want to mention on a bit of a side note that this case is also the subject of a song by Bruce Springsteen called Nebraska, which is a very good song from a very good album, probably my favorite Springsteen album. Yeah, it's inspired a lot.

[00:47:43] I think it's inspired films that kind of glorify it a bit. Natural Born Killers, the Oliver Stone film, I think that is understood to be somehow inspired by this case.

[00:47:53] Yeah, it takes a very celebratory view of them as two people who were just fighting the system doing whatever they wanted. How romantic. It's not romantic. This is horrifying. It's an awful case. Yeah, this is awful.

[00:48:05] As we were discussing this at the beginning, you said there was some things you wanted to say about why people find this subject so intriguing. Well, I don't know if I want to say anything. I'm just curious. Why do you think?

[00:48:16] I mean, you've been researching this and we're going to, I think, cut for more couples and maybe make this a little bit of a running franchise for the show because I think we both find it interesting.

[00:48:27] Also, we're a couple so who better to talk about it? We haven't killed anybody but it's just an interesting thing. Why do you think we as a society are so fascinated with specifically heterosexual couples who kill?

[00:48:40] I think there's always a mystery about what goes on in other relationships. And also, I think there is a tendency to think of murdering as being a solitary act, whether it's a Ted Bundy or what have you.

[00:48:56] It's a person doing something alone and when you have a couple doing it together, that somehow seems more transgressive. It's very salacious. It's very, it's good copy as far as newspapers and the media are concerned.

[00:49:14] It's definitely intrigues people. I think also, female serial killers and murderers intrigue people because they're against the norm. So I think it's probably for a similar reason couples doing it.

[00:49:27] I think people wonder, you know, what would a couple like, you can look at your own relationships and wonder like how messed up would I have to be or what would have to happen for me and my significant other to be going around doing stuff like that.

[00:49:41] Like what it's like, it's a familiar thing because many people are in relationships but it's also unfamiliar because they're doing something so against the norm. But oftentimes, I think it gets overly glamorized in the press. It's kind of like, wow, they're on the run and da-da-da.

[00:49:57] And it's a lot more sordid, nasty, rife with abuse, rife with manipulations, coercion, emotional abuse. Just not as certainly not glamorous when you actually look into the people and the actions behind the stories, behind the headlines.

[00:50:15] Yeah, I agree. And I think there are maybe even more cases like this of couples who kill together than people may realize at first glance. I think it will be interesting to explore some of them from time to time.

[00:50:28] Yeah, I think we have a couple on our list, no pun intended, that we would like to talk about in the future once we do some more research. But for the time being, you know, it's certainly... these are not the kind of relationships anyone would want to emulate.

[00:50:45] No, not at all. Well thank you so much for listening and if you are listening to this on the day the episode was released, I hope you have a good Valentine's Day. Yes, happy Valentine's Day. Thanks so much for listening to The Murder Shate.

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