STARKWEATHER SAG
During the second week of January 2021, word spread on the old car grapevine in Nebraska (aka, the Eastern Nebraska-Western Iowa Car Council) that a movie production company wanted to rent a 1956 Packard four-door sedan, preferably black, for some film work in the area.
That could mean only one thing: Someone was planning to revive and retell the story of the most notorious murder spree in Nebraska history. That happened 64 years ago, so a couple generations of younger folks have only heard the story from parents or grandparents, if at all. I was in high school in western Nebraska, 400 miles away from the crime scene, and didn’t find out about the spree until it was nearly over.
Briefly, 19-year-old Charles Stark-weather, accompanied by his 14-year-old girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate, killed nine people in the Lincoln area over a period of a few days, and a 10th in Wyoming. The entire population was on edge until the pair was finally captured in Wyoming. The first three victims were Fugate’s parents and younger sister. Three more were a wealthy Lincoln couple and their maid, who were killed in the couple’s home.
