The Caril Fugate story is to be released as a four-part SHOWTIME
docuseries on February 17. The documentary is based on the Addicus Books
title, The Twelfth Victim--The Innocence of Caril Fugate in the Charles
Starkweather Murder Rampage. The series will premiere on Friday,
February 17 at 8 p.m. ET/PT, with new episodes airing weekly on Fridays
at 7 p.m. CST, 8 p.m. EST on SHOWTIME. All four episodes will also be
released on demand and on streaming platforms for SHOWTIME subscribers
on February 17. In 1958, nineteen-year-old Charles Starkweather gained
notoriety as one of the nation's first spree killers. He murdered eleven
people in Nebraska and one in Wyoming. After a week on the run, he was
arrested, later convicted, and sentenced to die in the electric chair.
Starkweather's girlfriend, Caril Fugate, fourteen, was with him
throughout the murder spree. Was she his hostage or a participant? This
question still stirs debate more than sixty years later. Fugate claims
she was too terrified to attempt escape--Starkweather had told her he
would have her family killed if she disobeyed him. Unbeknownst to her,
he had already murdered them. A jury found Fugate guilty of first-degree
murder. She was sentenced to life in prison; however, in 1976 she was
paroled at age thirty-two. Now, in The Twelfth Victim, attorneys Linda
M. Battisti and John S. Berry, Sr. pull together years of research to
tell how Fugate was a victim of both Charles Starkweather and the
Nebraska justice system.
