Caril Ann Fugate, 1958 murder spree convict, critically injured in car crash

[Siwsan]

Caril Ann Clair (née Fugate), a woman linked to 10 murders in the Midwest more than 50 years ago, has been critically injured in a car accident.

Clair, 70, was injured in a single-vehicle accident. Her husband, 81-year-old Frederick Clair, was driving the SUV. He was killed in the accident.

In 1958, when she was 14, Clair was arrested in connection to 10 murders with then-boyfriend Charles Starkweather. The victims were killed in Nebraska and Wyoming, and included Clair's mother, stepfather and two-year-old sister.

The killing spree is the deadliest in Nebraska history, and inspired a Bruce Springsteen song and the movie "Badlands."

Clair plead not guilty and maintained her innocence, saying she had tried to break things off with Starkweather. The jury found her guilty in the robbery and murder of a 17-year-old boy. She was sentenced to life in prison, and served 18 years before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled mandatory life sentences for juveniles were unconstitutional.

From there, her sentence was changed to 30 to 50 years. Clair was paroled in 1976 and came to live in Michigan, where she lived with a family that befriended her after seeing a documentary of her on TV. She worked in a Lansing, Mich., hospital and married Frederick Clair at age 63.

Starkweather did not share the same fate. At the time of the murders, he was 19 years old and tried as an adult. He was executed in the electric chair in 1959.


Read more: http://www.upi.com/blog/2013/08/07/Caril-Ann-Fugate-1958-murder-spree-convict-critically-injured-in-car-crash/2531375909313/#ixzz2bKG8icav

[SoCalDem]

1. So she got better? Yesterday she died

Or so it was reported

[Siwsan]

2. I did a 'google' search and both stories didn't report her death

She lived in Michigan, very much under the radar, for years. I always wondered if she was a 'Stockholm Syndrome' victim or an active participant. It was one of those stories that has always intrigued me.

[SoCalDem]

3. I saw the headline here at DU but did not click it

just a " Generalissimo Francisco Franco" moment went thru my head

[Siwsan]

4. HA HA! Generalissimo Francisco Franco IS still dead, as far as I know

Of course, they day is not over, yet.

[kestrel91316]

5. She was 15 or barely 16 at the time. I always chalked it up to Stupid Teenager Syndrome and

never thought she deserved to be hounded and punished her entire life for what she did as a minor. Without Starkweather she would have wound up a typical 60s housewife.

[Siwsan]

6. Starkweather was a real sociopathic psychotic, that's for sure

What ever the situation, she did turn her life around.

[duffyduff]

7. I agree with you. She was a model prisoner and has led a quiet life

staying out of trouble. She was and is one of the few people in American history involved in serial/spree killings who has ever been paroled.

Fugate Clair is the classic example of somebody who really has been rehabilitated.

She was only about 14 or 15 during the time of the killings. That and the questions surrounding her involvement in the killings is what saved her life. She would never have been involved in any crime, directly or indirectly, had she not taken up with the loser Starkweather.

[duffyduff]

8. Stupid local reporters confused her with her husband, who WAS killed in the crash. n/t