Shattered Innocence
Park Hill-Based Author Harry MacLean’s Starkweather Examines A Killing Spree That Seized The Nation
Q&A By Cara DeGette
GPHN Editor
Harry MacLean describes Charlie Starkweather as the first mass murderer of the modern age.
The year was 1958. Starkweather was 19 years old. His girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate, just 14. In a brutal murder spree that January, 10 people were killed and innocence shattered in the heartland city of Lincoln, Neb.
The killing spree gripped the country, and the story continued to be revisited over decades. “The flight and capture and trials of Charlie and Caril were carried on nightly news, and the love affair between TV and violence was born,” MacLean says. “Charlie was immortalized in movies (Badlands) and songs (Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska and Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Light the Fire). He and Caril were the inspiration for Oliver Stone’s film Natural Born Killers and author Stephen King’s fascination as a boy with horror.
“The world was never quite the same after Charlie’s killing spree.”
That year, 1958, Harry MacLean was 15 years old. His house, in Lincoln, was a little over a mile from where three of the brutal murders occurred.
Now an attorney and true crime writer, MacLean has lived in Park Hill for three decades. In early December his latest book, Starkweather, the Untold Story of the Crime Spree that Changed America was published by Counterpoint Press to many positive reviews (including being named a notable non-fiction book of 2023 by the Washington Post).
On Saturday, April 13 at 4 p.m., MacLean is holding a public reading and booksigning of Starkweather at Cake Crumbs, 2216 Kearney St. Proceeds will benefit the Denver Public Library Friends Foundation. In anticipation of the event, the author answered a few questions from the Greater Park Hill News.
Greater Park Hill News: You say in the book that you thought about writing about the Starkweather case for years. What convinced you to finally commit to this project?
Harry MacLean: The question of Caril Ann Fugate’s guilt or innocence. She was 14 at the time of the murders and spent 17 years in prison before being paroled in 1976. She requested a pardon in 2018. In 2020, the pardon board denied her request. From growing up in Lincoln, Neb., I knew she had been presumed guilty of murder by law enforcement, the press, and residents from the very beginning. Researching the case after the pardon denial, I learned that the question had never been thoroughly investigated. It was long past time to take a fair, objective look at the question of her guilt or innocence.
GPHN: It must have been eerie to revisit the story that you grew up with, just a mile from where three of the murders occurred. Describe one memory that you’ve carried with you throughout your life about the crime spree.
MacLean: I knew Mike Ward. At 14, he was away at prep school in the East, as was I. We lived a few blocks from the Ward house in Lincoln. When I got the call at school from my mother that Mike’s parents had been murdered, my first reaction was one of shock and sadness, and then a realization that it could easily have been my family. I have imagined over the years the moment the minister entered Mike’s dorm room on the evening of Jan. 30, 1958, and delivered his devastating news to Mike of the death of his parents.
GPHN: Without giving too much away, do you anticipate ever seeing or speaking to Caril Ann Fugate again?
MacLean: Yes. I send Caril birthday cards every July 31. She is now 80. I would like to see and speak with her again now that the book is out. Whatever you believe about her participation, its hard not to see her life as a tragedy.