By Katherine Ramsland

David Ludwig, the 18-year-old who allegedly shot and killed the parents of his fourteen-year-old girlfriend, Kara Borden, last week in Pennsylvania is not the first to have reacted to a girlfriend's parents with an all-out attack. We can look to the 1958 case of Charles Starkweather, 19, and Caril Ann Fugate, 14, to learn from the similarities about Ludwig's possible motivation.

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Caril Ann Fugate & Charles Starkweather

Starkweather was a picked-on loner from an economically disadvantaged family who recently had lost both his apartment and his job as a garbage collector. About all he had left was Caril Ann. He'd already killed a gas station attendant to get money to buy her something, and when he came to her house one day six weeks later, her mother told him she did not approve of his relationship with her daughter. After a heated exchange (like with Ludwig), Starkweather retrieved his gun, returned, and shot her. Then he turned the weapon on her husband and used the butt to pummel to death Caril Anne's two-year-old sister. Caril Ann may or may not have witnessed this (statements are mixed), but she did not turn him in. Instead, she stayed with Starkweather for a week in the family home. Then they took off together across the state of Nebraska, killing people along the way.

One victim was a family friend, but the rest, including an engaged couple who had picked them up when their car got stuck in mud, were strangers. The two fugitives were caught after Starkweather had shot his eleventh victim, and Caril Ann immediately said that she'd wanted no part in the killings; she'd stayed with him out of fear. Yet there were clearly times when she could have sought help but had not. As a result, she ended up with a prison sentence while Starkweather got the electric chair.

Dr. James M. Reinhardt, professor of criminology at the University of Nebraska, spent thirty hours interviewing Starkweather and said that the killer had a suspicious, unrealistic, even delusional assessment of the world around him. He often lapsed into black moods, developing an intense hatred against those who humiliated him. There was no apparent abuse in his background and his murderous rage seemed rooted in cruelties inflicted on him by peers, along with his inability to forgive and move on. For Starkweather, the world had become an intolerable place and his symbol of power was the gun. He also said that he only felt good with Caril Ann, so she represented a source of solace for him, perhaps the only one. Unrealistically, he'd believed that they would get away with what they had done by running off to Washington State and hiding out. Neither seemed fully able to grasp the consequences of their actions. Starkweather even hoped to write a book about it.

Like Starkweather and Fugate, Ludwig and Borden apparently kept their intimate relationship secret. No one was going to come between them. Both home-schooled, they had met in May at a support group for other home-schooled children and began to see each other on a regular basis. They also kept in touch online. When Kara's mother cut off her Internet service to disconnect her from Ludwig, they still found ways to be together, including him apparently sneaking into her home at night (reported by friends).

From a home movie that Ludwig had made, it seemed clear that he'd at least rehearsed the idea of invading someone's house to kill them, and rehearsal fantasies (mental images that one keeps replaying) can be actualized merely on the impulse of sudden opportunity. The organized fantasy readies the person for action. In any event, Ludwig's attitude appears to be one of self-indulgent apathy about the rights, lives, and property of others. Yet reports about him indicate that he was a reliable worker and a good kid. So where did he hide his violent streak?

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