‘I Know I’m a Monster:’ Spree Killer Charles Starkweather Speaks Before Execution

Charles Starkweather

Below is the only known recording taken of Charles Starkweather, a young man who killed eleven people in the winter of 1958. The interview was taken the day before Starkweather’s June 25, 1959 execution in Nebraska’s electric chair. When asked why he claimed so many lives, Starkweather doesn’t offer much explanation beyond “the people were there and I killed them and I don’t know why.”

When asked if he’d go back in time to make things different, Starkweather says he’d probably just do the same thing again.

Starkweather, 19 at the time of his arrest, had a youthful accomplice in 14-year-old Caril Fugate. His girlfriend and partner in crime, Fugate served 18 years in prison. At the time, she was the youngest female in America to be convicted of first-degree murder. Now 70, Fugate (who goes by her married name of Clair) recently suffered life-threatening injuries in a car crash that killed her 81-year-old husband.

More on the Crimes of Starkweather and Fugate