She was one of the two teenage participants in the mass murder of 11 people, the accomplice of Charles Starkweather, and the youngest female in the U.S. to have been tried for first degree murder. Now at age 70, Caril Ann Fugate was recently involved in a car accident that left her injured and her 81-year old husband dead, the Huffington Post reports.
From 1957 to 1958, Fugate, then 14, and 19-year old Starkweather went on a killing spree in Wyoming and Nebraska, murdering Fugate's mother, 2-year old sister, stepfather and eight others. Starkweather, a high school dropout whom Futage met through her sister, worked as a truck unloader at a warehouse. After a series of gruesome murders, the two were caught, and Starkweather was sentenced to die by electric chair in 1959.
Because Fugate's involvement in the murders remained uncertain, and the jury believed Starkweather had not held her hostage, she was sentenced to life imprisonment, according to the Lincoln Journal-Star.
According to the Daily Beast, Fugate and Starkweather's killing spree inspired three movies, including the 1973 film "Badlands," and a Bruce Springsteen album, "Nebraska". After keeping a low profile in prison, Fugate was paroled in 1976.
On Monday, Fugate and her husband Frederick Clair were in a single-car accident when their vehicle went off the road and overturned on Interstate 69 in Calhoun County, Mich. while Clair was at the wheel. Fugate, surname now Clair, was taken to the hospital in Kalamazoo, having sustained injuries from the accident that local officials will not give information on.
Cleveland attorney Linda Battisti told the Battle Creek Enquirer that Caril is a "resilient, courageous and a brave woman."
"I have always said I have been humbled in her presence," she said. "She is incredibly funny and very loving and very giving. I am just devastated about [the accident]. What a horrible miscarriage of justice that has been done to her. I have always believed in her.
