The Caril Fugate story is to be released as a four-part SHOWTIME docuseries on February 17. The documentary is based on the Addicus Books title, The Twelfth Victim—The Innocence of Caril Fugate in the Charles Starkweather Murder Rampage. The series will premiere on Friday, February 17 at 8 p.m. ET/PT, with new episodes airing weekly on Fridays at 7 p.m. CST, 8 p.m. EST on SHOWTIME. All four episodes will also be released on demand and on streaming platforms for SHOWTIME subscribers on February 17. In 1958, nineteen-year-old Charles Starkweather gained notoriety as one of the nation’s first spree killers. He murdered eleven people in Nebraska and one in Wyoming. After a week on the run, he was arrested, later convicted, and sentenced to die in the electric chair. Starkweather’s girlfriend, Caril Fugate, fourteen, was with him throughout the murder spree. Was she his hostage or a participant? This question still stirs debate more than sixty years later. Fugate claims she was too terrified to attempt escape—Starkweather had told her he would have her family killed if she disobeyed him. Unbeknownst to her, he had already murdered them. A jury found Fugate guilty of first-degree murder. She was sentenced to life in prison; however, in 1976 she was paroled at age thirty-two. Now, in The Twelfth Victim, attorneys Linda M. Battisti and John S. Berry, Sr. pull together years of research to tell how Fugate was a victim of both Charles Starkweather and the Nebraska justice system.
John Stevens Berry, Sr. is a trial lawyer who conducts seminars and has been invited to the Judge Advocate Generals Legal Center and School to lecture.
Linda M. Battisti was a trial lawyer for the office of the United States Trustee Program of the Department of Justice in Ohio.
