Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend Caril Fugate have a unique place in American criminal history. Their deadly crime spree, claiming 11 lives has been a cultural reference for any number of works... from the movies "Badlands" and "Natural Born Killers" to the "Nebraska" album produced by Bruce Springsteen. Charles Starkweather, Nebraska's most infamous son and one of America's most shocking serial killers, terrorized the Great Plains in the winter of 1957-58 when he embarked on a brutal murder rampage with his fourteen-year- old girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate. Put to death for his crimes, Starkweather, whose case received unprecedented national media coverage, shocked America out of its 1950s maltshop innocence and foreshadowed the modern spree killer, whose victims are chosen largely at random to satisfy some deep-rooted hatred of humanity and to settle some secret grudge against society.
—Chronicle Broadcasting