Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 1, 1993 TAG: 9305010301
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PATRICIA BRENNAN THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Out in Nebraska two teen-agers, Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, were cutting a murderous swath that so petrified the residents of Lincoln they called out the National Guard. In the end, the pair were responsible for 11 deaths.
The Starkweather saga was the subject of Terrence Malick's 1973 movie "Badlands," with Sissy Spacek and Martin Sheen, and of Bruce Springsteen's 1982 song, "Nebraska."
Still, Michael O'Hara said he had never heard of the story. As he began researching their killing spree, he became fascinated. The result is ABC's "Starkweather: Murder in the Heartland" (Monday and Tuesday at 9 p.m. on WSET-Channel 13), a tale that ends with Starkweather's execution and Fugate's sentence of life imprisonment.
Starkweather might have remained alive had he stayed in Wyoming, where he was captured. There, Gov. Millard Simpson, a foe of capital punishment, had said he would commute any sentence to the gas chamber. News reports at the time said Starkweather waived extradition.
People who lived around Lincoln were so terrified that some 500 National Guardsmen were dispatched to help police search for Starkweather and Fugate. (Starkweather's defense lawyer would claim that he could not get a fair trial there, and a wire-service story reported that "efforts to assemble a jury bogged down, with prospective jurors being excused because they said their opinions had already been formed.")
Starkweather's execution was stayed several times by court appeals. Nebraska Gov. Ralph Brooks received letters and telegrams asking that Starkweather's life be spared because of his age. His death in Nebraska's electric chair at 20 was that state's last execution.
After Starkweather was put to death, his lawyer, T. Clement Gaughan, said, "That is what he always wanted."
Starkweather apparently showed no remorse at the end, nor did he exonerate Fugate, who believed that he would. Fugate, whose first appeal for freedom was denied, became a model prisoner and served 18 years in prison. She was 32 when she was released in 1976 and moved to Michigan.
Filmmaker O'Hara concluded that Starkweather "was a psychopath. I considered him the shark from `Jaws.' In no way did I want to glamorize Starkweather. I felt great responsibility to the parents of the kids [Robert Jensen Jr. and Carol King, both slain], and I didn't want to do some revisionist history. This was pre-Miranda, and I was not with historical hindsight going to recreate the facts. `In Cold Blood' was an examination of a killer's mind. I intentionally wanted none of this."
O'Hara decided not to cast in the two pivotal roles well-known actors whose appearance would trigger other memories. The leads are played by Tim Roth ("Reservoir Dogs," "Vincent and Theo") and Fairuza Balk ("Return to Oz," "Valmont").
Brian Dennehy plays John McArthur, who defended Fugate; Randy Quaid is prosecutor Elmer Scheele; and Milo O'Shea is T. Clement Gaughan, Starkweather's court-appointed attorney.
Fugate's lawyer, McArthur, portrayed her as a girl held hostage by a mad killer. O'Hara's film presents Starkweather's version of Fugate's participation by replaying key scenes. But Starkweather, already convicted and sentenced to death, testified against her at her trial in October 1958, even though he had earlier said she had nothing to do with the murders.
Fugate was sentenced to life imprisonment at 15, the youngest woman ever to receive that sentence. O'Hara said James McArthur, the lawyer's son (cast as the jury foreman in the Starkweather trial), "believes as his father did that this was an incredible miscarriage of justice."
Prosecutor Scheele tried Starkweather and Fugate for the murder of Robert Jensen Jr., but O'Hara believes he did not try them for the murder of King to spare the feelings of her parents. King was raped and mutilated.
Starkweather was convicted in three weeks but was not executed until a year later. "That's because they kept him alive for her trial," O'Hara said.
Viewers may be struck by historical aspects of the mini-series.
"It's all about time and place," said O'Hara. "We really tried to recreate 1958. They wore hats then. Everybody smokes. And there were very few women in any position of authority."
O'Hara said he looked to one theatrical movie and one television movie, both based on books, as his models. "Our benchmark was `In Cold Blood' and `The Executioner's Song,' " he said. "I'll leave that up to the critics to see if we hit it."
Both were set in the Plains states. Truman Capote's book "In Cold Blood," about two killers in Kansas, was filmed in 1967. "The Executioner's Song," Norman Mailer's story of Gary Gilmore, executed by firing squad in Utah, won an Emmy for Tommy Lee Jones in 1982.
by CNB