Killers - The Most Barbaric Murderers of Our Time Read Online Free PDF

drive off. But the handbrake was stuck fast. Caril said Starkweather turned to Collison’s corpse for help.
    ‘Man, are you dead?’ Starkweather asked when there was no reply.
    While Starkweather struggled with the handbrake, Joe Sprinkle, a 29-year-old geologist, drove by. Seeing Collison slumped in the front seat of the Buick, he thought there had been some sort of accident. He stopped and walked back to the Buick.
    ‘Can I help?’ he asked. Starkweather stuck the rifle in his face and explained that he could.
    ‘Raise your hands. Help me release the emergency brake or I’ll kill you,’ Starkweather snarled.
    It was then that Sprinkle noticed the bullet wounds in Collison’s dead body. Instinctively he grabbed for the gun. Sprinkle knew that if he did not get the gun away from Starkweather he was a dead man. As the two men grappled in a life-or-death struggle in the middle of the highway, Wyoming Deputy Sheriff William Romer drove by. He pulled up about 25 yards down the road. Caril got out of the Buick and ran down to the patrol car.
    ‘Take me to the police,’ she said, pointing at Starkweather. ‘He just killed a man.’
    Sensing the danger, Starkweather spun round, letting go of the gun. Sprinkle lost his balance and fell back into a shallow ditch. Abandoning the Buick, Starkweather ran back to the Packard and roared off back towards Douglas. The deputy put out an all-points bulletin and, with Caril on board, gave chase. A few miles down the road he was joined by another police car. In it were County Sheriff Earl Heflin and Douglas Chief of Police Robert Ainslie. With the two police cars in hot pursuit Starkweather pushed his speed up to 100 mph. When he hit Douglas, the traffic slowed him and Heflin got off a couple of pot shots at his tyres with his handgun. For a moment, Ainslie got close enough to lock bumpers, but the bumper tore loose as Starkweather jumped a red light and overtook a lorry on the inside. As he cleared the town, Starkweather put his foot down on the accelerator again and his speed climbed towards 120 mph. Heflin got out his rifle and started shooting at the Packard. One shot smashed the back window. Then Starkweather screeched to a halt. Bleeding copiously, he thought he had been shot. In fact, a piece of flying glass had nicked his ear.
    The police pulled up behind him. Starkweather got out of the car and started to walk towards them. The police shouted for him to put his hands up. As the police shot at the road in front of him, Starkweather put his hands behind him and coolly tucked in his flapping shirt tail. Then he lay face down on the road and surrendered.
    The police blustered about his arrest.
    ‘He thought he was bleeding to death. That’s why he stopped. That’s the kind of yellow son of a bitch he is,’ the arresting officer told reporters.
    However, in the public’s mind, Starkweather was already a new kind of brooding anti-hero. When the prisoners were taken to the state penitentiary they were met by a crowd of newsmen, photographers and news cameramen. Caril, with her head covered by a scarf, played up to the cameras. But it was Starkweather, ignoring the media, who got all the attention. Wearing tight jeans, a black motorcycle jacket, cowboy boots with a butterfly design on the toe, handcuffed and with a cigarette dangling from his lips, he was the perfect young rebel killer. America had already been rocked by the image of the wayward teenager. They had seen a brooding James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause and a cocky and threatening Marlon Brando as the motorcycle gang leader in The Wild One . Elvis Presley had just burst on the scene with wild pelvic gyrations that scared the pants off conservative middle-America. But here, in the person of Charles Starkweather, was the embodiment of their fears. Here was the ultimate juvenile delinquent. Local Nebraskan newspaper the Omaha World Herald captured the mood. In a vitriolic leader it declared: ‘The Starkweather story