American garbage man and lover of comic magazines. Known as ‘Little Red’ on account of his bow-legged, unprepossessing physical appearance and red hair, Starkweather (aged 19) modelled himself on film star James Dean.

Starkweather had already killed while committing a robbery, before he started on the week of killing which made him a mass murderer.

On 21 January 1958 Starkweather visited the home of his girlfriend, 14-year-old Caril Ann Fugate; while waiting for her to return he toyed with the .22 hunting rifle which he had with him. The girl’s mother shouted at him to stop fiddling with the rifle - he shot both her and her husband dead. When Caril Ann arrived home he entered her sister’s bedroom and choked the 2-year-old to death.

The couple put a notice on the door, telling the world, ‘Every Body is sick with the Flu.’ A relative called, and though apparently fobbed off by Caril Ann, notified the police. Officers went to the house, and they too were sent away by the girl. When they returned the house was empty save for three corpses.

An alert went out for Starkweather and his companion, and in the week of terror which ensued ‘Little Red’ shot and stabbed seven people. Twelve hundred police and national guardsmen were deployed in the hunt for the pair, who were eventually located at Douglas, Wyoming.

When arrested, Starkweather attempted to absolve the girl by saying she had been his hostage, but when the girl called him a killer he changed his tone. In his confession he said, ‘The more I looked at people, the more I hated them because I knowed there wasn’t any place for me with the kind of people I knowed…A bunch of God-damned sons of bitches looking for somebody to make fun of…’

Caril Ann Fugate maintained her innocence at the couple’s trial, but she was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment, and Starkweather was condemned to death. He died in the electric chair on 25 June 1959 at Nebraska State Penitentiary. Caril was released on parole in 1977.