UBC: Newton, Waste Land

Waste Land: The Savage Odyssey of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate by Michael Newton

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I'm of two minds about this book. On the one hand, it's all compiled from secondary sources; on the other, Newton collates his sources carefully, talks about discrepancies, and is clearly doing his own thinking, which I appreciate. He's an engaging writer, and he lays out the facts of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate's killing spree about as clearly as can be hoped for. I guess my problem is that I can't get a good read on how trustworthy he is--just because it's well-written doesn't mean it's a reliable source.

And the nature of the Starkweather/Fugate case foregrounds the question of reliability, with Starkweather's umpteen different confessions, all of them muddled, and Fugate's proclamations of terrorized innocence, so starkly at odds with basically EVERYTHING ELSE (including the self-contradictions in her testimony). Today she could probably make a case on Stockholm Syndrome, but I'm not even sure that that was what was going on. The fact that she and Starkweather dreamed up a clumsy "hostage" scenario before they even left the Fugate home tends to militate against the plausibility of any claim that Caril Ann Fugate, fourteen years old or not, knew exactly what she was doing. But, on the other hand . . .



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