Customer Reviews

Starkweather: Inside the Mind of a Teenage Killer

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An easy read, a bit dated now many years after the first edition, but still a nice history of that week in January and subsequent events. Allen tells a nice story without glorification of starkweather, and plenty of first hand observations noted. It is the definitive look into this case.

This book was an okay read. We still need a better rendition. I found parts of it disjointed. In other places instead of giving the name of a city a comma (,) was inserted in its place. I found this to be puzzling to say the least.

Charles Starkweather didn't have much going for him in life. He had a very low I. Q., was bullied in school, and mistreated by his father. He tried to find love in a 14 year old girl named Caril Fugate who fed his starved ego. He was bent on revenge on a society that had wronged him, and he didn't care who it involved. This is a book with no winners. Charles Starkweather was executed in the electric chair on June 25, 1959, and Caril Fugate was granted parole from prison on June 8, 1976 after 18 years in prison.

Author William Allen has done commendable research on this book. However, I feel a more complete study on this subject remains to be done.

The subject matter was very interesting, but I noticed so many obvious mistakes. It was so distracting. There was one section that was missing the last half of a descriptive paragraph. I have never seen a book like this before. It was like they published the book with out copy writing it. If you can get past that I'm sure you'll love it.