2/14/20

Dear members of the Board of Pardons:

It is my hope to be able to make a statement at the hearing for the pardon of Caril Fugate Clair. In the event I may not do so, I respectfully request that the following statement be incorporated into my letter in support for pardon:

First, I wish the board to know that while I am able to travel to places my father will never be able to go due to the loss of his parents C. Lauer Ward and Clara Ward at the hand of Charles Starkweather, I come here with my father’s full support. I also come here with the blessing of the nephew and niece of the deceased who completely defend my position in this matter regarding Caril Fugate’s wrongful conviction. What I say here in this room today, I say for them as well. My family’s support and willingness to admit they only knew as much as they’d been told about the deaths of our vanished loved ones, after years of pain and suffering, constitutes an act of faith and suggests a great possibility for redemption.

I see this opportunity to pardon Caril Fugate Clair as a chance to right the wrong long-held presumption of guilt concerning a young girl, orphaned herself and under the control of a psychopath wielding three rifles and a knife. This was a boy she had known, dated at the vulnerable age of thirteen, and broken up with. A boy to whom, when she said no, turned on a dime, and blew away her family while she was at school. He claimed her family was still alive somewhere; that their safety depended on her obedience. What choice was left to her other than to believe him?

To answer the question as to why a pardon matters after all this time, I feel it is a matter of human decency and integrity. It matters to the family members who remain. It matters to Caril Fugate Clair that her name be cleared of this heinous crime. To give a very old woman the peace she so rightly deserves has become for me, a moral obligation. I feel that it is my duty to speak up for what I have found to be true. The truth is owed as much to the memory of grandparents who were people of deep faith and grace, as it is owed to Caril herself.

I’ve spent my life uncovering the facts. I have read every document available to the public. Every line in the thousand pages of her trial transcript. I have visited every crime scene. I have listened to countless stories, and I find myself as yet unable to uncover a single shred of evidence that suggests beyond reasonable doubt that Caril Ann Fugate was guilty. What I have found instead is that she should never should have been charged with a crime—tried as an adult at fourteen with the death penalty on the table. Caril Fugate was not an accomplice in the Starkweather homicides. Not the mastermind. And never a willing participant in any of these murders.

That Starkweather himself, a psychopath responsible for eleven deaths, who changed his story at least four times before his conviction--was presented as lead witness for the prosecution is inconceivable. Why was Starkweather given a voice while Fugate’s version of the story was disbelieved? I find this not only unjust and unfair to Caril Fugate, but disrespectful to the victims who were murdered by Starkweather. Why should a mass murder’s version of events prevail in our consciousness? Why are we predisposed to hate her? To judge her by the fact that she didn’t cry at the trial? Or by her tough expression in a photograph? She should’ve been sitting on his knee when he got the chair. She was the mastermind. She had his baby in prison… Guilty as sin. These are all things that have been said to me. I don’t believe the people who said these things are bad or cruel, only misinformed, which in 1958, it was almost impossible not to be.

(Many do not know that Caril Fugate was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison merely on the basis that she handled money in a wallet belonging to murder victim Robert Jenson. Nor do they know about the note which was found in her pocket by authorities in Wyoming pleading for help—lost somehow during her extradition to Lincoln. Nor that she was sedated when she signed her extradition papers from Wyoming to Nebraska. Few know that one of the jurors was involved in a wager as to whether she would get the electric chair, which would, at least today, constitute an immediate mistrial. And I don’t know why it matters so much, but a physical examination proved that Caril Fugate had never been sexually intimate with anyone.

Caril Fugate was a young girl living in extreme poverty. She had never been as far east as Omaha, never crossed the Missouri River. She spent all her babysitting money on presents for her little sister; was a model prisoner, such that she was trusted with the keys to the gates to let people in and out, conducted tours, and upon parole remained an exemplary citizen all her life.)

I am here to implore you to grant Caril Fugate Clair a pardon; to find it in your hearts to step into the shoes of a fourteen year old girl; to see the situation through her eyes, to admit that she would never have been tried or found guilty of a capital offense today. I come here to urge us all to reconsider what we think we would do in her shoes…I can tell you that I have measured myself all my life according to Caril’s steps, and I have to admit that I do not know what I would have done differently. I just do not know.

I have a daughter who is five years younger than Caril Fugate when her life took an abrupt turn because of Charles Starkweather. Someday, I will have to tell my daughter this story. I will have to tell her what happened to her great grandparents, and what her beloved Gimpa endured as a child. This is our legacy, this crime-- as it is the unfortunate legacy of many in the State of Nebraska. The trauma is passed down through generations and the ripples still touch us today. Every relative of a victim knows this, and feels it in different ways. The ripples will reach my daughter somehow in some way, if they have not already. But I want to be able to tell her how it all ended; that the board and the world summoned the heart to pardon a woman who was once a child; that the world found the heart and courage to listen to Caril Fugate; to reconsider what they had always believed to be otherwise; to see things differently, and after more than sixty years finally honor the truth according to the girl.

Respectfully,

Liza Ward