LANSING, Mich. -- Caril Ann Fugate said Tuesday she feels vindicated because a lie detector test she took on a television show proved she was an unwilling accomplice to Charles Starkweather in a 1958 murder spree in which 10 people were killed in Nebraska and Wyoming.
Miss Fugate, who now lives in the Lansing area, took a polygraph test on the nationally syndicated television program 'Lie Detector,' hosted by attorney F. Lee Bailey.
Bailey said the test, aired Monday night, showed that Miss Fugate, 39, told the truth and was not Starkweather's willing accomplice in the murders.
Miss Fugate, convicted of first-degree murder, was sentenced to life in prison but the sentence was reduced in 1973 to 30-50 years and she was paroled in 1976.
'I feel vindicated. I feel free,' Miss Fugate told a news conference at a Lansing motel. 'You can't know what it's like to be a person in history and everyone hates you. It's like being in an iron grip.'
But Nebraska Attorney General Paul Douglas said he still feels Miss Fugate was guilty. In 1958, Douglas was an assistant Lancaster County, Neb., attorney who helped prosecute Miss Fugate and Starkweather.
'She was guilty as charged,' he said in Lincoln, Neb. 'I don't think anybody had much difficulty with bringing in a guilty verdict.'
Miss Fugate, who works at Lansing General Hospital, said her appearance on 'Lie Detector' was prompted by news stories marking the 25th anniversary of the Starkweather murders.
'That's when I said 'that's enough,'' she said. 'I was living a quiet life going on about my business.'
Miss Fugate said at the time of her trial that she was 'a helpless person.
'I was 14 years old. My family was wiped out and I had no one to defend me except a court-appointed lawyer,' she said.
She said she would like to speak once again with the judge who presided at her trial if he is still alive.
'I would certainly be satisfied with an apology' from Nebraska authorities, she said.
At the news conference, Miss Fugate repeated her story that she did not know at the time the murder spree began that Starkweather already had killed her family. By the time she knew, she said she would gladly have pulled the switch herself at his execution in the Nebraska electric chair.
On the polygraph test, she was asked three questions dealing with the case. Did Starkweather threaten to kill her family? Did she believe her family would be killed? Did she know her family had been killed?
She replied 'yes' to the first two questions and 'no' to the third.
Miss Fugate contended that she went with Starkweather because he threatened her and threatened to kill her parents. She said she did not know they already had been slain.
Douglas said 'if that's all they asked ... they didn't ask if she killed anybody, if she had helped him commit the crime, if she had a chance to get away. They didn't ask her a lot of the pertinent questions.'
Starkweather was 19 when his two-day rampage left 10 people dead in Nebraska and Wyoming in January 1958. He was executed Nov. 25, 1959, the last person to die in Nebraska's electric chair.
