Caril Ann Fugate lived in Lincoln, Nebraska, with her mother and stepfather. In 1956, at age 13, she formed a relationship with Charles Starkweather, a high school dropout five years her senior, whom she met through her sister Barbara, who was dating Starkweather's friend, Bob von Busch. Starkweather worked as a truck unloader at the Western Newspaper Union warehouse. On January 21, 1958, Fugate later claimed she came home to find that Starkweather had shot and killed her stepfather, Marion Bartlett, and her mother, Velda. Starkweather then hit her baby half-sister causing blunt-force trauma, and stabbed her in the neck. During the next six days the pair lived in the house and turned away all visitors, which made Fugate's relatives suspicious. The bodies were found later in outbuildings on the property.