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Skeptic is stark-raving mad about 1959 execution
At 12:02 a.m. on July 25,1959, a
19-year-old male was executed in
the electric chair at the Nebraska
State Penitentiary by a circuit exe
cutioner. For most of the citizens of
Lincoln, it was a hot, airless day, but
for this boy it was a cold day in hell.
The next morning, a body was
taken to Wyuka Cemetary and in
terned in section 28, grave 996, a
hop, skip and a jump from Wyuka’s
Baby land. It’s a lonesome comer
with little shade and a homely view
of one of Lincoln's less prosperous
residential districts.
But this grave wasn’t made for
resting in peace, it was dug listlessly
in the first light of morning by
gravediggers eager to move on to
more deserving cadavers.
The boy in the chair was sup
posed to be one Charles Stark
weather, inass-murderer and song
and film-fodder, who killed II
people in just three days and, once
arrested, told his lonesome tale like
a folk song.
But was the boy in the chair,
whose body sang and snapped as
thousands of volts of electricity
passed through it, really Charles
Starkweather, or was it some other
■■j.n.i.u.gs,-..
--—...„...
I
Dave Hogswid is one of those
people. For more than 10 years now
Hogswid has led a crusade to prove
that Charles Starkweather lives.
“Starkweather,” Hogswid said.
“Heain’tdead. He’s alive as you an’
me.
Hogswid is a small man, balding,
with a long scar on his forehead.
“If somebody died that summer
night in 1959, it was some other
guy,” Hogswid insists.
Hogswid says that the boy who
died bore no resemblance to James
Dean. One of Starkweather’s most
salient characteristics was his re
semblance to actor James Dean.
"He was smaller and his head was
rounder," he said. “A lot rounder."
There are a lot of questions that
no one is answering, according to
Hogswid. If Starkweather is dead,
he asks, why is someone charging
gasoline under his name at £astside
Conoco? If Starkweather died in
1959, why wasn’t there a tombstone
in Wyuka until much, much later? If
Charles Starkweather is really dead,
why can’t anyone remember seeing
his body and why do all the books
See STARKRAVING on 12
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