When the bodies of Marion and Velda Bartlett and their not-quite-3-year-old daughter Betty Jean were found stashed behind the family's home, authorities in Lincoln, Neb., expected that Caril Ann Fugate would turn up soon.

After all, they reasoned, Fugate's boyfriend Charles Starkweather had just killed her family, so surely the 14-year-old was next—or already dead.