Gerald and Charlene Gallego

Gerald Armond Gallego[1] was born on July 17, 1946, in Sacramento, California. His mother was a sex worker, while his estranged father was a criminal who in 1955 became the first man executed in the Mississippi gas chamber, for the killing of a police officer during a prison escape.[2] During his formative years, his mother and her multiple boyfriends beat him constantly. Several of her clients even sexually abused him. He often begged to be hugged and was frequently left unclean and hungry. At the age of 10, Gallego was arrested for his first known felony offense—robbing a neighbor's home. This was the start of his criminal career. He had twenty-three arrests and served prison time after being convicted of robbery prior to his murders.[1]

Gallego worked as a bartender and truck driver.[1] He was married a total of seven times, including two marriages to the same woman, but he would often abandon his partners when they ran out of money. When Gerald was 12, he sexually abused a 6-year-old girl which resulted in him being sentenced to a California youth authority facility,[3] and would during his adulthood sexually molest his own daughter as well as one of her friends. He was still married to a previous wife when he married Charlene.[3]

Charlene Adell Gallego (née Williams) was born on October 10, 1956, in Stockton, California. She was a smart, shy child from a supportive home.[4] Her father was a well-known businessman who served as the vice president of a chain of supermarkets. As part of their professional lives, he and his wife frequently traveled. After Charlene's mother was severely injured in a car accident, Charlene took over her mother's responsibilities and started accompanying her father on his business travels, where she was frequently lauded by her father's clients for being an educated and articulate youngster.

The trajectory of her life began to change when, as a young adult, she started using drugs and alcohol. Because of her overly flirty behavior with her male co-workers, Charlene was despised at work and developed a reputation as a nymphomaniac. Charlene wed a wealthy young man who was addicted to heroin who asserted that Charlene was desperate for a threesome with him, her, and a prostitute because she was enamored with lesbian sex. The marriage fell apart and they divorced because Charlene's first husband also detested the fact that Charlene's parents interfered in their relationship. Charlene's next husband was a soldier who Charlene described as a "mother's boy".She became bored with him, and they separated. When Charlene asked whether they might have sex with his wife, the married man with whom she was having an affair ended their relationship quickly. She attempted suicide after the breakup but survived. It was not long after this that she met Gerald.[5]

On September 10, 1977, Charlene met Gerald at a poker club in Sacramento, California. Within a week of their first encounter, Charlene moved in with Gerald.[4] Charlene acted as the sexually subservient partner in their sadomasochistic relationship. Although Charlene later claimed in court that she detested the painful experience, Gerald engaged in rough intercourse with her and particularly enjoyed sodomising her. Charlene allegedly became enamored by his machismo and started partaking in his deviant fantasies.[5][1]

After they had been living together for a few months, Gerald brought home a 16-year-old exotic dancer to Charlene, and they had a threesome together. He made sure the two women did not touch each other and only touched him. But afterwards when he got home from work, he discovered that the two women were having sex alone. He beat Charlene after throwing the dancer out an open window in wrath. Then he refused to have intercourse with her, claiming he had lost his libido and had become impotent. Charlene felt Gerald was sleeping with his patrons when he was working as a bartender because he had lost interest in having a sexual relationship with her. After a year, he admitted that he required a pair of sex slaves to keep him excited. Charlene was asked to find them, and she obliged out of respect for him and to gratify her own intense lesbian cravings.

16-year-old Sandra Kaye Butler was last seen in Sparks, Nevada, on June 26, 1978. At Fourth and Greenbrae Streets, directly across from her family's apartment, she was last seen making her way to the Greenbrae Shopping Center. She has not been seen or heard from since. Butler was seen as a probable runaway at the time of her disappearance, and police authorities took minimal action to conduct an investigation and track her down.[6][7]

Authorities believe that Sandra Butler was possibly Charlene and Gerald's first victim. Sandra had been given permission by her mother to ride her bike to the Reno Rodeo at the Washoe County Fairgrounds on the day she vanished. It is known that the Gallegos' were present there at the fair on that day. Gerald and Charlene were never interviewed then by the police who were investigating Butler's disappearance. Neither ever confessed, or were convicted of Sandra's supposed murder. Butler's remains have never been located, and there is suspicion of foul play. One year after Sandra disappeared, on June 24, 1979, the Gallegos' would kidnap two adolescent females from the Washoe County fairgrounds in Reno, where Sandra was biking to one year earlier. [8][9]

Two adolescents, Kippi Vaught, 16, and Rhonda Scheffler, 17, vanished from a Sacramento mall on September 10, 1978. Charlene tricked them into going to the back of the couple's van as they were both shopping at Sacramento's Country Club Plaza, where the pair then kidnapped them. The girls were restrained by Gerald after he threatened them with a firearm. The two victims were then repeatedly assaulted by him all through the night in Baxter, California.

The following day, the Gerald and Charlene drove to Sloughhouse, California, where Gerald ordered Scheffler and Vaught out of the van. Then, after forcing them to cross a field to a ditch, he struck Vaught with a tire iron before swinging around and beating Scheffler. Finally, he pulled out a .25 caliber pistol and shot each girl once in the head. Vaught moved and made an attempt to flee as Gerald was leaving because the gunshot had only lightly grazed her skull. She was killed when he went back and fired three more shots into her head.[1] Charlene would later tell a cellmate how ecstatic she felt during this particular crime.

On June 24, 1979, 14-year-old Brenda Judd and 13-year-old Sandra Colley were abducted from the Washoe County Fair in Reno, Nevada. Both were persuaded to enter the Gallegos' van with the promise of earning money by distributing flyers. On Interstate 80, Charlene took the van northeast of Reno and as she watched in the rear-view mirror, Gerald repeatedly sexually assaulted the two young girls in the back of the van. Charlene then parked their van in the remote Humboldt Sink area.

Over the next couple of hours, Gerald rested and watched Charlene force the girls to perform sexual acts on each other. Colley was then dragged towards a dry stream bed by Gerald after he removed a shovel from under their van's seat and yanked her out of the car. He then crept up behind Colley and repeatedly struck her in the head with a shovel. Charlene would later recall in court the assault, describing it as "a loud splat like a flat rock hitting mud, and the girl sank to her knees and slowly toppled over on her face." After killing Judd, Gerald dug a large pit, placed the two girls' naked bodies inside of it, and covered it with a rock. The teenagers were listed as runaways for four years until Charlene confessed to their murders during the 1982 trial.[1] Their remains were not found and identified until twenty years later in November 1999 by a tractor operator.[10]

On the morning of April 24, 1980, Gerald awoke Charlene and demanded, "I want a girl! Get up!" After some time spent driving around, he came upon two teenage girls exiting a bookstore: Stacy Ann Redican and Karen Chipman-Twiggs, both 17-years-old. On the pretext of smoking some marijuana, Charlene approached the two females and invited them to travel with her in the van. She led the girls back to the van after they enthusiastically concurred. Gerald met the girls with a .357 Magnum pistol as they entered the back of the van. He quickly commanded Charlene to drive and ordered the girls to undress. Gerald took turns raping and sexually assaulting them.

After he finished, he again had Charlene drive to a secluded area and led the girls one at a time into the woods carrying a hammer and a shovel. However, this time he forced Charlene to view the graves. She claimed that she saw movement, but Gerald insisted that both girls were dead. They then left. On July 27, 1980, picnickers discovered the coyote-ravaged remains of Karen and Stacy in two shallow graves in an area twenty miles outside of Lovelock, Nevada. They had both been raped, and suffered massive and fatal head injuries by a blunt instrument. [3]

While hitchhiking on June 6, 1980, in Port Orford, Oregon, 21-year-old Linda Teresa Aguilar was abducted, murdered with a blunt object, and buried in a shallow grave,[3] outside of Gold Beach, Oregon.[11] Aguilar had accepted the Gallegos' offer of a ride and was traveling with them in their van until Gerald threatened Aguilar with a .357 calibre revolver while Charlene was driving. Aguilar was four months pregnant and relatives reported her missing on June 20. German tourists found her body two days later. The victim's wrists and ankles were bound with nylon cord, and her skull was broken, but an examination revealed that she had been buried alive since sand had been found in her mouth, throat, and nose.

On July 17, 1980, 31-year-old Virginia Mochel was abducted from the parking lot of a West Sacramento tavern, where she worked as a bartender. Gerald and Charlene were acquainted with Mochel and had frequently been served drinks by her. Virginia was sexually assaulted by Gerald, who then forced her to beg for her life. After killing her by strangulation, he discarded her body by a pond. Her skeletal remains, still bound with nylon fishing line, were found three months later outside of Clarksburg. Loops of cord from the victim's neck were admitted as proof of death by strangulation.[12]

While leaving a fraternity party on November 1, 1980, 22-year-old Craig Miller and his fiancée, 21-year-old Mary Elizabeth Sowers, were forced into the Gallegos’ car.[4] Miller and Sowers were seen by the Gallegos' standing by the side of the road. Gerald then ordered the two to get into the automobile after getting out of the vehicle and approaching them directly while brandishing a .25 caliber Beretta.

After taking them to a remote location, Gerald ordered Craig out of the car. As he turned to approach the front of the car, Gerald pointed his pistol at Miller and shot him in the back of the head while his fiancée watched. Gerald then fired two more shots into Craig’s head, as he lay lifeless on the ground; his body would later be found near Bass Lake, California. Gerald got back into the vehicle and ordered Charlene to drive to their apartment. Once back at the apartment, Gerald took Sowers into the bedroom and raped her for hours. Afterward, he ordered Charlene to drive to a rural area in Placer County, California. Once there, Gerald ordered Mary out of the car. He then shot her three times at point blank range.[1]