shyscyberchamber.com  
SERIAL KILLERS

Date Added
Charlene Williams & Gerald Gallego November 2003
 
Bio
  Full Name Charlene Williams
Gerald Armond Gallego
  Date of  Birth CW: Unknown
GG: Unknown
  Known Also As CW: Unknown
GG: Stephen Robert Feil
  Hit Count 10
Information & Pictures
 

Soon after midnight on Sunday 2nd November 1980, a young couple, Craig Miller and his fiancée Mary Beth Sowers, emerged from the Carousel Restaurant in Sacramento, California, where they had been attending a dance. In the car park, they were accosted by a pretty blonde woman whose swollen stomach seemed to indicate pregnancy.


They stopped politely, the realised the girl was holding a gun. 'Get in,' she said pointing to a silver 1977 Oldsmobile that had stopped next to them. A sullen looking man sat in the passenger seat, also holding a gun. The couple climbed into the back seat of the car.


Before the blonde could follow, a passing student with a freakish sense of humour slipped into the driver's seat. Andy Beal had invited Miller and Sowers back to his room for a drink, but a single glance told him something was wrong. 'Get out of my car,' snapped the blonde, adding a few swearwords. Then she punched him in the chin so that he fell to the pavement. As the Oldsmobile pulled away with a screech of tyres, Beal had the presence of mind to memorise its number plate (ROV-240), and then write it down. Minutes later he was telephoning the police to report the abduction of Craig Miller and Mary Beth Sowers.
   GERALD GALLEGO:


Gerald Gallego seen while in custody before the trial which took place in November 1982, in Martinez, a small town on San Francisco Bay.  Charlene testified against her husband.
The Oldsmobile was registered to Charles Williams, a wealthy Sacramento business man. That Sunday the police paid him and his wife, Mercedes, a visit. They said that the Oldsmobile really belonged to their daughter, Charlene who lived with her husband in North Sacramento. Just then, Charlene arrived in the Oldsmobile. She said she couldn't remember where she and her husband had been the previous night - out drinking or at the cinema. And they had used her husband's Triumph.


Shortly after the interview ended, the officers were told that Craig Miller's body had been found in a field. He had been shot three times in the back of the head. When they returned to ask Charlene further questions, she had left with her husband Gerald Gallego.


Five days later, the body of Mary Beth Sowers was also found, dumped in a field. She had been raped and shot. It looked as though the rape was the motive for both the abductions and the murders.
  CHARLENE WILLIAMS:


Charlene Williams seen while in custody before their trial which took place in November 1982, in Martinez.
The manhunt ended two weeks later as Charlene Williams emerged from a Western Union office in Omaha, Nebraska. She had been collecting $500 wired by her parents, who had been trailed by FBI agents to a Western Union office in Sparks, Nevada. When it became clear to Williams that she and Gallego both faced the death penalty, she entered into plea-bargaining. She then began to recount a two and a half year spree of killings whose only apparent purpose had been to conceal the evidence of rape. Gallego's brutal sexual needs had been insatiable. Charlene Williams role had been to help Gallego fulfil his longings for what he called a 'perfect love slave'.


Gallego had told Charlene Williams of his fantasies some time before their marriage on 11th September 1978. On 11 September, two teenage girls, Rhonda Scheffler and Kippi Vaught, had gone missing while shopping in Sacramento. Their bodies were found eight days later. Two weeks later, Gallego's fourteen year old daughter Sally Jo had gone to the police and told them her father had committed incest with her since she was eight. To celebrate his 32nd birthday, she said, Gallego had committed rape and sodomy both with her and with a teenage girlfriend. Sally Jo, already seething with jealousy towards Charlene Williams decided finally to inform the police of Gallego's activities. Gallego had fled.
    GERALD GALLEGO:


Gerald Gallego practices firing his AR-15 semi automatic rigle near Sacrament.  He was a violent man, highly abusive towards women, whom he controlled by fear and force.
In Charlene William's account, the next victims were two more young girls, Kaye Colley and Brenda Judd, who were picked up at a fair in Reno, Nevada, on 24th June 1979. Charlene drove again, then waited as her 'master' raped them in the car and then killed them.


Ten months later, on 24th April 1980, Stacy Ann Redican and Karen Chipman Twiggs were the victims in some isolated woods in Nevada. Soon after, on the 6th June, Gallego and Williams passed an attractive girl walking along ta road between Port Orford and Gold Beach in Oregon. Her name was Linda Teresa Aguila. Linda was five months pregnant, but the couple in the car looked safe enough so she accepted a lift. Charlene was driving. Linda was raped and murdered.
   CHARLENE WILLIAMS:
After the Gallegos had decided on capturing 'love slaves', Gerald taught Charlene how to shoot pistols as part of a training programme. She became an expert shot.
  On the 17th July 1980, a pretty blonde waitress named Virginia Mochel had been accosted outside the tavern in Sacramento where she worked.


She begged to be allowed to call the babysitter of her two children. Her body was found in October, one month before the observant student took down the number plate of the car holding his friends Craig Miller and Beth Sowers.


Charlene Williams's long confession to her lawyer and the police traced the roots of her criminal partnership with Gallego. She described the blind date in 1977 through which she had met him, her failed marriages, and the inadequacy of the lovers that she had known. 


Gerald Gallego, this strutting sociopath, had a gruff dominance that enchanted and excited Charlene. Gallego's sexual appetite was immense and she had been expected to satisfy it without receiving any pleasure in return, she told the detectives. And, being something of a masochist, she had accepted this.
   GERALD ALBERT GALLEGO:
Gerald Gallego's father - seen here aged twenty six, in a soiled shirt, being returned to a Mississippi Jail in 1954 by highway patrolmen and armed posse men. He had escaped after killing a guard.
  Charlene had also accepted Gallego's way of exciting himself by speaking of fantasies of rape and murder, and his perfect sex slave. When he had asked her to help him find such a slave, she had felt she had not choice but to obey - Gallego was her master.


However, the District Attorney, Richard Wagner, realised that Gallego was capable of committing rape and robbery on his own, but that murder was a totally different issue. He became increasingly convinced that neither Gallego or Williams would have committed murder had they not met and become involved.


At the arraignment, Gallego leapt up and screamed at reporters, 'Get the hell out of here! We're not funny people! We are not animals!' He fought violently, overturning tables and chairs before he was subdued.


Because of the horror caused by the case, the trial was moved from Sacramento to Martinez, near San Francisco. Gallego tried to have Charlene's testimony excluded on the grounds that they were married. The ploy failed when it was proved that he had committed bigamy - he had still not divorced from his second wife.


On 22nd June 1983, Gallego was sentenced to die in the gas chamber. He began a long-running appeal, but Charlene Williams, who had been offered leniency in return for her testimony, accepted a sixteen year jail sentence.


In May 1994, Gallego was moved to Lovelock, Nevada, to face trial for the murders of Stacy Ann Redican and Karen Chipman Twiggs. Again, Charlene's testimony destroyed Gerald Gallego's swaggering defence. On June 7th, Gallego received his second death sentence.
   GERALD GALLEGO:
Gerald Gallego poses, with grim irony, in front of a sign for Death Valley National Park in southern California. The murders he and Charlene committed were carried out in remote parts of the country like this.
  Gerald Gallego began a long appeal process against his convictions and sentence. In 1985, and again in 1989, the Nevada Supreme Court refused to hear his case.
   GERALD GALLEGO'S CAR:


The Triumph owned by Gerald Gallego. The police discovered it was registered to Steven Robert Feil, Gallego's false name. When its boot was prised open, it was found to contain camping equipment.
  In 1990, Gallego's lawyers continued their efforts to have the case considered by the US Federal Appellate Court. They argued that advance publicity biased the juries against Gallego.
   GERALD GALLEGO:


Gerald Gallego listens quietly to his sentencing in Martinez, Contra Cost County, California, on 22nd June 1983 - death by gassing at San Quentin prison. But he was extradited to Nevada in 1984.
  Gallego remains under sentence of death in Nevada state prison in Carson City. The prison authorities found him too obstructive to be placed on death row and he has been kept in a section of the prison for incorrigible prisoners.

BACK TO TOP





Check out
the latest
Crypt Polls!
 


 

-»¦«-

 F o u n d   a   b r  o k e n   l  i n k ?   L e t   u  s   k n o w