A Match Made In Hell

On this day in 1977, Gerald Gallego met Charlene Williams at a poker club in Sacramento, California. Their meeting would spark a two-year run of sexual assault and murder until their capture in 1980. The killer couple was responsible for at least 10 deaths, that authorities know of.

Charlene Adell Williams was born in 1956 in Stockton, California. By all accounts, she was a shy and intelligent child who was brought up by a very loving family. However, she began to experiment with drugs and alcohol in her teens and had two failed marriages by the time she met the 10-years-older Gerald Gallego, who had quite a different upbringing. His father had the distinction of being the first man executed in Mississippi's gas chamber, for murdering a cop during a prison escape. His mother was a sex worker. By the age of 13, Gallego had committed a sexual assault on a six-year-old girl. He had racked up 23 arrests for various crimes, including robbery, by the time he met Charlene.

Despite their different backgrounds, Charlene Williams and Gerald Gallego hit it off immediately, moving in with each other a week after meeting even though Gerald was still married to another woman. Gerald soon made it clear that he was not a one-woman man when he brought home a teenage runaway for the couple to engage in sex with. He was angered, however, when he found out that Charlene and the girl were having sex without him.

It didn't take long for Charlene to realize that she alone couldn't satisfy Gerald, so the couple decided to start abducting girls to keep as sex slaves. On September 11, 1978, Charlene lured two girls, Rhonda Scheffler and Kippi Vaught, to the couple's van in a Sacramento mall parking lot. After pulling a gun on them, Gerald tied them up and they drove to the town of Baker, where Gerald raped and executed the two girls. It was after this brutal murder that the couple decided to get married.

The now Mr. and Mrs. Gallego then took a trip to Reno, Nevada, where they abducted Brenda Judd and Sandra Colley from the Washoe County Fair on June 24, 1979. According to Charlene, Gerald beat the two girls to death with a hammer. Their remains would not be found until twenty years later.

In April 1980, two more girls went missing from a Sacramento mall. The remains of Stacy Ann Redican and Karen Chipman-Twiggs were found in July. They had been sexually assaulted and bludgeoned to death.

In June 1980, the Gallegos abducted a pregnant hitchhiker named Linda Teresa Aguilar. She was beaten to death with a blunt object and buried in a shallow grave.

In July 1980, Virginia Mochel was abducted as she was leaving her job as a bartender at a West Sacramento tavern. Her remains, which were still bound with fishing line, were found three months later outside the town of Clarksburg. It was clear from the cords wrapped around her neck that she had been strangled to death.

In November 1980, the Gallegos abducted Craig Miller and Mary Elizabeth Sowers at gunpoint as they were leaving a fraternity party. Miller was forced out of the Gallegos' car and executed. Sowers was taken to their apartment where she was raped. She was then taken to a field in Placer County, California, and executed.

The abduction of Miller and Sowers had been witnessed by a friend who reported the Gallegos' license plate number to the police. While waiting for money to be wired by Charlene's parents, the Gallegos were arrested at a Western Union office. Initially, both Gallegos pleaded not guilty to charges of kidnapping and murder but Charlene was convinced by prosecutors to testify against Gerald for a reduced sentence of 16 years 8 months in prison. Gerald Gallegos was sentenced to death by the states of California and Nevada.

Charlene Gallego was released from prison in 1997. She had extensively studied psychology, business, and Icelandic literature during her incarceration. In an interview given after her release, she said "There were victims who died, and there were victims who lived. It's taken me a hell of a long time to realize that I'm one of the ones who lived." She also claimed that she had tried to save some of the murder victims from Gerald's wrath.

Gerald Gallego died of cancer in 2002 before the state of Nevada could execute him.

Related Reading:

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