Charlene Gallego: Her Role, Plea Deal, and Life After Prison

Charlene Gallego, born Charlene Adelle Williams on October 10, 1956, was the accomplice and common-law wife of serial killer Gerald Armond Gallego. Between 1978 and 1980, the pair kidnapped, raped, and murdered ten people across California and Nevada in what became known as the “Sex Slave Murders.” Her job was to lure victims, most of them teenage girls, into the couple’s van. She pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder, testified against Gerald in exchange for a reduced sentence, and walked out of a Nevada prison on July 17, 1997, after serving sixteen years and eight months.¹

Life Before the Murders

Charlene grew up in Stockton, California, the only child of Charles and Mercedes Williams. Her father was a business executive, and by outward appearances the family was stable and middle-class, with no history of foster care or parental substance abuse. She finished high school and was reportedly tested at an IQ of 160, though her school years were marked by drug use that began at age twelve and by promiscuity that drew cruel labels from classmates.² She stood five feet tall. She was working as a butcher when she met Gerald Gallego on September 10, 1977. She was nineteen.

Meeting Gerald Gallego

Gerald was thirty-one and already a lifelong offender. His father had been executed in Mississippi’s gas chamber in 1955 for killing a police officer during a prison escape. Gerald’s own arrest record started at age ten with burglary and by twelve included lewd and lascivious acts with a six-year-old girl, which sent him to a California Youth Authority facility.³ Armed robbery convictions, five marriages (only one legal), and heavy substance abuse followed. Within roughly a year of meeting Charlene, the two began killing together.

Her Role in the Killings

Gerald spoke about wanting “sex slaves.” Charlene later testified that he directed her to approach young women at shopping malls and other public places and coax them into the couple’s van.⁴ Once the victims were inside, Gerald raped them, then killed them with hammers, tire irons, shovels, or firearms.

Ten people died across at least five separate incidents between September 1978 and November 1980. Nine were female. Their ages ran from thirteen to thirty-four. The victims were Kippy Vaught, 16, and Rhonda Scheffler, 17, in September 1978; Brenda Judd, 14, and Sandra Colley, 13, in June 1979; Stacy Ann Redican, 17, and Karen Chipman Twiggs, 17, in April 1980; Linda Aguilar, 21, who was pregnant and buried alive, in June 1980; Virginia Mochel, 34, in July 1980; and Craig Miller, 22, and Mary Beth Sowers, 21, in November 1980.³⁵

The Miller and Sowers killings ended the spree. Gerald shot Miller three times, and Charlene helped bring Sowers back to the couple’s apartment, where Gerald raped and killed her the next morning. The two then fled, traveling through Reno, Salt Lake City, Denver, and Pueblo before being arrested in Omaha, Nebraska.⁶

The Plea Deal and Her Testimony

Charlene pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder for the killings of Craig Miller and Mary Beth Sowers, in exchange for testifying against Gerald in both California and Nevada. She was sentenced to sixteen years and eight months, with her California and Nevada terms running concurrently.⁶¹

At Gerald’s Nevada trial in May 1984, Charlene took the stand and, at times sobbing, described how she had lured Stacey Redican and Karen Chipman Twiggs into the van at a Sacramento shopping center. She said she watched Gerald rape the girls, then drove the van to Limmerick Canyon near Lovelock, Nevada, where Gerald took them into the desert and beat them to death. The next morning, she testified, Gerald threw a bloody hammer from the van window as they drove back toward Sacramento, and the two stopped in Lovelock for breakfast.⁷

A defense attorney asked why she had not used a gun in the van to stop Gerald. She replied: “Gerald was security. I didn’t want to be alone. I was still trying to please him.”⁷ She has always described herself as acting under Gerald’s threats and coercion, including threats against her family. Sacramento County Sheriff’s detective Paul Belli said investigators did not doubt she was a “willing participant in the crimes.”⁴

The Spousal Privilege Fight

Gerald tried to keep Charlene off the stand in Nevada by arguing she was his wife and therefore protected by the state’s spousal privilege statute, which barred a wife from testifying against her husband without his consent. His theory relied on a chain of prior marriages, capped by a California court order he said retroactively validated a 1964 Nevada marriage and, through it, his 1978 Reno marriage to Charlene.⁸

The Nevada Supreme Court rejected the argument. It held the 1964 marriage void from the beginning because Gerald had a living spouse at the time, so the California order had nothing to revive. Gerald, the court concluded, was “never lawfully wedded to Charlene,” and no privilege attached.⁸

Release and Life After Prison

Charlene was released from the Nevada Women’s Correctional Facility on July 17, 1997. She had served sixteen years and eight months from the time of her arrest.¹ She took a new name, saying she wanted to hide from Gerald and his family.

She has lived quietly in the Sacramento area since. A 2013 CBS Sacramento report located and interviewed her after more than a decade of silence. Then in her fifties, she said she had spent her post-prison years doing charity work, particularly supporting the military. She repeated what she had said at trial: that she killed no one and acted throughout under Gerald’s coercion.⁵ Investigators who worked the case never accepted that account, and the plea deal that spared her a possible death sentence has been contested for decades.

What Happened to Gerald Gallego

Gerald was sentenced to death in both California and Nevada, one of very few people ever to hold both sentences at once. The California Supreme Court affirmed his conviction and death sentence for the Miller and Sowers murders on December 20, 1990.⁶⁹¹⁰ He died of rectal cancer that had spread to his lungs and liver on July 18, 2002, at a Nevada prison medical facility, one day after his fifty-sixth birthday, having refused life-prolonging treatment.¹¹

1
SFGate. Ex-Con Starts Life Anew
2
Radford University. Serial Killer Information Center – Charlene Williams
3
Radford University. Serial Killer Information Center – Gerald Gallego
4
CBS Sacramento. Sacramento’s Sex Slave Murders: Killer Aims for Redemption
5
CBS Sacramento. Sacramento’s Sex Slave Murders: Killer Discovered Living in Area
6
Stanford Law School. People v. Gallego, 52 Cal.3d 115
7
UPI. Charlene Gallego Told Jurors How She Helped
8
Casemine. Gallego v. State, 101 Nev. 782
9
FindLaw. Gallego v. McDaniel
10
Las Vegas Sun. Serial Killer Sentenced to Death in Retrial
11
Record (Stockton). Sex Slave Killer Gallego Dies