TODAY IN HISTORY: SERIAL KILLER COUPLE MEETS

SEPT. 10, 1977. Gerald Gallego met a young, two time divorced woman, Charlene Adell Williams, at a poker club in Sacramento, CA. The two immediately hit it off and within a week of their first encounter, Charlene moved in with Gerald. Thus began the couple’s infamous relationship, resulting in one of the worst serial killing teams in American history.

Gerald Gallego already had a checkered past before he met Charlene. In 1955 Gerald's father was executed in Mississippi's gas chamber for killing two cops. At age thirteen Gerald was arrested for raping a six-year-old girl. By age 32 he had been married five times and a daughter who lived with Gerald's mother. He also had seven felony convictions. By the time Charlene met Gerald, she had already gone through two marriages and had acquired a hard-drug habit.

Gerald told Charlene he was impotent and the only cure was frequent sex with virgins and multiple women in his bed. Within a month of Charlene moving in, Gerald brought home a teenage runaway for a threesome. However, he became extremely angry when he found out that Charlene and the girl were having sex without him. He went into a rage and physically abused Charlene and her young lover while berating and shouting at them.

The couple decided the best way to deal with Gerald's sexual problem was to seek out victims that could keep Gerald sexually satisfied.

JULY 17, 1978. Gerald and Charlene celebrated his thirty-second birthday by sodomizing his teenage daughter Krista. They also discovered Charlene was pregnant.

SEPT. 1 1, 1978. He and Charlene hopped into their 1973 Dodge van and drove off in search of a sex slave for Gerald. They soon spotted two young girls, seventeen-year-old Rhonda Scheffler, and sixteen-year-old Kippi Vaught. Gerald pulled the van over a short distance away and Charlene approached the girls on the pretext of joining them in the van to smoke some Marijuana. The girls quickly agreed and followed Charlene back to the van. When Rhonda and Kippi stepped into the back of the van they were greeted by Gerald and a .25 caliber pistol. He forced the girls to lie face down as he bound their hands and feet with adhesive tape. He then drove to a secluded area where he unbound the girl’s ankles and led them out of the van and into the cover of trees, warning Charlene to stay put. Two hours later Gerald returned to the van without the young girls. He looked at Charlene and recanted the chilling words, "Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies."

SEPT. 13, 1978. Two days later, two migrant farm workers discovered the girl's bodies. Gerald took Charlene to an abortion clinic and forced her to abort their unborn child.

SEPT. 27, 1978. Gerald's daughter Krista filed charges of incest, sodomy, oral copulation, and unlawful intercourse against her father.

SEPT. 30, 1978. Gerald and Charlene were wed. Not wanting to face the charges his daughter had filed, they moved to Nevada.

DECEMBER 1978. The couple moved to Houston Texas, and Gerald took on the alias Stephen Feil.

JUNE 24, 1979 (Fathers Day). The couple went to the Washoe County Fair and Gerald sent Charlene off to find the new victim(s). She approached two girls, fourteen-year-old Brenda Lynne Judd, and thirteen-year-old Sandra Kay Colley, and offered them money to distribute handbills and place them on the windshields of parked cars. The two girls agreed and followed Charlene back to the van. However, once they arrived at the van, Gerald pulled a .44 caliber pistol, forced the girls into the van and bound there feet and wrists. As Charlene drove Gerald began to sexually assault the two young girls in the back of the van. Hours later, in the high Nevada desert, Gerald led the girls off one at a time, carrying with him a hammer and a shovel.

SEPT. 1979. The Gallego’s moved back to Sacramento and continued to live under the aliases of Mr. and Mrs. Feil. Gerald eventually got a job as a bartender and soon began having an affair with a woman by the name of Patty, who eventually became pregnant with his child.

April 24, 1980. Gerald woke that morning and told Charlene, "I want a girl! Get up!" They drove around until he spotted two girls, seventeen-year-old Karen Chipman Twiggs, and seventeen-year-old Stacy Ann Redican, coming out of a book store. Charlene approached the two girls and offered them to join her in the van, again using the pre-text of smoking some weed. The girls agreed and followed her back to the van. As the girls got into the back of the van, Gerald greeted them with a .357 Magnum pistol. Charlene drove to a wooded are and they took turns raping and sexually assaulting the girls. Again, Gerald 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 they were good and dead. Then they left.

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.

MAY 1980. Charlene was again pregnant by Gerald, and he was again pissed off.

JUNE 1, 1980. Gerald and Charlene married each other for a second time. However, this time they were wed as Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Robert Feil.

JUNE 7, 1980. Gerald and Charlene spotted a lone pregnant woman hitchhiking, twenty-one-year-old Linda Aguilar who four months pregnant. The young woman gladly accepted the ride and joined the couple in the van. After a short drive to a remote beach area, Gerald raped Linda, and then beat her over the head with a rock. To satisfy himself that she was dead he strangled her corpse for good measure and then buried her in the beach sand.

JUNE 22, 1980. German tourists walking the beach discovered Linda’s badly decomposing body. After an autopsy was completed, it was determined that Gerald was unsuccessful in murdering Linda, she actually had awaken after her captors left, and in her panic and struggle to get free suffocated in the sand.

JULY 17, 1980. Gerald’s thirty-fourth birthday, he abducted thirty-four-year-old Virginia Mochel as she walked from the tavern where she worked as a barmaid. The strange thing about this victim is the fact that Gerald and Charlene knew her and had been served drinks by her on numerous occasions. At any rate, Gerald raped Virginia, and afterwards she begged him to kill her. He gladly obliged and strangled her. He then dumped her body by a pond.

NOV. 2, 1980. Twenty-two-year-old Craig Miller, and his fiancée, twenty-one-year-old Mary Elizabeth Sowers, were leaving a fraternity party. Gerald got out of the car, walked right up to them on the street and brazenly pulled out a .25 caliber Beretta. He ordered them into the car. Unfortunately for Gerald, friends of the young couple saw them get into the vehicle and wrote down the license plate number. After driving to a secluded area, Gerald commanded Craig out of the car, as the young man turned to walk towards the front of the vehicle, Gerald aimed his pistol and shot the boy point blank range in the back of the head while his fiancée looked on in horror. Gerald then fired two more shots into Craig’s head, as he lay lifeless on the ground. Gerald got back into the vehicle and ordered Charlene to drive to their apartment. Once back at the apartment, Gerald took his new sex slave into the bedroom and raped her for hours on end. After he was satisfied, he ordered Charlene to drive to a rural area. Once there, Gerald ordered Mary out of the car. He then shot her three times in the head.

Craig and Mary's friends turned over the license plate number to the police. The police questioned Charlene and obtained a search warrant for their vehicle and house. Within minutes, investigators to find substantial evidence such as bullet casings and other suspicious tools. After mercifully interrogating Charlene, she spilled her guts and told all.

JAN. 17, 1981. Charlene, while in a prison ward, gave birth to Gerald Armond Gallego Jr. Custody of the child was given to Charlene’s parents.

JUNE 21, 1983. Gerald Armond Gallego Sr., was sentenced to death for the murder of the Craig Miller and Mary Elizabeth Sowers.

NOV. 1983. Due to a plea-bargain struck with prosecutors to testify against Gerald, Charlene was sentenced to sixteen years and eight months in prison, with the understanding that no other charges in ANY other state could or would be pressed against her, as long as she gave full cooperation, which she did.

June 25, 1984. Gerald was extradited to Nevada and sentenced to death for the murders of Karen Twiggs and Stacey Redican.

August 1997. At the age of forty, Charlene Adell Williams Gallego, was released on parole from the Department of Prisons Woman’s Center in Carson City, Nevada.

March 22, 1999. A competency hearing was held to determine the mental state of Gerald Gallego. Gallego, 52, has been undergoing a court-ordered evaluation by doctors since exhibiting bizarre behavior at a hearing in November that was supposed to be the first step toward a penalty-phase retrial of his 1984 murder convictions. That evaluation has been concluded, and attorneys from both sides conferred and settled on the starting date for the hearing that will decide if Gallego is competent to proceed. During much of his competency hearing Gerald Gallego slept under a table in his cell and communicated with doctors through a food slot in the door. According to Dr. David V. Foster, such behavior, combined with evidence of organic brain dysfunction, is indicative of a mental state that renders him incapable of assisting counsel in a retrial of his penalty-phase proceedings. Foster, an Auburn psychiatrist hired to assist Gallego's appellate defense team in California in 1994, added that Gallego's behavior is a result of a "delusion that there's a herd of people from the dark side who are his enemy." Claiming that Gallego suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from an extremely abusive childhood, and is afflicted by brain damage caused by head injuries sustained in his youth, the good doctor declared it would, "inhibit his ability to plan, problem-solve, comprehend and make judgments."

Gerald Gallego is currently still in prison.