Gerald And Charlene Gallego, The ‘Sex Slave Killers’
Public DomainGerald and Charlene Gallego in their 1980 booking photos.
In just a two-year period, from 1978 to 1980, Sacramento serial killer couple Gerald and Charlene Gallego murdered at least 10 young people, often killing two victims at a time. Their usual method was to cruise area malls looking for teenage girls, whom Charlene would lure into their van with promises of free marijuana.
Once the girls got into the van, they were confronted with an armed Gerald, who forced them into the cargo area and tied them up for a ride out to the countryside. The victims were invariably raped, beaten, and murdered, and their bodies were dumped in scattered locations.
Their last victims were 22-year-old Craig Miller and his fiancée, 21-year-old Mary Elizabeth Sowers, whom they kidnapped at gunpoint from a mall parking lot on Nov. 1, 1980. Gerald forced the young couple into his van in plain sight of their friend, who managed to catch the Gallegos’ license plate number and alerted the police.
Gerald shot Miller right away, but he and Charlene took Sowers to their apartment, where they raped and tortured her for several hours. Eventually, they drove her out of town and shot her three times.
Public DomainMary Elizabeth Sowers and Craig Miller, two victims of the Gallegos.
Gerald and Charlene fled to Reno, Nevada, but they were tracked down and arrested on Nov. 17. They both denied any wrongdoing at first, but Charlene soon struck a deal to testify against Gerald. In 1984, Gerald was handed the death penalty, but his sentence was later commuted to life in prison. He died behind bars from colorectal cancer in 2002.
Charlene served 16 years in prison, maintaining all the while that she was practically an innocent bystander who couldn’t have done anything to stop Gerald. She was released in 1997 and returned to Sacramento to live under an assumed name.
