In 1955 Gerald's father was executed in Mississippi's gas chamber for killing two cops. As luck would have it, Gerald turned out meaner that his pop. When he was thirteen he was arrested for raping a six-year-old girl. Years later he was arrested for having sex with his teen-age daughter. After four or five marriages he settled down with Charlene Williams who he told her he was impotent. The only cure for it, he said, was frequent sex with virgins.
All in the name of love, Charlene helped him out with his misfortune by rounding up "sex-slaves" who he raped and murdered. Gerald and Charlene raped and slaughtered up to ten young women between 1978 and 1981. Some of the victims were shot to death, others were beaten to death with blunt objects, some were strangled, and at least one, who was 21 and four months pregnant, was buried alive.
After serving her 16-year sentence for her part in the abduction, rape and murder of 10 people in three states, Charlene was released from prison. Her lawyer says that she'll pursue "positive" goals in an undisclosed place. Gerald, who has one more plea before being fed the worms in Nevada, claims she did the killings.
Gallego, now 52, was convicted in 1984 of the killings of Karen Twiggs and Stacey Redican. The two young women disappeared from Sunrise Mall in Citrus Heights in April 1980. Their bodies were found three months later in a remote canyon. Gallego is suspected of having killed 10 people in his 26-month search for "the perfect sex slave." In 1984 Gallego was convicted and sentenced to death.
A competency hearing was set for March 22, 1999, to determine the mental state of Gerald Gallego, a Sacramento serial killer whose Nevada death sentence was overturned in 1997. 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."
A federal appeals court ruled two years ago that his death sentence was invalid because the judge wrongly suggested to the jury that Gallego - who also was sentenced to death in California - might eventually be paroled if he was spared execution, thus the new competency hearings.
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."