The State - News from Oct. 4, 1989

Convicted sex fantasy slayer Gerald Gallego’s appeal of his death sentence was rejected by the Nevada Supreme Court. Gallego was sentenced to death by lethal injection in Nevada for the 1980 kidnaping and murder of two 17-year-old Sacramento girls, Karen Chipman Twiggs and Stacey Redican. Their battered bodies were found in the Nevada desert near Lovelock. Gallego, 43, was also sentenced to die in California for the 1980 kidnap-murders of Sacramento college sweethearts Mary Beth Sowers and Craig Miller. The Nevada high court rejected Gallego’s claims that his trial counsel was ineffective for not challenging a plea bargain that resulted in his common-law wife, Charlene, getting a 17-year term. Charlene Gallego testified against him in his Nevada trial, saying he killed at least eight women in what she termed his fantasy search for a perfect sex slave.