Free Women Who Kill: Profiles of Female Serial Killers by Carol Anne Davis Page A

equally lost young man and set up home with him. Unfortunately, he was a heroin addict who said that Charlene was obsessed by the idea of lesbian sex and wanted him to hire a whore that they could share in bed.
    Charlene’s first husband also found that she quickly let her appearance go to hell - hardly surprising given the amount of cocaine and marijuana that she was taking. He hated the fact that Chuck and Mercedes Williams intervened in their relationship a great deal.
    The marriage soon failed and Charlene just as quickly remarried - this time choosing a soldier - in what she’d later call a desperate search for emotional security. But husband number two also quickly tired of his new wife, for if he refused her anything she’d call her parents over and ask them for whatever she desired. If they demurred she’d sometimes have an asthma attack and completely collapse until they gave in to her. The Williams believed she had asthma but her third husband, Gerald Gallego, would later suggest it was faked.

A suicide attempt
    At just five feet tall, of a very slight built, and with blonde hair and blue eyes, Charlene looked younger than her years and very innocent - but by twenty-one she’d been divorced twice and had a string of unsatisfactory relationships. One of her more enjoyable affairs was with a married man and when he ended it she attempted to kill herself.
    Her working life went equally awry. She worked in various meat companies but she was so overdressedand so flirtatious with the male staff that she quickly made enemies of the females. She had planned to follow her father up the corporate ladder but was increasingly sidetracked, taking long intimate lunches with the male employees. Charlene continued to drink heavily and could handle neat vodka and the inevitable depression that followed. She continued to date and discard various men.
    Her father still doted on her, so when she moved into a nice apartment he bought lots of furniture for it. He also bought her a van.
    Psychologists would later suggest that Charlene’s father was too dominant a force in her life - and that she would spend her teenage years looking for a man who was equally forceful. She found him in Gerald Gallego who she met on a blind date. It was the autumn of 1977 and she was a thin and almost waiflike twenty-one. He was ten years older, a well built man with dark probing eyes and heavy dark hair. He’d been violent in most of his relationships and had done time for a string of offences, including car theft and armed robbery.

The lover’s childhood
    Gerald’s own background had been a brutal one. His mother and her numerous boyfriends had beaten him during his formative years - and when his motherbecame a working girl Gerald was abused by some of her clients. He was often left hungry and dirty and was always pleading to be held and hugged. When he was nine his natural father, who had played no part in his life, was executed for killing two policemen - something Gerald wouldn’t find out until he was fully grown.
    Like Charlene, Gerald had failed as a lover and as a spouse - by the age of thirty-two he’d left numerous women when they ran out of money and possessions. He’d been married, albeit often bigamously, seven times. He had also started sexually abusing his daughter from one marriage when she was aged eight. (Some sources say she was aged six. Statistically, seven is the most common age for incest to begin.)
    Gerald liked rough sex and Charlene responded to this. At first their sex life was so good that they simply couldn’t get enough of each other. Some crime texts suggest that she was masochistic but it’s more likely that she was sexually submissive. True masochism - in which pain is enjoyed for its own sake - is very rare. Indeed, she would later say in court that she hated the painful experience of being sodomised, an act which Gerald particularly enjoyed.
    Sexual submission relies strongly on conversational powerplay.