SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- A bartender awaiting trial in a double murder will also be charged in the sex killings of eight women and girls in California, Nevada and Oregon between 1978 and 1980, authorities said Tuesday.
Gerald Gallego, 36, and his fifth wife, Charlene, 25, were arrested in November 1980 for the kidnap-slayings of two 22-year-old Sacramento State University students, Mary Beth Sowers and her fiance Craig Miller.
Gallego, an ex-convict, was linked by his wife to the eight other slayings, Sacramento County Sheriff Duane Lowe said Tuesday.
Mrs. Gallego said her husband was acting out a fantasy in which he searched for the perfect sex partner, and she enticed women and girls for him to try out as sex partners before he killed them.
Mrs. Gallego, who bore her husband's child in jail, agreed to turn state's evidence against her husband in return for a maximum prison sentence of 16 years and eight months. Her information was corroborated by a private detective, former FBI agent Cliff Harriman, now working for Mrs. Gallego's attorneys.
'We're convinced today that there is sufficient evidence to prosecute Gerald Gallego in Sacramento County with three (additional) cases and in the State of Nevada with four cases,' Lowe told reporters.
The district attorney's office said the charges would be filed within the next few weeks.
In Gold Beach, Ore., Deputy District Attorney Bill Marshall said meetings had been held with California and Nevada prosecutors in the Gallego case but no charges would be filed soon.
'California has the possibility of the death penalty, Oregon has not,' he said. 'We don't have as much motivation' to prosecute.
Richard Wagner, district attorney of Pershing County, Nev., said he expected to charge Gallego with murdering four teenage girls.
'I assume that he will probably be tried in California first,' he said. But Wagner added that he would seek extradition no matter what happened to Gallego in California.
He said Mrs. Gallego was a dependent person who claimed her husband had 'a process of rating and competing with the women in his life. The sexual fantasy that Gerald has, Charlene said, is that he wants to have a girl, a specific girl, who will be available to him to fill his sexual desires at any time he wants.'
Prosecutors concede there may be some question about whether Mrs. Gallego's testimony will stand up under Proposition 8, the successful June ballot initiative which bans plea bargaining.
Besides Miller and Miss Sowers, the victims were:
-Kippie Vaught, 16, and Rhonda Scheffler, 17, of Sacramento, abducted in September 1978. Their bodies were later found in a rural area near Sacramento.
-Brenda Judd, 13, and Sandra Colley, 14, both of Reno, Nev., allegedly kidnapped from a county fair at Reno June 24, 1979. Their bodies have never been found, but Charlene Gallego said they were killed in the desert near Lovelock, Nev.
-Stacey Redican and Karen Chipman, both 17, of Sacramento, allegedly kidnapped from a Sacramento shopping mall in April 1980. Their battered bodies were found near Lovelock.
-Linda Aguilar, 17, of Port Orford, Ore., who apparently hitched a ride from the Gallegos' in June 1980. Her body was found buried in the sand at Gold Beach, Ore.
-Virginia Mochel, 34, employe of a West Sacramento tavern, kidnapped as she left work in July 1980. Her body was found in Yolo County, which adjoins Sacramento.
