GERALD & CHARLENE GALLEGO

Apprenhension

When Gerald and Charlene returned to her parents’ house the next morning, the police were there. Gerald disappeared quickly, leaving Charlene to deal with investigators’ questions. She and her boyfriend had gone to a movie the night before, she said; they’d driven his red Triumph. When detectives reminded her that the Triumph had been parked in front of the house all night, she said they’d gotten so drunk she couldn’t remember which car they’d taken. The detectives left deeply suspicious.

Gerald decided that Craig Miller’s body, which he’d taken no trouble to conceal, had to be moved before police found it. He didn’t know, however, that it had already been discovered, and when he and Charlene went looking for it that night, it was nowhere to be found. It was time to run, they decided. They drove to Reno where they ditched the Olds and boarded a bus for Salt Lake City.

Back in Sacramento the evidence was mounting. Craig Miller’s fraternity brother identified a picture of Gerald as the man he’d seen in the Oldsmobile with Craig and Mary Beth. Charles Williams told police that Stephen Feil’s real name was Gerald Gallego. The bullets removed from Craig Miller’s body matched those Gerald had shot into the ceiling of a bar where he had worked.

Charlene called her parents from Salt Lake City asking for money, which they wired to her. She and Gerald moved on to Denver, then to Omaha, Nebraska, where once again she called her parents. Reluctantly, they agreed to wire more money. This time, though, they told the FBI what they were doing. Agents were waiting at the Western Union office in Omaha, and they picked up the couple without a struggle.