My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 193 - The Lowest Limit

Episode Date: October 24, 2019

Karen and Georgia cover Gerald and Charlene Gallego, and ‘hitman’ Gary Krueger.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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And welcome. To my favorite murder. It's a podcast you like, remember? Yeah, remember? That's Karen Calguera. Oh, that's Georgia Harzer. We're from last week. You remember.

It was Thursday of last week. Were you last checked in with us? And the past 100,000 Thursdays before the, oh, we've been through so many Thursdays together. Guys, it's like we're thirsty. Thirsty Thursday, everybody. Yeah, everyone's favorite day. How are you?

What's going on? How's your coffee? Good stuff. Gross. So gross. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry, Canadians.

I forgot that people like my sister who have misophonia, I believe it's pronounced, can't have you just drinking coffee into the mic as a joke. Okay. Because they don't like sounds. We just got so many hangups. Yep. Come back, come back. I'm sorry.

She'll never drink again. She's going to dive. Thirst. I will. For you. Listeners. Yeah. What's up with you?

You know, I see your sparkly nail polish. Oh, isn't it nice? It is really nice. It's because I wanted to watch TV yesterday, but feel guilty just doing nothing or watch TV. So I either paint my nails or sew some shit. Oh. Yeah.

What are you even sewing? Can you say? Oh, so like a vintage dress that has a rip on the side. You know, just mend. I'll mend. Little women style. Yeah. Or I'll paint my nails.

And so that's why I have sparkly nails today. I'm going to start calling you Joe. Why? Oh. That's one of the sisters. I wish you wouldn't. No, it isn't the best nickname. What's up with you?

Well, my dad's in town. That's right. As you well know, because I am farmed Jim out to Vince. Thank God for Vince Averol because I couldn't. I was like, I'm going to have to have my dad come to the studio while we record for two hours. Yeah. And we're going to be in a little room yelling fuck.

And my dad's going to be sitting outside with his arms crossed. And he'll be like, no, I'm fine here. Oh, it's fine. He's going to sit because his hip is weird or whatever. Yeah. You do that or try to wrangle him and do an Uber by himself. Never. Right.

Couldn't do it. Yeah. Couldn't do it. My sister had him take an Uber to a fireman's lunch recently because she's like, do you not drive to a fireman's lunch where all you do is drink? And but we were both so worried. We're like, what if it's a really low car? Yeah.

He can't get into and out of a low car. Plus is he just going to get into a stranger's car? No. He's going to need to see his ID. I don't know, my dad drives an Uber and I don't even think he can know how to order and get into and take a ride from an Uber. Of his own car. It was like, if it was, if he calls one, he won't get it.

I was actually just telling him how proud I am that he is the kind of person that at least tries to operate in the modern world. Yeah. Because I said, and he said this to me because we, of course, we immediately start talking about politics and the way things are because it makes me very happy that my dad is not a Republican. So lucky. And I'm sorry to brag at you.

I wish you would keep. I just, I have hope still. But I said part of it must be the intense fear. People who grew up without computers at all. It's younger people can't imagine it. But like my parents, people, baby boomers, most people of that age, it's not just liberals. They want to use the word liberals to say that's the enemy or that's who's ruining everything. What they're really scared of is technology because they don't understand it and they

don't interact with it that much. And when they trust it, yeah, they, yeah, when they do, it's like, oh, everyone's coming to get your thing, lock your door and buy this flag. You know, that's like what their media, what they turn to for comfort is. And so it's just like, I'm like, dad, it's just the idea that you just have that iPhone text us and you try to do things is like the whole, the spirit of all of it is just like, get in there a little bit. Look, you're old, but you're still doing shit.

That's all we're saying. Just live in the fucking real world. You're basically one of the golden girls. Just click off like you told your children so many years before, turn off that TV set, get away from the pipeline that says you're, you should be in fear of the other person. Right. But don't go overboard like Marty and like go full-fledged into Instagram. I feel like when I was 16 and first got on the internet and was in chat rooms and shit

and I know my dad would have fucking broken my neck if he had known that I was just talking to strangers. Just whoever. Yeah. And just take all comers. Yeah. Yeah. Cause now he's 16.

On the internet. That's right. 60 year olds are 16. Hence all the emojis he sends me. Oh my God. What's his number one emoji from Marty? I thought you were going to say what's his number, his phone number. Can I call Marty?

He'll do a lot of cars like I'm headed over car or like I'm headed over to your car in a car to your house emoji or you know, like it's like a thumbs up emoji. Oh, that's good. Yeah. I don't know how it is. I feel like, I feel like the emoji use, I think I told you this when my sister first started using emojis, it made me laugh so hard because it is the opposite of her personality. It's like this super cutesy.

So she'd be like, she'd be like, call me dummy. And then it'd be like puppy, rainbow laughing and crying random ones. Yes. You know your sister. She'll hit six of them. She does when there's a really cute like Elvis drawing on the internet. She'll send it to me. Oh, look at this.

It's very sweet. It makes me happy. You know what it is? She is a lurker of our whole situation. She enjoys it, but she isn't going to enjoy it to our faces. Right. That's not how she does it. No, but it's sweet.

I think she can be a little sweeter to me in that way because we don't have just decades of bad history, huge scars, long, you know, ugly scars. Yeah. That's right. Speaking of, thank you for allowing it. Teach me. Well, try it with my sister sometime and then we'll talk. Lee and I have great conversations when I see her at your parties and stuff.

I like her. Yeah. She's her personality is more like yours than mine. Actually. Yeah. That's weird. Okay. Switchy.

Switchy. There's a new MFM animation that's up by Nick Terry. So good. It's a simple one of the cello. It is the cutest. It's so cute. Funniest. I mean, I thought the Mothman.

The Mothman is the best one to date, I think. It's so good and those sunglasses are so hilarious. I have the sunglasses. I have a bat costume and I have a plan for Halloween. Yes, girl. Check my Instagram. It's going up. Girl.

I'm not, no more, let's say no more, but it makes me so happy that like as a kid playing cello, the humiliation I went through for it, like paid off. There's four reasons that this sad girl played cello. We're scooping up all the childhood sadnesses and traumas and we're processing them and allowing our listeners to process for us. It's a real nice favorite y'all are doing. You guys are helping. You're helpers.

Look for yourselves. When he made you so tiny next to that cello, and then I go, that's not about me. It's so good. So cute. Nick Terry, thank you so much. You really enhanced the podcast. Yes. It's so exciting to come upon those and also to be able to show people like, I got to show

my friend who is from Wisconsin, the Dairy Queen cheese wheel parade one that is so hilarious and I can't even explain how it's hilarious and I would never replay her dream. Yes. It's insanity. And none of us, I don't think either of us would play the podcast where people would be like, well, let's be funny. But it's almost like, look, this is what we mean when we say it and he came into our brains almost like, I got this and you don't even have to worry about it or be talented

artistically. God bless you, Nick Terry. God bless you. God bless you to all the murdering makers who draw just the cutest shit right now. What about the one that is like a whole treasure is amazing thing going on for you. The other one that I loved was really simple. It looked like a children's book and it was I posted that blue. Oh my God.

I think there's this inktober is a thing and I think the word of the week is treasure. And so all you feel are dry. I know. Amazing. It's cute. We are lucky lucky. Thanks you guys. Thanks guys.

Very talented out there. Speaking of not speaking of you know me by now. My favorite weekend, November 1st and 2nd and Santa Barbara. The packages are sold out, but there's single tickets to the show. So you don't even have to come see us. You can go see Murder Squad or the Percast. Pick the show you want and go see it. Or can we announce that we're doing a live show with Io Tilly Wright, our special guest?

Sure. We're so excited. We're allowed to. We are. I mean, we are doing that. Yeah. It's basically like in conversation with yeah, it's kind of and we're gonna make him talk about how he made Billy Balls and apparently there's gonna be some pictures never before

seen content from the show that Georgia was so obsessed with. The Ballad of Billy Balls. You guys haven't listened to it yet on the podcast platforms. Yes. Get out there and listen because it's a really beautifully well done true crime, but also almost just like family deep dive. Yeah. It's such a good podcast.

It is and we're a huge fans of his and we're gonna this hopefully is the first of many collabs we do with him. Yeah. So go to myfavorweekend.com to get tickets. If you're an LA drive up, if you're in San Francisco, drive down. Yes. Okay. Get that wrong.

I always drive up to places. If you're in Reno, drive south-east. Across. Yes. Just west, west, west. You know where you are and which way it is. We don't have to tell you. Do we have to tell you how to get to Santa Barbara?

Because we're gonna give you the wrong directions. Yeah. We're not the people. And then of course we have the fan cult and we're doing special videos every week on Fan Cult Friday where we post some weird talking head of all of us videos. Yeah. Someone doing something. Karen is about to read my moon.

Your moon cards. Okay. Yes. I keep on calling them Luna cards but I realize that's because of Luna bars. Oh, right. They're not affiliated. You're gonna watch us eat Luna bars on this video. Oh, it takes forever.

We chew. So much chew. It doesn't go away. And there's also exclusive merch which I think is really cool. And then also you're gonna be able to buy gift memberships for your friends and family. In the fan cult store. So there's an exclusive fan cult store that you can only shop in if you're part of the fan cult.

But you can see it all at myfavorimurder.com. You can shop it and look at it from outside. Whatever you want in the car. Decide. And then you go, this is worth 40 bucks. Yeah. A year. A year.

A year. Break it down. All we charge you normally is your heart and soul and deep devotion. And sometimes sleep. Sleep. A little touch of sleep and maybe your feeling of security while you sit in your apartment by yourself. But still.

You should look your door. Other than that, it's a fan cult. It roughly turns out to about a quarter a day. That's right. The same as a cup of coffee. I made it all up. Hold on. Can I just talk really quick about a story that was in the news recently?

Please. And many, many people sent this to us on Twitter. I wasn't there. Okay. So last week, well, October 15th, this story broke. There was a Dutch family who were found in a secret room in their farmhouse. And they had been waiting for the end of time for nine years. No, that's too long.

Yeah. It's a really long time to wait in a small room under a set of stairs like Harry goddamn Potter. They just stayed there? Yeah. So here's the story. In this, it's, let's just say Drenthe. Okay.

But. Or Drenthe. That's right. Yeah. It could be anything. It could be Trenta. Yeah. Like at Starbucks.

The order, the size that everyone's afraid to order. Only the bolds get a Trenta. So that basically a guy shows up in a local bar in this city that only, or town, I should say, because it only has 3,000 people in it. And he rolls up to this bar and this bartender says a guy came in, ordered five beers and drank them and they started talking. Old. Right.

He told me my type. And the bartender said he had to chat with them and he told them this story that may immediately made him call the police. And the story was that the guy had long hair, a dirty beard. He had old clothes on and he looked very confused. He said he had never been to school. He hadn't seen a barber in nine years and that he and his sisters and brothers lived on this farm.

He was the oldest and he wanted to end the way they were living. So when the police went to the farmhouse, they discovered a hidden staircase behind a cupboard in the living room that led down to a secret room. Oh my God. Where this family of, I believe, six people were being held. There's some unbreakable Kimmy Schitt stuff. Isn't it? Kimmy Schmitt shit.

Schmitt shit is what it is. The quote that Stephen pointed out to me, which is Larry says the mailman, the local postman said he'd never delivered a letter to that address. And then he went, it's actually pretty strange now that I come to think about it. I mean, this story just shows you really more than anything else. The power of beer at the end of the day, the thing that'll get you out of fucking hibernation is beer. I mean, I'm such a believer, but sometimes coffee works too.

Yeah. Coffee is great. But, you know, if you've been say, if you've been in a cupboard for nine years, you go down and take a walk down, maybe share your story and your haircut with someone nearby that runs a place that has a phone. Tell your barber or tell your bartender. Yeah. They'll listen.

They will. And they'll keep those secrets if need be. Or just call 911 or call 911 if need be. If need be. I think when people create the end of the world when they're hiding from it. I know. I know. That's sad.

It is a sad story. It's a sad story. But we all, every day, creating the end of the world, we need to get out of the cupboard of your apocalypse. Karen. Shabbat. That is so good. It's true, right?

You can kind of do that to any statement anyone makes. But aren't we all? And then just love them. But I love the apocalypse. Like, that's a good friend of mine. Yeah. Well, the apocalypse is great because it's that idea that there is going to be this very succinct end to all of our pain.

Impending doom. But there's not going to be. Actually, it's just regular life. Yeah. So we're going to buck up and get out of your apocalypse cupboard, please get a haircut, get a trim, yeah, and fucking get a couple beers in you and live your life. And if you can't afford to go to the barber slash hairdresser right now or don't drink, which is fine.

You can. Yeah. So here's your options. You can go to the bartender and drink. You can stay home and cut your own hair drunk. That's how I used to do it. You can also do that sober. I've done that recently.

Very bad idea. Cut your own hair sober. Yeah. That's right. I just thought I was trimming a couple of ends. You just cut your hair. Yeah. I love that feeling.

It is fun. Because you shouldn't do it. No, you shouldn't. But what if it's great this time? Yeah. What if this time it's the best haircut you've ever had? What if this time it solves all those other problems I have? Right.

Just by putting scissors to the hair is my idea. And not haircut scissors, which I still have a pair from when I went to beauty school and I was 18, those ones that I continue to use on your bangs, because they're real sharp. Well, not for 20, not for the last 20 fucking years, they're 20 years old. So you use dull, old hair cutter scissors. Student hair cutter scissors. Do they have a little pinky holder on this? Yeah, they do.

Yeah, that's classy. That's classy. It's good to pretend like you know what you're doing, but that's about it. True. This. Oh, sorry. I know what you were going to talk about. What?

Lizzo. I wasn't, but that's let's talk about her. We went to Lizzo. We saw Lizzo live. That's right. Steven was there. Steven was there. And Vince was there.

And the Palladium, Steven was there. And Vince was there. Brandy Posey was there. Yeah. Solomon Giorgio was there. That's right. All our friends in the LA community. Yeah.

And it was, it was enlightening. It was empowering. Her voice is humongous. It's not like, you know, sometimes you're like, this is trendy or this is popular because of this, that or the other thing. You're wrong if you think that about Lizzo. Because Lizzo's voice is 10 times huger than anyone's I've ever seen. It is operatic.

And then the fucking songs are such they're all anthems or ballads. Yeah. And they're fucking hits. They're all hits. And then her fucking team of rad women dancers of every possible shape and proportion. It's just the best feeling. Look, I bought a shirt. I never buy a shirt.

I'm going to yoke that motherfucker and I'm going to wear it with pride. We got merch. We, we worked that show because it was like, we got there. Oh, I want to apologize. The one girl that came up and talked to us, I was a little, let's say bewildered because she was screaming. Was she? I think I was just really loud in there.

Well, I took it as screaming at me. So I was a little bit like, uh-oh, what's what is happening? And then George was like, do you want to take a picture? Like her, I took from the look on your face of like, no, no, this is a person that's trying that I was like, oh yeah, hi. She was trying to talk to me, but it was just the volume was up in a way that I don't like in public. So it took me a while.

So sorry to that person. Yeah. Do you remember? Was her name Stephanie? I bet you're right, but I'm so bad. You know, I'm so bad. I'm just digging into the random pile. She was a doll.

So I feel like it must have just been a fluke. It was pure excitement and like when, when we hugged her to take the picture, she was shaking. So it wasn't, she was not, it's just when you approach, you can't come at screaming. I will think it's an emergency. I'm not used to this. It's weird. So if you have your hands over your face and you're screaming, I'm going to think there's

some like there's blood coming down my head and I just didn't see the thing fall. What if the one time you don't, there actually is blood coming down your, so like you just have to keep doing it. And also we need to develop a signal. Yeah. And you have a head injury. Right. The girl's not screaming cause she wants, she wants to say hi.

Anyway, did that ruin our Lizzo story? The point is, if, if Lizzo's coming to your town and you don't buy a ticket, you're an absolute fool. It was unbelievable. I was like to a point where, and I don't listen to music ever. I was like, I need to listen to this CD, is CD store the CD player in my car? No, you sure don't. I need to listen to this.

Yes. My car's from 2015. Are you sure? Yeah. Oh, maybe it does. Okay. Yeah. Burn yourself a CD at the public library.

No, I want to pay for it. Oh, okay. I want Lizzo to have my CD money. Where? At the warehouse. The warehouse. Sam Goody. No, every song, every song off of, it's juice, right?

Yeah. Her newest album. Every. Cause I love you. Cause I love you. Cause I love you. Stephen, what was your favorite tune at the, what was your favorite number at the big concert? I mean, the title track just was so good.

Oh. And like. Yeah. Just. And also I forget what the name of the song was where everyone pulled out their phones as like the like lighters. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

It just, yeah. I felt like the crowd was all in it together. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like those people get, they either read on the internet what other people do, or they were there like Friday night as we were at the Sunday night show. Yeah. It was just incredible.

Stephen, I feel so embarrassed. I accidentally, when I was hug, went to hug your sweet girlfriend, Brenna, I grazed her boob so hard for her in a really weird lingering way, cause I couldn't get away cause I went to hug her and I think she went to hug Karen first. So my hand was just kind of in between. We were all in a weird square and I just was just like, if I move it now, it's going to be weird. If I yank my hand, you know, so please apologize to her for me.

She's very sweet. And I did not mean to feel her up. She's never going to make us pumpkin bread again cause Georgia. No, it's over. I sold her. Shit. Looking for a better cooking routine with meal planning, shopping and prepping handled. Hello Fresh has you covered.

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slash murder20 and use code murder20. Goodbye. Hey, I'm Mike Corey, the host of Wondery's podcast against the odds. In our next season, three mask men hijack a school bus full of children in the sleepy farm town of Chautchilla, California. They bury the children and their bus driver deep underground, planning to hold them for ransom. Local police and the FBI marshal a search effort, but the trail quickly runs dry.

As the air supply for the trapped children dwindles, a pair of unlikely heroes emerges. Follow against the odds wherever you get your podcast. You can listen ad free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. Okay, so this story I'm doing this week, I got the idea from the hometown I read last week that revealed a Sacramento murder series that I had forgotten all about. I love it. I want to know more about this one. I mean, I did too.

It is fucking horrible. And I think I wonder if it was one of those things where I looked at it and went absolutely not, I won't do it because it is so 70s and it's so Sacramento and it's so awful. It's Gerald and Charlene Gallego, the sex slave killers. Oh dear. Horrible. The sources, Wikipedia of course and Murderpedia, which is the murder version of Wikipedia. Always a good source.

Always a good source and please support them if you have extra money, especially if you read a lot of those articles because they aggregate a lot of murder articles for us all. There's a lot of people talking about this on Reddit, a lot of goss on Reddit about these stories and people who had kind of like secondhand, my uncle got into the car, which I really, really wanted to put into this, but don't think it's the best idea because who the hell knows who's on the internet. But Marty, Marty, get off. There's an article on the CBS 13 Sacramento website that had great information.

There's also a San Francisco Chronicle article by Joan Ryan from 1997 and two women, I'm sorry, people, I don't know if they're women, two people named Kelsey Inscow and Tina Galt Felt of the Radford University Psychology Department. They wrote a comprehensive chronology, it was a dream chronology of these, of what happened in this murder series that I was, it made me, I wish I had one for every time I told the story, then I would feel like I knew what was going on. So thank you guys for that work and posting it online. Okay, so let's get into it.

On September 11th, 1978, two teenage friends, 17-year-old Rhonda Shuffler and 16-year-old Kippy Vaught, they're shopping at Sacramento's Country Club Plaza Mall when a woman approaches them and asks if they want to come smoke pop with her. And because it's 1978, the girls say yes. It's a woman and it's a woman, yeah, the assumption that everyone would make, especially teen girls. So they follow the woman out to her 1973 White Dodge van. When the woman opens the van door, the girls find themselves face to face with a man holding

a 25 caliber pistol. He tells them to get in, he forces them to lie on their stomachs and he binds their hands and feet with tape. He then hops into the driver's seat and the woman gets into the passenger side. They get onto the I-80 and they head northeast for about an hour. They exit the freeway in a little town called Baxter. Once there, they find a secluded location. The man takes the teen girls out of the van and rapes both of them, then puts them back

into the van. They drive to another remote location. He knocks them both unconscious with a tire iron and then shoots both of them once in the back of the head execution style and leaves their bodies where they are. So two days later on September 13th, two migrant farm workers discover Ronda and Kippy's bodies, but it would take several years and eight more victims until authorities discover the identities of the killers, husband and wife, serial rapist and killers, Gerald and Charlene Galego.

Oh my God. Yeah. Okay. So let's talk about him first, Gerald Armand Galego. He was born July 17th, 1946 in Sacramento. He's a son of two career criminals. So he'd never met his father, who was Gerald Albert Galego, basically Gerald Sr., who was doing time in San Quentin when Jerry Jr. was born.

Gerald Sr. would spend the rest of his life in and out of jail. And in 1955, he had the honor of being the first person put to death in Mississippi's brand new gas chamber for murdering two policemen. So that's his dad, who he never knew. He's raised by his mother Lorraine, who's a sex worker on Sacramento's Skid Row. So not a great childhood. He spent most of it running errands for pimps and being abused by his mother and her many boyfriends.

He was a very neglected child, very needy, always unwashed, really sad, very sad. And he starts committing crimes and getting in trouble with the law when he's six years old. Totally fucking shit. Yeah. So in 1959, when he's 13, he's arrested for raping a six-year-old neighbor. Oh my God. So after that, they place him in what they called back then a boy's school, which was

just juvie. He's paroled in July of 1961. Almost immediately, he's arrested for armed robbery. He's sentenced to another stint in the juvenile detention center. He escapes, then he turns himself in, serves about a year, and is paroled again in 1963. So now he's the ripe old age of 16, and he marries his first wife, who's 21. What the fuck? I'm sure it was just because he had no family and no home life.

So he probably got out of jail and was just like, someone hold me. So in April of 1964, basically a year later, his wife gives birth to a daughter, Krista, and then pretty soon after they get divorced. And somehow, even though he's constantly getting arrested and going to jail, Gerald manages to get custody of his daughter, and he sends her to live with his mother, the old sex worker. So just to give a little idea. By 1977, Gerald's 31 years old, he's been arrested at least 23 times, and he's been married and divorced five times, just live in life out there to the lowest limit.

And it is at this age 31, when he meets his sixth and most evil wife in a dingy poker club, her name was Charlene Adele Williams. So Charlene Williams is born October 10th, 1956. She's 10 years younger than him in Stockton, California, raised by her parents, Charles and Mercedes in Arden Park, which is a kind of upper middle class neighborhood in Sacramento. Her father is a hardworking executive for a grocery store chain who worked his way up from being a butcher all the way up the chain into the boardroom. And Mercedes is a stay at home mom.

So Charlene's an only child, very shy, apparently very smart. They reported her RQ to be 160. Wow. So by all accounts, she should have had a good life. Yep. She's also a talented violinist. You enjoy that with your string instruments. It's kind of my thing, right?

All that changes in high school though, because that's when her quote unquote rebellious streak takes over. She starts drinking and doing drugs, particularly cocaine. It's the early 70s. I can't imagine anybody wasn't doing tons of drugs. Yeah. But I feel like if you have that streak of like, you go, like it's all or nothing. Yes.

Like there's some people who can dabble and get out of it and then there's some people who are just like for whatever reason, whether it's nature or nurture or just fucking go all in. Yeah. I relate. Well, and also I feel like if she really was kind of a genius, maybe she's bored. Yeah. Yeah.

Bored and maybe a little bit stifled. Who knows? Sorry. I keep throwing words at you. No, you can. She was stifled by her life because she's probably smarter than what she can, the choices she has to live up to. Yeah.

Maybe. Maybe there's a little bit of being a psychopath in there because we don't know for sure. But there's always that thing too of like, live in like, there's kind of no boundaries, less sensitivity, more of like, who cares, I'm just going to do what I want. Yeah. But who knows? We've never seen any of her paperwork, so we don't know. Okay.

She barely graduates from high school and she fails out of college. Hi. I can relate. Me too. Same, sirs. She also dives into two very brief marriages and is twice divorced by the time she's 20. Wow. 20.

20. And that's when she meets Gerald. So it's September, 1977, 31-year-old Gerald and 19-year-old Charlene are introduced by an acquaintance and they meet for the first time at, again, what I called a seedy poker bar in Sacramento. I tried so hard to find out what bar they're talking about because I love the idea. I hope it doesn't exist. You mean like what it was called?

Yes. The alibi room. Yeah, exactly. I'd be like, we used to go there all the time. It's not that seedy. They have free popcorn. Charlene would later claim her first impression of Gerald was that he was a, quote, very nice clean-cut fellow who didn't even try to kiss her when they said good night at the end

of their first date. But the next day he sent her a dozen roses with a card that reads to a very sweet girl. So this is the beginning of a truly psychotic love affair. Week later, they move in together, red flags all around. According to Charlene, Gerald's demeanor immediately changes. He becomes very controlling. He takes her money and her valuables. He tells her what to wear.

He openly cheats on her. She's both afraid of him and excited by him. And he begins, so at first they have their, obviously their sex life is very passionate and they're both really into it, but then it gets into a lot of, I guess, SMM or BDSM or whatever, which then it starts to go out past what she's comfortable with. It's past her control. This is according to her. Almost all the information that's like editorial like that is according to her, which should

be questioned because this is just like the Carla Homoco situation where it's the person who gets the plea deal that gets to have their say. And we don't really know who was making the decisions or who was in charge. But essentially, when Gerald starts having problems keeping an erection during sex, he blames her and starts beating her for it. When Gerald's 32nd birthday, July 17th, 1978, Charlene gets pregnant with his baby. He's not happy. He later makes her get an abortion.

And then one day in July of 1978, he brings home a teenage girl for a threesome. He directs the women not to touch each other, but to only touch him. So the next day, he comes home to find Charlene having sex with the girl. What the fuck? Yes. He throws the girl out. There was one website that actually said he threw the girl out the window. What the fuck?

But that was only on one website. So I don't know. Somebody could have been having, going crazy as they wrote up their stuff. But he basically gets rid of the girl and then he and Charlene have a fight. And they apparently had infamous fights. Neighbors had to call cops all the time on them. So it wasn't like everything was going great because they were indulging in all this crazy shit.

These plans to basically get very sexually experimental weren't solving their marital problems. Wait, what? No, I know. Hear me out. What am I going to do? That's my plan to fall back on one day. Here's a mask with a zipper for a mouth.

This will solve everything. I got it from American Horror Story season six. Okay, according to Charlene, so after basically she gets caught having this tryst, this is the fight that sparks the conversation that leads to the couple agreeing that they need sex slaves. Okay. All right. I don't see the through line there, but I mean, that's her story.

So they make the plan that they're going to go out, drive around, lure teen girls into their van, kidnap and rape them. Yes, they decide that together. So they enact this plan on September 11th, which was the day that Charlene lures Rhonda and Kippy into the van. Wow, that was their first experience. Yeah. Oh my God.

Yeah. I mean, aside from, he clearly had no problem because he was used to doing crimes and he had done all kinds of stuff before, but yeah, this was as far as we know the first time she ever participated in it. Two weeks after that on September 27th, Gerald's daughter Krista, who is I believe 14 or 15, files charges against her father for incest, sodomy, oral copulation and unlawful intercourse. It turns out Gerald Gallego had been raping his daughter since she was six years old. Yeah.

So Charlene steals her, this is her solution, she steals her cousin's birth certificate. So the Gerald can travel under the alias Stephen Field and three days later on November 30th, they leave town, they go to Reno, they get married and then they flee to Houston to get to escape the charges. But they came back eight months later, June 24th, 1979 and they drive up to Reno and there they abduct 14-year-old Brenda Judd and 13-year-old Sandra Colley. That's insane. It's so young.

It's so young. They go to the Washoe County Fair in Reno and basically troll around and find these two girls who are in junior high and they do it the same way that they did with their first victims this time only. They offer to pay Brenda and Sandra money to help them put flyers on cars in the fair parking lot. So these girls thought they were getting a job and probably like, oh, we can make money, we can go into the fair and buy that thing we wanted.

But of course, Charlene walks the girls over to the van to get the flyers and at the van Gerald pulls a gun on the girls, forces them to get into the van at gunpoint. He rapes them. He beats both of the girls to death with a hammer and a shovel and then leaves their bodies in the Nevada desert. Holy fuck. Yeah. So in December of 1979, they moved back to Sacramento, but they're still using the name

feel as the alias. So Gerald gets work as a bartender and he has an affair with a woman named Patty. So this is just the kind of stuff that was like open and they're basically posing as other people now. April 24th, 1980, Gerald wakes up and tells Charlene he wants a girl. So they drive to the sunrise mall in Sacramento and they see two 17-year-old girls named Karen Twigs and Stacy Redican and they're leaving a bookstore in the mall. That would be the last time those two girls were seen alive.

And then two months later, on June 7th, 1980, Gerald and Charlene again out trolling for victims, spot a woman hitchhiking alone. This 21-year-old Linda Aguilar and she is four months pregnant. She sees that she's being offered a ride from a couple. So presumably she thought it was safe to go with them. Her raped and beaten body would be found over two weeks later on June 22nd. On July 17th, 1980, the Galego spot 34-year-old Virginia Mochal and she's walking in the parking lot of the West Sacramento Tavern where she's a bartender and actually the couple knows

Virginia socially. They had met her before, but they still decide to make her a victim. And they kidnap her at gunpoint. It's all the same. And Virginia Mochal's skeletal remains would be found three months later outside of Clarksburg, which is about 20 minutes south of Sacramento. So it's basically this pattern that they have now where it's basically grab girls by gunpoint and then basically drive them out of town and rape and murder them and then just kind

of let it... No one is tracking any of it. It's a spree and no one... Yeah. On July 27th, 1980, the brutalized bodies of Stacey Redican and Karen Twiggs are both found in shallow graves in a remote part of Limerick Canyon, Nevada. Both of their hands had been bound with macrame rope and their cause of death for both girls was multiple blows to the head with a hammer-like weapon.

So later on, they would actually find pictures in Gerald Golegos's possession of him with like friends in that same canyon, like when they finally start putting it all together and get the evidence that he and Charlene are responsible for these murders. It's like they're basically just taking these girls to places that they've been to and that they already knew. Yeah. And so a couple months later in the early morning hours of November 2nd, 1980, Gerald and Charlene are once again cruising the mall.

It's like so heartbreaking too because that was like right when the mall was getting to be like the place you have to go as a teenager and just knowing that there are these monsters that are just circling outside. It feels like it was so like regular, but the 70s and 80s mall kidnappings, I'm just like morbidly fascinated by because it's just such an innocence lost kind of thing. Yeah. Because there was also a lot of stuff that was built in and around malls. You'd have like, there'd be like an arcade, there was always a trap cage for them.

Yes. It's for kids to hang out. It's for kids after high school to shop and be around other kids and stuff. So it's like the second they built those things, they should have like, and this is the security plan for keeping the creeps away. Predators everywhere. But yeah, that was before. It was before.

It was before. Okay. So they're out cruising this mall looking for their next victim. When they see 22-year-old Craig Miller and his fiance, 21-year-old Mary Elizabeth Sowers, they've just left a frat party that was actually, it was like a dance that was held in the mall's arcade. So they had just walked outside, their friends were behind them. When the van pulls up and Gerald gets out of the van, pulls the gun on this young couple

and tells them to get into the van. So Craig and Mary's friends walk out of the arcade right as they're watching their friends get into this white van and they don't know why. And they got the license plate number. Holy shit. Jay looked through our emails and we have a listener named Lauren M and she is the daughter of these friends who saw the van and she wrote us in a hometown. So here it is.

Oh my God. Okay. It just starts high. Between the years of 1978 and 1980, the sex slave murderers were terrorizing Sacramento. They would abduct young girls, usually in groups of two or three, into their van and rape and murder them. Their bodies were found with many bullet wounds, usually in a remote field. My mom was a freshman college student at Sacramento State at the time and recalls being terrified

to leave her dorm room. My dad was a junior and president of his fraternity. At this point, eight murders had taken place and my parents recall that the buzz around town was to be cautious of anyone with a white van as it was the only real eyewitness info that the police had gotten. So on November 1st, 1980, my dad's fraternity was holding a formal in an arcade that was attached to the local mall. As my mom and dad were leaving with their friends Craig Miller and Mary Elizabeth Sowers

to go home, my parents announced that they had used the restroom, so Craig and Mary waited outside the arcade while my parents went back into pee. When my mom and dad came back outside, Craig and Mary were stepping into a white van. My dad asked Craig if everything was all right and if they knew who the men and women around the van were, Craig responded everything was okay and just to get out of here. My dad thought it was odd as Craig seemed harsh and upset, which wasn't his usual attitude. Both my parents left and three days later, the bodies of both Craig and Mary were found near a local lake.

They had no clothes on, both had been raped and shot. My dad wrote down the license plate number of the van they were getting into that night. Thank God. Amazing. That license plate number was how they found the killers. Their names are Gerald Gallego and Charlene Williams. Gallego's father was the first man put to death by a gas chamber in the state of Mississippi and then she wrote, I guess, Murder Runs in the Family.

And Gallego was only 13 when he first raped a six-year-old girl. The couple were looking for the perfect sex slave to hold hostage. My dad had to testify in court and Gallego was sentenced to death in the gas chamber. Spoiler alert. His wife and accomplice turned on him to get a lesson sentence. He died of cancer and she's been released. She claims... What?

Yeah, get ready. She claims that... We'll get to that part later. Okay. The couple's death wrecked both of my parents. They never talk about it as they place a lot of blame on themselves. I find murder fascinating, so I try to ask questions, but both of my parents are very, very sensitive when the topic is brought up.

But... Yeah. He claims the years following were some of the darkest in his life as the trial and sentencing were dragged on and on and he was forced to relive that night many times. My mom has expressed that she thinks of that night almost every day. If my parents hadn't gone to the bathroom, who knows what would have happened. They could have been taken as well or maybe Craig and Mary would still be alive. It looks to me like they would have been taken as well and they would have been dead.

And then she just writes, thanks for letting me share the story, Lauren M. Isn't that unbelievable? Unbelievable. Unbelievable. That's crap. Yeah. Crazy. It's crazy.

Okay. So essentially, because of Lauren's parents, very smart people who were very sensitive to what was actually happening and not going like, oh, all right, see you later. They were like, this isn't right. It feels wrong. I'm writing this down. Because of them and them only, the police were able to track down the Galegos' get their address and they end up arresting Gerald at a Western Union office and he was there

trying to pick up money that Charlene's parents had just wired to them. So Charlene is also arrested and after she's questioned by the police for hours, she finally breaks and agrees to tell authorities everything in exchange for a plea deal as it always goes. So Gerald Galegos' trial lasts six months. He's found guilty of the murders of Craig Miller and Mary Sowers and on June 21, 1983, he's sentenced to death by the gas chamber at San Quentin. June 1984, he has to go to Nevada for the kidnapping and murder of Karen Twiggs and Stacy Redican and there the jury takes just four hours to find him guilty and also sentence

him to death. And because of her plea deal in November of 1983, Charlene is sentenced to 16 years and eight months in prison. It's just not long enough. It's not. In 1991, Nevada goes to release her on good behavior six years early but authorities in California find out and inform her attorney that if they or maybe they inform the, I actually assume that it was the attorney but now that I'm reading it out loud, they could have just

called Nevada directly but they basically said if you release her, we'll just arrest her on other charges and make her serve the rest of her sentence in California. So she ended up staying in Nevada and serving her full sentence there. She claimed that she wanted to stay in Nevada because she turned on Gerald. He told her he was going to kill her and that he had connections in the California prison system and she was afraid to go to California. Fuck her. Yeah.

So Charlene Gallego moved back to Sacramento after she got out of jail and continues to live there now under the name Mary Martinez. Oh my God. And since her release in 1997, she's given interviews about the crimes that she and Gerald committed. She claims that she was suffering from battered woman syndrome and that Gerald forced her into being his accomplice. She's quoted as saying, there were victims who died and there were victims who lived.

It's taken me a hell of a long time to realize I'm one of the ones who lived. Here's a problem. No one fucking lived. There weren't any victims who lived. Here's the other problem. It's a real big issue with psychopaths to make everything sad for them. That person, it seems to me, the people who actually suffer from battered women's syndrome and are roped into these horrible relationships, they don't come out talking about how sad

it is for them because they understand and live in this terrible guilt. They talk about how much they didn't want to do these things and how horrible these things are. And how sorry they are and how horrible it is. Leading with the I'm a victim is not the way to go, is not smart. And it's not a good indicator of what's actually happening in her mind. Neither is this. So apparently she gave birth to Gerald's son while she was in prison.

And that son would grow up and later join the army and he ended up dying in Afghanistan. So when Charlene got out of jail, she started a charity called Gold Country for the Troops. And she said it was for raising money to support friends and families of veterans. But since that interview where she was interviewed, it's been looked into and that charity has reportedly turned out to be a scam. Oh, shit. Yeah. On July 18th, 2002, Gerald Gallego died of cancer in Eli State Prison in Nevada at the

age of 55. And that is the just another horrifying Sacramento story. This time it's the sex slave murderers, Gerald and Charlene Gallego. Fuck, Sacramento. Fuck. I never knew that Sacramento is this hotbed. Sacramento is the Pacific Northwest of California. It is.

It really is. It is. Why is that? Because it's so fucking hot? Well, I think, you know, if we had to go line by line, I bet you there's just as many super fucked up things in San Francisco and way more fucked up things in Los Angeles. But I think it's because in that area, it's a little bit like country, farmland, bucolic. It seems like it's small town, even though it's the capital, but the murders that come

out of there seem to be, to quote, law and order, especially heinous, so special victims unit. It's always like the fucking, the vampire killer. It's always the irons, the guy that rapes women for years and just keeps getting what it's like deeply nightmarish up there. For some reason. I'm fucking so hot. It is so hot to compound everything.

It's hot to keep your windows open at night. It's so hot that during the day, the asphalt melts and you can just smell it. Oh my God. Melting. Holy shit. Get high at them. Fucking fumes. I did my best.

I was all down near the ground all the time. You did great, Karen. Guys, what is that, a penny? Karen, you did great. Thank you. I'm proud of you for graduating. Thank you. From Sacramento.

Oh, bad news, I didn't graduate. No, no, no. Just leaving it. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. I got my master's in Sacramento. Master's in getting the fuck out of Sacramento.

Mm-hmm. All right. Well, that was horrible. Thank you. You're welcome. But great job. Thank you. This story, it started on the weekend when Vince and I got home from going out and just

we're watching Unsolved Mysteries. This episode I'd never seen came up and I was like, ooh, and like looked it up and then it brought me to a blog post about it at none other than True Crime Diary by Michelle McNamara. She had written about it. Yes. So I was like, okay. And it's like rabbit-holy and brings you down, down, down. Yeah.

And did it give you massive chills to be like, what's this click and then? And it kind of was like, it kind of justified this story for me. I was like, well, Michelle McNamara thought this was cool enough to dedicate a blog post to it. Then I can talk about it. And we've talked about Michelle and her writing and everything a lot on the show. But truly, if you've never read her blog, True Crime Diary, do yourself a favor. If you're going to get lost on any True Crime website anywhere, her writing is so beautiful.

She makes you, I feel like I know so many like cold cases by heart because of the way she wrote about them. Yeah. And these little ones too. I mean, she just, she's so smart. And I fall asleep to her book almost every night. So it just feels like part of my world now. So when I found out about this, that she had covered this, I was like, great.

I also got a lot of information from a article in the Chinook Observer by Natalie St. John. There was a Cairo 7 article or K-I-R-O 7 article. I don't know. Oh yeah. K-I-R-O. You mean out of Chinook? I love those guys. That news is good.

Yeah. That's right. All the news you need to know. News. All the news you need to... Newsing. Newses. The Unsolved Mysteries fandoms, the Unsolved Mysteries fandom site and also Unresolved

Podcasts is in an episode and they ever write a page about it as well. So this is the story of hitman Gary Krueger. Oh. Okay. And a lot of this, most of this takes place in and around the Seattle area. Okay. So let's start with the Unsolved Mysteries episode and what got me interested in the first place.

Mike Emmert is a prosperous Seattle area real estate agent in the early 2000s. He and his wife are, who's also a real estate agent, are partners, her name's Mary Beth. They seem to have the perfect life. He's this hardworking, straight-laced dude. He's one of the areas most well liked and well regarded realtors. He had won Realtor of the Year. He's like fucking aces, you know? On January 4th, 2001, Mike is scheduled to meet up with a prospective home buyer.

A man Mike had told Mary Beth was named Steven. Okay. Steven. Steven, what did you do? Steven cut yourself out of the story. He had shown him houses before. So Mike had told Mary Beth that Steven was in his 50s, walked with a limp, carried a cane, spoke in an East Coast accent and claimed to have been relocating from Northern California.

And he, Mike said he was a little bit of a weirdo. Okay. So Mike and Steven met at a local mall to head to the house around 11.30 a.m. on January 4th, 2001, which is where to begin with. And their laws have changed because of this case that you can't meet at a second, like first location and then go to the house. Oh, okay. Because it's sketchy.

So they go to the house, it's located in Woodinville, a suburb of Seattle that's like upscale. Sorry, can I ask a question really quick? Is that because it throws people off that he was going to the mall, but actually he was going to the house? Is it like basically because they need to say, it may get official, we're both meeting at this house and other people need to know about it? Actually, I think now they meet at the office and then go to the house together. Many people see this person's face and it's not.

And there's like background checks on the people who are looking at the houses now because of this case. So like there's a whole protocol now that wasn't in place back then. So they go to the house, it's like a kind of upscale house on a private lot far away from the neighboring houses, like outside Seattle, you know, how beautiful and woodsy it is and shit, yeah. So cut to 2.30 in the afternoon, same day, the house's owner who's selling the house comes home from work to have lunch.

She goes in the house and finds the front door of the house, a jar, she's like, fuck. When she goes inside, she hears the sound of running water upstairs. And as if she's in a fucking horror movie, she goes up to check what it is. No, no. Uh-huh. No. I'm sure she walked up the stairs slowly. How about you call that neighbor that's six foot five.

Yeah. Slowly saying hello. Is anyone there? Is anyone here? Is anyone here? And then she finds a trail of blood. And guess what? She follows it.

No, no. No, those aren't crumbs. No. Do not follow trails of blood. She follows it to the bathroom where she find Mike Amert's body. Oh, God. He slumped across the bathtub, the shower head and both faucets are running so they're like overflowing.

And Mike had been stabbed 19 times. Oh, my God. So police surmise that the murder took planning and experience because it seems like thought out. They believe the house was chosen because it was far away from the others. They also believe that the Steven person may have been a hired killer. And his limp and cane were a ruse. Oh, yeah.

Especially because the scene suggested that Amert, who was himself a large fit man, had been attacked in an upstairs bedroom and then dragged across the hall into the bathroom. So someone with a lot of strength had to have done that. And also who knew how to like get people under control, probably. Right. Or maybe he was like he had hit him first or something. So they also believe that the shower was left running so that the killer could get rid of and trace evidence on Mike's body, et cetera, and they also think that maybe the cane was

the weft like what had a knife hidden inside of it. Yeah. Because he was stabbed with like a long knife. It wasn't just like a kitchen knife. Right. So like oh. Oh, God. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Horrible. Mike's diamond ring and expensive watch had been stolen from his body and his black catalogue escalated and taken and later found abandoned in a nearby shopping center. His cell phone and wallet were found in Seattle placed on top of a pay phone at the docks for anyone to find like they wanted someone to find those things. So Kings County Sheriff's Investigators conducted this like crazy search into Mike's background to see who the fuck would want to have him killed.

They look into his friends, family, his co-workers, they dig deep into his life, interview hundreds of people. They clear his wife Mary Beth and all of Mike's co-workers and they can't find anyone who have wanted him dead. He's totally fucking clean. So all signs though based on this hit, so all signs though based on the murder point to a professional hit man but no one can figure out why or who would want Mike dead. The case is featured on Unsolved Mysteries like I said but unfortunately it might not

have gotten a ton of views or tips because it aired on September 12th, 2001. Oh no. Guys, take a couple of weeks off. I mean, but this, how many things like that happen? Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. Isn't that amazing?

Yeah. Just like no one was watching that show. Yeah. And that must have been so frustrating for his fucking, his widow who was like maybe this will help the case. They did have one thing though which they kept a secret that was traces of DNA were found under Emirates fingernails because he fucking fought. It's almost like he knew he was going to die and like wanted to get evidence.

Yeah. And a drop of blood believed to be from the killer was discovered in Emirates abandoned Cadillac Escalade. They ran the DNA but didn't get a hit. That is until the DNA of Mike's killer matches DNA found at the scene of an attempted home invasion 10 years later. Oh shit. Let's go there.

Okay. On the night of March 26, 2010 in the driveway of an upscale home on Lake Washington around 10.30 p.m., the homeowner, Dr. Craig McAllister, he's an orthopedic surgeon, he and his 20-year-old son who was visiting from college pull up to their house and they park on the street because there is like a pile of mulch in the driveway. So they walk up the driveway and as they get near the house, a man wearing a ski mask and dressed in all black, uh-huh, uh-huh, rises up from behind the pile of mulch. Oh my God.

Yeah. Awful. Awful. Yes. So the guy says, just relax. He indicates in a convoiced that he had a gun and if they cooperate, no one will get hurt. Um, but Craig McAllister, this fucking doctor, he's super smart because he quickly is like,

okay, uh, if this was a normal burglary, the mask dude would have left as soon as we got, like he saw us if this was normal. Plus, so Craig is like, I'm outside with my 20-year-old son, but inside the house is my wife and 13-year-old daughter. Oh fuck. And he's like, there's no fucking way they're getting in the house. And he, so he's like, let's fucking do this and he lunges at the mask dude, tackles one with the ground.

They start fucking fighting. Yes. The mask dude starts zapping McAllister with fucking stun gun. Holy shit. But McAllister still gets the upper hand. Yes. He's fucking fighting despite all of this shit. Hell yes.

Because orthopedics, surgeons don't mess around. Put that on your bumper sticker immediately. They will fix your fucking carpal tunnel and they will fight off a masked intruder. That's fucking right. Thank you. Thank you, orthopedic surgeons. Yes. But then another fucking dude in the ski mask jumps out from the side of the house, comes

up and fucking pistol whips Dr. McAllister from behind. What? And he goes down. So at this point, the son had fucking taken off to call 911 from a neighbor's house, but the pair of intruders don't take off. They fucking go to the house and start furiously trying to kick the door, front door in. To the house where the son went? No.

To their house. To McAllister's house. Son takes off. They're not like, oh shit, we better get out of here. They're like, let's keep fucking going. We're going inside. We're going inside. Jesus.

Trying to kick down the door. McAllister's wife, she's like, what's that noise? Oh lady. I know. Opens the door and then she sees a ski masked man and she quickly shuts and bolts the door though. Like these two are fucking, what's that one? Home Alone?

I don't know, the family of super heroes. Oh, the Incredibles? Yes. They're the Incredibles. They are the Incredibles. She dead bolts. I thought you were shitting on the big masked men. No, they're total dipshit.

They kind of are. She dead bolts the door and calls the police, but by the time the police arrived, the two attackers are finally fucking gone, but badass McAllister had ripped one of their ski masks off during the struggle and found DNA inside that ski mask. They run it through the fucking system and it gets a hit. It matches a convicted felon named John Allen Bradshaw. So he's a 65-year-old man. Can you imagine your dad being a home invasion robber?

Not at all. Unless that home left all the lights on. And Budweiser in the fridge. And they'd be like, turn that off, turn that off. Oh, I am. I mean, all of a cold one. I'll clean the lint out of the dryer and I'm out of here. Pulls the mask up, drinks a beer, gets the hell out.

Lines all the lights up. Oh my God. Adjust the thermostat. I told my dad yesterday that I kept my thermostat at 70. I thought he was going to have a stroke at my dinner table. What's he gonna be? Hilarious. Did he came last night?

Yeah. Is it too cold for him? No, he just doesn't let, he goes, your air conditioner ran all night. I go, you can't hear me say something when I'm one foot away and the air conditioner kept you up all night. You son of. Let me ask you this, does he go for a nice jacuzzi? I bet he'd get in that jacuzzi, I've never even, you know, I've never turned that thing

on. I'm, I'm having a seizure. I can't. George's eyes just rolled all the way back in her head right now. You don't go in that thing every fucking night. I don't. You're gonna have to show me how to enjoy my life. We're switching houses.

Okay. That's it. We're gonna freak you Friday, these houses. Okay. Where were we? It was tire. Okay. So they run the DNA.

Yes. 65 year old man. 65 year old man, obviously really unusual for a burglar and especially a home invasion robber. Yeah. His record, he does have a record, but it's not for burglary. He had spent time in federal prison on arson and federal money laundering charges. Who is this guy?

Who is he? Who is he? Bradshaw was nowhere to be found. They can't fucking find this dude, but his, but once they find his identity, they're able to figure out who his partner in crime was. See the wife of an associate of Bradshaw's had found a missing person's report a week after the home invasion on her husband named Gary Krueger. Okay.

Let's talk about Gary. Okay. Gary Krueger was a 62 year old husband and father, another oldie but goody, but batty. This is, yeah, really, this is like one of those Morgan Freeman movies where he's like, I'm retired, but I'm gonna get into bank robbing. Yeah. The bucket list of bank robbery. The bucket list of in Las Vegas where we're gonna like, come on guys.

It's the bucket list for felons. Yeah. So this guy, Gary Krueger is a former Marine and also a former Seattle police officer. Uh-oh. Say what? So he's born and raised in the Seattle area. He was a Navy cadet in high school. He joined the Marines, goes to Vietnam in 1967.

He was part of a combined action group, which is an elite team of Marines and Navy corpsmen. I promised myself, I wouldn't say corpsmen. Corpsmen, good. Which I always do. Great job not saying that. Thank you. Who lived in remote villages, they did humanitarian and Psyops work. Oh, whatever the fuck that means.

That means you've seen some shit. Yeah. You've been, you've caused some shit. You've seen some shit. That's right. Yeah. You come back, not the same. Yeah.

And then in the Tet Offensive, he turned 20 on the sixth day of the Tet Offensive. Oh, 20. Babies. Oh. Babies. He witnessed the death of many friends, including a handful from his hometown who he convinced to go with him to Vietnam. He was like, come on fellas, we're going to be heroes.

And they all like, most of them died. I mean, but that, that's the story of Vietnam is that almost all those kids were either drafted against their will or they were like, we got to do what's right. Right. We got to help people. Right. And then some to go with him. So I think he was a little bit broken from that.

Surely. He was honorably discharged in January 1969 and joined the Seattle Police Department. It seems that he had gone from being a normal team when he left for Vietnam into a man with a violent temper and PTSD when he returned. Of course. Right. Of course. But, you know, they didn't all fucking kill people.

So. No, you're right. Not making excuses, but the PTSD piece, I was actually just listening to this amazing book called the body keeps the score, which I will find the author of after because I don't want to totally derail you, but it was, it's a guy who does a lot of trauma work as a doctor, a psychiatrist, I believe in psychologist who does a lot of trauma work. And he started by working with, he's one of the first people to work through veterans affairs in the VA office with soldiers who later they would realize had PTSD.

But at the time, it was just people who were like, I'm trying to live my life, but these nightmares, right? Like I have nightmares. I wake up screaming. I have an like a violent temper and all this stuff and it is because everything they went through was unprocessed and our culture at the time was like, be a man and keep your mouth shut. Just drink.

Yeah. They didn't acknowledge it at all. It's horrifying. I don't read that for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So he was praised for his kindness, courtesy and professionalism when he was a beat cop, but he then had a few violent and questionable run-ins.

So in April 1970, he used a wrestling hold to restrain a, quote, violent and unmanageable vet who was threatening hospital staff and the man died as a result of the hold. Yeah. But they kind of swept it under the rug. In 1974, a man claimed that Kruger and his partner badly beat him in a parking garage and Seattle PD paid this victim $3,000 as like compensation to pay him off. Right. In 1977, Kruger, then 29, was sitting in his patrol car when a prowling suspect named

Roger Lee Stanley, who was 31, allegedly lunged into the car through the driver's side window and tried to stab him with a large kitchen knife. Kruger was able to pull his revolver out and fatally shot this man's four times. Oh. Yeah. A jury deemed the killing justified, but after the shooting, Kruger's health, career and marriage fucking collapse. Horrifying.

That's right. I feel like juries almost always have that finding though, especially back then. Which isn't, isn't to say it's not true. We really don't know what any of it means. Yeah. Yeah. But it's hard to not feel like there is a bias about those stories and how they come out.

Right. Yeah. In 1979, a PCP user tried to shoot Kruger with his own gun. He brutally beat the man, only stopping because other officers showed up. He was removed from active duty and referred to a psychologist and a friend actually took all his guns for safekeeping at the time as well. That's good. Yeah.

People were worried about him. Yeah. In early 1980, he left the police force on a disability retirement, but it's a rumor that he'd become a liability to the force and had been forced to retire. So he's like in his 30s and retired from the police force on disability. Well, also, I feel like I understand the logic of it, you're in the military and then a police job would seem to you have the training for and the experience to do that, except for... It's like doubling down on all that.

Yeah. Yeah. You have this terrible PTSD and suddenly it's like high stress situations all day. Yeah. You're in combat still. Yeah. In your mind. Yeah.

So he simply took a bank robbery. Oh. Oh. Okay. He was convicted multiple times and he was in and out of jail when his DNA was put into the system and matched the DNA found at the Mike Emert murder all the way into in 2010 once the ski mask was pulled off. Oh my God.

So it wasn't until then that they fucking put it together that it was him. I think that Mike Emert's wife was really upset that they hadn't run the DNA sooner. I'll tell you why. Because they're like, great. So we know who this Stephen guy with the limp is finally. It's not Stephen Ray Morris. Right. Phew.

Finally. And let's get him and put the puzzle pieces together, but no. The plot thickens. Oh. See, in September 2011, about a year and a half after the attempted home invasion, Gary Kruger's body was found floating in Lake Washington. Oh. Found nearby, nose down at the bottom of the lake was a nine foot aluminum skiff that

had been stolen from the McAllister's neighborhood the night of the crime. Is this skiff a boat? Skiff is a boat. Little boat? Apparently. Okay. So essentially, they're trying to make a getaway from the McAllister, Dr. McAllister fucking thing.

Got it. They steal a skiff boat and they get onto Lake Washington and they crash and drown and he dies. Whoa. And it isn't for like another year and a half that they find his body floating in there. Oh, my God. Okay. You were right when you said it gets weirder.

Yeah. Inside the boat was a duffel bag with plastic hand restraints, duct tape and extra ammo. So it looks as though Gary died in an accident trying to flee the home invasion. Okay. But they're able to tie his DNA back to fucking 10 years ago, Mike Emert's weird fucking bath to murder in this house for sale. Right. And they're like, let's put these fucking pieces like why this guy must be a hit man.

Right. And they put these pieces together. They're able to connect Kruger to at least two other murders and surmise that he'd become a hit man. Oh, my God. It's hard to say exactly what the murders motives all were, but real estate seems to be a through line in many of the cases. After he'd retired from the police force for a really quick time, he'd become a real estate

agent. Mike Emert was a realer, one of Kruger's other alleged victims was a real estate attorney whose name's Jim Berry. Okay. On February 7th, 1984, Jim Berry, who specialized in real estate and fraudulent bankruptcy cases is found in his office by his wife at 3am. He shot five times and stabbed 11. This is eight in 1984.

His wallet, watch and jeweler are missing and detectives always believe that Berry was no random homicide victim and believe that the motive on this may have been revenge. You see, Mr. Berry worked for the Rainier Bank at the time and Gary Kruger had some outstanding loans at that bank. They put this together until much fucking later. There was some direct correspondence from Mr. Berry's office to the Kruger home that he needed to pay those bills, so they think that maybe Gary was just pissed off about those loans.

So he might have just been a hit man for fucking for himself. Oh, my God. Is that a thing? Well, I mean, yeah, if you, if you, if he could have been doing it for other people and then it was just like, but I'll also take care of what I want to take care of. It seems like he had kind of no rules at that point in his life. Yeah. So another one was that of Mario Vacarino, who was the leader of both Seattle's local

eight and the International Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union. And so he was trying to unionize these people who didn't want to fucking be unionized. Around the time of his death, he was super outspoken. He was leading protests on downtown Seattle hotels and food establishments, pressuring owners to accept unions, and there were rumors that he was cooperating with a federal organized crime investigation. Oh, wow. So on the morning of Friday, October 25th, 1985, Vacarino's badly beaten body was found

floating face down in his bathtub, his clothes and a bathrobe still on and water running. His car was driven away from the crime scene and dumped in a public parking lot. And his wallet is prominently left for anyone to find at a local strip club called My Place. Same pattern. Same fucking pattern. There's also Parmesan cheese sprinkled over the victim as if it were some sort of calling card for mob hit or a rat. So I think he was just trying to lead investigators elsewhere.

Toward the mafia or some sort of union issue. Yeah. But really, so the case is cold for the next 27 years. Investigators thinking it was a mob hit, but then it turned out that a longtime friend of Gary Krueger mentioned to him that Vacarino was going to fire him. They realized that there's a connection between Gary Krueger and a friend of his. And so he maybe just killed the guy because his friend was going to get fired. There's a DNA hit in 2011 that proved the connection.

Oh, my God. So he's like a bet like Charles Bronson gone a ride. He's doing things for vengeance. But not with justice in mind just for self-serving purposes. Exactly. Oh, my God. There's this other one. This is a case like True Crime Diary where Michelle brought it up as she never finished

investigating, but she said maybe it's connected to this murder and it is of Thomas C. Wales. He was an assistant United States attorney in Seattle and a gun control advocate. He was the victim of an unsolved murder that has been characterized as an assassination. On the evening of October 11, 2001, he is sitting at his computer in his queen and home office basement and there's a window there. Again, men enters the backyard, avoids the security lights, and as he sits in his basement desk working or an open window, the murderer shot multiple times through the window hitting Wales in the neck.

Oh, my God. The killer left shell casings behind. The shots were heard by a neighbor who called 911. And because he was a federal prosecutor and actually the only U.S. federal prosecutor in history to become a victim of assassination, like this case is fucking huge. An airplane pilot that Wales had prosecuted was investigated and his home searched, but he wasn't charged. The airline pilot, and he was also a firearm, this guy was also a firearms enthusiast, but

agents believe that he resented. So Gary Krueger has no known links to Wales, but there is a link to this other dude that he had done shit with, Bradshaw. He had been prosecuted by the Seattle office of the Department of Justice. And in 2001, Bradshaw, who was one of the home invasion robber guys, had pleaded guilty to federal money laundering charges and was sentenced to eight years in prison. So it's possible it was another fucking vengeance murder. That's right.

Wow. So he was penalized in federal fraud cases, which included money laundering. So it's possible that he was connected to that. Other murders, another suspected murder is a victim is ex-cop and gas station owner Terry Dolan, who in 1981 was shot in what appeared to be a stage robbery at his gas station. And Snohomish County, mother of five, Cheryl Gross, who according to her husband, Tom Gross, ran off, you know, how mother of fives like to do. From the hotel, from the hotel they were staying at in 1991, the woman's husband was suspected

of being involved, but had an alibi for the night she vanished. And it turns out that Gary Krueger was a good friend of the husband and was even the best man at her and Tom Gross's wedding. Oh, no. But I'm not sure where that case stands today. So it's so hard to find motives. And I think people are really upset that they can't find a motive for the Mike Emmerit murder, the one in the very beginning of the story, where they hits was Gary Krueger acting as

some sort of dickhead vigilante. And as for the McAllister attack, the home invasion robbery attempt, at first investigators thought it was a botched, just a botched home invasion robbery, but they eventually learned that the real reason for the attack was that Dr. McAllister had refused to do Gary's wife's knee replacement surgery. You got to be fucking kidding me. So he was taking revenge. And maybe he was trying to break into the house to attack the wife, to like get back

it, you know, the doctor somehow. That's insane. Like he was trying really hard to get into the house. Like he was after the wife. Wow. I know. I mean, that's... Not so.

It's nuts. They've also been investigating the murder of Mike Emmerit. Nothing has been found leaking him to Krueger, to him, any of his friends or family. There's no known reason why he brutally murdered this guy. But it sounds like it could be like he cut in front of him in line at the grocery store. Or smirked at him. Right. Yeah.

Maybe he... just something happened and we have no idea what it is. He cut him off in traffic. Exactly. I mean, like that... It sounds like the kind of thing where it's... He never took care of his PTSD or any of the temper problems. And probably instead of doing anything about them, let it grow and take over. So then suddenly you're just this... just an exposed nerve that God forbid anybody come

anywhere near you. Crosses you. Yeah. You have a fucking sword in it. Dude. So, Gary Krueger's body was recovered in Lake Washington, as I said. So he's dead. John Bradshaw's body was not discovered.

Oh. And some investigators believe he drowned with Krueger that night. The McAllister family, the family of the home invasion robbery, were so fucking afraid that he was still alive that they hired sonar body recovery specialists to find Bradshaw's body in the lake. Nothing was found. Oh my God. I still don't know the reason why Mike Emert was targeted.

And that is the story of the hitman Gary Krueger. Wow. They're fucking... That was like seven stories. Scorsese murder. I mean... It was a total Scorsese. It was a Scorsese story or some shit.

It was. So, basically, it cut... because it also could have been that the guy that got away murdered Gary. Ooh. In the boat. You're right. Tom Tim made it seem like there they go and then whatever, I don't know, what if they had money?

What if they had done something else? Well, they were bank robbers. The thing too is that the people who said that their skiff boat skiff was robbed saw only one set of footprints next to their house where the boat was robbed from. Because Jesus was holding another guy? Sorry. I had to. You had to.

It was like... What choice do I have? It was there for you. At this point. So, sorry. That means one set of prints toward the boat? Like one person stole the boat, which means the other one skedaddled or was dead. Okay.

He could have killed the guy who's still missing in a way that no one found. Oh, carried him and... He could have gone down the river. I don't know. How bodies work. Do you like connector rivers? Ocean. You know what?

Let's not us try to solve this. Let's not us. But it could be, how sad for Mary Beth that it could be that someone, you know, there could be some real estate agent who like was pissed off that this guy was fucking beating him in real estate, what? Yes. In the real estate world. Contest.

When they have those contests. Yeah. And then basically hired some dude. Or did it? Or was like, this motherfucker keeps beating me and the guy was like taking it into his own hands. Oh my God. It's so fucked up.

That's nuts. Yeah. So, thanks, thanks on self mysteries and thank you so much to True Crime Diary as always. Yep. Wow. Yeah. Amazing. That was great.

Thanks. Do you know what your fucking hooray this week is going to be? Well, it was going to be that, the Lizzo concert. Kind of. I can't remember how much I've told you of this already and Stephen, forgive. But I went to a gynecology appointment for the first time in I think like six years. Karen. No, I know.

Karen Marie. Karen Marie Kilgarov. It's the, it goes under the, it's the same as the other one where when I'm scared myself into thinking I might have breast cancer. Don't deal with it. Don't avoid medical stuff. No. Even if you're broke and I understand that's a, I don't even want to get into that territory

because God forbid we all know it's so difficult. It's very difficult to afford insurance. Nobody can get a job that will cover insurance because everyone's fucking scamming people. We've all been broke but there are affordable resources that you can find in your city. There are clinics. There are free clinics. There are places that people have set up because of this exact situation. Please make sure you go and get your stuff taken care of.

I mean, I went to Planned Parenthood up until a couple years ago because I just didn't have the money to, to afford even, I had insurance and I still couldn't afford the copay and shit. That's right. So yeah, it's just. God bless Planned Parenthood. Please donate to them. If you do have money and you're not on the, this side of the discussion, you're, if you're

on the other side, sitting pretty, go ahead and go give $100 to Planned Parenthood. Please. But all that is to be said is I finally did it because, because I had to. And the doctor that I went to was a Canadian miracle. She was an older lady. She had her hair up in a bun. She looked like a model for a cookie package and yet hip, cool, non-judgmental. Not only, yeah, non-judgmental, very much like what, what birth control do you need,

what this, do you need, what that, where I was like, oh, this is the way it's supposed to be done. Like no shame, no whatever. And at one point told me I had an absolutely perfect cervix. Karen. Thank you. Now I wouldn't have known that, Steven. I wouldn't have known that if I hadn't gone.

This is absolutely actionable. My point is when I keep things in my head as this is a problem, I don't want to do it. This isn't a negative. And then I don't do that. When I finally am forced to, it always turns out that I go, I should have done this five years ago. So please learn from my weird fear-based decision making and just go do it and take care of it because you also don't realize, I don't realize how many amazing, talented

people there are out there to help me. I don't believe that is true and I have to keep proving it to myself over and over. I don't have to do it by myself. I don't have to hold things by myself and there are people who study and make it their life's work because they know how hard it is to be like, Hey, guess what? Not only are you glad you're here and you put your feet up in some stirrups, which is very uncomfortable, but everything looks great and you should like go walking around with the pride of a perfect cervix.

You should use your cervix picture as your new profile because it's so fucking perfect. I'm going to put it right up there and just be like, What's up? I'm on, I'm on Tinder. Disgusting. No, you're not. Stephen, here's why you're not allowed to sue us. We've given you everything. Stephen, we give you everything and then you get a little extra.

It's not our fault. I hope you don't cut any of that out just because it's, you're going to need it in the court case someday and I would never deprive you of that because I care about you. Because that's how much we've given you. That's how much we care. We'll give you evidence against us. Well, I guess along those lines for me too, and I feel like I've said this, I feel like in the podcast history, I've said this many times and it's because I guess in the past

year, oh God, almost exactly a year ago, my therapist killed herself. So I found another new therapist and this one, I think it's our old therapist. And I love him so much and he's really helping me. He told me to write a letter to her, which I don't do and I'm such a fucking, I don't do homework in therapy, but it's a good idea. So I got another new therapist and that's my fucking array. That's great. Like the third or fourth time.

Well, it's hard. I was thinking about that the other day, selfishly because my therapist is on a month vacation and right when I was getting real, I was kind of getting almost upset about it. And I was just like, how about you hold on because things are worse, there's worse things in the world. That's all I want is acknowledgement. A little bit perspective. No, it's a horrible, I mean, just all around so much pain, all around so difficult.

It's just so hard to, but it's been almost exactly a year since it happened. So go bless him and I think about her all the time. But I'm so glad it's working. Thank you. Thank you for having me talk about it. Of course. Of course. Send us your fucking arrays, comment on our Instagram of your fucking array.

Like what's the great thing in your life right now? Yeah, it's good. It's good for us to hear other ones so then we can think of the ones that we need to be saying because it's real hard sometimes to think of positive things, positive things and things that don't absolutely traumatize Steven. That's true. Give us non-actionable fucking arrays, please. And also stay sexy.

And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, you want a cookie?