Convicted serial killer rebukes court-appointed attorneys

Tuesday, Sept. 21, 1999 | 10:38 a.m.

Before opening statements began Monday, Gallego complained that he wasn't being properly represented. Gallego has been miffed since visiting District Judge John McGroarty denied him permission to represent himself.

In addition to denying Gallego's motion to represent himself, McGroarty also rejected a second motion to fire Nevada State Public Defender Steven McGuire and Robert Dolan of the defender's Winnemucca regional office.

Gallego is suspected of killing 10 people. He was convicted in 1984 of the 1980 kidnap-slayings of two 17-year-old girls kidnapped from a mall in Citrus Heights, Calif. Karen Twiggs and Stacey Redican were found dead in a remote Pershing County canyon.

Gallego was sentenced to death for the murders by a Pershing County jury. During the trial, his former common-law wife, Charlene Williams, testified that he kidnapped the girls as part of a serial odyssey of slayings as he searched for the perfect sex slave.

The death penalty was overturned by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled that the sentence was invalid because it was wrongly suggested to jurors that Gallego - who also is under a death sentence in California - might eventually be paroled if he were spared execution.

The Nevada attorney general's office tried to appeal that ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, but a state mail room blunder kept the legal challenge from arriving at the high court until after the deadline.