The fourth death
One year and one week after she’d killed her third child, Martha crushed eleven-year-old Jennyann into the mattress. Again, her motive was to regain contact with her former husband. This must have been a terrible death as a child of this age will fight for some time to draw breath. When her daughter went limp, Martha called her upstairs neighbour to say that the girl had stopped breathing and had wet the bed.
The neighbour found Jennyann face down on the bed clad in a t-shirt and dry briefs, apparently lifeless. She found Martha’s demeanour odd, not that of a bereaved mother - especially a mother who had now lost all four of her children in a five year period. Instead, she was matter of fact and calm.
The police were also surprised at her lack of emotion and the paramedics were very suspicious of her child’s death. Martha explained that Jennyann had fallen off a climbing frame a few days previously and had consequently had a brace fitted in hospital and that this had caused her to have breathing difficulties. The reality was that Martha had taken her daughter to the hospital complaining that she was having difficulty breathing. (She’d set up a similar alibi prior to killing one of her other children.) But when hospital workers examined and X-rayed the child they’d found nothing wrong.
Hours later, whilst conducting his investigation into Jennyann’s death, Lieutenant Roberts realised that the woman was totally obsessed with getting back her estranged husband. When the subject of the deaths was brought up, she asked him, ‘If I were two people and this other person did hurt the kids, would I go to jail?’ He replied that she would.
Later, at the funeral, she was overheard to remark that though Jennyann was dead, Earl her husband was back home. This time the police feared homicide and ordered an autopsy. It showed that the girl had probably died of asphyxia. The crime lab strongly suspected homicide but just didn’t have any proof. As a consequence, they didn’t file charges against the now childfree Martha, who now went in search of husband number four.
Martha’s fourth marriage
Soon she married Charles Eugene Johnson and went to live at Locust Grove, south of Atlanta. She was physically unable to have any more children but told relatives that she still thought of the four who had died, especially at their birthdays and at Christmas. She seems to have blocked out the truth of what she’d done to them. She added that she looked at photographs of them all the time.
She made friends with lots of the neighbourhood kids and took a job in the local convenience store. When asked to explain the deaths of all four of her children she said ‘I think it was just bad luck.’
Reopening the case
But Martha’s own luck was beginning to run out. At the end of 1988, seven whole years later, an investigative reporter in Atlanta found a medical report on Jennyann’s death which admitted the death was suspicious. The newspaper, The Atlanta Journal & Constitution, made the findings public and as a result the autopsy details were looked at again.
The police now brought in FBI agent John Douglas and other specialists from Quantico to examine the case. The chances of a woman losing all four of her children to natural causes was deemed highly unlikely, and it was recognised that the deaths of the two-year-old and the eleven-year-old could hardly be attributed to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome as they were no longer infants. Various child protection workers, law enforcement personnel and Earl Bowen’s lover, Stanley, also voiced their very strong concerns.
The arrest
In the summer of 1989 Martha Ann Johnson, now aged thirty-four, was arrested for murder. Sergeant Kenneth Stewart spent time sitting with her and helping her to dry her tears. Unknown to the accused, he had a video camera set up, hidden inside a box on a nearby shelf. Martha’s confession was therefore taped without her knowledge, something that her defense would object to at her subsequent trial.
On the tape she confessed to suffocating Jennyann and James as a way of getting back at her husband after they’d argued. Her actual words to the police were ‘… I was just in a rage. I was mad. It hurt.’ Of the suffocation, she explained ‘I took Jennyann to bed with me and laid on her so she could not breathe. When she stopped moving I knew it was over with.’ At another juncture she said ‘I just hated him (Earl Bowen) so much for what he put me through.’ But she denied killing the two children actually fathered by him.
Sergeant Stewart had had the children’s graves bugged in case she apologised out loud for killing them, but she was always accompanied by relatives on her visits to the gravesides. Indeed, one of her aunts would speak in her defence at court. Though Johnson’s defense would criticise the sergeant’s tactics in going through Martha’s garbage to ascertain more about her lifestyle, he would later receive a citation of merit for helping break the case.
The taped confession would remain a bone of contention throughout the trial for her defence would claim that it was meaningless. They said their vulnerable client was easily manipulated and would say almost anything under pressure. Martha herself would claim that she lied about causing the deaths in order to go home.
Her fourth husband clearly loved her and believed in her innocence. He promised that he’d look after her so she was let out on bail with the provision that she not be left alone with any child under the age of twelve.
The trial
In court she retracted her guilty statement, saying ‘They had me convinced that I did it,’ and later ‘I didn’t really understand. I was nervous and upset.’
But her original confession was played in court and the tape showed that she was aware of exactly what she’d done and she was heard saying that she was so sorry, that ‘I knew over the years I did wrong.’ She explained on the tape that suffocating the children with her weight was the only way she could think of to get her husband to come back.
Hearing the tape, she cried - possibly because her earlier statement helped prove that she was guilty. Towards the end of the tape she wept that she was afraid to go to jail.
On the last day of the five day trial she collapsed and had to see a doctor. She wept again that she hadn’t harmed her kids. The jury - eight women and four men - didn’t believe her and she was convicted of smothering eleven-year-old Jennyann. Though police, medical personnel and the fathers of the murdered children were in no doubt about her guilt, her fourth husband and some of her relatives continued to believe in her innocence.
Several sources suggest Martha was sentenced to the death penalty but in fact she was given a life sentence, which she immediately began serving at the Georgia Women’s Correctional Institute in Hardwick. The District Attorney would later be criticised by a defense attorney in another case for not seeking the death penalty for both Martha and another woman due to gender bias.
Update
Martha Johnson largely disappears from the public record after her sentencing, only occasionally mentioned in articles about child killers. She cannot have any more offspring - and didn’t ever harm a stranger’s child - so presumably won’t be a danger to anyone if she is ever released. The public still largely refuses to believe that some women kill their children though there have been many such high profile cases over the years, such as Alice Crimmins, Susan Smith, Waneta Hoyt, Marybeth Tinning, Diane Downs and Paula Simms.
5 Slave to love
The confused priorities of Charlene Gallego
Charlene Adelle Williams was born near Sacramento, California, in October 1956. Her father, Charles (known as Chuck) had started off as a butcher and worked his way up to being the vice president of a supermarket chain. He was a respected entrepreneur who had to wine and dine clients as part of his job. His wife, Mercedes, acted as his hostess and the pair of them regularly travelled as part of their business life.
Sometimes little Charlene would travel with them and at other times she’d stay with her maternal grandparents whom she loved dearly. She’d wear the beautiful floaty dresses with ribbons that her doting father bought her. She’d dance and sing and be his fairytale ideal of a little girl.
Charlene’s father thought that young women shouldn’t swear or be unladylike. He believed that good manners were important. Little Charlene more than lived up to his expectations - she was good at every one of her school subjects and was a regular attendee at her local church.
Mercedes was a small slim woman and Charlene was equally tiny. But despite her frail appearance her mother had a very brisk and no-nonsense approach to life.
Charlene remained shy until she reached fourth grade and found that she had a talent for playing the violin. It was a passion that would stay with her. She excelled in the school orchestra and also found the confidence to get involved behind the scenes in various drama club activities. Chuck was proud of Charlene’s musical skills and bought her a very expensive violin. Soon it rarely left her side. Later she’d talk of becoming a professional musician, but her mother didn’t think this was a suitable career for her daughter so Charlene started to think about following her father into the supermarket business instead.
Then Mercedes was involved in a car accident and badly hurt her back. After that, she didn’t want to travel very often. The schoolgirl Charlene, dressed like a princess as usual, took over the hostessing tasks. She’d travel in light planes and in boats with her father to meet his clients, most of whom would praise this intelligent and well spoken young girl. In return she was given lots of presents - especially dresses, which she adored. Charlene began to find that she could make friends with men and alienate women - but this suited her as she had always been a Daddy’s girl. She was to remain her wealthy parents only child.
But there was clearly trouble in paradise for by puberty Charlene had started experimenting with drugs. By fourteen she was drinking heavily, getting by on a potent mix of Qualudes and gin. Her school kept wanting to expel her but her father intervened in her favour again and again. As her IQ was so exceptional, in the top one percent of the population, the school let her remain.
By now alternately quiet then boastful, she found it difficult to make or keep female friends. She also became very promiscuous but her parents were in denial that anything was wrong.
Two failed marriages
Charlene went to college but quickly tired of it. Still a teenager, she now decided to become a full time wife, perhaps emulating her mother. She promptly married a rich but 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 overdressed and 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 mother became 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. The submissive often indicates to the dominant party what he or she enjoys, so in a way it’s the submissive that’s in charge, the common term for this being ‘topping from below.’
Sexually submissive people are often very strong characters in their day to day lives - as, in many ways, Charlene was. She was running rings around everyone at work but, like many women, wanted a man in her bed who could take charge. Gerald Gallego, who hated women deep down, originally rose to the challenge. He appeared streetwise and very masterful.
Within a week of meeting, the new couple had rented a house and moved in together. Gerald soon moved beyond the flowers and chocolates stage of the relationship and Charlene accepted that he was more interested in his own sexual satisfaction than he was in hers. Like most serial killers who use sex to hurt and humiliate their partners, his preference was for anal sex then oral sex, with vaginal sex a very poor third. But she was fascinated by his machismo and was soon sharing in his illicit fantasies.
When they had been cohabitating for a few months Gerald brought home a sixteen-year-old dancer and they had a threesome together, but he made sure that the two women only touched him and not each other. The next day he returned early from work to find Charlene having sex with the girl. Enraged, he threw the dancer out of the, thankfully, open window and hit Charlene. He then withheld sex from her, saying that he had become impotent. In reality, it seems, he no longer found her attractive because she’d shown she wasn’t fully dependent on him for sexual kicks. Inadequate men like Gallego tend to choose very needy or very young
girls who they can overwhelmingly dominate and impress.
Gerald now sodomised his fourteen-year-old daughter and raped her friend - prior to this he had only had vaginal sex with the confused teenager. He did so with Charlene’s knowledge. It’s unclear if Charlene was in the room with them or just in the same apartment, but she evidently didn’t find anything immoral in Gerald’s paedophiliac act. The fact that she condoned the incest - and would later help him flee from the authorities when they were ready to charge him with it - suggests she had the lack of conscience found in the sociopath.
For the next few months Charlene worked at various jobs and Gerald, who was uneducated, worked in a bar. He made many tips because he was so attractive to women. Charlene suspected he was sleeping with many of his customers, as by now he was sexually disinterested in her.
When the couple had been together for a year, he said that he needed a pair of love slaves to turn him on, and asked her to procure them. Some sources suggest that she agreed because she saw the man’s word as law, that she wanted only to please him. But no one is completely self-effacing so it’s more likely that she wanted to satisfy her own strong lesbian desires and totally control a helplessly tied-up girl. Whatever her motivation, she agreed to lure teenage virgins to their certain deaths.
The first two victims
On 11th September 1978 she approached two teenage girls in a Sacramento shopping mall, suggesting they come with her to her Oldsmobile van to smoke some marijuana. Gerald, of course, was crouching in the back.
Women Who Kill: Profiles of Female Serial Killers Page 6