Customer Reviews

The Sex Slave Murders: The Horrifying True Story of America's First Husband-and-Wife Serial Killers

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

The Sex Slave Murders chronicles the crime spree of Gerald and Charlene Gallego. The couple is often referred to as America's first husband and wife serial killers. Flowers does an excellent job of laying out the troubled backgrounds of Gerald and Charlene, leading up to their eventual meeting, marriage, and killing spree. Charlene served as bait, luring young women, and then Gerald would attempt to live out his "sex slave" fantasy with the victims and ultimately kill them.

One of the strongest assets of the book is the attention given to the victims. Instead of just listing names and dates, Flowers takes time to outline what the victims and their lives were like. As a result, the reader will get to know the victims, thus, the true impact of the Gallego crimes is better felt and understood.

Although this book is non-fiction, it reads more like a novel. While Gerald's "sex slave" fantasy was central to the crimes the couple committed, the author does not exploit the fantasy by focusing on the nature of the heinous sexual acts. Instead the book explores the reasons behind the crime and the reasons why Charlene Gallego was a willing assistant in the crimes. Most importantly, the book highlights the lives that were cut short or forever changed as a result of the crimes committed by the Gallegos. While there were a few times in the book that I felt it jumped around and others where it was a bit repetitive, this book was excellent overall. R. Barri Flowers has done a tremendous job, and if you are looking for a true crime read this book should not be missed.

Reviewed by Stacey Seay

An animal with a fondness for cruelty, an animal with a lust for sexual torture, an animal with a penchant for murder...

And the woman who loves him, who willingly helps him, who lures his victims for him, who stands by while he tortures them, and who merely looks away when he executes them.

This is the bizarre and grotesque world of Gerry and Charlene Gallegos, who broke all the rules of pathological behavior by being the first husband-and-wife serial killers.

Through exhaustive research, intense interviews, and meticulous detective work, criminologist and sociologist R. Barri Flowers introduces you to two of the most odious sociopaths of our time. He takes you into their world, and explores their methodology, their histories, their motives, and their madness.

If you find the concept of sociopathy fascinating and compelling, read this book. It is a thorough study of two people together torturing and murdering eleven victims, but it is also a thorough study of a woman who assists her husband in his derangement, a petite, pretty young woman who willingly and expertly lures his youthful female victims for him... an unusual twist in the world of serial killers.

Here Flowers makes his first foray into the area of true crime writing, but certainly not into the world of authorship. His previous books include such studies as The Prostitution of Women and Girls, and The Adolescent Criminal: An Examination of Today's Juvenile Offender. He is currently working on his first novel, and is preparing an encyclopedia of serial killers.

As an avid fan of true crime and mystery books, I found The Sex Slave Murders by R. Barri Flowers to be amongst the top books I've read in each category. Certainly as a true crime tale, they don't get any scarier and the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction. It involves a murderous couple, Gerald and Charlene Gallego, who meet in California, then become involved in sex slave fantasies and serial murder.

I found myself hooked from the first page that talked about Gerald Gallego's father being a twice convicted murderer, who was executed -- implying a "bad seed" in his killer son. With Charlene, they may have fancied themselves some sort of modern day Clyde and Bonnie. In fact, I saw them only as brutal killers, whose murder spree took ten innocent lives before they were brought down.

The courtoom drama that turned the two killers gainst each other was riveting!

For any true crime fans who want a real page turner and a case unlike any other out there from start to finish, I greatly recommend The Sex Slave Murders!

I also read Flowers' mystery novels, Damning Evidence and When Night Falls. They were also great. I can't wait till his next true crime book comes out!

First of all, it was well written! Very exciting and interesting true story of a husband and wife on their "killing tour"! Once when started reading it, I couldn't put it down. If you wanna read a good book, this is the one!

I'm being extravagant in giving this book a 1 star rating and it's only because zero star isn't an option. It's almost never that I feel it necessary to write a review on any literature. However after reading "The Sex Slave Murders" I feel it important that other readers should pass this book up and read something more substantial even if that would include the back of toothpaste tubes. This isn't to say the R. Barri Flowers isn't a good crimnologist, but he should stick to what he knows best and it isn't writing. This book lacked reader's interest and will leave you feeling Mr. Flowers took a quick course in creative writing or had full intentions of boring the reader to tears. The book lacked substance and not once did I feel like the next page would be better because I knew it wouldn't be. Save your money for dental floss, more excitement in cleaning your teeth than to read this book that didn't even offer much in unfolding courtroom testimony to hold one's interest. YAWN.

As an attorney with 20 years criminal defense experience, I find myself drawn to true crime for the sense of professional and emotional catharsis it provides -- the bad guys always get caught and punished in the end. Consequently, I have read over two hundred of these accounts over the years and I regret to say that this book is the poorest example I've come across of what can otherwise be a spell-binding genre. Do yourself a favor and avoid this loosely researched, 'rough draft' account of what might have been a creditable read if more time and care had gone into its creation.

A frightening and strange true to life story...about a man and his sexual fantasies...a woman and her total submission to her husband...and how together they committed an unusual and brutal crime of sexual torture and murder...not once but over a period of time and involved several victims. The book presented the story with accurate details giving the readers a vivid description of the characters and their horrible crime. Truly gripping.

Hai (dont mind my English cause I'm from Holland)

I,m sorry I bought this book cause I dont think this is a very good one.
I was very irritated by the writer finding excuses all the time for the wife of Gallego.
It made me very angry.
She Charlene Gallego lured the innocent victims in a trap,(in the back of a van,asking them if they wanna smoke some marihuana) knowing what her husband was planning to do to them. and Mr Flowers is writing how quilty she felt and that she could not do anything else,had no other options!!
How does he know?
And then on the end of the book he suddenly changes his mind?
Dont buy this one. There are much better books than this one...

Sitting at Barnes and Noble bookstore I was rummaging through the True Crime book section, looking for a new book to read for a school book project. I came across "The Sex Slave Murders" by Flowers and decided it would do for my project.
Not only did this book just satisfy my criteria for school, it satisfied me as a reader. Normally, I am one to skip pages and not want to read, but I couldn't put the book down. From victim to victim I became more appalled by the Gallegos, but couldn't stop reading. I was so curious to see what would happen next.
Every other chapter Flowers wrote about a new victim, what happen to them, what the police think happened to them, and how Gerald and Charlene covered up their tracks. Flowers showed us back and forth the struggle Charlene had killing and helping her husband rape other women, afraid she would be the next victim if she didn't help.
I think Flowers did a great job getting into the heads of these criminal masterminds. I also enjoyed the fact that he go back and forth between trial and murder, that way I wasn't overwhelmed with their cruel acts all at once.
I give this book a 5 star. It kept me hanging on till the very end. I would recommend this to anyone, Flowers shows the world the sick and demented creatures that roam the streets like one of us. The Gallegos put fear into eleven victim's eyes, and I was able to see that through Flowers writing.

After reading this story, the only real reaction the book elicited from me was a shrug of the shoulders and a "meh" (tm Bart and Lisa Simpson). I am attributing this to a couple of factors. First, the chapters are very short, and the story jumps back and forth between the crimes and the trials of one of the main characters. While this can be an effective way to tell a story, it's not working for me in this book. The chapters are quite short, and at some points the story shifts back and forth with each chapter - this results in a very choppy flow (or lack thereof) to the story.

Second, the writer really seems to project a lot of Charlene's mental state into the book without any indication of where this is coming from. Did the author interview Charlene directly? Did he make assumptions based on the trial testimony she gave? Is he a mind reader? I find it a bit strange that he is continually writing declarative statements of how Charlene felt or of what Charlene was thinking without giving any context as to where this information was coming from.

All in all, I think the book did have one strong point, in that there was no lingering on the actual crimes - no graphic descriptions, no gratuitously gory descriptions of murder scenes. As another reviewer has said, the author also does a great job of humanizing the victims, rather than just making them names to add to the roll call of a body count. Overall, though, I just didn't feel like there was anything in the book that really grabbed my attention.