Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
- Salt Lake police announced Thursday that they solved Christine Gallegos' 1985 murder using DNA evidence.
- Rickie Lee Stallworth was identified as the killer but died before facing charges.
- Gallegos' family expressed gratitude for closure, despite Stallworth's death preventing prosecution.
SALT LAKE CITY — On the 40th anniversary of the night 18-year-old Christine Gallegos disappeared and was later found murdered on a Salt Lake City street, police announced Thursday her cold-case homicide has been solved.
Salt Lake police detective Cordon Parks says an extensive investigation, which included DNA testing, points to Rickie Lee Stallworth.
"As a result, we've concluded that he is the killer of Christine Gallegos and we are closing the case," he announced during a news conference at the Salt Lake City Police Department. "Today, we can say with certainty that he was responsible for the death of Christine Gallegos. And we are officially announcing the closing of this case."
Stallworth will not face criminal charges, however, because he died of natural causes in 2023 at the age of 65, just a few months before he became a person of interest and could be questioned.
"Handcuffs do not equal healing. Unfortunately, in this case, we don't have a suspect to put handcuffs on or anyone to charge. But we hope our efforts just give some measure of justice to the victim, her family who is with us today, and their friends and people her loved her," said Steve O'Camb, with the State Bureau of Investigation, who handles all advanced DNA testing grants in the state and is an investigator for Utah's sexual assault kit initiative.
Among the members of Gallegos' family in attendance Thursday was her mother, Leah Gallegos, who thanked the department for its efforts.
"They have never given up. Even though I had thought they had given up, they'd never given up," Leah Gallegos said. "She was just special. She was outgoing, she was sweet, she was in love with (her) finance, Troy. They had a family planned. They took so much away when they took her away. … You never quit thinking about it, you never quit crying about it. It's just always there.
"I just know that I sure miss this girl every day."
On May 15, 1985, Christine Gallegos, of Kearns, told her then-fiancé and family members she was going to hitchhike to work in downtown Salt Lake City. She was last seen on 4000 West walking toward the freeway about 10:30 p.m.
About an hour later, Gallegos was shot twice in the area of 1400 S. Jefferson Street, Parks said. But Gallegos's body wasn't discovered until several hours later, at about 3:50 a.m. the next morning by a passerby.
Gallegos had been severely beaten, stabbed and shot twice in the head, and left lying in the road, Parks said.
"Our best guess is she was hitchhiking to her job and (Stallworth is) the one who picked her up. Instead of taking her to the bar to work, he took her to a very secluded place by old Derks Field, assaulted her behind 1384 S. Jefferson. She fought her way out of the car. They had a big fight where she was stabbed outside of the car, and she left a blood trail up to the gutter of Jefferson Street where she fell and was shot twice in the head," he said.
Despite the high-profile killing and extensive investigation, which included multiple interviews with friends and family members, no one was ever arrested and Stallworth's name was never brought up. Parks said there is no indication that Stallworth and Gallegos knew each other.
Despite multiple forensic tests over the years, including the submission of DNA collected from the crime scene into a national database, no matches were ever made.
In 2023, Parks consulted with the state's Cold Case Review Board, which suggested he try "forensic investigative genealogy" or "forensic ancestry investigation," which essentially compares DNA with a database of civilians' DNA samples collected for genealogical purposes.
That test resulted in Stallworth's name popping onto the department's radar. Parks interviewed family members and collected a voluntary DNA sample from one of Stallworth's sons. After comparing that DNA with forensic evidence collected in 1985, investigators determined a match.
As Parks dug deeper into Stallworth's history, he learned Stallworth was a 27-year-old airman based at Hill Air Force Base, living in Layton at the time of Gallegos' death.
But Parks also learned that Stallworth was a "State Street stalker," who would tell his wife that he was going out for the night, leave late in the evening, return home about 5 a.m., and never provide an explanation for where he was or what he had been doing. The last two years of his life, Parks says, police had contact with Stallworth on State Street for allegedly having interactions with prostitutes.
Parks said when he interviewed one of Stallworth's four ex-wives and explained to her why he was there, "She was not surprised that we would be collecting DNA for other criminal acts he may have committed."
"She wasn't surprised that he was a murder suspect?" KSL.com asked.
"No," Parks replied.
