June 03, 2025
In the early hours of May 16,1985, the body of a young woman was discovered near 1384 South Jefferson Street, a block west of Derks Field, in Salt Lake city, Utah.
She was white, with dark eyes and strawberry blonde hair. One of her shoes was missing but she appeared to be fully clothed.
She had been beaten, sexually assaulted, stabbed and shot, and had self defense wounds indicative of a struggle.
Because she looked so young, police initially thought she was a runaway child and put out a bulletin in the local area, however, soon identified her as 18-year-old Christine Gallegos.
Christine was born 22 December 1966 to parents Daniel F and Leah Lambson Gallegos. According to an obituary in The Salt Lake Tribune printed May 18, 1985, she was a member of the LDS Church and had attended Granger High School.
In a parking lot near the crime scene police discovered Christine's belt, as well as an earring, and drops of blood.
The blade of a knife, thought to be one of the murder weapons, was also recovered.
A local resident said that around 12:20am she heard a car engine, a voice shouting "hey!" and what sounded like one gunshot followed by another, but did not see anything.
Truckers who had been parked up along the nearby Sears warehouse were unable to add anything, one thought they heard "two explosive sounds" that night, but did not attribute the sounds to the murder until afterwards.
Her mother, Leah Gallegos, said she had last seen the victim at approximately 10:00pm on the night of her murder. She said she was going to the local grocery store. Some believe she had recently started working as a cocktail waitress at a bar in the area using a fake I.D that stated she was 21.
Her mother did not know which bar Christine worked at, as the teenager refused to tell her. According to an article published in The Salt Lake Tribune on Sunday Feb 23, 1986, a friend of the victim alleged the bar was "managed by a pimp" whose wife and other female workers were supposedly prostitutes.
Other friends alleged Christine lied about the job just so she could go out at night.
Christine also had a habit of hitchhiking, and friends said she would get in just about anyone’s car so long as she could get a ride.
This information expanded the suspect pool significantly and allowed police to speculate even more about what could have happened that night.
According to the victim’s boyfriend at the time, Christine had told him someone “was trying to kill her,” although he could not say who and why.
All he knew was that she refused to get out of his car at a park the weekend prior, out of fear of being killed.
There was a man who was questioned by police, having threatened to "blow her head off," after Christine allegedly called his wife repeatedly accusing him of cheating. The man had an alibi for the night of the murder and was no longer considered a suspect after talking to police.
Police interviewed every potential suspect and person of interest they had, however one after the other, they were cleared. The case went cold but the victim's mother continued to investigate her daughter's murder, filling notebook after notebook with information she gathered along the way.
Other articles at the time of the murder mention two other slayings in Salt Lake City around the same time, including the shooting death of Lisa Strong, 25, in Layton Utah on May 12, and that of Carla Maxwell, 20, on April 25. According to authorities, all three had been shot in the head "with a large-calibre pistol."
In July 1986, The Idaho Statesman wrote that a task force was also investigating eight additional unsolved murder cases and reports of missing women in Utah dating back to 1982.
According to the article the force considered at the time that six unsolved cases were being investigated for "strong possible links to the deaths of Strong, Gallegos and Maxwell."
Strong’s rape and murder was later linked to a man named Forrest Lee Whittle, who was later indicted for Strong’s murder in 1995. He was serving time in jail for a 1987 rape and robbery at the time.
Maxwell’s death remains unsolved.
In 2023, investigators were able to identify a suspect in Christine’s murder using the DNA profile of an unknown male developed from evidence found at the crime scene. This profile had previously been entered into the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) but turned up no results.
In 2023 the profile was sent to Othram Labs in Texas and a relative of the suspect was tracked down. The relative provided a DNA sample, which matched that of the DNA profile found at the crime scene.
On May 15, 2025, the Salt Lake City Police Department (SLCPD) put out a public statement identifying the killer.
The suspect was identified as Ricky Lee Stallworth, a former airman who was stationed at Hill Air Force Base at the time of Christine's murder. He would have been 27 years old when the murder took place.
He died from natural causes in July of 2023.
Subsequent interviews with friends and family of Stallworth helped police pinpoint him as the killer.
Police do not know if the pair knew each other.
Leah Gallegos never stopped trying to find her daughters killer, despite police initially labelling her as a hindrance to the case.
In February of 1986, The Salt Lake Tribune wrote that Christine's mother had "sought police records of the investigations and has called newspaper reporters for assistance and information. Though she apparently knows most the case evidence from her own inquiry, police, afraid she will ruin the case, have denied her access to all but a simple report."
Four decades later, Leah said of the case: "You never quit thinking about it. You never quit crying about it.”
She added: "I wonder about the kids that she would have…She was outgoing, she was sweet ... they took so much away when they took her away.”
