Who killed Tammy Terrell, and why?
This beautiful seventeen-year-old from Roswell disappeared on September 28, 1980. She was dropped off at the State Fair in Roswell and later sighted at a Denny’s in Roswell with an unidentified white couple around 10 pm. Somehow, police know that she was talking about going to California with the couple.
She was never seen again.
When she was found stabbed and beaten to death in an arroyo in Henderson, Nevada, on October 5, 1980, no one knew who she was. She would be called “Arroyo Grande Jane Doe” until December of 2021. That’s when forensic genealogy performed on her DNA matched her to her two sisters.
The two brothers who found Terrell’s body in the arroyo were devastated. One of the brothers was an off-duty police officer. He made donations for her burial and frequently visits her grave with flowers.
Terrell had been stabbed in the back seven times with an unknown two-prong instrument that was about 3 inches long. She had also been beaten in the head and face with what appeared to be a framing hammer and one of her teeth had been knocked out by the violence. She had also been raped. She was fully nude. On her right forearm, she had a small homemade tattoo of an S.
Prior to dumping her body, the killer washed her body and then posed her facedown and nude in an arroyo near Las Vegas. A piece of shower curtain was found near her body.
Theories
Sadly, there is a sharp lack of leads in this case. What a horrible, painful death she died. I wish that hadn’t happened to her.
Based on the tools used to kill her, I wonder if Tammy Terrell was killed by a construction worker or landscaper or someone in one of those trades. She may have been murdered at a worksite.
I also wonder if the couple she was last seen with trafficked her and then they, or one of her clients, killed her. Some think that Tammy Terrell’s tattoo was a brand.
Another theory I have is that she was killed by Gerald and Charlene Gallegos. They were a serial killer couple active from 1978 to 1980. The two claimed eleven victims total. They enjoyed picking up young girls at state fairs, who Gerald Gallegos would then rape and torture. They usually buried their victims in shallow graves with the exceptions of a few they left on the ground or in ponds. They mostly operated in California, but they had killed in Oregon and Nevada before. Maybe they went to the State Fair in Roswell in 1980?
Charlene was known as a nymphomaniac, while Gerald was a sadomasochist. Charlene would lure girls to help keep Gerald happy. Later on, he was given the death penalty, which was overturned and commuted to a life sentence. He died of cancer in prison in 2002. Meanwhile, Charlene was given only 16 years in exchange for testifying against Gerald. She says she was also one of his victims, who lived.
Who Was Tammy?
Not much is public about Tammy Terrell. She had been living at The Assurance Home, a teen group home in Roswell, when she was allowed to go to the fair with another girl. I don’t know why she was at the group home. At the fair, she told a friend she would not be coming back. Then she failed to show up at the pickup site.
Besides the sighting of her at a Denny’s with an unidentified couple later that night, she was never seen or heard from again. She died only a week later.
Nobody had any idea she was the Jane Doe in Nevada. Over the years, numerous attempts were made to identify Arroyo Grande Jane Doe. Ultimately, these attempts led to twenty rule-outs.
One of the most promising leads was a missing woman in California. Terrell was exhumed in 2003 for DNA extractions that determined she was not the missing California woman.
She was exhumed two other times for DNA extractions as well. The final time in 2016 allowed the University of North Texas to construct a DNA profile that did not match anyone in the databases. That changed in 2021, when her sisters uploaded DNA that was matched to her.
Tammy Terrell’s Legacy
The horrible way Terrell died really impacted the law enforcement community in Henderson. They said that Terrell inspired them to do more for their unidentified murder victims.
So on November 1, 2003, they launched a website of unidentified decedents and they review it every 18-24 months You can view it here. Cases only go up on the website after all leads have been exhausted, from fingerprints to DNA to clothing identification. Terrell was one of the first to go on the site. Some controversy surrounded the department’s decision to put real photos of decedents up on the site, but their strategy ultimately worked. Once the site launched, 15 people were identified within four years. You can thank Tammy Terrell for that!
Terrell now has her name back. Yay! But there are still lots of questions surrounding her death. Who was the couple she was eating with in Roswell? How did she meet them and did they traffic her? Were they involved in her death at all, or did they just bring her to Nevada where someone else got to her? Finding them would definitely answer at least a few questions and might solve her case. Unfortunately, they haven’t been identified yet, and time makes these cases even harder to solve.
For More Reading:
https://www.officer.com/home/article/10249575/identifying-the-unknown
https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/02/us/nevada-victim-identified-cold-case-homicide/index.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/dna-leads-police-identity-teen-1980-nevada-cold-case-n1285367