20-year-old man pleads guilty to killing his alleged rapist while maintaining his mom was killer

A woman and her then-17-year-old son, both accused of murdering the son’s alleged rapist at the man’s South Hill apartment, pleaded guilty to lesser crimes and avoided prison time.

Caleb B. Hulings and his mother, Dané K. Hulings, said the other stabbed and killed 76-year-old Alvin Gallegos before they engaged in a knife fight with one another, according to court documents.

Caleb Hulings, now 20, pleaded guilty last week to first-degree manslaughter. Spokane County Superior Court Judge Tony Hazel gave Caleb Hulings credit for serving nearly two years in jail and released him from incarceration.

The “exceptional sentence” was below the standard sentence range of 6½ to 8½ years in prison and recommended by the prosecution and defense, according to court documents. Caleb Hulings made an Alford plea, meaning he maintains his innocence but understands the evidence against him could have led a jury to convict him of the murder charge at trial.

Dané Hulings pleaded guilty in May to conspiracy to commit second-degree assault with a deadly weapon and first-degree rendering criminal assistance. Spokane County Superior Court Judge Rachelle Anderson sentenced her to more than eight months in jail, but gave her credit for more than one year served.

Dané Hulings’ plea was an In Re Barr plea, meaning she was able to plead guilty to amended charges that may not relate to her case but allowed her to take the plea agreement.

Police were called the afternoon of April 26, 2023, one day after the crime, to an apartment, at 2629 E. 29th Ave., for a suspicious death complaint, according to court documents.

Gallegos was discovered in a recliner.

Dané Hulings reported to police May 3 that her son killed a man named “Alfred,” who she said sexually assaulted her son.

Gallegos was sentenced in 2011 to five years in prison for assaulting a woman on a downtown Spokane sidewalk. The victim told police Gallegos grabbed her buttocks and chest before punching her in the face, causing her lips to split open and breaking her tooth in half.

Gallegos was accused of molesting other people, but those victims were ruled out as suspects in his killing, police said in documents.

Caleb Hulings told a clinical and forensic psychologist, Jeffrey Aaron, while in jail that he was 13 when Gallegos sexually assaulted him.

He said he was drinking and walking alone at night when he encountered Gallegos, who he had not met before, outside a convenience store. He asked Gallegos for a cigarette, and after he provided him one, Gallegos asked Caleb Hulings to come to his apartment to have drinks, to which he agreed.

He said they drank alcohol there, and then Gallegos pulled out a methamphetamine pipe. They smoked from it, and Caleb Hulings fell asleep. He woke up with his pants down and knew he had been sexually assaulted.

He told the psychologist he was “haunted” by what happened and increased his substance use to push away his feelings.

The night before Gallegos was found dead, Dané Hulings was arrested for stabbing her son with a knife inside a north Spokane apartment, according to court documents.

A witness told police the mother and son swung knives at each other. Caleb Hulings was taken to the hospital, and Dané Hulings was booked into the Spokane County Jail.

It appears the case was resolved after prosecutors declined to file charges, according to documents.

In police body camera footage from the domestic violence incident between the mother and son, Dané Hulings could be heard telling Caleb Hulings, “I’ve seen you murder people,” as police were entering the apartment, documents say.

Meanwhile, phone records indicated the last outgoing call from Gallegos’ phone was about 2 p.m. April 25. The phone appeared to have left Gallegos’ apartment and was shut off or died around 4:55 p.m. that day.

Video surveillance from the area showed the Hulingses walking away from Gallegos’ apartment.

A Facebook messenger conversation in May shows Dané Hulings asking a man for help. One message from Dané Hulings said, “I saw my son murder,” and then, “I was there.”

She said in the conversation she was in Spokane and had no money with no place to go.

Police wrote in documents that DNA profiles of the Hulingses’ were found at the crime scene.

Caleb and Dané Hulings were not charged for Gallegos’ killing until nearly nine months after his death.

Spokane County Deputy Prosecutor Jonathan Degen said he believes he could have proven the case against Caleb Hulings beyond a reasonable doubt, but that he had a significant number of hurdles to overcome. He said he wanted to try Caleb and Dané Hulings together, but they ultimately would have had separate jury trials.

Prosecuting Attorney Preston McCollam said the mom and son accused each other in the death of Gallegos.

McCollam said Dané Hulings’ account of the killing led to her case resolving in May.

She said she was at her Spokane apartment with Caleb Hulings the day of the killing when he told her an older man had previously molested him, according to court documents. She said her son wanted to confront the man about it and wanted her to come in support. She said she believed they were only going to speak to the man.

When they got to Gallegos’ apartment, Dané Hulings said she asked whether he knew who her son was and why they were there. Before he had a chance to answer, she said Caleb Hulings grabbed her arm and threw her back toward the door to the apartment. Caleb Hulings then pulled a knife out of his backpack. She said she heard Gallegos say Caleb Hulings was going to go to prison and Caleb Hulings told him to be quiet.

She said her son then stabbed Gallegos an unknown number of times while Gallegos was sitting in his recliner. She said she heard Gallegos say he was sorry, according to documents.

She said her son wiped the knife off on his shirt sleeve and took a hat and put it over Gallegos’ face. Her son then took Gallegos’ watch and jewelry, she reportedly said.

On the way home, Caleb Hulings stopped at a field and started a fire to burn his clothes and the knife he used to stab Gallegos, she said in documents.

They returned to their apartment, where she said her son grabbed her around the neck and said things about having to tie up loose ends. She said she feared he would kill her. He then came after her with a knife, and she grabbed a knife herself and yelled for her other son to call the police.

She said she locked herself in the bathroom, but Caleb Hulings still got in, and she said she used her knife in self-defense.

She said she is still scared of her son. The court ordered that Caleb Hulings cannot have contact with her for life.

Caleb Hulings has an entirely different account of what happened, according to court documents filed by his attorney, Joy Abrams.

Abrams wrote that her client was one of Gallegos’ multiple sexual assault victims. Caleb Hulings hid the assault for years but disclosed it to his mom on a night they were drinking heavily together, according to the documents.

Dané Hulings asked that her son take her to Gallegos’ apartment so she could confront him. They went to the apartment, and Dané Hulings grabbed a knife out of Gallegos’ kitchen and stabbed him repeatedly, he said. They went back to her apartment and argued, and she stabbed her son in the face. She eventually fled to California, while Caleb Hulings stayed in Spokane.

Abrams asked the court to consider her client’s age and “traumatic upbringing.”

While time served for less than two years is unusual given the circumstances, “Mr. Hulings’ case is a very unique case with countless mitigating circumstances,” Abrams wrote.

Prosecutors said the molestation allegations and Caleb Hulings’ age factored into the plea agreement .

Degen said a psychological evaluation added additional challenges. McCollam said the report could have affected Dané Hulings’ credibility.

The report details a childhood of abuse, mistreatment and neglect that “had a significant impact on his psychological development and were associated with ongoing problems in functioning,” according to the psychologist.

“Caleb’s complicated family history, early and ongoing exposure to parental violence, substance abuse, and what by his description would be reasonably described as the intentional induction of psychological terror, sexual abuse, and the consequent development of severe anxiety, PTSD, and depression, could all easily explain responses in and after a terrifying situation that might not seem logical to an observer,” the psychologist wrote. “If his description of what transpired in the killing of Mr. Gallegos is accurate, then taken together, his failure to alert police of what had occurred and turn in his mother for the murder, and instead respond by disconnecting from his emotional experiences and most aspects of his life through heavy substance use would be unsurprising and not inconsistent with expectation.”

In the evaluation, Caleb Hulings described his mother as volatile, violent and bizarre.

He said his mother required him to stand in a corner without moving for hours, as well as locking him in a basement or closet for hours. One time, he said she locked him in a room for days, and he was forced to urinate himself.

He described other instances in which he believed her behavior was calculated to frighten him. For example, he was afraid of the dark as a young child, and his mother would intentionally place him in a dark room and laugh at his reaction. When he was about 6, she threw his favorite stuffed animal into a fire and then laughed.

Caleb Hulings said his mother would pick up the phone and appear to have a conversation about giving him away and tell him to pack his bags.

“I really think that she enjoyed breaking me down psychologically and making me completely dependent on her,” he said.

He also smoked marijuana and did cocaine with his mom a few times. After a period of relative separation, he said he and his mother reconnected a year or two before the killing after she was diagnosed with cancer.

“Caleb had a highly conflicted and conflictual relationship with his mother, characterized by conflict, violence, fear, and a desperate desire for connection,” the psychologist wrote. “Their relationship appears to have involved a primary connection around shared substance use, and to have been highly volatile.”