NEW BOSTON, Texas (KTAL/KMSS) – Taylor Parker is set to become the seventh woman on Death Row in Texas, following her sentencing Wednesday in Bowie County for the capital murder of Reagan Hancock and the kidnapping her unborn baby, Braxlynn Sage. The baby did not survive.
The last woman to be handed a death sentence in the state was Kimberly Cargill in June 2012 for the slaying of her developmentally disabled babysitter in Smith County, who was set to testify against her in a custody battle.
None of the women currently on Death Row in Texas are scheduled for execution.
According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, six women have been executed in Texas since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, more than any other state, according to Death Penalty Information Center.
The last woman to be executed in Texas was Lisa Coleman, on September 17, 2014, for torturing and starving her girlfriend’s 9-year-old son to death.
The last woman to be executed in the U.S. was Lisa Montgomery in January 2021. It was the first execution of a female inmate carried out by the federal government since 1953, and her case is chillingly reminiscent of Parker’s. She was convicted of using a rope to strangle an expectant mother to death and using a kitchen knife to cut the baby girl from her womb. Afterward, Montgomery tried to pass the baby off as her own. Although the murder took place in Missouri, she was housed in federal prison in Texas before her execution in 2021.
Texas death row is mostly a man’s world. Since the beginning of 2010, Texas has executed 129 convicted criminals. Only three of them have been women, and women account for just 3.1% of inmates on Death Row in Texas, according to the TDCJ.
Parker was transferred within hours of her sentencing Wednesday to the Christina Crain Unit in Gatesville for processing before she is moved to the Mountain View Unit at the same TDCJ complex, where all of the state’s female Death Row inmates are housed. As of late Friday afternoon, Parker was not yet showing up on the state’s official list of female Death Row inmates.
Women on Death Row in Texas are housed at the Mountain View Unit in Gatesville in a building separate from the rest of the prisoners at the TDCJ complex. They live in single-person cells measuring 60 square feet. They have a bunk, a combination toilet, a sink and drinking fountain, a stool with a metal desk, solid steel doors, and a window. They only are allowed out of their cell to shower and for two hours daily for recreation time unless they work. All jobs for female Death Row inmates are at the discretion of the warden, and the work is done inside the cell block.
The six other women housed on Death Row in Texas have been there between 10 and 27 years. They range in age from 49 to 64. At 29, Parker will be the youngest.
Darlie Lynn Routier (Source: Texas Department of Criminal Justice)
Melissa Lucio (Source: Texas Department of Criminal Justice)
Brittany Holberg (Source: Texas Department of Criminal Justice)
Erica Yvonne Sheppard (Source: Texas Department of Criminal Justice)
Kimberly Cargill (Source: Texas Department of Criminal Justice)
Linda Carty (Source: Texas Department of Criminal Justice)
Erica Yvonne Sheppard, 49, was convicted along with a co-defendant in the 1993 murder of a 43-year-old woman in her home in order to rob her of her car. She has been on Death Row for 27 years, longer than all of the other women.
Darlie Lynn Routier, 52, has been on Death Row for 25 years following her conviction in the 1996 stabbing of her two young sons, Damon and Devon.
Brittany Holberg, 49, is on Death Row for the 1996 murder and robbery of an 80-year-old man. The victim was stabbed more than 60 times and had part of a lamp shoved down his throat. She has been there for 24 years.
Linda Carty, 64, is the only British woman on Death Row in the United States. She was convicted in 2002 of orchestrating her 20-year-old neighbor’s slaying and abducting the woman’s infant. Carty denied involvement. Three men convicted as accomplices received long prison terms. Carty got death. She has been there for 20 years.
Melissa Lucio, 54, has been on Death Row for 14 years for her conviction in the murder of her 2-year-old daughter in 2007. Her execution was delayed in April as she continues to fight for exoneration.
Kimberly Cargill, 55, was sentenced to death in 2012 for the slaying of her developmentally disabled babysitter in Smith County, who was set to testify against her in a custody battle. She has been there for 10 years.
The State of Texas has executed four people in 2022 and has one more execution scheduled this year. As of Nov. 11, six executions are already scheduled for 2023.
Texas, which is the second most populous state of the Union, has executed 577 offenders since capital punishment resumed in 1982 — more than a third of the national total — with the most recent being Tracy Beatty on Nov. 9 for beating and strangling his mother to death in 2003.
