Skip to Content

Death Row


Women on Death Row

There are currently two women with death sentences in Tennessee.  In 1986, Gail Owens became the first female to receive the death penalty when she was convicted in Shelby County of accessory before the fact in the 1985 murder of her husband.  The man who killed her husband, Sidney Porterfield, was also sentenced to death.  Owens committed her crime on February 17, 1985 and was convicted on January 4, 1986.  She entered prison on February 21, 1986.

In 1996, Christa Pike became the second women sentenced to death in Tennessee.  Christa Pike was convicted of first degree murder on January 12, 1995 for the beating death of a fellow Jobs Corps worker from Knoxville, Tennessee.  Pike was 19 years old when she committed her crime.  At the time of her incarceration on March 30, 1996, she was the youngest person on death row at age 21.


Gail Owens:

  • Born in Ripley, Tennessee on September 22, 1952.

  • Resided in Memphis when she was married.

  • Previous conviction in 1978 for fraud and embezzling funds from a doctor for whom she worked.  She received five years probation.  She and her husband paid back half of the money she embezzled.

  • She has two children from her marriage.

  • On February 17, 1985, her husband was killed in Bartlett, Tennessee.  A tire iron was the murder weapon used by Sidney Porterfield, hired by Owens to kill her husband.

  • Owens was tried and convicted for accessory before the fact/murder.  She received the death sentence along with Sidney Porterfield.

  • She was 34 years old when she entered prison.

  • Owens has a job at the Tennessee Prison for Women Conducting clerical duties in the housing unit she is assigned.

Christa Pike:

  • Born in West Virginia on March 10, 1976.

  • Lived in Knoxville working in the former Federal Jobs Corps Program when she committed her crime.

  • On January 12, 1995, she killed Colleen Slemmer in a remote area of the University of Tennessee Agricultural campus.  She beat the worker and then killed her.  Pike was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to death.

  • On March 30, 1996, Pike entered the Tennessee Prison for Women.

  • On August 24, 2001, Pike (with assistance from the inmate Natasha Cornett) strangled inmate Patricia Jones with a shoe string nearly choking her to death.  She was convicted of attempted first degree murder on August 12, 2004.