Texas killer dies in 7th U.S. execution

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. — A man who killed a religious couple visiting Texas from Iowa was executed Thursday, the first Black inmate put to death as part of the Trump administration’s resumption of federal executions.

Christopher Vialva, 40, was pronounced dead shortly before 6 p.m. CDT after receiving a lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind.

In a last statement, Vialva asked God to comfort the families of the couple he had killed, saying, “Father … heal their hearts with grace and love.” His final words were: “I’m ready, Father.”

Vialva was 19 years old in 1999 when he shot Todd and Stacie Bagley and burned them in the trunk of their car. Vialva’s lawyer, Susan Otto, has said race played a role in landing her client on death row for killing the white couple.

Vialva was the seventh federal execution since July and the second this week. Five of the first six were white. The sixth was Navajo.

“I believe when someone deliberately takes the life of another, they suffer the consequences for their actions,” Todd Bagley’s mother, Georgia, wrote in a statement released after the execution.

“Christopher’s mother had the opportunity to visit him for the past 21 years,” she wrote. “We have had to wait for 21 years for justice and closure. We cannot be with our children for visits or to see them on holidays. We were denied that privilege,” Bagley’s mother wrote.

In the video statement his lawyers released Thursday, Vialva expressed regret for what he’d done and said he was a changed man.

“I committed a grave wrong when I was a lost kid and took two precious lives from this world,” he said. “Every day, I wish I could right this wrong.”

Vialva’s mother, Lisa Brown, told the AP in a text Thursday night that she attended the execution and “He was looking at me when he died.”