A Tennessee prison is making final preparations for the execution of Christa Pike, who is scheduled to become the first woman put to death by the state in more than 200 years. Pike, now 50, is due to be executed by lethal injection at 3 a.m. Thursday Israel time, after years of delays and legal challenges. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee this week rejected her request for clemency, clearing the way for the sentence to be carried out.
Pike was 18 when she murdered 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer on Jan. 12, 1995. The two were enrolled in a vocational training program in Knoxville along with Pike’s boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp. Prosecutors said Pike became convinced Slemmer was interested in Shipp and, driven by jealousy and rage, lured her to a secluded area on the University of Tennessee campus.
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Christa Pike (right) after her arrest, and Colleen Slemmer, who was lured to a secluded area, tortured and murdered
There, Pike and Shipp tortured and killed her. Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large piece of asphalt, while Shipp carved a pentagram into her body. The crime scene drew particular attention amid the “Satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s, when widespread fears in the United States centered on supposed satanic cults abducting and ritually abusing people, including children.
Pike’s death sentence made her one of the youngest women ever sent to death row in the United States. She has never denied responsibility for Slemmer’s killing, but for years her lawyers and supporters have argued that execution is disproportionate given her age at the time, her later-diagnosed mental illnesses and a childhood marked by neglect and severe sexual abuse, including rapes at ages 11 and 17.
Her current attorney, Stephen Ferrell, has also argued that Pike’s trial lawyers failed during the sentencing phase to present jurors with crucial details about her background or to emphasize her youth. Pike was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. She told police that she had initially intended only to confront Slemmer physically but lost control and killed her.
In her clemency petition, Pike’s lawyers argued that her untreated mental illness left her unable to “hit the brakes.” Pike herself expressed remorse in a statement included in the petition.
‘It makes me sick to think I was capable of such a crime.’ Christa Pike after she was sentenced in 1996
“I was an 18-year-old kid and mentally unstable,” she said. “It took me many years just to understand the gravity of what I had done, and even longer to understand how many lives I destroyed. I took someone’s daughter, sister and friend. It makes me sick today to think that I was capable of committing such a crime.”
Ferrell has argued that scientific understanding of adolescent brain development has advanced substantially since Pike was sentenced and that imposing the death penalty on someone who had only recently turned 18 is now exceptionally rare. He has also pointed to the different sentence received by Shipp, who was 17 at the time of the murder and was given life imprisonment with the possibility of parole because of his age.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 275 people have been executed in the United States in the modern death penalty era for crimes committed between the ages of 18 and 20, but death sentences for defendants in that age group have become increasingly uncommon. Robin M. Maher, the center’s executive director, has said she does not believe a jury hearing Pike’s case today, with evidence of the sexual abuse and neglect she endured, would sentence her to death.
Her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp. The court sentenced him to life in prison
Slemmer’s family sees the case very differently. Her mother, May Martinez, has rejected arguments that Pike should be spared because she was so young when she committed the murder, saying her daughter was denied the chance to grow older at all.
“Not a day goes by, not a minute goes by, that I don’t think about Colleen,” Martinez said. “The holidays are the hardest. Colleen’s birthday was last week. She should have been 51.”
Executions of women remain exceedingly rare in the United States. Only 18 women have been executed since 1976, roughly 1% of all executions during that period. Tennessee last executed a woman in 1820. The most recent woman executed anywhere in the United States was Amber McLaughlin, a transgender woman put to death in Missouri in 2023 for a 2003 murder.
In a final attempt to halt Pike’s execution, her lawyers appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that her post-traumatic stress disorder could cause “severe mental suffering and heightened psychological terror” when she is restrained on a gurney for the lethal injection.
Pike has also asked that only women take part in the execution process, arguing that the presence of men during her final moments could trigger trauma. Tennessee corrections officials said they would try to accommodate at least some of her requests, including having female officers move her from her Nashville prison to a high-security facility during the 24 hours before the execution.
Before Lee rejected her clemency petition, Pike said in a letter to the media that whatever the outcome, she had reached a sense of peace.
“I’m not afraid to die,” she said. “I’m just nervous about the process itself.”