Tennessee’s Lone Death Row Female is Scheduled for Execution Wednesday for 1995 Torture/Murder

At the time of this writing, Christa Pike has only four days left before she will be put to death by the Tennessee Department of Corrections. Unless Tennessee Governor Bill Lee intervenes or the U.S. Supreme Court steps in, Tennessee will strap Christa Gail Pike to a gurney on the morning of Wednesday, Sept. 30, and put her to death. It would be the first execution of a woman in the state since 1819, a gap of more than two centuries.

The case has become a test of two competing truths that rarely fit comfortably in one sentence. By her own admission, Pike took part in the savage, premeditated killing of a young woman who had done nothing to her. She was also a teenager who, by the account of almost every court that has examined the record, was raped, beaten, and neglected for most of her childhood, and then failed again by the lawyer who defended her.

The crime

In January 1995, Pike was 18 and enrolled at the Knoxville Job Corps center, a federal program that trains young people from difficult backgrounds. 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer was enrolled there as well.

Pike had become convinced, as many teens that age do, that Slemmer was pursuing her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, though People who knew Slemmer have since consistently said there was no such interest. Pike, Shipp, and a third student, Shadolla Peterson, lured Slemmer to a secluded spot on the University of Tennessee’s agricultural campus where court records say Pike carried a box cutter and a small meat cleaver from the dormitory.

The torture session that followed lasted roughly half an hour. Slemmer was beaten and slashed while Peterson kept watch. Pike ended the attack by striking her in the head with a rock. To add a little more shock value to an already horrific crime, a pentagram was cut into Slemmer’s chest, and Pike removed and kept a piece of her skull as a souvenir; Pike later displayed it to acquaintances.

Police arrested all three within about a day and a half. The fragment of skull was found during the resulting search of Pike’s home, strewn amongst a random collection of Pike’s belongings. Investigators also found satanic literature, a well-worn copy of the Satanic Bible, and an improvised altar in Shipp’s room.

Three defendants, three outcomes

A jury convicted Pike of first-degree murder and conspiracy in 1996; she was sentenced to death at age 20. Shipp, who was 17 and therefore ineligible for capital punishment, received life with the possibility of parole. Peterson pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact and was only sentenced to probation.

Pike’s lawyers argue the disparity is exactly the point. Their position: a jury sentenced the 18-year-old to die while the co-defendant who shared the same motive and the same violence, and who was steeped in the occult imagery that dominated the trial, was spared by the accident of his birthday. Meanwhile, the state’s counterargument is that a jury weighed the evidence, reached their verdict, and their will should be done.

A childhood on the record

Nobody disputes that the case cannot be told without considering Pike’s childhood. Court documents unilaterally describe a horrific cornucopia of physical violence, drug abuse in the home, sexual abuse, and neglect, with the first documented cases of her abuse beginning around age 4. A relative also testified that Pike’s mother left her toddler crawling in filth and dog feces and did not respond to serious seizures. Pike first attempted suicide at the age of 12.

According to the record, she was sexually abused by her grandmother’s boyfriend before she started preschool, raped by a neighbor at 11 and raped by a stranger at 17, a year before the murder. At trial, some relatives and acquaintances portrayed her as a habitual liar, and that credibility fight has followed the case ever since. But the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office has not contested that she suffered sexual violence or that she was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. After her arrest, she was also diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Her current lawyers say the jury heard almost none of this in a coherent form. Pike says her trial attorney was handling his first capital case, was himself under investigation, and assured her that a Knoxville jury would never sentence “a pretty white girl” to death, which is why she turned down an offer of life without parole. The documentary Dead Woman Walking: Pike Vs Tennessee reports that the attorney was later sanctioned over fraudulent billing and lost his law license. Her legal team adds that prosecutors were prepared to resolve the case with a life-without-parole sentence before trial.

What she says now

In the documentary, a subdued Pike describes her state of mind on the night of the killing. She says she had gone without sleep for about three days, was in the grip of untreated bipolar disorder, and felt as if her nerves were exposed. She does not offer that as absolution. She says she is deeply remorseful and thinks often about Slemmer’s mother, whom she took a child from.

She rejects the “devil worshipper” label the press gave her, attributing the satanic elements to Shipp. And she describes what a year-long countdown has done to her: sleepless, terrifying nights and a dread that starts when she opens her eyes each morning. One recurring nightmare concerns whether the execution team will be able to find a usable vein.

That fear has a recent precedent. In May, Tennessee halted the execution of Tony Carruthers after personnel spent more than an hour failing to place the required backup and central intravenous lines. Gov. Lee granted Carruthers a one-year reprieve. Alabama abandoned its 2022 attempt to execute Kenneth Eugene Smith for the same reason before later using nitrogen gas on him in January 2024.

The legal fight, day by day

The date. The Tennessee Supreme Court set the execution date in an order dated Sept. 30, 2025, giving Pike a full year of certainty.

The lethal injection challenge. Her attorneys argued that the state’s protocol would inflict unconstitutional suffering on her, in part because being restrained on the table could force her to relive her sexual assaults, and in part because of a medical condition, thrombocytosis, that they said could complicate the procedure. Women’s-rights groups and abuse experts backed the argument. A special master appointed by the court held a hearing on Aug. 13 and concluded Pike had not shown needless suffering. He noted that corrections officials had taken steps to reduce triggers, including assigning female staff where possible. On Wednesday, Sept. 23, the Tennessee Supreme Court agreed and refused to stay the execution. The state’s position has been that psychological distress does not make an execution unconstitutional.

Clemency. Pike’s lawyers delivered a 226-page clemency petition to Gov. Lee’s office on Sept. 2, asking him to commute her sentence to life without parole. That would keep her in prison for the rest of her life. Lawyer Kelly Gleason has urged the governor to “protect a victim of child rape” and to correct the failures of adults and institutions. The governor holds sole constitutional authority to grant clemency and is not bound by the court’s ruling. As of the latest reports, no decision had been announced.

Outside pressure. United Nations human rights experts have called for the execution to be halted, arguing that nearly three decades of isolation on death row, combined with the year-long awareness of a set date, amounts to torture. Amnesty International USA has an urgent action in circulation. A vigil march and rally is planned for Sunday, Sept. 27, and organizers have asked churches to toll bells at 10 a.m. on the day of the execution.

The Supreme Court. Her lawyers say they will now seek relief from the U.S. Supreme Court, which rarely intervenes at this stage.

The other side of the ledger

Any honest telling has to include a fact that Pike’s supporters seldom lead with. In August 2001, while on death row, Pike strangled another inmate, Patricia Jones, with a shoelace and nearly killed her. She was convicted of attempted first-degree murder in 2004. Prosecutors and victims’ advocates point to the episode as evidence that she remains capable of violence. Her defenders reply that it happened long ago, before the treatment she now receives for bipolar disorder and PTSD.

A mother’s position

May Slemmer Martinez has spent three decades fighting for her daughter to be remembered. She supports the execution and rejects the argument that youth or trauma should save Pike, noting that many children endure terrible things and do not kill.

Her grief has been compounded by the aftermath. She says she battled Tennessee officials for 16 years to recover her daughter’s skull, and that when remains later arrived, they came in packages without any warning. She has told reporters she believes the public conversation has drifted away from the victim, and that she intends to attend the execution with a photograph of Colleen.

Asked by a Knoxville television station about the pain of lethal injection, Martinez said she would feel better knowing Pike felt what her daughter felt.

The questions Tennessee is really answering

Beyond one woman’s fate, the case raises questions that reach well past Nashville.

• How much weight should an 18-year-old’s brain carry? The Constitution bars executing people for crimes committed before 18. Science on adolescent brain development has since blurred that line. Pike’s lawyers note that she would be the only person executed in Tennessee in the modern era for a crime committed at 18, 19 or 20.
• Does sex matter? Nearly 200 women convicted of first-degree murder in Tennessee since 1978 did not receive death sentences. Pike’s supporters see arbitrariness. Others note that the severity of this particular crime, not the defendant’s sex, drove the outcome.
• What is owed to the trauma the state failed to prevent? Pike’s advocates say Tennessee had knowledge of her circumstances as a child and did not act.
• What is owed to the victim? Slemmer’s family has waited 31 years, and the law they relied upon promised a sentence.

Former Tennessee corrections reporter Burton Staggs, who covered the case, has said that a jury with today’s mitigation science would probably not have chosen death.

What happens next

The next four days will decide it. Gov. Lee can grant clemency at any moment or let the clock run out. The U.S. Supreme Court can grant a stay or decline. Media witnesses have been credentialed by the Department of Correction for the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.

Whatever happens on Wednesday morning, two families will carry it. One lost a daughter in a wooded field in 1995. The other, in a different way, lost a daughter long before that.

This story is developing. The Florida Sun Journal will update this article as events unfold.

Sources: PEOPLE; USA Today; Associated Press; WATE 6 (Knoxville); WBIR; WVLT; Truthout; Davis Vanguard; Death Penalty Information Center; Amnesty International USA; UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights; Tennessee Department of Correction; documentary Dead Woman Walking: Pike Vs Tennessee.