The execution date has been set for Christa Pike, Tennessee’s only female prisoner on death row, according to reports.
Pike, now 49, received the death sentence in 1996 for brutally murdering her fellow Knoxville Job Corps worker, Colleen Slemmer, in 1995. Both were 18 at the time. She was not the only one involved in Slemmer’s murder, as Tadaryl Shipp — Pike’s boyfriend at the time — as well as one other individual, Shadolla Peterson, were convicted in the murder case as well.
She is now scheduled to be “executed by September 30, 2026, unless another court order intervenes,” according to WATE. The outlet also notes that Pike “would be the first woman executed in Tennessee since 1819” and the “first person to be executed who was 18 at the time of the crime in Tennessee since the death penalty was reinstated in 1972.”
Pike and others lured Slemmer to an area of the University of Tennessee Agriculture Campus and beat her to death, carving a pentagram into their victim’s chest. Pike also took a piece of her skull and initially said she murdered the woman because of “satanic beliefs,” but WATE added, “they later found she believed Slemmer was involved in a love triangle.”
Pike’s attorneys said in a statement that they are “disappointed in the Tennessee Supreme Court’s order that grants the State of Tennessee’s motion for Christa’s execution.”
“We remain steadfast that Christa’s death sentence should be commuted given her youth and severe mental illness at the time of the crime,” they continued. “Christa was sentenced to death in 1996 for a crime she and two others committed when she was just 18 years old.”
Her attorneys appealed to Pike’s childhood, which they claim was “fraught with years of physical and sexual abuse and neglect.”
“With time and treatment for bipolar and post-traumatic stress disorders, which were not diagnosed until years later, Christa has become a thoughtful woman with deep remorse for her crime,” they added.
Daily Mail notes that Pike “received a secondary conviction in 2004 for trying to strangle a fellow inmate during a prison fight, which added 25 years to her sentence.”
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