Christa Gail Pike was convicted of first-degree murder in 1996 for the brutal killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer and now Tennessee’s Supreme Court has finally set an execution date
A death row prisoner who tortured and murdered a teenager is set to be the first woman to be executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.
Christa Gail Pike, the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, was sentenced to death when she was 18 for the brutal attack on 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1995. The pair were both Knoxville Job Corps students when Pike and her then boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp lured Colleen into the woods near the University of Tennessee’s agricultural campus on January 12, 1995.
Pike cut Slemmer’s throat with a box cutter, struck her with a cleaver, carved a pentagram into her chest and crushed her skull with a piece of asphalt, according to court records. Pike then kept a piece of the teenager’s skull as a souvenir, according to investigators.
The killer was convicted of first-degree murder in 1996 and a jury sentenced her to death. Shipp was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole. Pike also received a secondary conviction in 2004 when she was convicted of attempting to strangle an inmate, which added another 25 years to her sentence.
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Now, nearly 30 years after being sentenced to death, Tennessee’s Supreme Court has finally set an execution date for Pike, now 49. The State of Tennessee filed a motion on September 30 with the prisoner scheduled to be executed on September 30, 2026.
Pike, who is the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, would become the first woman executed in Tennessee since 1820 and only the fourth in the state’s history if the execution goes ahead, according to Fox News.
Death Penalty Information Centre records show that Martin Eve, listed as a woman, was executed by hanging in 1820 for accessory to murder.
Pike’s lawyers have previously argued that her young age, history of abuse and later diagnoses of bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder should exempt her from execution.
“Christa’s childhood was fraught with years of physical and sexual abuse and neglect,” her attorneys said in a statement on Wednesday.
“With time and treatment, she has become a thoughtful woman with deep remorse for her crime.” In a letter wrote to The Tennessean, Pike admitted she deeply regrets the crime.
“Think back to the worst mistake you made as a reckless teenager. Well, mine happened to be huge, unforgettable and ruined countless lives,” she wrote.
“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done. Even more to accept how many lives I effected. I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think that someone as loving and compassionate as myself had the ability to commit such a crime.”
Amber McLaughlin was the last woman to be executed in the US, according to Death Penalty Information Center, after she died from lethal injection in Missouri in January 2023. Records show 18 women have been executed in the US since the modern application of death penalty began in 1976.