Tennessee’s failed attempt to lethally inject Christa Pike, a 30-year death row inmate, on Wednesday evening has placed her execution in doubt and could ultimately prompt the state to abandon capital punishment, according to the former Knoxville police chief who supervised her arrest in the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer.
“I’ll be surprised if there are any executions in Tennessee in the near term, if again, ever,” Phil Keith, who headed the Knoxville Police Department from 1988 to 2004, told News Media.
Pike drew national attention in the days leading up to her scheduled Sept. 30 execution after filing a last-minute appeal, seeking clemency and requesting alternative execution methods, including a team of all-female executioners. The failed attempts to administer the lethal injection soon overshadowed everything else.
An undated portrait photograph of Colleen Slemmer provided by her mother. (May Martinez/Special to the News Sentinel)
That focus, Keith said, also diverted attention from Slemmer, the teenager who was killed.
“Why don’t we talk about Colleen’s potential future, about her life, you know, do a deep dive on her family, talk about what she was trying to do?” he asked in an interview with News Media on Thursday.
Pike and Slemmer met at the Job Corps Center, a vocational school serving young people from difficult backgrounds, Keith said. While Pike displayed signs of what he described as a developing criminal career, Slemmer was a teenager who avoided trouble and was working to improve her life.
Christa Gail Pike is seen during her trial for the murder of Colleen A. Slemmer March 18, 1996, in Knox County Criminal Court. (USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect)
“She was a bright young woman,” Keith said. “She had interest in computers. She was applying herself there. She was clearly an innocent party in this; she was not involved in any of the violence that went on at Job Corps.”
University of Tennessee forensic anthropologist Dr. Murray Marks testifies about the wounds to Colleen A. Slemmer’s skull during Christa Gail Pike’s murder trial in Knox County Criminal Court on March 25, 1996. (USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect)
Keith described Slemmer as shy and committed to her education.
“She was just a child that was trying to, that had been through a troubled early life and was trying to get her life on track,” the former chief said. “Her mom was, was clearly a big supporter of her, but there were some limitations there.”
Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, did not respond to News Media’s requests for comment Thursday.
Pike and two others — her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, and a friend, Shadolla Peterson — lured Slemmer to a park, where they beat, slashed and tortured her for as long as an hour.
Christa Gail Pike was scheduled to be executed on September 30, 2026. (Tennessee Department of Correction via AP)
“Pike was the catalyst,” Keith said. “She was the one that was planning out all the events, the luring, all that sort of thing.”
Keith said Pike showed “no remorse” during police questioning after the attack, which a psychiatrist later testified at trial had involved “satanic elements.”
Pike kept a fragment of Slemmer’s fractured skull as a trophy and showed it to other classmates before her arrest. Shipp, who prevented Slemmer from escaping and held her down, later carved pentagrams into the victim’s chest and face.
“She represents pure evil,” Keith said of Pike.