Death-Row Inmate Christa Pike’s Family Speaks Out After Botched Execution

When Christa Pike’s aunt spoke with her by phone late last month, she believed it might be their final conversation.

Carrie Ross had hoped to stand beside Pike, whom she says she loves like a daughter, as the woman faced execution for the brutal killing of a fellow student nearly 30 years ago.

Pike, however, pleaded with her not to attend.

“Aunt Carrie, I really don’t want you to come because it’s just going to be painful for you,” Ross recalled Pike saying. “And it’s painful for me. I don’t want you to remember me that way.”

Ross said they ultimately agreed she would stay away. “I said, ‘Okay, Christa, I love you. See you later, and I’ll meet you on the other side.’”

On September 29, Pike was moved from the women’s prison in Nashville to Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, where she was placed on death watch—a round-the-clock period leading up to her scheduled execution.

Then, the execution began to unravel.

On September 30, Pike survived a failed lethal injection after prison officials administered two doses of pentobarbital, a drug intended to suppress brain activity until death.

A week later, Pike—the only woman on Tennessee’s death row—was still alive, awake and talking from a hospital bed.

In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail, Ross described the botched execution, the confusion that followed and the painful reality of loving a relative widely condemned for her crime.

“It’s been up, down, up, down. I have cried more tears in the last week than I’ve cried in my whole life,” Ross said.

“This entire week has been a blur.”

Ross, whose late sister Carissa was Pike’s mother, sees her niece’s survival as a sign that God does not want her execution carried out.

“When God puts his hand on someone, God is in control,” she said. “Not the Department of Correction, not us, but God.”

Her belief is especially striking given that Pike’s crime became entangled with the Satanic Panic that swept across the United States.

On January 12, 1995, Pike was 18 when she lured Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old fellow Job Corps student, to a secluded location on the University of Tennessee campus.

With her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, and friend Shadolla Peterson, Pike tortured Slemmer for as long as an hour. Prosecutors said the victim was cut more than 100 times with a box cutter before being beaten to death with a piece of asphalt.

Slemmer’s body was discovered the following day, bare from the waist up. A Satanic pentagram had been carved into her chest, and part of her fractured skull was missing—an alleged souvenir taken by Pike.

Shipp, who was 17, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Peterson, who largely acted as a lookout, took a plea deal and served just one year. Pike, who was tried as an adult, was sentenced to death. 

After three decades on death row, her execution was finally set for September 30 – a conclusion welcomed by Slemmer’s mother May Martinez, who feared she might die before her daughter’s killer.

Ross said her niece was ready to die that day – so ready that she was dismayed when, with minutes to spare, an appeals court granted a stay over arguments that jurors never heard about Pike’s childhood sexual abuse.

‘The first words out of Christa’s mouth to her sister Alicia was, “Oh no, they can’t do that to May.” She knows how bad May wants her to die,’ Ross said.

‘She didn’t want the stay. She was ready to go. She was at peace. She had accepted that whatever happened was not in her control. It was in God’s control.’

The stay was lifted by the US Supreme Court hours later.

‘Our hearts were up, and then our hearts were down,’ Ross said.

Pike was strapped to the gurney and given a lethal dose of pentobarbital. When that failed to kill her, a second was administered.

But she did not die. Witnesses recalled Pike snoring loudly behind a curtain as they were ushered out of the execution chambers.

‘When they said she’s still breathing, we got excited thinking that she was going to make it,’ Ross said.

MORE ON THIS: Gainesville Man Arrested After Running Nude Amid Abuse Charges

Then on Monday evening, the family was told doctors had declared Pike brain dead.

‘They were taking her off the ventilator,’ Ross recalled. ‘They were going to let her go – let her die – at 1 o’clock.’

Again, Pike did not die. She woke up on Tuesday and began to talk – asking where she was and who the doctors were.

None of Pike’s family has been able to speak to her since. They have had to rely on information from Pike’s lawyers.

‘We know that Christa knows who she is and where she is,’ Ross said.

Pike’s attorneys say she faces a long road to recovery: she has pneumonia and a blood clot in her arm, cannot swallow and has no movement in her swollen arms.

Her death sentence also remains uncertain, with her lawyers renewing calls for clemency from Governor Bill Lee while death penalty opponents question the constitutionality of a second execution attempt.

‘That would be horrible. Torture. Don’t do that to a human,’ Ross said. ‘She has completed her execution. She went willingly.’

In her eyes, Pike’s sentence should be commuted to life without the possibility of parole.

‘None of us excuse what she did,’ Ross said. ‘We know she committed a horrible, heinous crime, and she has to pay the price for that.’

But Ross said Pike regretted her actions from the get-go, recalling a tearful conversation days after the murder in which she said: ‘Aunt Carrie, I don’t know why we did that. How could we do that?’

Based on what her niece has told her, she also feels Pike unfairly shouldered more blame than her accomplices.

‘She was 18 going on 10 emotionally. She was so naive and easily swayed,’ she said.

‘She’s not the monster she’s been portrayed to be,’ Ross insisted. ‘She is a sweet, kind, giving, loving person. She has grown up and matured to the point where all she wants to do is help people.’

But Ross’ characterization of Pike and her version of events sharply contradict the evidence presented at trial.

Jurors heard how Pike hatched a plan to lure and attack Slemmer because she believed Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend.

Slemmer begged for her life as Pike and Shipp slashed, beat, kicked and bludgeoned her.

Rather than showing instant regret, Pike showed off the piece of skull to other students, prosecutors said.

Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, isn’t fooled by Pike’s claims of remorse. She told the Daily Mail before the execution that she has never had an apology from Pike or her family in 31 years.

‘If a person’s very remorseful because she knows she’s going to get the death penalty and they’re going to act on it, then why didn’t she show her remorse years ago?’ she said.

Pike also offered no apology in her final statement from the execution chamber.

‘I think Christa probably felt like she had apologized enough,’ Ross said. ‘She has apologized and apologized. I’ve heard Christa apologize and say how bad she feels numerous times.’

‘She can’t take it back. She can’t make this whole problem go away. If she could, she would.’

Ross said she too would like to apologize to Martinez if ever given the chance.

‘I would tell May I’m very sorry that she’s had to suffer as much as she has. My heart goes out to her, and her family,’ Ross said.

‘I understand how May feels. I’m not blind to that. But we hurt, too. With all the back and forth they have done to her, can they not just stop?’