NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Christa Pike was 18 when she killed a fellow student in an attack fueled by jealousy, becoming one of the youngest women ever placed on death row. At 50, Pike is scheduled for execution Wednesday—an event that would mark Tennessee’s first execution of a woman in two centuries.
Pike and her boyfriend were convicted in the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a classmate at Knoxville Job Corps. Prosecutors said Pike viewed Slemmer as a romantic competitor and lured her to an isolated location, where she and her boyfriend tortured and killed the teenager. The case drew national attention because of the victim’s age, the extreme violence and a satanic symbol carved into Slemmer’s body.
Pike has never disputed that she was responsible for Slemmer’s death. But her attorneys and supporters contend that execution is unjust for a crime committed at 18 by a teenager with untreated mental illness and a history of severe sexual abuse and neglect. Slemmer’s mother, meanwhile, says the execution should proceed after decades of waiting to see Pike’s sentence carried out.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said Monday that he would not intervene with clemency. Pike’s lawyers have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the execution.
The clemency appeal centers on Pike’s traumatic childhood
Pike’s attorneys say she endured an unusually violent and abusive childhood that was not fully considered during her trial.
Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said Pike was sexually abused beginning in toddlerhood and raped when she was 11 and again at 17. He argued that her trial attorneys failed to give jurors crucial details about her upbringing or ask them to weigh her age when deciding whether she should receive a death sentence.
Pike was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. She told investigators that she had initially intended only to fight Slemmer before the confrontation escalated into a frenzied killing. Her clemency petition says untreated mental illness, combined with her traumatic background, left her unable to “put the brakes on.”
“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 affected. I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime,” Pike said in a statement submitted with her clemency petition.
Ferrell said scientific understanding of adolescent brain development has advanced substantially since Pike’s trial and that her death sentence now stands apart. Her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, was 17 when the killing occurred and received life in prison with the possibility of parole because of his age. He was denied parole last year. A third teenager who admitted serving as an accessory received probation.
Ferrell also said that, during the modern era of capital punishment, Tennessee has reduced the sentences of other people who were condemned for crimes committed at age 18.
The Death Penalty Information Center reports that 275 people across the United States have been executed in the modern era for crimes committed at ages 18, 19 or 20. Even so, death sentences for defendants in that age range have become increasingly uncommon.
“If Christa Pike was tried today, I do not believe a jury that knew about the documented sexual abuse and neglect she experienced as a child would sentence her to death,” Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said.
Slemmer’s mother says the execution should proceed
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In a telephone interview from Florida, Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, also emphasized her daughter’s age. Slemmer, she said, never had the opportunity to grow into adulthood.
“Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run,” Martinez said.
Martinez said Slemmer volunteered with the Special Olympics, enjoyed roller skating and hoped to build a career in computers.
“She was easygoing. She was a computer geek to begin with. She and my husband would build and tear apart the computers constantly,” Martinez said. “She trusted everybody, and that was her downfall.”
Martinez recalled that her daughter called from Job Corps on the night of the murder, but the connection repeatedly cut out because of poor reception. By the time Martinez returned the call, Slemmer had already left.
“Not a day goes by, or a minute goes by that I do not think about Colleen. Holidays are the worst. Colleen’s birthday was last week. She would have been 51,” Martinez said.
The slaying rocked the city of Knoxville. Prosecutors said Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large chunk of asphalt. Elements of the crime stoked fears of Satan worship during the “satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s. Shipp, Pike’s boyfriend, has admitted that he was the one who carved a pentagram, a star-shaped symbol associated with Satanism, into her body.
Executions of female inmates are rare in Tennessee and nationwide
If Pike’s execution proceeds as scheduled, it would be Tennessee’s first execution of a woman since 1820, Maher said.
Executions of female inmates are also rare in the U.S. Since 1976, 18 women have been executed in the country, representing about 1% of all executions, according to the center.
Most recently, Missouri in 2023 executed Amber McLaughlin, a transgender woman, for a 2003 killing, in what is believed to be the first execution of a transgender woman in the U.S. In 2021, the federal government executed Lisa Montgomery, marking the first time in nearly seven decades that the U.S. government has put a female inmate to death. Georgia executed a woman in 2015.
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Chandler reported from Montgomery, Alabama.
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