Christa Pike was 20 years old when she was handed down a death sentence by a Tennessee judge for the murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer.
At the time of the trial, three decades ago, Pike was the youngest woman on death row. Today, she’s 50 years old, and her day of reckoning for the brutal crime she committed is close at hand.
Pike’s date of execution has reportedly been scheduled for September 30, 2026 at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. Providing the sentence is carried out as planned, she will become the first woman executed by the state of Tennessee in over 200 years.
On January 12, 1995, Pike was an 18-year-old student at the Job Corps career-training center in Knoxville, Tennessee, where she was dating fellow student Tadaryl Shipp, 17.
As their relationship progressed, Pike grew increasingly jealous of 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer, believing she was trying to steal her boyfriend.
Her suspicions, prosecutors say, ultimately led to a deadly plan.
According to court records, Pike, Shipp and another student, Shadolla Peterson, lured Slemmer into a wooded area in Knoxville. Prosecutors said Peterson kept watch while Pike and Shipp attacked Slemmer.
The next day, a groundskeeper found Slemmer’s body, beaten, stabbed and bludgeoned, with a pentagram carved into her chest.
According to court records cited by USA Today, Pike later boasted about the killing to another student, claiming she slashed Slemmer’s throat six times with a box cutter, struck her with a meat cleaver and continued the assault even as the teenager “begged” her to stop.
With Pike’s date of execution quickly approaching, footage from the day she was sentenced has resurfaced, depicting the exact moment she appeared to fully process that her life was now forfeit.
Immediately following her sentence, Pike made a desperate plea to the woman sitting behind her. According to new reports, those were the final words she spoke before she was taken away to spend the rest of her life on death row.
At the time she was sentenced to die, Pike was the youngest woman in modern US history to receive a death sentence. And it was as the judge revealed her fate that she then began to break down.
Footage from March 30, 1996 shows Pike crying as the judge informs her that she will be put to death. Initially, the sentence specified that she would be executed via electrocution.
“Your body shall be subjected to a shock by sufficient current of electricity that you shall die,” she was told. “May God have mercy upon you.”
Upon hearing the words, the young Pike turned to search the courtroom for her mother. She went on to plead: “Can I please hug my mom before I go?”
Pike then screamed: “Please, just let me have a hug. I love you.”
She was not permitted to hug her mother, and was instead transported directly to death row.
Pike has now spent three decades in prison, with much of that time served in isolation. Her legal team have long argued that while she accepts that she should remain imprisoned for life, the 50-year-old should not be executed.
In their latest clemency campaign, a 226-page petition submitted to Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, emphasis was placed on Pike’s troubled childhood, asking him to commute her death sentence to life without parole.
Said petition argued that Pike experienced years of severe sexual and physical abuse and neglect before committing the murder of Slemmer, pointing to mental-health problems, including bipolar disorder, which was diagnosed only after her trial.
Over the years, Pike herself has acknowledged responsibility for the killing while describing herself as a very different person than the teenager convicted in 1995.
In a 2023 letter to The Tennessean, part of the USA Today network, she wrote: “Think back to the worst mistake you made as a reckless teenager. Well, mine happened to be huge, unforgettable and ruined countless lives.
“I was a mentally ill 18 yr. 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.”
At the time of writing, Pike’s execution – set to be carried out via lethal injection – is scheduled for September 30, 2026. Last week, the Tennessee Department of Correction confirmed it was accepting applications for media witnesses for the execution, which is scheduled for 10 am local time.
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