Death row inmate endured ‘excruciating’ execution after last meal ‘mistake’ as Christa Pike makes major decision

Christa Gail Pike, 50, is set to be executed later today, September 30, after spending three decades on Tennessee’s death row.

And he has already made one striking decision about her final hours.

Executions involving women are extremely rare in the United States. Since the death penalty returned in 1976, just 18 women have been executed out of more than 1,600 people put to death across the country.

That alone has put plenty of attention on Christa Pike’s case.

Pike, 50, is set to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. The state has carried out 17 executions in the modern era, but none of them involved a woman.

The West Virginia native was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of fellow student Colleen Slemmer, who was 19 at the time. Pike was just 20 when she was convicted of the killing.

Pike was convicted of killing Slemmer after becoming jealous over her boyfriend at the time, Tadaryl Shipp, who was 17. Prosecutors said Pike believed Slemmer was interested in him.

The killing involved a box cutter, a cleaver and a piece of asphalt. Pike also cut Slemmer’s throat and carved satanic symbols into her body before reportedly keeping part of her skull.

For years, her attorneys have fought to stop the execution, raising arguments about her mental health and religious beliefs as they made repeated attempts to spare her life.

Those efforts continued right up until the final hours. Governor Bill Lee rejected Pike’s request for clemency after reviewing her case, while the U.S. Supreme Court also declined to step in and halt the execution less than a day before it was due to take place.

With those final appeals exhausted, Pike is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at 10 a.m. CDT at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville

Christa Pike refuses a final meal

According to the Tennessee Department of Correction, Pike has chosen not to have a final meal following the governor’s decision.

Tennessee is among the states where death row inmates can request a special final meal, although their choices are subject to certain restrictions.

In Tennessee, a death row inmate’s final meal is served at midnight on the night before the scheduled execution.

According to a redacted version of the Tennessee Department of Correction’s lethal injection protocol released in 2025, the meal is served at 12:00 a.m., with all utensils and any leftover food then removed from the inmate’s cell.

That means if Pike had accepted a final meal, she would have eaten it just hours before her scheduled 10 a.m. execution.

But Pike is far from the only death row inmate to reject the traditional final meal.

Another death row inmate refused his final meal

Wesley Ira Purkey was 68 when he was executed by lethal injection in 2020, after spending 16 years on death row.

Purkey had been sentenced to death for the kidnapping, rape and murder of 16-year-old Jennifer Long in 1998.

Before his execution, Purkey reportedly requested pecan pie for his final meal — but asked prison officials to save it for later.

There would, of course, be no later meal.

Purkey had reportedly approached Long outside a grocery store before forcing her into his pickup truck and taking her to his home, where she was raped and killed.

He later used a chainsaw to dismember her body and partially burned the remains before burying them in a septic pond in Clearwater, Kansas. Her remains have never been recovered, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Purkey was also convicted of killing 80-year-old Mary Bales, whom he had gone to visit under the pretense of repairing a kitchen faucet. He beat her to death with a claw hammer, and neighbors later reported seeing him trying to burn her body.

He was sentenced to death in January 2004.

But details surrounding Purkey’s own death later drew attention.

An autopsy found that he had suffered severe bilateral acute pulmonary edema, with fluid present in his trachea and main airways.

Medical experts said the condition would have caused fluid to rapidly build up in his lungs, producing a sensation similar to drowning. One expert described the experience as potentially among the most painful sensations a person can endure.

The findings raised renewed questions about what some prisoners may physically experience during lethal-injection executions.

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