Only days remain before Christa Pike is scheduled to enter the execution chamber in Nashville, Tennessee – unless her attorneys succeed in their desperate efforts to stop it.
As her legal team continues fighting to have her death sentence overturned, attention has also turned to what Pike has requested should the execution go ahead.
Among her final wishes, three in particular have caught people’s attention.
”My brain eats itself”
Christa Pike says her nerves are completely “shredded” as the reality of her scheduled execution draws closer.
At just 20 years old, Pike was convicted of the brutal murder of her classmate Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville. Now, 30 years later, the 50-year-old is facing a date she once believed would never come — September 30, 2026.
Speaking in a new YouTube documentary titled Christa Pike’s Last Fight to Stop Her Execution, Pike opened up about the chilling certainty of knowing exactly when she could die by lethal injection.
“I know I said I believed a date would never be set, but now that one has been set, it’s like a roulette wheel of thought and your actual brain is the ball bouncing around,” she said.
Pike has also described suffering from “horrible nightmares” as the execution date approaches.
“My nerves are shredded. When I do sleep, my brain eats itself,” she says.
As mentioned, the 50-year-old is set to enter the execution chamber in Nashville, Tennessee, on September 30, unless her attorneys succeed in their last-ditch effort to stop the death sentence. Her attorneys have filed a 226-page clemency petition seeking to have her death sentence replaced with life without parole.
Pike’s legal team argue that her history of childhood abuse, mental health diagnoses and decades spent in solitary confinement should be taken into consideration.
At the heart of the petition is a photograph of Pike as a toddler, shown below.
They have also raised concerns about the way a lethal injection could affect Pike because of a rare blood disorder, arguing that the procedure could be “prolonged and agonizing.”
Asked to be hanged instead
In fact, Pike is so afraid of being executed by lethal injection that she took the state to court in August, asking to be hanged instead.
Pike has also made some highly unusual requests about what she wants to happen if the execution goes ahead.
If the execution is ultimately carried out, she wants an all-female execution squad to carry out the procedure in front of witnesses, including members of her victim’s family.
According to her attorneys, the request is rooted in the severe trauma Pike experienced as a child. They say she suffers from PTSD stemming from years of abuse by men.
Asking specifically for an all-female execution team is unusual. An execution team is made up of people selected according to the rules and procedures set by the state or correctional facility. For example, Utah’s firing squad consists of five law enforcement officers, along with alternates and a team leader.
Strong reactions online
Pike’s request has sparked a strong reaction online, with people divided over whether her wishes should be taken into consideration.
“Her victim didn’t get to choose anything about the way she died. She shouldn’t either. She got to live much longer than her victim,” one person wrote.
Another shared their own experience, writing: “I also suffered SA as a very young child from 5 years of she until I was in high school by a family member. I also had very bad experiences with men mostly mental and psychological of abuse in my many years. But not once did I ever kill someone.”
“She can ‘request’ all she wants but what it comes down to is whoever happens to be working that day will be part of the execution team period,” a third person commented.
And another wrote: “So many requests….. I wonder if any of Colleen’s requests were considered 🤔”
Mother prepares for the execution
Earlier this week, Colleen Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, confirmed that she plans to be there in person if Pike’s execution goes ahead.
For more than 30 years, Martinez has lived with the loss of her daughter. Now, she is preparing to make the more than eight-hour drive from Jacksonville, Florida, to Nashville, Tennessee, to witness the execution.
When 10News asked Martinez what she would say to Pike if she had the chance to speak to her before the execution, her response was strikingly simple: nothing.
”My husband, he’ll say something. But I won’t,” she said. ”I’ll hold Colleen’s picture up to remind her of what she did. Saying something to her and talking to her now, after all these years, that she never apologized — never even tried — or her family. What’s the point?”
Martinez also said she believes her daughter would have supported Pike receiving lethal injection, so she would never have the chance to hurt anyone else again.
amid all the attention surrounding Pike, Colleen Slemmer’s mother has stressed that her daughter’s story too often gets pushed into the background.
”It’s never about the victims,” Martinez said. ”It’s like Colleen was never there.”
Martinez said that feeling has stayed with her for decades. She also recalled spending weeks attending court proceedings while feeling largely alone and without the support she believed she needed.
”The victims need help from the justice system, but the state … they don’t see. Like when I sat in the court for three weeks in a row, they didn’t see that I was by myself. They didn’t see that I was in a hotel, you know, there, and nobody (was) with me,” Martinez said.
If the execution goes ahead, Pike would become the first woman executed in Tennessee since 1819.
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