Christa Pike was 18 when she was convicted of killing her 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer in 1995. Now 50, Pike is scheduled to be executed in Tennessee on Wednesday, in what would be the state's first execution of a woman in 200 years.
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Pike and her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, were students at Knoxville Job Corps when Slemmer was killed. Prosecutors said Pike believed Slemmer was a romantic rival and lured her to an isolated area, where she and Shipp tortured and killed her.
The case drew national attention because of the brutality of the killing and the ages of those involved. Shipp later admitted that he carved a pentagram, a star-shaped symbol associated with Satanism, into Slemmer's body.
Pike has never denied that she killed Slemmer. However, her lawyers and supporters argue that she should not be executed for a crime committed when she was 18, citing her untreated mental illness and a childhood marked by severe abuse and neglect.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee announced on Monday that he would not grant Pike clemency. Her lawyers have now asked the US Supreme Court to stop the execution.
Lawyers cite abuse and mental illness
Pike's lawyers say she suffered years of sexual abuse and neglect as a child. Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said she was sexually abused from toddlerhood and raped at ages 11 and 17.
He also argued that lawyers who represented Pike during the sentencing phase of her trial failed to present the jury with important details about her childhood or make her age a significant part of their case.
Pike was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. She told police that she had initially intended only to fight Slemmer but that the confrontation escalated into a frenzied attack.
In her clemency petition, her lawyers said her untreated mental illness and traumatic upbringing 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 included in her clemency petition.
Ferrell said research into adolescent brain development has advanced since Pike's trial and argued that her death sentence is an outlier.
Shipp, who was 17 when Slemmer was killed, received a life sentence with the possibility of parole because of his age. He was denied parole last year. A third teenager who admitted to being an accessory received probation.
Ferrell said other people in Tennessee who were sentenced to death for crimes committed at 18 have since had their sentences reduced.
The Death Penalty Information Center says 275 people have been executed in the US during the modern death penalty era for crimes committed at ages 18, 19 or 20. It also says death sentences for people in that age group 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 wants execution to go ahead
Slemmer's mother, May Martinez, has spent decades waiting for her daughter's case to reach this point. She supports Pike's execution and has said her daughter never had the opportunity to grow up.
“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 work 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 speaking to her daughter by telephone from Job Corps on the night of the killing. The call kept dropping because of poor reception, and by the time Martinez called back, 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.
Prosecutors said Pike attacked Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large piece of asphalt. The presence of the pentagram became part of the wider attention surrounding the case during the period of widespread fears about Satanism known as the "satanic panic" of the 1980s and 1990s.
A rare execution of a woman
If Pike's execution goes ahead, it would be Tennessee's first execution of a woman since 1820, according to Maher.
Executions of women are also uncommon across the US. Since 1976, 18 women have been executed in the country, accounting for about 1% of all executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Missouri executed Amber McLaughlin in 2023 for a 2003 killing. McLaughlin, a transgender woman, is believed to have been the first transgender woman executed in the US.
The federal government executed Lisa Montgomery in 2021, marking the first federal execution of a woman in nearly seven decades. Georgia executed a female inmate in 2015.
