Tennessee is preparing to put Christa Gail Pike to death on Wednesday morning in what would mark the state's first execution of a female inmate in at least 200 years. Pike, who was 18 years old when she participated in the 1995 murder of a classmate, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.
Pike, now 50, was convicted alongside her boyfriend for the brutal killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow classmate at a Job Corps vocational training center in Knoxville. Prosecutors said Pike, fearing Slemmer was attempting to steal her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, lured the victim to a wooded area on Jan. 12, 1995. Slemmer was attacked with a box cutter, beaten with a large chunk of asphalt, and killed.
