Tennessee to execute woman for first time in 200 years
If Christa Pike is executed, she will be the first woman to be executed in Tennessee in 200 years and the 19th woman in modern U.S. history.
Christa Gail Pike was just 18 years old when she committed a crime that dominated headlines for years. She tortured and killed a romantic rival in Tennessee and then showed part of a 19-year-old woman’s skull to her schoolmates.
The murders in the Knoxville woods displayed a brutality and callousness rarely seen in a woman, much less a woman this young. Now, 30 years later, Pike is back in the headlines as the state of Tennessee prepares to execute her.
Pike, who just turned 50 on March 10, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on September 30, about six months later, for the murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemer. On January 12, 1995, Pike and two others lured Slemmer into the woods and carried out a ritual murder that lasted about an hour.
If the execution goes ahead, Pike will become the first woman to be put to death in Tennessee in more than 200 years, and the 19th woman to be put to death in modern U.S. history.
She is now fighting back, suing the state to halt her execution.
Pike’s lawyers filed suit in Tennessee court in January, arguing that the state’s method of execution violates her religious beliefs and constitutional rights and could cause her undue suffering. In response to Pike’s claims, the state said in a Thursday, March 19, court filing that it has presented no evidence that lethal injection poses an unconstitutional risk to her and that death row inmates are not guaranteed a painless execution.
While Pike was in prison, she took responsibility for the murder and “changed dramatically,” she said in a 2023 letter to The Tennessean, part of the USA TODAY network.
“I feel sick now to think that someone as loving and compassionate as I was was capable of committing such a crime,” she wrote.
USA TODAY examines Pike’s arguments for a stay of execution, the state’s view of them and the feelings of the victim’s mother.
What was Christa Gail Pike convicted of?
Krista Gail Pike and Colleen Slemer were students at the Knoxville Job Corps, a career training program, where Pike began dating a 17-year-old boy. She then became afraid that Slemer was trying to steal from her, prosecutors told jurors at trial.
According to court records, her friend and boyfriend, Pike, lured Slemmer out of the Job Corps Center into the woods before the attack, which was primarily carried out by Pike on January 12, 1995.
Pike later bragged about killing Slemer, telling another student at the center that he slashed the teen’s throat six times with a box cutter, slashed his back with a butcher knife, carved a pentagram on his chest and continued the assault despite Slemer’s “begging” to stop, according to court records.
Pike said he “threw a large piece of asphalt at the victim’s head,” causing what appeared to be the fatal injury, and kept the skull fragments, which he later showed off to other students, according to court records.
Pike was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. Pike’s boyfriend, Tadaril Shipp, was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison, but was recently denied parole. Pike’s friend Shadra Peterson, who prosecutors say was watching during the attack, testified against Pike and was sentenced to probation.
Who is Christa Gail Pike?
Christa Gail Pike, 50, is the only woman on Tennessee’s death row and has lived there for 30 years since her sentencing in April 1996. Pike and her mother, Carissa Hansen, sobbed uncontrollably in the courtroom during the sentencing, according to archived news reports.
According to archival reporting in the Knoxville News Sentinel, part of the USA TODAY Network, Ms. Pike’s trial attorneys tried to reduce her charges by portraying her as an abandoned child from a dysfunctional family who bounced back and forth between the homes of her divorced parents, depending on who was fed up with her at the time.
Hansen told jurors that she was a bad mother who smoked marijuana with her daughter and even allowed 14-year-old Pike to have a live-in boyfriend. “I should be in her seat. She should be punished for her crimes,” Hansen said.
A University of Tennessee police officer disputed sympathetic testimony, telling jurors that after Slemmer’s body was discovered, Pike returned to the crime scene and “seemed amused.”
“She was giggling,” he testified, according to the newspaper.
Pike’s current lawyers argue that if she were tried today, she should never have been sentenced to death because of her young age at the time of the murder, her mental illness, and her disturbing history of childhood sexual abuse, which began before she could speak. They believe she deserves a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
Pike’s website, created by his supporters, says he does not want to use his childhood trauma as an excuse for killing Slemer.
“There is no excuse for what I did…I take full responsibility for my actions and regret everything that happened that night,” she says. “All I want is for you to look at your current situation with the eyes of logic, not anger, and answer the question: Do I deserve to die for the crimes these three people committed?”
Christa Gail Pike sues Tennessee authorities over execution
In a lawsuit filed against the state in January, Pike’s lawyers argued that Tennessee’s lethal injection method caused her unnecessary suffering, was likely to cause her further fear and suffering, and violated the U.S. Constitution’s protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
Citing a report from an anesthetist, they claim that one of Pike’s conditions, thrombocytosis, causes abnormal bleeding that could cause him to “drown in his own blood and die.” Additionally, Pike cannot request to be executed by electrocution, the only other method allowed by the state. Her lawyers argue that doing so would violate her Buddhist beliefs, which prevent her from “participating in the dying process.”
They also say the state could botch the lethal injection of Mr. Pike, citing concerns about the state’s new execution procedures.
Tennessee began using the new protocol in 2025, three years after the state halted all executions due to a “technical oversight” in injecting death row inmate Oscar Franklin Smith. The new lethal injection protocol uses a single drug, pentobarbital, compared to three drugs in the previous method.
Pike’s lawyers cite a number of “failed” executions that used only pentobarbital, including the 1988 execution of Tennessee’s Byron Black, who killed his ex-girlfriend and her two daughters.
Reporters who witnessed the execution, including a Tennessean, reported that the black man appeared to be in pain and suffering during the lethal injection, which is required under the U.S. Constitution to avoid cruel and unusual punishment.
“It hurts so much,” Black told a psychiatrist at one point during the execution, The Tennessean reported.
Pike’s lawyers charged that the state’s new lethal injection protocol suffers from “the same problems that have characterized failed executions for decades: secrecy, deliberate omissions, inattention to detail, and untrained and unauthorized prison staff attempting to perform medical functions.”
What the state is saying about Pike’s lawsuit
Regarding Pike’s claims of cruel and unusual punishment, established case law states that “the Eighth Amendment does not guarantee a prisoner a painless death,” and that “any method of execution, no matter how humane, involves some degree of risk of pain,” according to the state’s response to Pike’s lawsuit, filed on Thursday, March 19.
The state also defended its lethal injection protocol, citing its “overwhelming history favoring the use of lethal injection in general and pentobarbital in particular.”
In addition, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Scumetti said that after Pike “lured Colleen Slemmer into the woods to torture and kill her, he carried part of her shattered skull in his pocket and showed it to his friends as a trophy.”
“Ms. Pike has only speculated that the established constitutional lethal injection method poses unique risks in her case,” he said in a statement to USA TODAY. “I wish Pike’s commitment to the sanctity of life had been there in time to save Colleen Slemmer.”
Slemer’s mother, Mae Martinez, is a vocal supporter of the death penalty for Pike. She has been fighting for decades to get the last part of her daughter’s skull so it can be buried with the rest of the teenager’s remains. Investigators are keeping it as evidence in the case.
“My heart breaks every day because I remember it over and over again. I can’t do this anymore. I hope it happens before I die,” Martinez told WBIR-TV in 2021.
“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about Colleen and how she died and how difficult the circumstances were,” Martinez continued. “I just want Krista to calm down, get it over with, and put my daughter at ease so she can finally rest.”
How many women have been executed in America?
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, only 18 women have been executed in the United States since 1976, compared to 1,623 men. That means women account for only 1% of all executions in the United States today.
Pike is not only Tennessee’s only female death row inmate, but also one of only 48 female death row inmates in the nation. By comparison, the male population is just under 2,100, or about 2%.
The last woman executed in the United States was Amber McLaughlin in 2023. McLaughlin, the first transgender person to be executed in the United States, was found guilty of raping and stabbing 45-year-old Beverly Guenther to death on November 20, 2003. Guenther was McLaughlin’s ex-girlfriend.
How many women were executed in Tennessee?
Pike’s lawyers cite information from the Death Penalty Information Center and say only three women have ever been executed in Tennessee.
They list the hangings of three black women in 1807, 1808, and 1819, but their crimes are not specified. The only known woman’s name is Molly Holcomb in 1807. Two of them are listed as slaves by deathpenaltyusa.org, which labels the crime as murder, but many slaves commit suicide due to wrongful charges or for no reason at all.
Pike was the last person to be sentenced to death in Tennessee for a crime she committed when she was 18 years old, and the last woman to be sentenced to death in the state, The Tennessean reported.
Contributors: Evan Mealins and Kelly Puente, The Tennessean
Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime reporter covering breaking news, cold cases and capital punishment for USA TODAY. Follow her on X at @amandaleeusat.
