Christa Gail Pikewas just 18 years old when she committed a crime that dominated headlines for years: She tortured and murdered her romantic rival in Tennessee and later showed off a piece of the 19-year-old woman's skull to schoolmates.
The killing in the woods of Knoxville demonstrated a brutality and callousness rarely seen in a woman, let alone one so young. Now 30 years later, Pike is back to making headlines as the state of Tennessee prepares to execute her.
Pike, who just turned 50 on March 10, is set to be executed by lethal injection about six months from now on Sept. 30 for the murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. On Jan. 12, 1995, Pike and two others lured Slemmer into the woods and carried out a ritualistic murder that lasted about an hour.
If the execution moves forward, Pike will be the first woman put to death in Tennesseein more than 200 yearsand only the19th woman executedin modern U.S. history.
She's now fighting back and suing the state to stop her execution.
Pike's attorneysfiled a lawsuitin a Tennessee court in January challenging the state's lethal execution method, arguing that it violates her religious beliefs and constitutional rights, and could cause her excessive pain. In response to Pike's arguments, the state says in a court filing on Thursday, March 19, that she hasn't presented any evidence that the lethal injection presents an unconstitutional risk to her and that death row inmates have never been guaranteed a pain-free execution.
During Pike's time behind bars, she has taken responsibility for the murder and has "changed drastically," she wrote in a 2023letter she wrote to The Tennessean− part of the USA TODAY Network.
"It sickens me now to think that someone as loving and compassionate as myself had the ability to commit such a crime," she wrote.
USA TODAY is looking at Pike's arguments for a reprieve from execution, what the state has to say about them and how the victim's mother feels.
What was Christa Gail Pike convicted of?
Christa Gail Pike and Colleen Slemmer were both students at the Knoxville Job Corps, a career-training program, when Pike began dating a 17-year-old boy in the program. She later came to fear that Slemmer was trying to steal him, prosecutors told jurors at trial.
Pike, her friend and the boyfriend, lured Slemmer away from the Job Corps center and into the woods before the attack, largely carried out by Pike over an hour-long period on Jan. 12, 1995, according to court records.
Pike later bragged about killing Slemmer, telling another student at the center that she had cut the teenager's throat six times with a box cutter, cut her back with a meat cleaver, carved a pentagram into her chest, and continued the violence even though Slemmer "begged" her to stop, according to court records.
Pike said she had "thrown a large piece of asphalt at the victim's head," believed to be a fatal blow, and kept a skull fragment, later showing it off to fellow students, court records say.
Pike was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. Pike's boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, was convicted of first-degree murder, sentenced to life in prison and recently was denied parole. Pike's friend, Shadolla Peterson − who prosecutors say kept watch 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 been living there for 30 years following her sentencing in April 1996. Pike and her mother, Carissa Hansen, sobbed uncontrollably in the courtroom during the sentencing, according to archived news reports.
Pike's trial attorneys had tried to mitigate her crimes by describing Pike as a cast-off child from a dysfunctional family who bounced between her divorced parents' houses depending on who was sick of her at the time, according to an archived news report in the Knoxville News-Sentinel, part of the USA TODAY Network.
Hansen told jurors that she was a bad mother who smoked pot with her daughter and even allowed Pike to have a live-in boyfriend at the age of 14. "I should be the one in her seat. I should be punished for her crime," Hansen said, according to the News-Sentinel.
A University of Tennessee police officer countered the sympathetic testimony, telling jurors that Pike returned to the scene of the crime after Slemmer's body had been found and "seemed amused."
"She was giggling," he testified, the newspaper said.
Pike's current attorneys arguethat had she been tried today, Pike never should have been sentenced to death because of her young age and mental illness at the time of the murder, and her disturbing history of being sexually abused as a child, starting before she could even talk. They believe she deserves life in prison without the possibility of parole.
On Pike's website, created by supporters who are arguing for her clemency, Pike says that she doesn't want to use her childhood trauma as an excuse for Slemmer's murder.
"There is no excuse for what I did ... I take full responsibility for my actions, and regret everything that happened that night," she says. "I only want my situation to be looked at now through the eyes of logic instead of anger and answered the question of if I deserve to die for a crime committed by three people."
Christa Gail Pike sues Tennessee officials over execution
In a lawsuit filed against the state in January, Pike's attorneys argue that Tennessee's lethal injection method is likely to cause her unnecessary pain and added terror and suffering, a violation of the U.S. Constitution's protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
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One of Pike's medical conditions,thrombocytosis, can lead to unusual bleeding and "death by drowning in one's own blood," they argue, citing a report by an anesthesiology expert. Additionally, Pike cannot request to be executed by the state's only other approved method − electrocution − because doing so would violate her Buddhist beliefs, which prevent her from "participating in any process leading to her own death," her attorneys argue.
They also say that the state could botch Pike's lethal injection, citing concerns over the state's new execution protocol.
Tennessee began using the new protocol in 2025, three years after the statehalted all executionsover a "technical oversight" in the lethal injection ofdeath row inmate Oscar Franklin Smith. The new lethal injection protocol usesthe single drug pentobarbital, as opposed to three drugs under the previous method.
Pike's attorneys cite a number of "botched" executions using only pentobarbital,including that of Byron Blackin Tennessee for the murder of his ex-girlfriend and her two daughters in 1988.
Reporters who witnessed the execution,including one from the Tennessean, reported that Black appeared to be in pain and distress during the lethal injection, which is required to be free from cruel and unusual punishment under the U.S. Constitution.
"It's hurting so bad," Black told his spiritual adviser at one point during the execution, the Tennessean reported.
Pike's attorneys slammed the state's new lethal injection protocol as being "plagued with the same issues that have marked botched executions for decades: secrecy, intentional omission, inattention to detail, and untrained and unlicensed prison personnel attempting to fill medical role."
What does the state say about Pike's lawsuit
Regarding Pike's arguments about cruel and unusual punishment, established case law says that "the Eighth Amendment does not guarantee a prisoner a painless death" and that "some risk of pain is inherent in any method of execution − no matter how humane," according to the state's response to Pike's lawsuit filed on Thursday, March, 19.
The state also defended its lethal injection protocol, citing "the overwhelming history affirming the use of lethal injection generally and pentobarbital specifically."
Besides, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said that Pike "carried around a piece of Colleen Slemmer's shattered skull in her pocket and showed it to her friends as a trophy after luring Colleen into the woods to torture and murder her."
"Pike has offered nothing but speculation that the well-established, constitutional lethal injection method poses any unique risk in her case," he said in a statement to USA TODAY. "We wish Pike's commitment to the sanctity of life had arrived in time to save Colleen Slemmer."
Slemmer's mother, May Martinez, has been vehement in her support of the death penalty for Pike. She has fought for decades to obtain the last remaining piece of her daughter's skull so that it can be buried with the rest of the teen's remains; investigators have been holding it as evidence in the case.
"My heart breaks every single day because I keep reliving it and reliving it, and I can't no more, and I want this to happen before I die,"Martinez told WBIR-TVin 2021.
"There's not a day goes by that I don't think about Colleen or how she died and how rough it was," Martinez continued. "I just want Christa down so I can end it, relieve my daughter, so she finally can be resting."
How many women have been executed in the U.S.?
Just 18 women have been executed in the United States since 1976, compared to 1,623 men, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. That means women represent just 1% of all modern U.S. executions.
Pike is not only the only woman on Tennessee's death row, but she's among just 48 female death row inmates in the nation. That's compared to a male population just under 2,100 − roughly 2%.
The last execution of a woman in the United States was that ofAmber McClaughlin in 2023. McClaughlin, who was the first transgender person executed in the nation, was convicted as a man of raping and fatally stabbing 45-year-old Beverly Guenther on Nov. 20, 2003. Guenther was McLaughlin's ex-girlfriend.
How many women has Tennessee executed?
Citing the Death Penalty Information Center, Pike's attorneys say thatonly three womenhave ever been executed in Tennessee.
They list the hangings of three Black women in 1807, 1808 and 1819, though they didn't identify their crimes. Only one of the women's names is known: that of Molly Holcomb in 1807. Two of them are listed as slavesby deathpenaltyusa.org, which names the crimes as murder, though many slaves were unjustly killed themselves over false accusations or for no reason at all.
Pike is both the last person in Tennessee sent to death row for a crime they committed when they were 18 and is the last woman sentenced to death in the state,reported the Tennessean.
Contributing: Evan Mealins and Kelly Puente, The Tennessean
Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime reporter who covers breaking news, cold cases and executions for USA TODAY. Follow her on X at @amandaleeusat.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Tennessee plans rare execution of a woman. She's fighting back.
