Christa Pike was 18 when she killed her classmate in a jealous rage and became one of the youngest women sentenced to death in the US.Now 50, Pike is scheduled to be executed on Wednesday, in what would be Tennessee’s first execution of a woman in 200 years.Pike and her boyfriend were convicted in the 1995 killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, who was their classmate at Knoxville Job Corps. Prosecutors said Pike saw Slemmer as a romantic rival and lured her to a secluded area, where she and her boyfriend tortured and killed her.The case drew widespread attention because of the brutality of the killing, the young age of those involved and a satanic symbol carved into Slemmer’s body.Pike has never denied killing Slemmer. But her lawyers and supporters say the death penalty is not appropriate for a crime committed when she was 18, especially given her history of sexual abuse, neglect and untreated mental illness.Slemmer’s mother, however, wants Pike’s execution to go ahead. She has said she has waited decades to see the sentence carried out.Tennessee Gov Bill Lee said on Monday that he would not grant Pike clemency. Her lawyers have asked the US Supreme Court to stop the execution.
Lawyers point to Pike’s troubled childhood
Pike’s lawyers say she suffered severe abuse as a child.Assistant federal defender Stephen Ferrell said Pike was sexually abused from the time she was a toddler and was raped at ages 11 and 17.He said her lawyers during the original trial did not give the jury enough information about her childhood or explain how her age should be considered.Pike was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.Pike told police that she initially wanted only to fight Slemmer but ended up killing her in a violent attack. In her clemency petition, her lawyers said her untreated mental illness and traumatic childhood made it difficult for her to control her actions.“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 scientists now know more about how the brain develops during adolescence and argued that Pike’s death sentence is unusual.Pike’s boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, was 17 when the killing took place. He was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole because of his age. He was denied parole last year. A third teenager involved in the case admitted to being an accessory and received probation.Ferrell said other people sentenced to death in Tennessee for crimes committed at age 18 have since had their sentences reduced.The Death Penalty Information Center said 275 people have been executed in the US in the modern death penalty era for crimes committed when they were 18, 19 or 20. However, death sentences for people in that age group have become increasingly rare.“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, said she still wants Pike’s execution to take place.Speaking by phone from Florida, Martinez said she often thinks about what her daughter went through.“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, loved roller skating and wanted 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 said her daughter called her from Job Corps on the night of the killing, but the call kept dropping because of poor reception. 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.The killing shocked Knoxville. Prosecutors said Pike attacked Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large piece of asphalt.The case also became linked to fears about Satan worship during the “satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s. Shipp later admitted that he carved a pentagram, a star-shaped symbol associated with Satanism, into Slemmer’s body.
Female executions are rare in Tennessee and US
If Pike’s execution goes ahead, it would be Tennessee’s first execution of a woman since 1820, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.Executions of women are also rare across the US. Since 1976, 18 women have been executed in the country, accounting for about 1% of all executions, according to the centre.Missouri executed Amber McLaughlin in 2023 for a 2003 killing. McLaughlin, a transgender woman, is believed to be the first transgender woman executed in the US.In 2021, the federal government executed Lisa Montgomery, the first time in nearly 70 years that the US government had executed a female inmate. Georgia executed a woman in 2015.
