The Tennessee Supreme Court has set a grim milestone: an execution date for Christa Gail Pike, the state's lone woman on death row, slated for September 30, 2026. Pike, now 49, was just 18 when she orchestrated the savage torture and murder of her 19-year-old classmate, Colleen Slemmer, back in January 1995. The case, rooted in the Knoxville Job Corps program, shocked the nation with its raw brutality—a prolonged attack involving beatings, stabbings, and even carving a pentagram into the victim's chest.
Details from the trial paint a chilling picture. Pike, along with her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp and accomplice Shadolla Peterson, lured Slemmer to an isolated wooded path near the University of Tennessee campus. What followed was over 30 minutes of unrelenting violence, ending with Slemmer's body discovered the next day, bludgeoned by a chunk of asphalt. Pike even kept a piece of Slemmer's skull as a trophy, a fact that prosecutors hammered home during her 1996 conviction. Sentenced to death by electrocution, she became the youngest woman in the U.S. to receive that penalty since the Supreme Court's 1972 Furman ruling reinstated capital punishment.
Indeed, Pike's appeals have dragged on for decades, marked by claims of ineffective counsel and mental health issues stemming from her chaotic upbringing. A recent settlement in 2024 ended her years in solitary confinement, granting her more privileges like out-of-cell time. Yet, efforts to vacate her sentence—citing a 2022 Tennessee ruling on juvenile sentencing—were dismissed last year. Moreover, her legal team expressed disappointment over the court's order, but the path forward seems sealed.
However, the case lingers in controversy. Slemmer's mother, May Martinez, has long pleaded for closure after 30 years of anguish. Pike's execution, if carried out, would mark Tennessee's first of a woman in over two centuries, stirring debates on youth, redemption, and the death penalty's reach.
As the date approaches, one wonders if justice truly heals the scars left by such unrelenting cruelty.