While Christa Pike’s execution attempt has some turning their attention to her case for the first time, the family of Colleen Slemmer has waited 31 years for Pike to take her last breath.
Officials in Tennessee attempted to execute Pike by lethal injection on Sept. 30, but the procedure was unsuccessful and she was taken to a hospital for medical care. Her condition is unclear as of early Oct. 1. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has ordered an investigation into what went wrong.
If Pike’s lethal injection had succeeded, she would have been just the 19th woman executed in the U.S. in the last 50 years. In Tennessee, a woman has not been executed in more than 200 years.
Pike, 50, has been on death row for three decades after being convicted of the brutal 1995 murder of 19-year-old Slemmer. Here’s what to know about the case.
What did Christa Pike do? Her crime, explained
Tennessee death row inmate Christa Gail Pike was convicted of the murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1995.
On Jan. 12, 1995, 18-year-old Pike, her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, and her friend Shadolla Peterson lured Slemmer to the woods in Knoxville, Tennessee.
There, Pike and Shipp tortured Slemmer and bludgeoned her to death. Pike believed Slemmer was interested in her boyfriend, according to court documents.
“When Slemmer tried to flee, Pike sliced her stomach with the box cutter. … As Slemmer begged for her life, Pike repeatedly kicked her in the face. Pike then cut Slemmer’s throat as she begged for mercy,” the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office wrote in court documents.
After Slemmer made one final attempt to escape, Pike smashed the back of her head with a rock, they wrote. Shipp also carved a pentagram into Slemmer’s chest, and Pike later showed off a piece of Slemmer’s skull to a friend.
Slemmer’s body was found on Jan. 13, 1995. A Tennessee Grounds Department employee first mistook her body for the corpse of an animal because of how badly she had been beaten, according to court records.
Pike ultimately confessed to the crime. A jury convicted her of first-degree murder and she was sentenced to death in 1996.
Shipp, who was 17 at the time of the killing, was also convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. He was sentenced to life in prison.
Who was Colleen Slemmer? Teen was murdered by Christa Pike
Colleen Slemmer is pictured
Slemmer was born Sept. 20, 1975, and raised in Orange Park, Florida. She moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, to enroll in Jobs Corps, a training program designed to provide educational and career courses, according to court records and the Nashville Tennessean, part of the USA TODAY Network.
Pike and Slemmer both met while students in the Job Corps program.
More: Remembering Colleen Slemmer, the teenager killed by Christa Pike
May Martinez, Slemmer’s mother, told WBIR-TV that her daughter loved roller skating, computers and playing old games with her family.
“She was a nerd,” Martinez told the station. “But a good nerd.”
Martinez traveled to Tennessee for Pike’s planned execution.
“I just want Christa down so I can end it, relieve my daughter, so she finally can be resting,” she told WBIR-TV in 2021. “There’s not a day goes by that I don’t think about Colleen or how she died and how rough it was.”
Christa Pike execution attempt: What we know
Prison officials injected Pike with two syringes of lethal chemicals, but they didn’t stop her heart, her attorneys said.
Media witnesses who were in a death chamber viewing room reported that Pike talked about experiencing pain during the process, saying: “My arm feels like it’s about to burst open.”
Hours after beginning the process, state officials told the Tennessee Supreme Court that Pike was being taken to a hospital in an ambulance to get medical care, according to a ruling obtained by USA TODAY.
The Tennessee Department of Correction said in a statement that it followed the state’s established execution protocol.
“The lethal injection chemical in the protocol has consistently been effective, and the protocol does not allow for additional procedures beyond what was carried out this evening. Christa Pike has been transported to an off-site medical facility,” the statement said.
Pike’s attorneys said the state had not updated them on her condition as of late Wednesday.
“Tonight the State of Tennessee once again failed to carry out a lawful execution,” Pike’s attorneys said in a statement to USA TODAY. “We take no pleasure in being right, but the concerns raised by Ms. Pike proved to be true: difficult vein access, blown veins, degraded pentobarbital, no emergency medical care available when things inevitably go wrong, all under a protocol that remains veiled in secrecy.”
Melina Khan is a national trending reporter for USA TODAY. Keep up with her on X @melinakh and Instagram @bymelinakhan.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What Christa Pike did to land on death row
Leave a Reply