The January 1995 Killing of Colleen Slemmer
Pike and Slemmer were students at the Job Corps center in Knoxville, a federal training program. Prosecutors said Pike believed Slemmer was trying to take her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, and lured her to a wooded area near the University of Tennessee campus, according to the AP. Court records cited by CBS News say Shipp and a third student, Shadolla Peterson, helped carry out the attack, which lasted roughly thirty minutes to an hour.
The AP reports that Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and struck her with a large piece of asphalt. Shipp has admitted he was the one who carved a pentagram into her body.
That symbol, and other details of the crime, fed public fears of Satan worship during the “satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s, and turned a local killing into a national story.
CBS News reports that fellow students said Pike later boasted about the killing and showed them a piece of Slemmer’s skull she had kept.
Pike confessed, and her lawyers do not dispute that she took part. In a statement filed with her clemency petition, she described herself as a mentally ill 18-year-old who took years to grasp what she had done.
Three Defendants, Three Outcomes
Only Pike received a death sentence. She was convicted in 1996 and sentenced to death at age 20, which CBS News describes as making her the youngest woman sent to death row in the modern era of capital punishment.
- Shipp was 17 at the time of the killing, so he could not be sentenced to death. He received life in prison with the possibility of parole. CBS News reports his parole was denied last year and that his case is due for review again toward the end of 2031.
- Peterson testified against Pike at trial and was sentenced to probation, according to CBS News. Axios describes her plea as guilty to being an accessory after the fact.
Pike’s supporters point to this spread of outcomes as evidence that her sentence was arbitrary. The victim’s family and prosecutors hold that the sentence fits the crime.
Sentenced at 20: The Argument Over Age and Trial Evidence
Much of the case since 1996 has turned on two questions: whether an 18-year-old should face execution, and whether the jury heard the full story of her childhood.
Her attorneys say she suffered childhood sexual abuse, abandonment and neglect, and has psychological conditions including PTSD, bipolar disorder and congenital brain damage. They argue that this evidence was not adequately presented at trial.
Amnesty International makes a similar claim in its urgent action on her case, saying her court-appointed trial lawyers did not put a full mitigation case before the jury. Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell told the AP that other 18-year-olds sentenced to death in Tennessee have had their sentences vacated.
Courts rejected her appeals at every stage. In a concurring opinion in a 2018 appeal, U.S. Circuit Judge Jane Stranch agreed with the ruling against Pike but wrote that the outcome ruled out the possibility that the crime reflected youthful immaturity, and noted that other teenage killers have been rehabilitated in prison, as CBS News reported.
Maher told CBS News she believes a jury today, knowing Pike’s age, illness and abuse history, would likely not sentence her to death.
Decades of Isolation and the 2024 Settlement
Because she was the only woman on Tennessee’s death row for all but three of her years there, Pike spent most of her incarceration without contact with other prisoners, CBS News reports.
Gaile Owens, whose sentence was later commuted, was held in the same facility for those three years, but court filings show the two never had contact.
Pike’s lawyers sued, arguing that this amounted to solitary confinement. The suit ended in a 2024 settlement that gave her more opportunities to interact with other inmates.
Her record in custody is not unblemished. Axios reports that in 2004 she was convicted of attempted murder after attacking another inmate.
Her attorneys say that in recent years she has received treatment for her mental illness and helped guide other incarcerated women. That characterization comes from her legal team.
Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol requires a condemned prisoner to be held in solitary confinement for 14 days before execution, and Pike’s lawyers said she was returned to those conditions as her date approached.
Case Timeline
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| January 12, 1995 | Colleen Slemmer is killed near the University of Tennessee campus in Knoxville. |
| 1996 | Pike is convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death at age 20. |
| 2004 | Pike is convicted of attempted murder after attacking another inmate, per Axios. |
| 2018 | A federal appeals court rules against her; Judge Stranch writes a concurrence questioning the assumptions behind the sentence. |
| 2024 | Her isolation lawsuit is settled, allowing more contact with other inmates. |
| End of September 2025 | The Tennessee Supreme Court sets her execution for September 30, 2026, per Axios. |
| September 28, 2026 | Governor Bill Lee denies clemency. |
| September 29, 2026 | The U.S. Supreme Court denies her request to halt the execution. |
| September 30, 2026 | Execution scheduled for the morning at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. |
The Final Week: Clemency, the Supreme Court and Calls for Mercy
Governor Lee’s statement said that after deliberate consideration of the clemency request and a thorough review of the case, he was upholding the sentence and would not intervene, as CBS News reported on September 29, 2026.
Pike’s attorneys said they were deeply saddened and that the 18-year-old she once was no longer exists.
The U.N. rapporteurs and advocacy groups had urged the governor to commute the sentence. According to CBS News, the U.N. experts also argued that decades in isolation should amount to unlawful torture. The AP reported that the U.S. Supreme Court denied a stay on Tuesday, September 29.
Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, has supported the execution. She told the AP she has waited decades to see the sentence carried out, and that a group raised money so she and her husband could travel from Florida to witness it.
Where the Case Stands
As of September 30, 2026, the newest sources reviewed (the AP report published that morning and CBS News, Amnesty International and other coverage from September 29) show every legal avenue exhausted and the execution scheduled for that morning.
This article will be updated when an official account of the outcome is published.
Sources
- CBS News: What to know about Christa Pike, first woman to be executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years
- ABC News (Associated Press): Tennessee prepares to execute a woman for a crime she committed at age 18
- Axios Nashville: Execution date set for only woman on Tennessee’s death row
- Amnesty International USA: USA: Woman Facing Execution for Crime at Age 18
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