Christa Pike faces execution in Tennessee more than 30 years after brutal murder
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Death row inmate Christa Pike is scheduled to be executed next week in Nashville, more than three decades after she brutally murdered a teenage friend she viewed as a love rival.
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Tennessee’s Supreme Court rejected a request to stay the execution , leaving the 50-year-old inmate just days away from becoming the first woman executed by the state in more than 200 years, reports WKRN . Pike is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Sept. 30 for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer.
Pike is the only woman currently on Tennessee’s death row and one of just 45 women nationwide facing execution, according to USA Today .
‘Terrified’ about dying by lethal injection
Her lawyers aren’t giving up yet. They have filed a 226-page clemency petition and are still hoping for a last-minute reprieve, reports News.com.au . Pike, meanwhile, has said she is “terrified” about dying by lethal injection.
Under Tennessee’s updated execution protocol, she would be strapped to a gurney and given a single dose of the drug pentobarbital.
Her lawyers and dozens of women’s advocacy groups and sexual abuse experts are making an unusual argument for clemency. They say the execution itself could trigger the trauma Pike suffered from years of sexual abuse as a child and teenager.
History of sexual abuse
Pike was raped repeatedly before she was even in preschool. According to court documents obtained by USA Today , her grandmother’s boyfriend sexually assaulted her for years, continuing until she was in kindergarten.
At 11, a neighbour raped her, causing an infection. A year later, Pike attempted suicide. Then, at 17, she was attacked by a stranger while walking, dragged into the woods and raped, court records say.
The state isn’t disputing that Pike endured years of sexual violence or that she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder as a result. But the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office argues that none of that erases the responsibility she bears for Slemmer’s murder, according to USA Today .
Brutal slaying
As we previously reported , Pike was just 18 when she was sentenced to death for the brutal 1995 murder of Slemmer, her friend and a woman she saw as a romantic rival.
Both young women were Knoxville Job Corps students trying to get their lives back on track.
Instead, Slemmer was lured to the University of Tennessee’s Agricultural campus to smoke marijuana with Pike and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, and their friend, Shadolla Peterson. The couple then attacked her, beating and stabbing her to death.
They carved a pentagram into Slemmer’s chest.
Macabre souvenir
Detectives said Pike took a piece of Slemmer’s skull as a souvenir and later showed it to friends.
Shipp, who was a minor at the time , was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole. Pike received the death penalty.
She later picked up another conviction in 2004 for trying to strangle a fellow inmate with a shoestring during a prison fight.
If Pike’s execution on Sept. 30 goes ahead, she has made one final request: She wants an all-female execution team and wants witnesses, including members of Slemmer’s family, to be present, per News.com.au .
— with files from Brad Hunter