The Tennessee Supreme Court on Tuesday scheduled the execution of Christa Gail Pike, the only woman on the state’s death row, for September 30, 2026, marking what would be the first execution of a woman in Tennessee in over 200 years.
Pike, now 49, was convicted in 1995 for the brutal murder of Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at the Knoxville Job Corps program.
Pike was 18 when she, along with her then-boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp and another friend, lured 19-year-old Slemmer to a wooded area on the University of Tennessee’s Agricultural campus on January 12, 1995. Court records detail a gruesome attack where Pike stabbed, beat, and bludgeoned Slemmer, carving a pentagram into her chest and taking a piece of her skull as a souvenir.
Pike later bragged about the killing, telling a fellow student she had cut Slemmer’s throat six times with a box cutter, slashed her back with a meat cleaver, and thrown a piece of asphalt at her head, believed to be the fatal blow.
Pike was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. Shipp, also convicted of first-degree murder, received life in prison with the possibility of parole and is eligible for release in November. A third accomplice, Shadolla Peterson, who acted as a lookout, testified against Pike and received probation.
Pike’s attorneys have argued for commuting her sentence to life without parole, citing her youth and undiagnosed mental health issues at the time of the crime.
“Christa’s childhood was fraught with years of physical and sexual abuse and neglect,” her legal team said in a statement to USA TODAY. “With time and treatment for bipolar and post-traumatic stress disorders, which were not diagnosed until years later, Christa has become a thoughtful woman with deep remorse for her crime.”
In a letter to The Tennessean, Pike expressed regret: “Think back to the worst mistake you made as a reckless teenager. Well, mine happened to be huge, unforgettable, and ruined countless lives. I was a mentally ill 18 yr. 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 effected (sic). I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think that someone as loving and compassionate as myself had the ability to commit such a crime.”
Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, has consistently supported the death penalty for Pike.
The execution date comes amid renewed scrutiny of Tennessee’s lethal injection process, which resumed in May after a three-year pause due to improper drug testing. An independent review revealed that none of the drugs used in the seven executions since 2018 were fully tested for purity and potency. During the most recent execution, inmate Byron Black reportedly said he was “hurting so bad” on the gurney, with an autopsy showing pulmonary edema, a condition attorneys say feels like drowning.
“We will continue to fight to bring the truth of what happened to light before these executions move forward to protect our clients from being tortured the way Byron was,” said Kelley Henry, a federal public defender representing death row inmates, per the Associated Press.
Pike’s execution, if carried out, would make her the 19th woman executed in the U.S. since 1976, amid a national uptick in executions, with 34 conducted in 2025, the highest in a decade.
Since 1976, the year the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty, there have been 1,641 executions carried out in the United States. Female prisoners accounted for only 18 of those executions.
“That is a very, very small number,” said Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C., per USA Today. “It’s extremely rare.”
Texas leads all other states in the highest total number of executions since 1976, with 596, followed by Oklahoma with 129, and Florida with 119. The state of Texas has executed six women since 1976, and another six female prisoners are currently sitting on Texas’ Death Row.