Woman, 50, faces execution this week for horror satanic ritual murder when she was a teen

Woman, 50, faces execution this week for horror satanic ritual murder when she was a teen Christa Pike, 50, is set to be executed for the horrific 'satanic' murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer - despite objections from her lawyers and UN experts A woman who carried out a satanic ritual murder when she was a teenager is set to be executed this week. Christa Pike, 50, will be given the death penalty in Tennessee on Wednesday after being convicted in 1996 for the torture and murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a crime she committed she was 18 years old. If it goes ahead, Pike will be the first woman executed in the state since 1819, and will become the first woman there to be put to death by lethal injection. Pike has asked that no family members or friends be present for the execution. On January 12, 1995, 18-year-old Pike, along with her 17-year-old boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp and 18-year-old friend Shadolla Peterson, brutally tortured and killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. All four were students living at a Job Corps training centre in Knoxville, Tennessee. Pike believed that Colleen was trying to "steal" her boyfriend, Shipp, and claimed Ms Slemmer had been "running her mouth" about her. Pike and Peterson lured Colleen into the woods near an abandoned boiler house on the University of Tennessee's agricultural campus, convincing her to sign out of their dormitory with them under the pretence of "making peace" and offering her cannabis. Once they reached the remote spot, the pair brutally beat, kicked, and slashed their victim using a box cutter and a miniature meat cleaver, with the ordeal lasting between 30 minutes and one hour. Ms Slemmer was taunted as she begged for her life, and one point during the attack, Shipp carved a pentagram into her chest. She attempted to escape multiple times, but was caught and dragged back down. Pike was the one who carried out the fatal blows, smashing Collen's head with a block of ashphalt. Before leaving the scene, Pike took a piece of Slemmer's skull as a 'trophy', going on to show the fragment and brag about the incident to another pupil upon her return to the Job Corps centre. The teens were arrested three days after the incident, with Pike claiming to police in an interview that she had only intended to scare Slemmer, not kill her. During the trial, police played a taped confession in which Pike described a 30-to-45-minute 'torture session'. A jury found her guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder, and she was sentenced to death aged 20, making her the youngest woman on death row in the entire US at the time. In 2001, while on death row, Pike choked fellow inmate Patricia Jones with a shoestring, and was convicted of attempted first-degree murder for the attack three years later. Tennessee's Supreme Court officially set an execution date for her last year, and her legal team has since filed a number of appeals in a desperate bid to halt the process. Her lawyers argue that carrying out the execution by lethal injection would violate her constitutional rights against cruel and unusual punishment, as she suffers from blood clots and obesity. They also said she was a victim of sexual abuse as a child, a claim that received backing from experts at the UN Human Rights commission, who warned earlier this month that her execution would break international law. "Pike’s execution would mark the culmination of a trajectory of severe physical and psychological suffering marked by childhood abuse and nearly three decades of solitary confinement on death row", the panel said in a statement. Colleen's mother, May Martinez, has been among those urging state of Tennessee to carry out the death sentence. On September 25, the Tennessee Supreme Court officially denied Pike's request for a stay of execution after finding that she was not at "substantial risk" of severe pain or needless suffering.