One of the youngest women ever sent to death row to be executed in Tennessee for ‘satanic panic’ murder

One of the youngest women ever sent to death row to be executed in Tennessee for ‘satanic panic’ murder Tennessee is set to execute a woman for the first time in 200 years - Bookmark Become an Independent member to bookmark this article Already a member? Log in Tennessee will carry out its first execution of a female prisoner in 200 years, on Wednesday. Christa Pike, 50, faces death. Pike was 18 when she was sent to death row following a murder committed in a jealous rage, making her one of the youngest women to receive a capital sentence. Pike and her boyfriend were convicted over the 1995 killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a classmate at Knoxville Job Corps. Prosecutors stated that Pike feared Slemmer was a love rival and lured her to a secluded area, where the pair tortured and killed her. The case attracted widespread attention owing to the brutal nature of the killing, the ages of those involved, and the fact that a satanic symbol was carved into the victim’s body. Pike does not deny her guilt, but her attorneys and supporters argue that a death sentence is not appropriate for a crime committed at that age by a teenager suffering from untreated mental illness after a childhood of brutal sexual abuse and neglect. However, Slemmer’s mother wants the execution to go forward, stating she has waited decades to see Pike’s sentence carried out. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced on Monday that he would not grant clemency. Pike’s legal team has asked the Supreme Court to stay the execution. Pike's attorneys said she experienced an exceptionally traumatic and abusive childhood. Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said Pike was sexually abused starting from when she was a toddler and that she was raped at ages 11 and 17. He said Pike's lawyers at the penalty phase of her trial did not present the jury with what he said was critical information about her past or argue that her age should be a consideration. Pike was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. Pike told police she initially only wanted to fight Slemmer but ended up killing her in a frenzied attack. In her clemency petition, Pike’s attorneys said her untreated mental illness and background made her unable to “put the brakes on.” “I was a mentally ill 18-year-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 affected. I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime,” Pike said in a statement included in her clemency petition. Ferrell said more today is known about adolescent brain development and that Pike's death sentence is an outlier. He noted that Pike's boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, who was 17 at the time, was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole because of his age. He was denied parole last year. A third teen admitted to being an accessory and received probation. In the modern death penalty era, Ferrell said, other 18-year-olds who were sentenced to death in Tennessee have since had their sentences reduced. The Death Penalty Information Center said 275 people nationwide have been executed for crimes they committed at age 18, 19 or 20 in the modern death penalty era, but that death sentences for those in that age group have become increasingly rare. “If Christa Pike was tried today, I do not believe a jury that knew about the documented sexual abuse and neglect she experienced as a child would sentence her to death,” Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said. Speaking by telephone from Florida, Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, also pointed to her daughter's age and said Slemmer never got a chance to grow up. “Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run,” Martinez said. Martinez said her daughter volunteered with the Special Olympics, loved roller skating and wanted to pursue a career in computers. “She was easygoing. She was a computer geek to begin with. She and my husband would build and tear apart the computers constantly,” Martinez said. “She trusted everybody, and that was her downfall.” She said her daughter called her from Job Corps on the night of the murder, but the call was dropping because of bad reception. When Martinez called back, her daughter had already gone out. “Not a day goes by, or a minute goes by that I do not think about Colleen. Holidays are the worst. Colleen’s birthday was last week. She would have been 51,” Martinez said. The slaying rocked the city of Knoxville. Prosecutors said Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large chunk of asphalt. Elements of the crime stoked fears of Satan worship during the “satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s. Shipp, Pike's boyfriend, has admitted that he was the one who carved a pentagram, a star-shaped symbol associated with Satanism, into her body. If Pike’s execution proceeds as scheduled, it would be Tennessee’s first execution of a woman since 1820, Maher said. Executions of female inmates are also rare in the U.S. Since 1976, 18 women have been executed in the country, representing about 1% of all executions, according to the center. Most recently, Missouri in 2023 executed Amber McLaughlin, a transgender woman, for a 2003 killing, in what is believed to be the first execution of a transgender woman in the U.S. In 2021, the federal government executed Lisa Montgomery, marking the first time in nearly seven decades that the U.S. government has put a female inmate to death. Georgia executed a woman in 2015.