In the final days of September 2026, the state of Tennessee moves toward executing Christa Pike — a woman of fifty who was eighteen when she committed a brutal murder, and who would become the first woman put to death in that state in over two centuries. Her case arrives weighted with questions that outlast any single life: whether justice can be separated from the conditions that produce violence, whether a legal system can be trusted when its most vulnerable defendants receive its worst representation, and whether the desire for closure — felt so acutely by a grieving mother — can ever be fu
Tennessee set to execute Christa Pike, first woman in 200 years, as lawyers seek clemency
Colleen Slemmer, 19, was beaten, tortured and murdered in 1995; Christa Pike faces execution; victim's mother continues to experience ongoing trauma from the crime.
Her life to matter, not to actually live
Mark
Why does Pike's case matter now, thirty-one years after the crime?
Mimi
Because the legal and scientific understanding of trauma, mental illness, and culpability has changed. Her lawyers say evidence that would be routine to present today was never shown to the jury.
Luke
But the courts have already looked at this. The federal appeals court said the jury heard about her difficult childhood and that new evidence wouldn't have changed the verdict.
Mimi
That's what the court said. But the psychologists who examined her later say the jury didn't hear the full picture—not the specific details of the sexual abuse, not the bipolar disorder diagnosis, not the untreated PTSD.
Mark
So the question is whether her trial was actually fair, or whether she was failed by her own lawyers.
Luke
Right. And that's a real question. But it's also true that a jury convicted her and sentenced her to death. The courts have reviewed that conviction multiple times.
Mimi
The gender disparity is also striking. Only eighteen women have been executed since the 1970s, compared to 1,663 men. Pike would be the first in Tennessee in over two hundred years.
Mark
Does that suggest the system is broken, or that women are treated more leniently?
Luke
It could be either. Or both. The data alone doesn't tell you why the disparity exists.
Mimi
What it does tell you is that this is rare. And when something is this rare, it's worth asking whether the decision is being made fairly.
Mark
What does the victim's family want?
Mimi
Colleen's mother wants the execution to happen. She's been grieving for thirty-one years and says she needs this to find peace.
Luke
And that's real too. That grief is real. The question is whether the state's response to that grief should be execution or something else.
The Pulse
- Tennessee is days away from executing Christa Pike, a milestone that would mark the first female execution in the state in more than 200 years and only the nineteenth for a woman in the modern American era.
- Pike's legal team argues that the jury never heard the full truth — a childhood of repeated sexual abuse beginning in toddlerhood, untreated bipolar disorder, and PTSD that a forensic psychologist says directly shaped the violence she committed at eighteen.
- The state's courts and Governor Bill Lee, who has never granted clemency in a capital case, have so far refused to intervene, leaving Pike's legal team searching for any last-minute avenue of reprieve.
- Colleen Slemmer's mother, who has relived her daughter's torture and murder every day for thirty years, is traveling to Tennessee to witness the execution, calling it the only relief she has left.
- Those who know Pike now — including a fellow formerly incarcerated woman who became a justice reform advocate — hold the tension of two truths at once: that Colleen's life mattered, and that Christa's does too.
In the final days of September 2026, the state of Tennessee moves toward executing Christa Pike — a woman of fifty who was eighteen when she committed a brutal murder, and who would become the first woman put to death in that state in over two centuries. Her case arrives weighted with questions that outlast any single life: whether justice can be separated from the conditions that produce violence, whether a legal system can be trusted when its most vulnerable defendants receive its worst representation, and whether the desire for closure — felt so acutely by a grieving mother — can ever be fully satisfied by an execution.
Christa Pike sent a message from death row this week asking a friend not to come to her execution. The request captures something of who Pike is now at fifty — protective, aware of others — and how difficult it is to reconcile that person with the eighteen-year-old who, in 1995, beat, tortured, and killed nineteen-year-old Colleen Slemmer at a job training camp in Tennessee. Slemmer's body was found with a pentagram carved into her chest. Pike bragged about the killing afterward and showed other residents a piece of Slemmer's skull. She was sentenced to death within a year. Her boyfriend, who was seventeen at the time, received a life sentence with the possibility of parole.
If the execution proceeds on September 30th, Pike will be the first woman put to death in Tennessee in more than two hundred years — part of a stark national asymmetry in which only eighteen women have been executed since the 1970s, compared to over 1,600 men. Her legal team has filed a 226-page clemency petition arguing that the jury never heard the evidence that mattered most: Pike was raped as a toddler by her grandmother's boyfriend, assaulted again at eleven and seventeen, and raised in an environment of abandonment and neglect. A forensic psychologist hired by her original defense team documented all of this in 1995 — and was never called to testify. That failure was later challenged as ineffective assistance of counsel, and rejected by the courts.
In prison, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and PTSD. A second psychologist assessed her in 2023 and concluded that untreated manic episodes and trauma directly influenced both how threatened she felt by Slemmer and her inability to control what followed. Legal scholar Sandra Babcock, who has worked on Pike's defense, put the broader stakes bluntly: if the system executes someone this damaged and this poorly represented, it reveals that capital punishment is not reserved for the worst offenders — it falls on the most vulnerable.
Colleen Slemmer's mother, May Martinez, has supported the execution for years and reiterated that position to the BBC this week. She describes reliving her daughter's death every day and says she wants it to end before she herself dies. A victims' rights group is helping her travel to Tennessee to witness the execution.
Ashlee Sellars, who met Pike in prison and now works as a justice reform advocate, holds both realities without resolving them. She believes Martinez has every right to her grief. She also believes Pike deserves to be seen as more than the worst moment of her life. 'People want to know that everyone's life matters,' Sellars says. 'Christa in this moment, I think she is fighting much more for her life to matter than she is to actually live.'
Ashlee Sellars received a text message from her friend Christa Pike earlier this week—a message sent from a death row cell in Tennessee, where Pike is preparing to be executed by lethal injection. Pike asked that Sellars not be present on Wednesday when the state carries out the sentence. "She doesn't want us to experience that," Sellars says. The request sits uneasily with Sellars, who has come to know Pike as someone kind and protective, a person whose current self seems irreconcilable with the crime that brought her here.
Pike is fifty now. When she was eighteen, in 1995, she and her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp beat, tortured, and killed Colleen Slemmer, a nineteen-year-old they had met at a job training camp for troubled teens. Slemmer's body was found with a pentagram carved into her chest—a detail that seized the attention of Knoxville newspapers and television stations. Pike had accused Slemmer of insulting her and attempting to seduce her boyfriend. In the months after the murder, Pike bragged about what she had done to other residents at the camp and showed them a piece of Slemmer's skull. A year after her arrest, Pike was sentenced to death. Shipp, who was seventeen at the time of the crime, received a life sentence with the possibility of parole. If Pike's execution proceeds on September 30th, she will be the first woman put to death in Tennessee in more than two hundred years. Since the 1970s, only eighteen women have been executed across the entire United States, compared to 1,663 men.
Pike's legal team has filed a 226-page clemency petition arguing that she should not die. They contend that if she had been tried today as a teenager, she would not have received a capital sentence. The argument rests on evidence that her trial lawyers failed to present—a documented history of severe childhood sexual abuse, abandonment, and neglect that shaped who she became. In 1995, a forensic psychologist hired by her defense team, Dr. Diana McCoy, examined Pike and found she had been physically and sexually abused by several of her mother's husbands and boyfriends. She was raped at eleven years old and again at seventeen. She was raped repeatedly as a toddler by her grandmother's boyfriend. Her mother did not believe her when she reported these assaults. Pike's trial lawyer never called McCoy to testify and did not present most of the witnesses McCoy had recommended. These details emerged more than a decade later when a new legal team claimed ineffective assistance of counsel—a claim the judge rejected.
In 2021, while in prison, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and began treatment. A second forensic psychologist, Dr. Bethany Brand, assessed Pike in 2023 and described her case as extremely rare: she had been sexually violated by multiple people who were supposed to protect her, starting before she entered school. Brand found that Pike had untreated manic episodes and untreated post-traumatic stress disorder. "Both of those things together absolutely influenced how threatened she felt by the girl she ended up killing and her lack of emotional control in that situation," Brand said. Sandra Babcock, an expert in gender and the death penalty at Cornell Law School who has worked on Pike's defense, framed the stakes plainly: "If they let her be executed, then what it tells us is that the death penalty in this country is just a joke. It's not for the worst of the worst. It is for the people who receive the worst legal representation and who are the most damaged and vulnerable."
Tennessee's Supreme Court ruled last year that Pike had not demonstrated circumstances justifying commutation. A federal appeals court had earlier determined that the jury had heard testimony about her difficult childhood from her mother, father, and aunt during trial, and that new evidence of bipolar disorder and PTSD would not have changed the verdict. Unless Governor Bill Lee grants clemency—something he has never done in a death penalty case—Pike will be executed on September 30th. The Tennessee Supreme Court denied her request to halt the execution this week. Her legal team is discussing next steps, though any reprieve would likely come at the last moment.
Colleen Slemmer's mother, May Martinez, supports the execution. "She did the crime. I think she should pay for it," Martinez said in 2021 and reiterated to the BBC this week. She told a Knoxville television station that she wants Pike to suffer as her daughter suffered. "My heart breaks every single day because I keep reliving it and reliving it, and I can't no more, and I want this to happen before I die," Martinez said. "There's not a day goes by that I don't think about Colleen or how she died and how rough it was. I just want Christa down so I can end it, relieve my daughter, so she finally can be resting." The Justice Coalition, a victims' rights advocacy group, has raised money to help Martinez travel to Tennessee to witness the execution.
Ashlee Sellars, who met Pike in prison while serving a sentence for her own involvement in a robbery-murder, carries both convictions at once. She believes Colleen's mother has a right to her grief and her desire for justice. She also believes everyone, including Pike, deserves a chance at redemption. "When I think about reconciling who you see on TV or the horrible tragedy that happened with Colleen, the only thing that makes sense to me is around mental health and trauma and the way that people process stuff in a moment when they don't have the things that they need," Sellars says. She now works as an advocate for justice reform and victims of crime. "People want to know that everyone's life matters, right? They want to know that Colleen's life mattered," she says. "Christa in this moment, I think she is fighting much more for her life to matter than she is to actually live."
Notable Quotes
If they let her be executed, then what it tells us is that the death penalty in this country is just a joke. It's not for the worst of the worst. It is for the people who receive the worst legal representation and who are the most damaged and vulnerable.— Sandra Babcock, Cornell Law School expert in gender and the death penalty
She doesn't want us to experience that.— Ashlee Sellars, describing Pike's request not to have loved ones present at execution
Want the full story?
Read the original at BBC News ↗