Christa Gail Pike (born March 10, 1976) is an American convicted murderer on death row in Tennessee. In 1995, when she was 18, Pike and her boyfriend lured their 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer into a wooded area in Knoxville where they tortured and killed her. Slemmer was beaten, slashed, and had a pentagram carved in her chest before Pike killed her by crushing her skull. Pike was arrested within two days and sentenced to death in 1996 at the age of 20, making her one of the youngest women to receive a death sentence in the United States during the post-Furman period.
Pike spent her prison time in solitary confinement at the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center in Nashville. She was scheduled to be executed via lethal injection on September 30, 2026, but she survived the attempt after two rounds of pentobarbital failed to kill her. Pike was subsequently hospitalized in critical condition at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville. She was unconscious, on a ventilator and intubated for nearly a week, and by October 5, her lawyers believed she was brain dead. However, she regained consciousness on October 6, and was discharged from the hospital and returned to prison on October 10. It is unknown whether another attempt will be made to execute her. The failed execution was the second for the state in 2026, prompting the Tennessee Department of Correction commissioner to resign and Governor Bill Lee to place a moratorium on executions for the remainder of the year.
Pike's sentence remains controversial, as some experts have stated that her legal defense failed to present mitigating evidence at trial, including the effect of her youth and childhood trauma on her decision-making abilities. Her lawyers alleged that this evidence would have been relevant for the jury to decide whether she should have been sentenced to death. Several human rights advocacy groups and United Nations special rapporteurs have called on Tennessee to commute her sentence.
Early life
Christa Gail Pike was born on March 10, 1976, in Beckley, West Virginia. She was neglected by alcoholic parents, and her attorneys said she was exposed to alcohol in the womb. She was raped as a toddler and again at ages 11 and 17. She attempted suicide at the age of 12 and in 1991 she was sent to the Juvenile Evaluation Center in Swannanoa, North Carolina, after breaking the terms of her probation, which she had been placed on for breaking into a community center to steal candy.
The center was designed to reform troubled youth. Children earned or lost points based on compliance with rules, and their progress through the program depended on those points. It was promoted as an alternative to more punitive forms of juvenile incarceration. By the 1990s, however, the center had become increasingly punitive, relying on a uniform points‑and‑punishment system rather than behavioral change.
The program proved ineffective for Pike: she repeatedly violated rules, generally in minor ways, and remained there for more than a year, far longer than most other minors. In the months leading up to her arrival at the center, North Carolina social services had temporarily removed her from her home after her mother's live‑in boyfriend physically and sexually abused her. During her time at Swannanoa, she became a teacher's assistant and earned her GED. She was released from the juvenile center in March 1993 and enrolled in a Job Corps program in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Murder of Colleen Slemmer
Born September 20, 1975, in Orange Park, Florida, Colleen Slemmer was studying computer technology at the Job Corps at the suggestion of her grandfather, who noted her technical proficiency with computers.
Pike, a classmate, became convinced that Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend, 17-year-old Tadaryl Shipp. According to trial testimony, Pike devised a plan to confront Slemmer. Prosecutors said the intent was to kill her, while Pike told police she had meant only to fight her. On the evening of January 12, 1995, Pike, Shipp and their friend, 18-year-old Shadolla Peterson, left the Job Corps dormitory with Slemmer and led her to a steam plant on the University of Tennessee campus.
There, Pike and Shipp attacked Slemmer, while Peterson stood watch. Over the next 30 minutes to an hour, as Slemmer pleaded with them to stop, she was beaten, cut with a box cutter and a meat cleaver, her throat was slashed multiple times, and a pentagram was cut into her chest. Finally, Pike beat Slemmer's head with a large chunk of asphalt, killing her. Slemmer was 19 years old.
Following the attack, Pike, Shipp, and Peterson returned to the Job Corps dormitory. Pike had taken a fragment of Slemmer's skull from the scene, and the next morning she showed it to other Job Corps students. The same morning, University of Tennessee employees found Slemmer's body. Police identified Pike, Shipp, and Peterson within days, and all three were arrested. When arrested, both Pike and Shipp were wearing pentagram necklaces, and Shipp told police there was satanic paraphernalia in his dorm room. The pentagram and other case details drew wide attention at the time and extensive news coverage, occurring amid the Satanic panic of the 1980s and 1990s.
Slemmer's mother, May Martinez, repeatedly asked Tennessee authorities to return the fragment of skull for proper burial, but it remained in the state's possession as evidence. Authorities stated they would not return it while the case remained open, awaiting Pike's execution. In a documentary that premiered September 2026 ahead of Pike's potential execution, Dead Woman Walking: Pike vs. Tennessee, Slemmer's mother confirmed that after 16 years of fighting and writing letters, she had received the skull from the state of Tennessee, however she has still not received "the last piece of her daughter's skull".
Trial and appeals
Trial
Pike, Shipp, and Peterson were all charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. Shipp, who had turned 17 two months before the murder, was tried as an adult. Peterson, who agreed to become a witness for the prosecution, received probation after pleading guilty to being an accessory after the fact. The prosecution sought a death sentence for Pike and life in prison without parole for Shipp. Before trial, the prosecution offered Pike a sentence of life imprisonment without parole in exchange for a guilty plea, which was not accepted.
The jury found Pike guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. On March 30, 1996, Pike was sentenced to death by electrocution.
In January 1997, Shipp was also found guilty on both counts. The judge sentenced him to life imprisonment with parole eligibility. Describing Shipp as a dangerous individual, the judge imposed a consecutive 25-year sentence for his conspiracy conviction, ensuring that he would not become eligible for parole until he was in his late 40s or early 50s. Shipp first came up for parole in October 2025, and was denied. Tennessee's parole board scheduled his second parole hearing to take place in October 2031.
Domestic appeals
On direct appeal, the Supreme Court of Tennessee affirmed the conviction and sentence of Pike in 1998.
Pike then "launched, cancelled and then re-launched" an appeal of her conviction in the Tennessee state courts. In June 2001, then again in June 2002, against the advice of her lawyers, Pike asked the courts to drop her appeal and sought to be executed via electrocution. Criminal Court judge Mary Beth Leibowitz granted the request, and an execution date of August 19, 2002, was set.
Pike soon changed her mind, and on July 8, 2002, defense lawyers filed a motion to allow the appeal process to continue. This motion was denied. On August 2, 2002, a three-judge state appeals court panel ruled that the proceedings should be continued, and the execution was not carried out. In December 2008, Pike's latest request for a new trial was turned down, and she was returned to death row. This decision was affirmed in 2011 by the Court of Criminal Appeals of Tennessee.
In May 2014, Pike's lawyers entered an appeal in the federal court system. They sought a commutation of the sentence from death to prison on the following grounds: ineffective assistance of counsel; mental illness; and the unconstitutionality of the death penalty as administered in Tennessee. In a 61-page ruling issued on March 11, 2016, by U.S. District Judge Harry Sandlin Mattice Jr., all grounds were rejected, and the requested commutation was denied.
On August 22, 2019, having heard the same appeal on October 1, 2018, the three-judge panel on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit unanimously upheld the lower court ruling and denied relief.
Life on death row
After Pike's trial, the Tennessee Department of Correction adopted a policy requiring death row inmates to be held in maximum-security conditions. As such, Pike was held at the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center in Nashville in solitary confinement from 1996 until 2024.
While in prison Pike was treated with Prozac for obsessive-compulsive disorder; she was also diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Pike sued the Tennessee Department of Correction in 2022 over the conditions of her confinement, which she argued constitued cruel and unusual punishment. Her lawyer wrote, "For the last nearly 30 years, Ms. Pike has been subjected to solitary confinement in a cell the size of a parking space, where she has had nearly no meaningful human contact." The lawsuit noted that while male death row inmates were kept separate from the general population, they were still allowed to socialize and work together. Due to the fact that Pike is the only woman sentenced to death in Tennessee, she had arbitrarily been de-facto kept in solitary confinement. The state settled the lawsuit in September 2024, agreeing to equalize Pike's treatment with men on death row, including a job, shared meals with other incarcerated women, and more time out of her cell.
Attempted murder of Patricia Jones
Pike was accused of attacking and attempting to strangle fellow inmate Patricia Jones with a shoestring on August 24, 2001, during a fire-related evacuation. At the time of the attack, Jones had been serving a life sentence for the 1994 murder of 84-year-old Alberta Coker in Knoxville. Pike said she was trying to protect another inmate, Natasha Cornett. Pike was convicted of attempted first degree murder on August 12, 2004 and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Jones later testified that Pike had intervened in a fight between Jones and another inmate and likely saved the other woman's life. At Pike's appeal, Appellate Judge John Everett Williams said that "her stated intention was to protect" convicted killer Natasha Cornett, but also said that "there was ample evidence by her actions and [Pike's] own words that contradicted this position."
Attempted prison escape
In March 2012, it was revealed Pike had made escape plans involving Justin Heflin, a 23-year-old corrections officer, and Donald Kohut, a 34-year-old personal trainer from New Jersey. Kohut had entered into a letter-writing correspondence with Pike around the beginning of 2011. By July of that year, Kohut was making the nearly 1,700 mi (2,700 km) round trip from Flemington, New Jersey, to Nashville, Tennessee, to visit Pike in person once or twice a month. Eventually, Kohut communicated an escape plan to Pike and enlisted the help of Heflin by bribing him.
Because of security concerns, the Tennessee Department of Corrections has not provided many details about the plan; however, the indictment laid out a scenario where a prison key would be traced and then a duplicate created. Prison authorities became aware of their plan in January 2012, leading to a joint investigation involving the Tennessee Department of Corrections, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) and the New Jersey State Police. According to the TBI, the plan was not very far along when it was discovered, and "the jailbreak was not imminent".
In March 2012, Kohut was arrested and charged with bribery and conspiracy to commit escape, while Heflin was arrested and charged with bribery, official misconduct, and conspiracy to commit escape. Pike was not charged in connection with the alleged conspiracy. Investigators said it was unclear whether she was a participant in the conspiracy beyond her awareness of the scheme. On May 31, 2012, Kohut was sentenced to seven years in prison to be served at the Tennessee State Northeast Correctional Complex. He was released in 2018. Heflin, who cooperated with authorities after his arrest, served no prison time, but was terminated from his job with the Tennessee Department of Corrections.
2026 execution attempt
Death warrant
On August 27, 2020, the office of Tennessee attorney general Herbert Slatery asked the Tennessee Supreme Court to set an execution date for Pike. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic in Tennessee and other factors, Pike's attorneys received extensions from the court, giving them more time to argue why Pike should not be executed. The state did not oppose the extensions. On June 7, 2021, Pike's attorneys filed a motion opposing the execution date and requesting a Certificate of Commutation on the grounds of mental illness. The motion was denied.
Before November 2022, Pike had exhausted all appeals. That month, however, the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled in State v. Booker that the state's law mandating life sentences without parole for juveniles in homicide cases was unconstitutional. On the basis of this decision, on August 30, 2023, Pike's lawyers filed a motion to reopen her appeals in an attempt to overturn her 1996 conviction and sentence. They argued that the Court's reasoning in Booker applies to all youthful defendants, not just minors, and that Pike's young age and mental health struggles at the time of the killing should spare her from execution.