A female death row inmate in Tennessee, Christa Gail Pike, is poised to become the first woman executed in the state in over two centuries. Pike, the solitary female on Tennessee’s death row, was handed a death sentence at the age of 18 for the savage murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1995. The gruesome incident occurred when Pike, alongside her then boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, lured Slemmer into the woods near the University of Tennessee’s agricultural campus.
During the attack, Pike used a box cutter to slash Slemmer’s throat, a cleaver to strike her, carved a pentagram on her chest, and crushed her skull with a piece of asphalt. She even kept a fragment of Slemmer’s skull as a memento. Pike was found guilty of first-degree murder in 1996, leading to her death sentence. Shipp, on the other hand, received a life sentence with the chance of parole. Pike’s sentence was extended by 25 years in 2004 due to a separate conviction for attempting to strangle another inmate.
After nearly three decades since her sentencing, the Tennessee Supreme Court has set a date for Pike’s execution, scheduled for September 30, 2026. If the execution proceeds, Pike would be the first woman to be executed in Tennessee since 1820 and only the fourth in the state’s history. Records from the Death Penalty Information Centre indicate that Martin Eve, identified as a woman, was hanged in 1820 for being an accessory to murder.
Pike’s legal team has argued that her youth, history of abuse, bipolar disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder should exempt her from execution. They highlighted Pike’s troubled childhood marked by physical and sexual abuse. Pike herself expressed deep remorse for her actions, acknowledging the irreversible impact of her crime and her struggles with mental illness at the time of the offense.
The last woman to be executed in the United States was Amber McLaughlin, who received a lethal injection in Missouri in January 2023. Since the reintroduction of the death penalty in 1976, 18 women have been executed in the country.