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. Over roughly thirty minutes, Slemmer was beaten, slashed, and had a pentagram carved in her chest before Pike killed her by crushing her skull with a chunk of asphalt. 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 lost conciousness and was intubated for several days until regaining conciousness on October 6. The failed execution was the second for Tennessee in 2026, prompting the state's Department of Corrections secretary 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 a Juvenile Evaluation Center in Swannanoa, North Carolina after being placed on probation 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 children. In the months leading up to her arrest, North Carolina social services 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 Job Corps at the suggestion of her grandfather, who noted her technical proficiency with computers.
While living at the Job Corps training campus, Pike met and fell in love with another Job Corp student, 17-year-old Tadaryl Shipp. They began dabbling in the occult and devil worship. Pike became convinced that fellow student Colleen Slemmer was trying to steal Shipp. Along with her friend, 18-year-old Shadolla Peterson, Pike planned to lure Slemmer to an isolated, abandoned steam plant near the University of Tennessee campus.
On January 12, 1995, Pike, Shipp, Peterson, and Slemmer signed out of the dormitory and went to the woods, where Slemmer was told they wanted to make peace by offering her some cannabis. Upon arrival at the secluded location, Slemmer was attacked by Pike and Shipp while Peterson acted as lookout. According to court testimony, for the next 30 minutes, Slemmer was taunted, beaten, and slashed. During the attack, Slemmer begged for her life. Pike and Shipp held her down and used a box cutter to carve a pentagram into her chest while she was still alive, while Pike used a meat cleaver and sliced her across the stomach, ignoring the victim's pleas and cries to stop. She was stabbed and slashed hundreds of times. Finally Pike repeatedly smashed Slemmer's skull with a large chunk of asphalt, killing her from brain injury. Pike dug through the gaping open hole in her head, fished a piece of her skull, and put the blood-soaked fragment in her jacket pocket. She would show it off and boast about how she got it. All three were arrested within 36 hours. Shipp's room was searched, and a Satanic Bible and altar were found. A search of Pike's jacket turned up the piece of Slemmer's skull. Even so, Pike insisted she and her co-conspirators were merely trying to scare Slemmer and their plan got out of control.
Slemmer's mother 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 it would not be returned 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, May Martinez, confirmed that after 16 years of fighting and writing letters, she had received the skull from the state of Tennessee but has still not received "the last piece of her daughter's skull". Trial and appeals Trial Pike rejected a deal offered by the prosecution to plead guilty in return for a sentence of life imprisonment without parole.
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.
The jury found Pike guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. During the sentencing phase of the trial, her mother, father and aunt had testified on her behalf. On March 30, 1996, Pike was sentenced to death by electrocution for the murder charge and 25 years in prison for the conspiracy charge.
In January 1997, Shipp was also found guilty on both counts. However, after the jury could not unanimously agree whether to sentence him to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, the judge sentenced him to life in prison 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 was denied parole in October 2025.
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 thereafter changed her mind, and on July 8, 2002, defense lawyers filed a motion to allow the appeal process to continue. This motion was denied. However, 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 has been held since 1996 at the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center in Nashville, in solitary confinement until 2024.
Pike was treated in prison with Prozac for obsessive-compulsive disorder. She was also diagnosed with bipolar disorder while in prison.
Pike sued the Tennessee Department of Correction in 2022, alleging that her conditions of confinement were unequal to those of similarly-situated male inmates. While male death row inmates were allowed to socialize and work together, Pike was subject to more restrictive conditions. The state settled the lawsuit in September 2024, agreeing to equalize Pike's treatment with men on death row.
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 claimed she was trying to protect another inmate, Natasha Cornett. Pike was convicted of attempted first degree murder on August 12, 2004 and was 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 corrections officer Justin Heflin as well as Donald Kohut of New Jersey. Kohut, a personal trainer in his 30s, had entered into a letter-writing correspondence with Pike around the beginning of 2011. By July of that year, Kohut was making the nearly 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 corrections officer Heflin, who agreed to participate in return for cash and gifts.
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. Early in 2012, prison personnel received information about the escape plot. This led to the attempted prison break being thwarted by 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 uncovered, and "the jailbreak was not imminent".