The State of Tennessee is preparing to carry out its first execution of a woman in over two centuries, with Christa Gail Pike scheduled to die by electric chair on September 30, 2026. Pike, now 50 years old, has spent nearly three decades on death row following her 1996 conviction for the gruesome torture and murder of fellow Job Corps student Colleen Slemmer in January 1995. The execution date was formally set after years of legal appeals, and in accordance with Tennessee law, Pike is set to be transferred to the custody of the warden at the Tennessee Prison for Women in preparation for the lethal procedure.
This impending execution marks a historic and somber event for the state, which has not executed a woman since the year 1819, a gap of over 207 years. The last female execution on record in Tennessee was an unnamed Black woman who was hanged, though some historical records previously (and incorrectly) cited a woman named Eve Martin as the last, an error that has been debunked by historians who note Martin was actually a murder victim. Because law mandates electrocution as the method if chosen by the inmate or the state for crimes predating certain legislative changes, Pike is slated to die in “Old Sparky,” the state’s electric chair, rather than by lethal injection.
Christa Gail Pike was just a teenager when she committed the crime that would seal her fate. In 1995, at the age of 18, Pike was a student at the Knoxville Job Corps Center, a federal program designed to help at-risk youth gain employment skills. It was there she met her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, and her friend Shadola Peterson.
Smitten and enveloped in a newfound lust for power, Pike quickly enveloped her peers in her orbit. However, the relationship between Pike and Slemmer was fraught from the beginning, starting with accusations of romantic interference and ending with a feral act of violence that has disturbed investigators and legal scholars for 31 years.
Throughout the initial months of the Job Corps enrollment, Pike accused Colleen Slemmer, a shy computer science student from Florida, of trying to “steal” Shipp. These accusations were later proven to be a fabricated cover for a far more sinister motive. According to evidence presented at trial, Pike had adopted a serious devotion to Satanism, influenced by her boyfriend.
In their discussions and seances, Pike often bragged that the devil required a human sacrifice to ask for him to grant them affection and glory. The target was ultimately selected: Colleen Slemmer, unconcerned, defenseless, and wholly trusting after Pike somewhat befriended her to keep her close.
On the night of January 12, 1995, Pike invited Slemmer to go pick a video, letting her trust do the rest. All four teenagers, including the Slemmer victim, signed out of the Job Corps dormitory. Instead of heading for a rental store, they led the victim into a wooded section of Tyson Park, four miles away.
Inside that park, a brutal assault occurred. Investigators later detailed that Christa Pike used a box cutter to slash at Slemmer, causing her to stagger and attempt an escape, but she was pursued by Shipp, who slammed her to the ground. The attack continued as Pike used a heavy piece rock to split Colleen Slemmer’s skull, bludgeoning her to death in a slanted reminder of the depression and duress she held within herself.
After the death, forensic investigators noted a peculiar mark: an upside-down pentagram carved into the victim’s chest. It was later revealed that Pike had began the slicing, while her accomplice finishing it to complete their “satanic star,” a macabre souvenir in the group’s belief system. In addition, Pike picked up a piece of flesh and skull from the gruesome scene and kept it as a “trophy” in her pocket.
She was arrested once police tracked that she had signed out of the center with the victim and had admitted to the scene. The piece of skull was still in her possession, a clear indication of the coldness of her actions.
The trial, which began in 1996 ended on 22, led to Pike being found guilty of first-degree murder. It took just over three minutes of deliberation for the jury to recommend the death penalty, a sentence that was officially stamped that March of 1996. Following the sentencing, Pike became one of the youngest women in modern US history to be sent to death row, a record that’s been often misattributed to her but belongs other women named, yet remained in the record due to her young age and crime—committed when she was just 18.
Authorities argued she met the legal age needed for capital punishment by being older than the new Supreme Court threshold of 16 years old.
Pike’s history on death row has done little to generate sympathy or appeals for mercy. In 2001, while incarcerated at the Tennessee Prison for Women, Pike attacked a fellow death row inmate, Patricia Jones, trying to strangle her with a shoestring. Pike’s intentions were thwarted by prison guards who intervened.
As a result of this violent prison behavior, she received an additional 25 years of sentenced time, but it was constitutional to still carry out the death warrant despite her being 50 years old. In judges, Pike’s recent legal team has tried to argue mental incompetency, but the Tennessee Supreme Court rejected that claim in a ruling that allowed the current execution date to stand.
As the community waits for the scheduled execution day of September 30, the region’s statistic shows that Tennessee has not executed a woman since well before the Civil War. The death penalty for female offenders remains a rare occurrence currently; the last woman to be executed in the entire US was Lisa Montgomery in January 2021, who had been killed by lethal injection by the U. S.
government for the rub-snatching of a baby. In Texas, a woman named Melissa Lucio was excused at the last minute. In Tennessee, Pike will stand again before the state’s “Old Sparky” electric chair.
It’s the solitary device that shall bring her life to an end, to rewrite this story and its legacy of state’s death book of record.
The family expected to cross-examine the killed victim, Colleen Slemmer, rejoiced at the certainty of a date, with her mother, speaking in public of how she has passed decades thinking of the “peace” that will lie over the family when she is complete. They have long known that the sentence is not a door that leads to closure, but the date comes to signatures that the state waits for final moments.
In the months that remain, the guards will perform final warehouse checks. As the date comes in, the death house will be sealed and clear of any media or onlookers. In a Tennessee law, a prisoner can opt between electrocution and lethal injection if they choose, but with no choice from the reginal, it’s an automatic current to flow into the body of Christa Pike.
Witnesses are expected to consist of family members and the victim’s family, a final press statement for her, and the electric chair. At the last moment, she’ll be strapped, and the executioner will pull the switch to send 1,750 volts through her drop-down.
Daily nearest to the September 30 date, Tennessee prison officials have updated logistical measures, setting up an execution procedures with an preselected usual that obscures pain by multiple application. The date is still too far away for prisoner to be transferred fully; but once at the prison, she will be in a cell block monitored by a guard and officials. Her psychological state will be checked and regular and her appeal exhausted.
The process of post-court motions have been resoluted and no more pending remains.
The case after learning about the execution is still a darken sore. This time, the state is likely not to retreat as the previous attempts or delays. In a recent decision, a judge cleared away the mental claim that her psyche of those years would have prevented her from being a violent criminal.
Therefore, the final step to go forward with pains and the time is as scheduled.
As a legal backdrop, here’s the timeline for the execution. On the date of the fatal current pulse, the prisoner is posed a question for a final statement. The warden will then order the command to continue, and the current will flow.
The warden reads loudly, That on the 12th day of January, 1997, your body shall be subjected to shock by the current for a cur few small circle and shock. It is then that the warden said that the final part of the will was int continue to the breathing and stop the pulse. The state’s Emergency Medical Officer will then checks for a heartbeat and an absent.
The executioner’s name is kept from least. Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam was waived a request for mercy. In the stat of Christa’s run, Dan spent the state of Tennessee dollars in appeals to keep her alive, while she has been holding a slate of final meals and last sanctioned media interview.
At the onset of the death row and execution era, the 𝒔𝒄𝒂𝓃𝒹𝒶𝓁 of Pike’s victim’s rib—the incomplete pentagram—will continue on as a constant memory of how she undermined victim’s trust not by the boy, but by the devil’s law. Both officials and locals feel that the tension will be high until the electric switch is turned. Look for foreign media to stream often, the emotion like the morning of the january execution in 1997 upon covers, but this year, in the struggle for a late, Pike’s the fire will now slow.
The world can watch in horror the conclusion to such a dark chapter as scheduled.
At the minimum, for this of reporters and interviewers field, they have realized piecing over. There has been the identity of Shadola after she was granted a prosecutor. The female accomplice, renounced earlier, ran a beauty supply, but remains lingering.
The obvious emotion that the crime was away from the violent death of Colleen was in at the will.
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The state has vehicles and news media already setting up. Bringing with that the inevitable switch from these annotations to the date into still photography. The daily schedule in Knoxville, where Job Corps is remembered as a bed, but no one is allowed site as the date approaches.
The diocese and the anti-death penalty advocates will set up a vigil at the prison entrance, chanting “Mercy for Christa” and “do no 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁.” The counter-protests, with the justice for Colleen, are also to be shown.
In all involving, this date is a historical dark crossing. The electoral commission says that the state period will be transparent and scheduling prove, and the correctional system is ready to proceed and not expecting delays. For the “victim’s family, they are already the family of revenge has turned.
Thus, as the days pass, all the warners in the state will turn to the point of the park in Tyson where now trampled all, three years ago. The cages continue. The machine pushes.
And the final seconds come. The state of Tennessee will strike the date to match a 31-year-old old wound, and the woman slated for death is now the center of a history.
This definitive incident confirms are because we all now think, the electric chair is set: Christa Pike.