Christa Pike to Be Executed September 30 for 1995 Murder of Colleen Slemmer Christa Pike is scheduled to be executed on September 30, becoming the first woman put to death in Tennessee in over 200 years, while her lawyers seek clemency. Christa Pike, now 50, is scheduled to be executed in Tennessee on September 30, making her the first woman to be put to death in the state in more than 200 years. She was convicted in 1996 for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow Job Corps student, and became the youngest woman sentenced to death in the United States at age 18. May Martinez, Slemmer's mother, plans to attend the execution in the front row, holding a picture of her daughter. She will make the nearly 11-hour journey from her home in Florida to Tennessee, even though the state is not helping to cover her travel or hotel costs. She is so determined to be there that she says she is willing to forgo a mortgage payment if necessary.I won't pay my mortgage, she said. I want to be there. I need to be there. Once inside the execution chamber, Martinez plans to sit as close to Pike as she can and hold up a photograph of Colleen. I want that last image in her face to be of what she did to an innocent, beautiful girl, she said.Pike is set to die by lethal injection on September 30. She has requested an all-female team to carry out the execution, arguing that being restrained and handled by men could retraumatize her due to past sexual abuse. If that request is denied, she has asked to be hanged instead. Meanwhile, Pike's lawyers are asking Tennessee Governor Bill Lee to grant her clemency and commute her sentence to life without parole, citing her history of childhood sexual abuse and mental illness.May Martinez told the Daily Mail she has little sympathy for Pike's plight or past. She said Pike should not be allowed any special treatment and accused her of playing the system, adding that Pike did not consider how her daughter felt. She said Pike has not apologized in 31 years. I think it's convenient all this is coming out now, Martinez said. She is not expecting an apology and says that even if one comes, it will mean nothing to her.In January 1995, Pike, then 18, lured Slemmer to an isolated area of the University of Tennessee campus and subjected her to a torturous attack that lasted more than an hour and ended in a fatal bludgeoning. Pike was convicted the following year and sentenced to death. She is also set to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.At the time, Pike had become convinced that Colleen was trying to steal her 17-year-old boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, a fellow Job Corps student with whom Pike shared an interest in satanic imagery. Friends of Colleen denied any romantic rivalry. Pike and another student, Shadolla Peterson, hatched a plan to lure Colleen away from the school, telling her they wanted to make peace and offering to share marijuana with her in a secluded area near the University of Tennessee campus.Colleen went with Pike, Shipp and Peterson that evening. Once they reached the woods, she was attacked. For at least half an hour, prosecutors said, Colleen was beaten, kicked and slashed as she begged them to stop and repeatedly tried to escape. At some point during the assault, Shipp carved a pentagram into her chest while she was still alive. Colleen ultimately died from devastating blows to the head, administered by Pike with a chunk of asphalt.Pike later returned to the Job Corps center with a fragment of Colleen's skull, which she showed to other students while describing what had happened. Colleen was found dead the next morning, naked from the waist up, her blood-soaked clothes hanging on branches above her. Pike was convicted of premeditated first-degree murder and conspiracy in March 1996. At sentencing, jurors found that Colleen's murder was especially cruel and involved torture or serious physical abuse beyond what was necessary to kill her. They sentenced Pike to death.Shipp received life in prison. Because he was 17 when Colleen was murdered, he was legally protected from execution. Peterson received a six-year suspended sentence. Their 10-month difference in age has since become another central pillar in the case for sparing Pike's life. Tennessee has never executed anyone in the modern death penalty era for a crime committed at 18, state records show. Seven other defendants who were 18 when they committed murder have been sent to the state's death row over the past 50 years, but every one later had their death sentence vacated. The youngest offender Tennessee has executed was 23.Pike's attorneys have seized on that history, arguing that the legal divide between 17 and 18 fails to reflect decades of research showing that the parts of the brain governing judgment, impulse control and decision-making continue developing well beyond a person's 18th birthday. Her gender has also become part of the wider debate. As Tennessee's only female death-row prisoner, Pike spent almost three decades largely isolated from other inmates under conditions her lawyers say were substantially harsher than those experienced by condemned men.Sandra Babcock, one of Pike's clemency attorneys, told the Daily Mail that an international human rights commission concluded Tennessee subjected her to cruel and inhumane conditions and treated her more harshly because she was a woman. Pike's advocates have also highlighted what they see as a contradiction in Tennessee's approach to sexual violence. In 2024, Gov. Lee signed a law authorizing the death penalty for certain child-rape offenses, with supporters citing the lasting psychological and emotional damage inflicted on victims. Now, Pike's attorneys are asking the same governor to spare a woman who was repeatedly raped as a child, arguing that the impact of that trauma was never properly considered before she was sentenced.The portrait of Pike being put forward by her lawyers contrasts with the one painted by prosecutors who argued for her death 30 years ago. In a 226-page clemency petition, Pike's attorneys argue that she is now terrified of what awaits her, suffering horrible nightmares and shredded nerves as judgment day edges closer. They have asked Governor Lee to consider a childhood marked by repeated sexual violence, physical abuse, and neglect, much of which her lawyers say was never properly addressed by the adults and institutions around her.According to the petition, Pike was sexually abused by her grandmother's boyfriend from ages two to five. At 11, she was raped by a 37-year-old neighbor who received only a suspended sentence and continued living nearby. Then, at 17 - almost exactly a year before Colleen's murder - Pike reported being dragged into the woods and raped by a stranger while walking to a store. A rape kit was performed, but the attacker was never identified.Her attorneys also claim she endured physical abuse at home, attempted suicide several times as a child, and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and PTSD after reaching death row. None of Pike's documented history of sexual abuse was presented to the jury when deciding whether she should live or die. Her lawyers argue that omission deprived jurors of crucial context about the teenager they were sentencing - context they insist does not excuse Colleen's murder but should matter when deciding Pike's fate.Christa was broken, not evil, her attorneys argued in the petition. She was broken by the people and places that were meant to be safe and supportive, they said, and by a mental health system, juvenile system, and criminal justice system that ignored, misdiagnosed, and mistreated her at every turn. Now, after receiving proper treatment, they claim the Pike of today bears little resemblance to the volatile teenager who killed Slemmer. Her advocates describe her as thoughtful, even-tempered, bright, funny, and deeply remorseful for her actions. Pike has become a keen artist behind bars, her attorneys say.As part of the petition, Pike's mother, Clarissa Hansen, wrote a letter appealing to Governor Lee, in which she voiced her regrets and admitted to failing her daughter at important moments. Insisting she was distracted by work and men for much of Pike's childhood, Hansen also claimed that her heart was broken for Slemmer's family and that she has spent years trying to find ways to ease Ms. Martinez's pain. But Martinez says she has never heard from Pike or anyone close to her, and that Pike's supposed remorse has never been expressed directly to the family.For Martinez, however, arguments about Pike's age, trauma or treatment in prison feel irrelevant when compared to the sheer brutality she inflicted on Colleen. And despite the last-minute legal maneuvering, she is confident the execution will go ahead. Slemmer's family remembered her as a kind, gentle and proud computer nerd who loved helping other people. Asked what she imagines the moment after Pike's execution will feel like, Martinez said: I think the sky's going to open up so bright. Then her thoughts returned, as they so often do, to the daughter she lost. As the execution date approaches, Pike's final requests and clemency plea remain unresolved, while Martinez prepares to witness the execution and honor her daughter's memory.