More than three decades after a horrific high school love triangle culminated in a brutal killing, the State of Tennessee is preparing to carry out a historic capital sentence. Christa Pike, now 49, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on September 30, 2026. If the sentence is executed, she will become the first woman put to death by the state in more than two centuries.
But as the execution date looms, her defense team is launching a high-stakes legal maneuver. Citing a recent high-profile failure within the state’s execution chamber and a rare blood disorder afflicting their client, her attorneys have submitted an urgent request to state officials, warning that moving forward under the current protocols would amount to a modern-day torture session.
A Horrific Crime of the Occult
The grim narrative began on January 12, 1995, at the Job Corps career-training center in Knoxville. At the time, Pike was a volatile 18-year-old student locked in an intense relationship with 17-year-old Tadaryl Shipp. Driven by an all-consuming jealousy, Pike convinced herself that a 19-year-old classmate, Colleen Slemmer, was attempting to steal Shipp’s affection.
That suspicion sparked a meticulously planned ambush. Investigators proved that Pike, Shipp, and a third student, Shadolla Peterson, lured Slemmer into a secluded, wooded pocket of the Knoxville campus. While Peterson acted as a lookout, Pike and Shipp unleashed a savage, prolonged assault.
The next morning, a campus groundskeeper stumbled upon Slemmer’s mutilated body. She had been systematically beaten, stabbed, and bludgeoned, and a large pentagram had been carved deeply into her chest.
Court records later revealed that Pike openly bragged to other students about the slaughter. She boasted of slashing Slemmer’s throat six times with a box cutter and striking her with a meat cleaver, continuing the butchery even as the terrified teenager begged for mercy. The fatal blow came when Pike hurled a massive chunk of asphalt at Slemmer’s head. Before leaving the woods, Pike fractured the victim’s skull, pocketing a piece of the bone as a macabre souvenir to show off to her peers.
For Slemmer’s grieving mother, May Martinez, the passing of three decades has done nothing to erase the agony of those details.
“Christa Pike wanted a human sacrifice and my daughter was it,” Martinez stated, pointing to Pike’s active fascination with the occult. “They basically cut her over 300 times and carved a pentagram on her chest.”
The legal system responded swiftly. Pike was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death, earning the distinction of becoming the youngest woman ever sent to Tennessee’s death row. Shipp also received a first-degree murder conviction but, due to his age, was sentenced to life in prison; inmate records indicate he will become eligible for parole in November 2026. Peterson, who turned state’s evidence and testified for the prosecution, received probation.
From ‘Reckless Teenager’ to Remorseful Inmate
Over the decades spent in solitary confinement, Pike has undergone a profound transformation, according to her legal team. She has transitioned from a defiant teenager into the state’s lone female death row inmate—and the only modern-era offender facing execution in Tennessee for a crime committed before reaching the age of 21.
In a poignant 2023 letter written to The Tennessean, Pike attempted to bridge the gap between her past actions and her current reality.
“Think back to the worst mistake you made as a reckless teenager. Well, mine happened to be huge, unforgettable and ruined countless lives,” Pike wrote. “I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done… It sickens me now to think that someone as loving and compassionate as myself had the ability to commit such a crime.”
Her defense lawyers, led by Stephen Ferrell, have consistently urged the public and the courts to re-examine the context of her youth. They argue that the initial trial jury never fully grasped the scope of Pike’s childhood, which they describe as fraught with severe physical abuse, sexual trauma, and systemic neglect. Only years after her conviction was she formally diagnosed and treated for bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Two Centuries of Precedent
If the execution proceeds, it will shatter a historical status quo that has stood since the era of the Monroe presidency. The last woman executed by Tennessee was a slave named Martin Eve (alternatively recorded as Eve Martin), who was hanged in 1820 after being convicted as an accessory to murder. Pike would be only the fourth woman ever executed in the state’s history.
Yet, while the defense appeals to historical gravity and psychological rehabilitation, the victim’s family remains completely unmoved. May Martinez has spent years publicly demanding that the state fulfill its legal obligation without further delay.
“What I want to see from the judge right now would be to get a date and put her down, instead of waiting another year or another day,” Martinez said in an emotional interview with WBIR-TV. “There’s not a day goes by that I don’t think about Colleen or how she died and how rough it was. Honestly, my heart breaks every single day… I want this to happen before I die. Otherwise, nobody will see justice.”
The Looming Crisis in the Chamber
Now, the final battleground centers on the technical mechanics of the execution itself. Pike’s attorney, Stephen Ferrell, is petitioning state officials to halt the proceedings, pointing directly to a catastrophic failure inside the state penitentiary earlier this year.
On May 21, prison officials attempted to execute death row inmate Tony Carruthers for a 1994 triple murder. The procedure was abruptly halted when medical staff spent an extended period failing to establish the mandatory backup intravenous (IV) line. The logistical collapse forced Governor Bill Lee to step in and issue a sudden one-year reprieve for Carruthers.
Ferrell warns that executing Pike via the state’s current lethal injection protocol poses an even higher risk of a botched outcome. According to medical briefs filed by her defense, Pike suffers from unusually small, recessed veins, compounded by thrombocytopenia—a severe blood disorder characterized by a low blood platelet count that causes excessive, uncontrollable bleeding.
The defense attorney warned that these combined medical factors would make inserting a central line exceptionally difficult, even for the most seasoned medical specialists.
Furthermore, Ferrell presented expert medical testimony suggesting that the specific chemical interaction of the state’s lethal injection drug cocktail, when introduced into a patient with Pike’s blood disorder, could cause her lungs to rapidly fill with a bloody fluid. The result, he argues, would cause her to effectively drown in her own blood while conscious.
“Since the state released the 2025 execution protocol, defense counsel, medical experts, and advocates have warned that the lack of clarity on any number of issues would result in a torturous execution,” Ferrell concluded.
With the September deadline fast approaching, Tennessee finds itself at an ethical and legal crossroads: forced to balance the demands of a mother who has waited thirty years for justice against a stark warning that carrying out that justice could result in a gruesome constitutional crisis.