Full timeline of Christa Pike case as she's denied clemency and is set to be executed today
Christa Pike, 50, is set to become the first woman executed by Tennessee in more than 200 years.
Following years of appeals, challenges and petitions, all avenues of appeal have failed, and Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has declined to grant clemency.
Pike was sentenced to death for the brutal murder of Colleen Slemmer aged 18, becoming one of the youngest people to be sent to death row.
Her lawyers have argued her history of sexual abuse and subsequent PTSD and bipolar diagnosis should have resulted in her sentence being commuted to life imprisonment.
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With Pike's scheduled execution hours away, this is a timeline of her horrific crime as a teenager, her attempted murder conviction while in prison, and the last-minute attempts to prevent her death sentence from being carried out.
1995
11 January
Christa Pike, an 18-year-old student at the Job Corps Center in Knoxville, Tennessee, tells friend and fellow student Kim Iloilo that she intends to kill another student, 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, because she ‘had just felt mean that day’.
12 January
Pike, her 17-year-old boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, and 18-year-old friend Shadolla Peterson leave the Job Corps Centre with Slemmer.
They go to an isolated area on the University of Tennessee Agricultural campus, where Slemmer is beat, tortured and killed.
A pentagram is carved into Slemmer’s chest, and Pike takes a piece of her skull as a ‘souvenir’ and later shows it off to her friends.
13 January
At around 8.05am, a University of Tennessee Grounds Department employee discovers Slemmer’s ‘semi-nude, slashed, and badly beaten’ body.
14 January
Pike and Shipp are interviewed separately at the Knoxville Police Department. Pike gives investigators a lengthy statement about her involvement in the attack.
As recounted by the Tennessee Supreme Court, Pike accuses Slemmer of trying to steal her boyfriend and ‘running her mouth’ everywhere. Pike also claims that she had not planned to kill Slemmer, but had instead planned to fight her and let her know ‘to leave me the hell alone’.
Pike is arrested and charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
1996
18 March
Pike’s trial at Knox County Criminal Court begins.
22 March
After just a few hours of deliberation, the jury finds Pike guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.
30 March
Aged 20, Pike is sentenced to death for Slemmer’s murder, making her the youngest woman sentenced to death in the United States in the modern era. She also receives a consecutive 25-year sentence for the conspiracy charge.
Pike appears emotional and cries out for her mother in the courtroom. She is taken to the Tennessee Prison for Women, which is now known as the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center.
January 1997
Shipp is convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder, receiving a life sentence with the possibility of parole. As Shipp was 17 at the time of Slemmer’s murder, he is ineligible for the death penalty.
1998
Following an appeal from Pike, the Tennessee Supreme Court affirms her convictions and sentence.
1999
The US Supreme Court denied Pike's petition for a review of her case.
August 2001
While incarcerated, Pike is convicted of attempted first-degree murder in connection with an attack on fellow inmate Patricia Jones. She is handed an additional 25-year sentence.
2021
A Tennessee court filing states that Pike was ‘properly diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder’ after she was jailed.
2021-2026
Pike continues to challenge her death sentence through state and federal courts, but her attempts to overturn or commute the sentence are unsuccessful.
2026
8 January
Pike files a complaint in Davidson County Chancery Court seeking declaratory and injunctive relief.
Among Pike’s claims were Eighth Amendment challenges to Tennessee's lethal injection protocol, with her lawyers arguing it could cause ‘unconstitutional suffering’ in her case.
6 May
The Chancery Court transfers the case to the Tennessee Supreme Court.
12 May
The Tennessee Supreme Court dismisses the transferred case without prejudice.
12 June
Pike’s legal team file a motion with the Tennessee Supreme Court challenging the state’s lethal injection protocol and requests a special master to ‘develop the facts to support these claims’.
2 September
Pike’s lawyers submit a 226-page clemency petition to Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, asking that her death sentence be commuted to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
It presents extensive evidence about Pike's childhood, arguing that her actions at 18 cannot be separated from years of sexual abuse, rape, neglect and untreated mental health problems.
Her lawyers also argue that warning signs of the abuse were present when she was a child, including a graphic picture drawn while at school, but that the adults around her failed to properly investigate what was happening.
Pike's team request an all-female team be involved in her execution, arguing that being restrained and handled by male officers could exacerbate trauma linked to her history of sexual abuse.
Tennessee says female corrections officers will transfer Pike to the prison and that efforts will be made to have female staff present, although the state cannot guarantee that everyone involved in the execution will be a woman.
7 September
UN human rights experts urge US officials to ‘immediately halt’ Pike’s execution.
“Pike’s execution would mark the culmination of a trajectory of severe physical and psychological suffering marked by childhood abuse and nearly three decades of solitary confinement on death row,” they said.
17 September
Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell tells NewsChannel 9 that Pike has a history of difficult blood draws and is worried about what could happen if they need to use a central line.
He says: “Her biggest fear is not the fear of dying. It's the fear of that process.”
Ferrell also adds: “Christa Pike at age 50 is not at all Christa Pike at age 18.”
18 September
Pike appears in a documentary, titled Dead Woman Walking: Christa Pike Vs Tennessee, where she discusses the murder and her feelings ahead of the execution date.
“I know I said I believed a date would never be set, but now that one has been set, it’s like a roulette wheel of thought and your actual brain is the ball bouncing around,” she says.
“My nerves are shredded. When I do sleep, my brain eats itself. I have the most horrible nightmares, but I think what has been worse is that they told me a year ahead of time. And so, every day I’ve woken up and lived that thought all day, every day, every waking moment.”
Pike also admits that she feels ‘remarkably remorseful’ for what she did, adding: “I’ve always felt bad for her mother, that I took someone’s child, someone’s sister, someone’s friend away.”
23 September
The Tennessee Supreme Court rejects Pike’s request for a stay of execution.
They conclude ‘that Ms. Pike failed to demonstrate a likelihood of success on the merits of her claims’.
28 September
Governor Lee declines to grant Pike clemency.
“After deliberate consideration of Christa Gail Pike’s request for clemency and after a thorough review of the case, I am upholding the sentence of the State of Tennessee and do not plan to intervene,” he says in a statement.
Pike’s lawyers say they are ‘deeply saddened and heartbroken’ by the decision.
They add that ‘moving ahead with her execution puts the State of Tennessee on singular footing: Christa will be the first person Tennessee executes in the modern death penalty era who was a teenager at the time of the offense and the first woman executed by the state in more than 200 years’.
The statement from Pike’s lawyers continues: “Throughout her childhood, Christa was failed by people and institutions that should have shown her care and meaningful intervention. Instead, her childhood was marked by repeated, documented rape and sexual abuse, neglect, and violence.
“The 18-year-old girl suffering from severe mental illness and near-debilitating trauma no longer exists. Christa is a 50-year-old remorseful woman who understands her actions, receives proper treatment for her mental illness, and provides for and guides fellow incarcerated women.
“With this decision, the State of Tennessee is ignoring what both science and our legal system have decided: an 18-year-old brain is not an adult brain, and 18 is too young to face execution.” They also claim the decision ‘leaves unanswered vital questions about Tennessee’s execution protocol’.
30 September
Pike is scheduled to be put to death at Nashville’s Riverbend Maximum Security Institution.
Topics: Crime, US News, True Crime
Lauren Wilkins