Mother of victim murdered by Christa Pike issues emotional statement as execution date looms

As the one-week countdown to Christa Pike’s execution date has begun, her victim’s mother has spoken out, 31 years after her daughter was brutally murdered.

May Martinez’s world was turned upside down in 1995 when her 18-year-old daughter Colleen Slemmer was bludgeoned to death and mutilated by her fellow Jobs Corps student, Pike, 19.

Now 50, Pike, who was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death, is scheduled to be executed in Tennessee, USA, on 30 September.

She was the youngest woman on death row and will become the first woman executed in the US state in more than 200 years.

However, heartbreakingly, Colleen’s mother believes her daughter’s memory is getting lost in the noise surrounding the high-profile execution.

She told WBIR Channel 10: “It's never about the victims. It's like Colleen was never there."

Martinez added: "The victims need help from the justice system, but the state ... they don't see. Like when I sat in the court for three weeks in a row, they didn't see that I was by myself. They didn't see that I was in a hotel, you know, there, and nobody (was) with me.”

Slemmer was brutally murdered by Pike in 1995 (First Coast News/ABC)

She described herself as Collen’s ‘voice,’ saying that ‘somebody's gotta talk’.

"She's not with me. Every day, every hour, every minute, she's gone,” Martinez said.

Three decades after her daughter’s murder, Martinez will be driving over eight and a half hours from Jacksonville, Florida, to Nashville to witness Pike’s execution via lethal injection.

When asked what she’d say to the woman who killed her daughter, given the chance, the grieving mother sadly said there’s no point.

She told the outlet: "My husband, he'll say something. But I won't. I'll hold Colleen's picture up to remind her of what she did.

“Saying something to her and talking to her now, after all these years, that she never apologized - never even tried - or her family. What's the point?"

Martinez wants people to remember who her daughter was before she became the victim in one of Tennessee’s most gruesome murder cases.

She said she remembers her daughter as playful and compassionate - she loved roller skating, computers, and playing old games with her family.

Martinez added: "She was a nerd. But a good nerd."

Pike, Shipp and Peterson all received different sentences (WBIR/NBC)

What was Christa Pike’s crime?

Pike reportedly thought Slemmer was trying to steal her then-boyfriend, 17-year-old Tadaryl Shipp.

Slemmer was stabbed and beaten by Pike and Shipp, with the horrific crime taking place in a remote area of the University of Tennessee’s Agricultural campus.

Pike and Shipp, along with their friend Shadolla Peterson, asked Slemmer to meet them in the woodland, but tragically, she had no idea she was being lured to her death.

Peterson acted as a lookout while Slemmer was stabbed and bludgeoned for thirty minutes, and a pentagram was carved in her chest.

The attack made headlines around the world because of its brutal nature, as Pike smashed Slemmer's skull with a large chunk of asphalt, and investigators claimed she kept hold of a piece of it.

According to USA Today, Pike also bragged about the brutal murder, telling another student that she cut the teenager's throat six times with a box cutter.

While Pike is awaiting execution, Shipp, who was 17 at the time of the killing, was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder, receiving a life sentence with the possibility of parole.