Rhianna Benson
After her execution date was set last week, followers of Christa Gail Pike's blood-curdling case have been reflecting on her death row journey.
More specifically, one particular period of the 49-year-old's 30 year incarceration has intrigued true crime fanatics for some time, having played a pivotal part in appeals from lawyers for her freedom.
For those unfamiliar with her heinous crimes, back in 1996, when she was just 19 years old, Pike was convicted of a violent, first-degree murder back in 1996. As a result, she was sentenced to death by a Supreme Court.
The year prior, convinced one of her classmates was attempting to 'steal' her toxic, devil-worshipping boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, the West Virginia-local lured 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer to an abandoned steam plant, close to University of Tennessee's Agricultural campus.
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Having recruited another friend, 18-year-old Shadolla Peterson, to keep a look out, Pike and Shipp attacked Slemmer, torturing her for as long as 30 minutes. Eventually, the vicious killer smashed her head in using a large chunk of asphalt.
Pike was arrested in the days that followed, having kept a piece of Slemmer's skull and showed it off around her Job Corps campus in Knoxville.
After Peterson testified against the couple, claiming she had no idea they planned to take tensions to a murderous degree, Shipp was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Pike, meanwhile, having orchestrated the grisly killing, was issued the death penalty by the Tennessee Supreme Court.
The ruling made history for several reasons at the time, with Pike becoming the youngest criminal to face the death penalty in the States since the Furman period, as well as the sole female to be placed on death row in the 'Volunteer State' in over 200 years.
The latter 'achievement', however, saw Pike subjected to a rather unconventional added punishment whilst awaiting death behind bars.
According to local outlet The Tennesseean, her unique female status saw her placed into prolonged solitary confinement for a hefty chunk of her three-decade-long stint behind bars, which her lawyers argued 'constitutes torture'.
This decision had been made by the Tennessee Department of Correction, who ruled it integral to keep male and female inmates housed separately. Unfortunately for Pike, however, being the only woman on death row, she spent much of her sentence totally alone.
Her cell reportedly measured up to the size of a parking space, whilst the amount of contact she is said to have experienced with other people was said to have been even smaller. She also endured limited access to either educational or recreational activities.
Her lawyers previously argued during appeals for her freedom that these factors deeply affected her mental wellbeing, which they say had already taken a hit prior to her sentencing 30 years ago.
In 2024, her lawyers successfully managed to move her out of de facto solitary confinement, 'increasing interaction with others'.
Back in 2023, her legal team also argued that her brain wasn't fully developed at the time she murdered Slemmer, with criminal defence attorney Chloe Ackers telling WBIR Channel 10 at the time: "If a person's mental capacity is so limited as to be defined as intellectually disabled under the law, it is considered cruel and unusual punishment for the state to seek the death penalty against that person."
Pike also pled the same case recently in a handwritten letter to The Tennessean, writing: "Think back to the worst mistake you made as a reckless teenager. Well, mine happened to be huge, unforgettable and ruined countless lives. I was a mentally ill 18 yr old kid.
"It took me numerous years to even realise the gravity of what I'd done. Even more to accept how many lives I effected [sic]. I took the life of someone's child, sister, friend."
She continued: "It sickens me now to think that someone as loving and compassionate as myself had the ability to commit such a crime."
Pike will be put to death on 30 September, 2026.