In January 1995, Colleen Slemmer was a 19-year-old from Orange Park, Florida, enrolled in a Job Corps training program in Knoxville, Tennessee. She was there to learn a trade and build a future. She was not involved in crime or gangs; she was a teenager trying to improve her life.
Christa Pike was in the same program. Pike decided that Slemmer posed a threat to her relationship with a young man named Tadarrius Shipp. Instead of walking away, Pike decided Slemmer had to die.
On the night of January 12, Pike, Shipp, and another young woman convinced Slemmer to leave the safety of her dormitory. They told her they wanted to make peace and resolve the conflict. Slemmer believed them and went with them to a remote, isolated area near the University of Tennessee.
Once Slemmer was alone in the dark, the group turned on her. The attack was long and brutal. It was not quick or confused; it lasted an extended period. By the end, Slemmer was dead.
After the murder, Pike kept a souvenir from the killing. She took a piece of Slemmer’s skull with her. This detail contradicts any claim of remorse or accident. A person does not keep a trophy from something they regret.
Two days later, Pike was arrested and confessed. She told police the situation got out of control and they only meant to scare Slemmer. But the evidence showed a premeditated plan to lure a trusting girl to a quiet place and then attack her for an extended time.
In March 1996, Pike was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. She was 18 when she killed Slemmer, making her one of the youngest women sentenced to death in modern U.S. history. She became the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, a status she still holds.
The other two people present that night faced different outcomes. The third woman acted as a lookout, agreed to testify for the prosecution, and was released on probation. Tadarrius Shipp, who was 17 at the time, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole. He remains incarcerated and was denied parole last year.
Pike’s role in the murder and her choice to keep a trophy led to the harshest sentence. She earned the most severe punishment through her own actions.
Years later, Pike attacked another inmate. She and another prisoner attempted to strangle Patricia Jones with a shoelace. This was not the act of a panicked teenager; Pike was a mature woman already on death row for murder. She was convicted of attempted first-degree murder and received an additional 25 years.
For nearly 30 years, Pike remained the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, carrying convictions for murder and attempted murder. Her path was built entirely on the decision she made that night in 1995.
Over time, Pike became a subject of true crime media. Documentaries and programs focused on her, and she gained followers fascinated by her case. Meanwhile, Colleen Slemmer, the victim, was largely forgotten.
In 2026, the execution date finally arrived. On September 30, Governor Bill Lee denied clemency, and the execution was scheduled at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. It would have been the first execution of a woman in Tennessee in about 200 years.
The procedure failed. The lethal injection protocol did not work as intended. The team struggled to find a viable vein, and the chemicals caused problems. Pike did not die on the table.
She was taken to a hospital, alive. The state halted the execution while officials and courts reviewed what went wrong. The woman who built this path for herself now lies in a hospital bed, and the state is determining its next step.
The failed execution is not the tragedy in this story. The tragedy is Colleen Slemmer, the young woman who never had the chance to grow up because of a choice Christa Pike made on a cold day in 1995.