Christa Pike Makes One Unusual Request Ahead of Her September 30 Execution — What Is It?

With less than two weeks remaining before her scheduled execution, Christa Gail Pike—the only woman currently on Tennessee’s death row—is making a deeply personal request through her attorneys: if the state carries out her death sentence, she wants only female staff to physically handle her during the execution process. Pike, now 50, is scheduled to be executed at 10 a.m. CDT on September 30, 2026, at Riverbend Maximum Security Insтιтution in Nashville. Tennessee officials are continuing preparations for that date, although ongoing litigation and a clemency request could still affect whether the execution proceeds as scheduled.

The request for female staff is tied to Pike’s reported history of childhood Sєxual abuse. Her current legal team says she experienced severe instability, neglect and abuse while growing up in West Virginia, including Sєxual ᴀssaults beginning when she was a child. Her attorneys argue that being strapped to an execution gurney and physically handled by male staff while intravenous lines are inserted could trigger traumatic memories. They have therefore asked Tennessee officials to ensure that women perform the procedures requiring physical contact with her. As of the latest reporting, the state had not publicly guaranteed that the request would be granted.

The unusual request has brought renewed attention to Pike’s background, but it has also returned attention to the reason she has spent three decades under a death sentence: the January 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer.

Pike was 18 and attending the Job Corps Center in Knoxville, Tennessee, when she became involved with 17-year-old Tadaryl Shipp. According to the Tennessee Supreme Court record, Pike had developed hostility toward fellow Job Corps student Colleen Slemmer. Prosecutors presented evidence that Pike believed Slemmer was interested in Shipp, although the case record reflected additional tension between the two young women. On January 11, 1995, another student testified that Pike said she intended to kill Slemmer.

The following evening, January 12, Pike, Shipp, Slemmer and another Job Corps student, Shadolla Peterson, left the center together. Pike told Slemmer they were going elsewhere and eventually led her toward an isolated location on the University of Tennessee agricultural campus. What followed was a prolonged ᴀssault that the Tennessee Supreme Court later described in extensive detail.

Slemmer was beaten, cut and repeatedly prevented from escaping. According to Pike’s own statement to investigators, Slemmer repeatedly attempted to get away and pleaded to be released. Pike admitted striking and kicking her, cutting her with a box cutter and attacking her after she attempted to flee. Rocks were also used during the ᴀssault. Pike estimated that the episode lasted approximately 30 minutes to an hour. The following morning, a University of Tennessee grounds employee discovered Slemmer’s body near the agricultural campus greenhouses.

One of the most disturbing pieces of evidence emerged almost immediately afterward. Witnesses testified that Pike returned to Job Corps and talked openly about the killing. According to the court record, she showed other students a fragment of bone that she claimed she had taken from Slemmer’s skull as a souvenir. Those statements became significant evidence against her.

Pike later gave investigators a statement acknowledging her involvement but claimed she had originally intended only to fight and frighten Slemmer rather than kill her. Prosecutors argued that the evidence demonstrated premeditation, pointing not only to Pike’s actions during the attack but also to testimony that she had spoken about killing Slemmer the day before.

A Tennessee jury convicted Pike of premeditated first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. During the penalty phase, jurors found two statutory aggravating circumstances, including that the killing involved torture or serious physical abuse beyond what was necessary to cause death. Pike was sentenced to death for the murder and received a consecutive 25-year sentence for conspiracy. The Tennessee Supreme Court affirmed her convictions and death sentence in 1998.

The other defendants received different punishments. Shipp, who was 17 at the time of the crime, was convicted of first-degree murder and received a life sentence. His age is legally important: subsequent U.S. Supreme Court precedent prohibits capital punishment for crimes committed by people younger than 18. Peterson cooperated with prosecutors and testified in the case rather than receiving a death sentence.

Over the decades, Pike’s case moved through repeated appeals and post-conviction proceedings. At one stage she attempted to abandon further challenges to her sentence, and Tennessee courts concluded that she was competent to make that decision. Later litigation resumed, and her death sentence remained intact.

In September 2025, the Tennessee Supreme Court formally set Pike’s execution for September 30, 2026, unless another court or appropriate authority intervenes. The Tennessee Department of Correction has since proceeded with preparations, including selecting official media witnesses and issuing guidelines for journalists covering the execution at Riverbend Maximum Security Insтιтution.

Pike’s attorneys are now asking Governor Bill Lee to commute her death sentence to life imprisonment without parole. Their clemency argument does not dispute that Pike was responsible for Slemmer’s killing. Instead, it focuses heavily on information about Pike’s childhood, psychological development and mental health that the defense says was not adequately presented to the jury responsible for deciding her punishment.

According to recent reporting on the clemency effort, Pike’s attorneys say she endured severe childhood abuse, including Sєxual violence, instability and neglect. They contend that jurors deciding whether she should receive a death sentence did not hear the full extent of those experiences. The lawyers also point to mental-health diagnoses and argue that Pike’s age—she had only recently turned 18 when Slemmer was killed—should receive greater consideration in light of modern research into adolescent brain development. These are arguments advanced by Pike’s defense team in support of clemency; they do not change the findings of the jury or the Tennessee courts regarding her guilt.

The case therefore contains two very different stories that remain important to distinguish. Colleen Slemmer was a 19-year-old woman subjected to a prolonged and fatal ᴀssault, and Pike was convicted of deliberately participating in her murder. Pike’s own history of alleged abuse is now being presented by her lawyers as mitigation for punishment, not as a legal justification for what happened to Slemmer.

Pike’s attorneys have also challenged aspects of Tennessee’s execution procedures, including the lethal-injection protocol. Those challenges concern the possibility of severe pain during the execution and Pike’s individual medical and psychological circumstances. So far, none has removed the September 30 execution date.

Her request for an all-female team has become one of the most personal elements of those final legal efforts. The concern, according to her lawyers, is that being restrained and touched by male personnel could recreate aspects of earlier Sєxual trauma during the final minutes of her life. They are asking that female correctional or medical personnel handle those procedures instead.

For now, however, Pike remains under a valid death sentence. Tennessee officials are preparing for an execution at Riverbend Maximum Security Insтιтution on September 30, 2026, while her attorneys continue seeking clemency and pursuing available legal challenges.

Nearly 32 years after Colleen Slemmer was killed and three decades after Pike was sentenced to death, the case has reached another critical point. The coming days will determine whether Tennessee carries out the sentence as scheduled, whether Governor Lee intervenes, and—if the execution proceeds—whether Pike’s final request to be physically handled only by women will be honored.