Christa Pike Says She’s “At Peace” Ahead of Execution — Tennessee Governor Rejects Last-Ditch Clemency Bid

Posted by Team - October 4, 2026

The first woman sentenced to death in Tennessee in 200 years said she is “at peace” before her rare execution — as the state’s governor declined to get involved in her last-ditch bid for clemency.

“Whether my clemency is granted or not, I am at peace,” convicted murderer Christa Pike wrote in a letter to NBC News before learning that Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee would not grant the condemned killer clemency.

“I am not afraid to die,” the killer wrote to the outlet. “I’m only nervous about the process.”

Christa Gail Pike appears remotely from Deborah K. Johnson Rehabilitation for her hearing in Knox County Criminal Court. — Christa Gail Pike said she is “at peace” ahead of her planned execution in Tennessee on Wednesday.USA TODAY Network via Reuters ConnectPike, 50, is slated to be executed on Wednesday by lethal injection, the first time the state will put a woman to death in more than two centuries.

She was just 18 when she lured fellow Job Corps student Colleen Slemmer, 19, to an isolated spot on the University of Tennessee campus in Knoxville and tortured her to death in a jealous rage with the help of her boyfriend on Jan. 12, 1995.

Pike’s attorneys have asked the Supreme Court to halt the execution, citing her struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder and the possible “severe mental suffering and superadded psychological terror” from being strapped to a gurney to receive the lethal injection, the outlet reported.

Her lawyers have claimed that Pike’s horrific childhood trauma involving Sєxual and physical abuse, neglect, and domestic violence was never addressed by the insтιтutions and adults she depended on — or considered when the jury was deliberating the death penalty.

Pike also claimed Monday she feels a “kinship” with Lindsay Clancy — whose triple murder case ended in a hung jury, the Times of London reported.

“We are both females who got into trouble because of uniquely female issues,” she told the outlet.

Pike’s execution will be the first time the state has put a woman to death in more than two centuries.USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

But Pike’s lawyers didn’t use her traumas as premeditating circumstances.

“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old girl who committed a crime with two other individuals and I was the only one to receive this sentence,” she said.

Pike said she was “pleased” Clancy received a mistrial.

“There are so many women who don’t get the help they need: me and others,” she said.

Pike has also requested an all-female lethal injection team to carry out her execution, claiming she could be traumatized by having men involved in her final moments.

Tennessee corrections officials have said they would try to fulfill some of the killer’s requests, including using female guards to move her from prison in Nashville to a nearby maximum-security insтιтution within a day of her execution, NBC reported.

They may also grant her request for an all-female execution team.

Pike — who was one of the youngest women sentenced to death in the US in March 1996 — was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder later in life.

This undated pH๏τo shows Colleen Slemmer, who was murdered in 1995 in Tennessee.May Martinez via AP

In her 226-page clemency peтιтion, filed in September, Pike’s attorneys argued that her untreated mental illness and traumatic history made her unable to “put the brakes on.”

“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done. Even more to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime,” Pike said in a statement included in her clemency peтιтion.

Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her to death with a large chunk of asphalt. Her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, also carved a Satanic pentagram into her body.

The murder rocked the city of Knoxville due to its brutality and because of the occult symbol — stoking the “satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s.

The victim’s mother, May Martinez, has said she wants Pike’s execution to move forward.

“Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run,” Martinez told the ᴀssociated Press.

“Not a day goes by, or a minute goes by that I do not think about Colleen. Holidays are the worst. Colleen’s birthday was last week. She would have been 51,” Martinez said.

Shipp, who was 17 at the time, was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole because of his age and was denied parole last year. A third teen admitted to being an accessory and received probation.

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The first woman sentenced to death in Tennessee in 200 years said she is “at peace” before her rare execution — as the state’s governor declined to…

Christa Pike Says She’s “At Peace” Ahead of Execution — Tennessee Governor Rejects Last-Ditch Clemency Bid

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