Tennessee’s First Female Death Row Inmate in 200 Years Refuses Her Last Meal Ahead of Wednesday’s Scheduled Execution

Posted by Team - September 30, 2026

A Tennessee woman set to become the first female executed in the state in over 200 years on Wednesday has refused her last meal.

Christa Pike, 50, was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, and later convicted of attempting to strangle another inmate to death with a shoestring in 2001.

Death row inmates typically request a customized last meal prior to being put to death – and the Tennessee Department of Corrections confirmed that Pike has not made a request, WJHL 11 reported.

Pike’s lawyers have argued that she suffered abuse during her childhood and asked Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee for clemency, but he he refused that request Monday and said he would not intervene in the execution.

“Whether my clemency is granted or not, I am at peace,” Pike wrote in a letter to NBC News before learning her last-ditch attempt had failed.

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

Pike is expected to be executed by lethal injection on Wednesday morning at the Riverbend Maximum Security Insтιтution in Nashville.

She was only 18 when she, her then-boyfriend and a female friend lured Slemmer to an isolated area of the University of Tennessee’s Knoxville campus and tortured her to death on Jan. 12, 1995.

In August 2001, Pike was convicted of attempting to murder fellow inmate Patricia Jones — and had 25 years tacked onto her sentence.

Then, in March 2012, a plot to spring her from the Tennessee Prison for Women in Nashville, involving a corrections officer and a New Jersey personal trainer who Pike was in correspondence with, was thwarted.

Pike said Monday she feels a “kinship” with Lindsay Clancy and was “pleased” the accused child murderer received a mistrial, the Times of London reported.

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

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

Pike has asked for an all-female lethal injection team to carry out her execution, claiming she might be traumatized if men are involved.

Tennessee corrections officials have said they may grant her request.

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A Tennessee woman set to become the first female executed in the state in over 200 years on Wednesday has refused her last meal. Christa Pike, 50, was…

Tennessee’s First Female Death Row Inmate in 200 Years Refuses Her Last Meal Ahead of Wednesday’s Scheduled Execution

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