'Like a band-aid opening': Eye wittnesses reveal the unsettling sounds they heard from Christa Pike's execution chamber

Eyewitnesses to Christa Pike's botched execution claimed to have heard haunting sounds from the chamber where she was given two doses of a lethal injection. Pike, now 50, was on death row for torturing and killing her classmate, Colleen Slemmer, in a jealous rage in 1995. Pike was 18 when she murdered Slemmer. She became one of the youngest women to be sent to death row.

Tennessee prison officials gave Pike two doses of the lethal injection drug on Wednesday night. The pentobarbital did not kill her, but her lawyers said her arms were burned and blistered by the caustic drug.

'Groaning, whimpering, Velcro fastening and paper rustling'

On Wednesday, Pike's execution was delayed for more than eight hours after a federal appeals court ruled that judges could thoroughly review whether the jury that sentenced her to death should have considered sexual abuse that she said she suffered as a child. The US Supreme Court later overturned the stay, allowing Pike to be put to death at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.


The execution was attended by Slemmer's mother and a few members of the media, while protesters gathered outside. According to a report by The Sun, a curtain blocked the witnesses' view and the microphone was switched off, but attendees heard muted sounds of "groaning, whimpering, Velcro fastening and paper rustling."

Will Puckett, a TV reporter in Knoxville, told The New York Times: “If you imagine what it sounds like when you open up a Band-Aid, that’s what I heard on multiple occasions.”

On Sunday, Christa Pike's lawyers said that she remains unconscious and on a ventilator at a hospital. Pike's attorneys have not identified who is making her medical decisions. They said they may not know for several more days whether she can recover.

“We don’t know right now, and we may never know what sort of torture she endured during that process, where her consciousness was, what physical pain there was — what mental torture she went through,” Ferrell said.

Future of Pike's death penalty case is unclear

It is unclear what will happen in her death penalty case. Pike's lawyers have asked the governor to commute her punishment to a life sentence.

“If she recovers, she may not fully recover. And there may be issues about her competence,” Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell, Pike’s lawyer, was quoted as saying by the AP.

Pike did not deny that she killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1995. The two were classmates at Knoxville Job Corps.

Prosecutors said Pike feared Slemmer was a romantic rival and lured her to a secluded area, where she and her boyfriend slashed Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large chunk of asphalt. The case received widespread attention because of the brutality of the killing, the ages of those involved and because a satanic symbol was carved into the victim's body.