Tennessee court saves Christa Gail Pike an hour before execution: Who is she and why she is being called a 'Satanic killer'?

Christa Gail Pike's execution has been stopped by a Tennessee court just about an hour before she was scheduled to receive a lethal injection Wednesday. Her execution would have been Tennessee’s first execution of a woman in at least 200 years. Pike, 50, was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, whom she killed when she was 18. The judges said they wanted to review whether allegations that Pike suffered sexual abuse and rape as a child had been fully considered when she was sentenced to death.

Who is Christa Gail Pike?

Christa Gail Pike is the first woman in Tennessee to face death sentence in 200 years. She was convicted in 1996 for killing Slemmer, her classmate at a job-training facility in Knoxville. As per prosecutors, Pike lured Slemmer into a wooded area on January 12, 1995, because she believed Slemmer was trying to take her boyfriend. Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large piece of asphalt. Pike's boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, was also convicted in the killing. Shipp, who was 17 at the time, later acknowledged carving a pentagram into Slemmer's body.

Shipp was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole, while Pike received the death penalty. The case attracted widespread attention partly because of the pentagram and other details of the killing, which fueled fears surrounding Satanism during the "satanic panic" of the 1980s and 1990s.

As per Wikipedia, Pike had a difficult childhood. She was reportedly raped by a neighbor at the age of 11, and was later sent to a "Juvenile Evaluation Center" in 1991. She was released from the juvenile center in March 1993 and enrolled in a Jobs Corps program in Knoxville, Tennessee. She later became a teacher's assistant and earned her GED. Notably, before the murder, social services rescued Pike after her mother's live-in boyfriend had physically and sexually abused her.

Why was Christa Pike's execution halted?

The Tennessee court halted the execution after Pike's lawyers argued that her sentence should be reconsidered because of her age at the time of the crime, mental illness and a history of severe sexual abuse.

In her clemency petition, Pike also acknowledged her responsibility for the killing. "I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done," Pike said. She added that it took even longer to understand how many lives she had affected.

Notably, the U.S. Supreme Court had earlier rejected a request from Pike's lawyers to halt the execution on Tuesday. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee also denied Pike clemency on Monday.

Why would Pike's execution have been historic?

Tennessee has not executed a woman in at least 200 years, according to Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. However, historical records are incomplete, making it difficult to establish exactly when the last woman was executed in the state.

Female executions remain rare across the US. Since 1976, 18 women have been executed in the country, accounting for about 1% of all executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Missouri executed Amber McLaughlin in 2023 for a 2003 killing. McLaughlin was believed to be the first transgender woman executed in the US. In 2021, the federal government executed Lisa Montgomery, marking the first execution of a female federal inmate in nearly seven decades.