What did Christa Pike do to be executed? 31 years ago, she and boyfriend attacked classmate with box cutter, carved pentagram, here's why

Christa Pike, Tennessee death row inmate, was unable to put to death by Tennessee officials for a 1995 murder after administering two doses of a lethal drug. A death penalty expert said it was an unprecedented failure, and Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee halted the one remaining execution for the rest of the year, according to news agency AP. It was the second time this year that Tennessee has been unable to carry out an execution.

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What did Christa Pike do to be executed?

Christa Pike and her boyfriend were convicted of the fatal stabbing and beating in 1995 of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their classmate at a job training facility in Knoxville. Slemmer was slashed with a box cutter, with a pentagram carved into her chest and a piece of her skull was removed. Only Pike received the death penalty, and her boyfriend at the time, Tadaryl Shipp, was given a life sentence. Shipp has admitted that he was the one who carved a pentagram, a star-shaped symbol associated with Satan, into her body.

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The case garnered widespread attention in part because of a pentagram that was carved on Slemmer’s body, and other elements of the crime stoked fears of Satan worship during the “satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s.

Inmate Christa Pike is the only woman currently serving a sentence on Tennessee’s death row. In 1996, Pike was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of Collen Slemmer, a fellow Jobs Corps worker from Knoxville, Tennessee. Pike was 19 years old when the crime occurred in a remote area of the University of Tennessee Agricultural campus. At the time of her incarceration, she was the youngest person on death row at age 21. On March 30, 1996, Pike entered the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center (formerly the Tennessee Prison for Women).

On August 24, 2001, while incarcerated, Pike was convicted of attempted first degree murder in the assault on inmate Patricia Jones, according to Tennessee government.

Why did Christa Pike murder Colleen Slemmer?

According to news reports, one of the key reasons for the murder was that Pike accused Colleen of insulting her and attempting to snatch her boyfriend. Two residents of Tennessee later testified that Pike boasted about the murder before and after, and reportedly showed them a part of Colleen’s skull.

In her clemency petition, Pike said she had intentions to beat Slemmer, not kill her, but that she was unable to "put the brakes on". After the killing, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.

"I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid," she said in a statement. "It took me numerous years to even realise 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."

Christa Pike survives execution attempt

Pike, 50, was alive and loudly snoring after the attempted lethal injection and taken by ambulance from the prison, her attorneys said. She was being treated at a hospital, but they said they hadn’t been told about her condition. The attempted execution took place at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville at about 20:00 local time (01:00 GMT on Thursday).

She was attempted to be executed for the killing she committed at age 18 and would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. An appeals court stopped the lethal injection just an hour before it was to start and hours later the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that stay. "The Tennessee Department of Correction followed every step of the State's lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General's Office," department spokesperson Dorinda Carter told the Tennessean newspaper.

"The lethal injection chemical in the protocol has consistently been effective, and the protocol does not allow for additional procedures beyond what was carried out this evening. Christa Pike has been transported to an off-site medical facility," she said.

Victim’s mother says she is waiting for death sentence

Slemmer’s mother had traveled to Nashville in the hopes of witnessing the execution of her daughter’s killer. She told The Associated Press on Saturday that she had waited decades to see Pike’s sentence carried out.

“Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run,” May Martinez told The Associated Press in a telephone interview on Saturday. The killing had rocked the city of Knoxville.

(With agency inputs)