Christa Pike, first woman to face execution in Tennessee in 200 years, was sexually abused as toddler and raped twice; fresh details emerge

Fresh details have emerged about Christa Pike, the 50-year-old who has been on death row for over three decades and is set for execution on Wednesday (September 30, 2026). According to Pike’s attorney, Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell, she was sexually assaulted and raped twice. Pike and her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, who was 17 at the time, were convicted of killing 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1995. She was their classmate at Knoxville Job Corps.

According to prosecutors, Pike, who was 18 then, was afraid Slemmer was a romantic rival and lured her to a secluded area where she and her boyfriend tortured and killed Slemmer, news agency AP reported. Now 50, she is set to be put to death in what would be Tennessee’s first execution of a woman in 200 years.

Christa Pike had traumatic childhood and was sexually abused

Ferrell said she experienced an exceptionally traumatic and abusive childhood and was sexually abused starting from when she was a toddler. He further stated that she was raped at ages 11 and 17. He said Pike's lawyers at the penalty phase of her trial did not present the jury with what he said was critical information about her past or argue that her age should be a consideration, as reported by AP.

Later, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. She told police that initially she wanted to fight Slemmer but ended up killing her in a frenzied attack. In her clemency petition, Pike’s attorneys said her untreated mental illness and background 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, or friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime,” Pike was quoted as saying by AP in a statement included in her clemency petition.


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Calling Pike’s death sentence an “outlier,” Ferrell said that more today is known about adolescent brain development. Pike was 18 at the time of when she killed her classmate in a jealous rage and became one of the youngest women to be sent to death row.

Pike does not deny her guilt

Pike has not denied her guilt. However, her attorneys and supporters argue a death sentence is not appropriate for a crime committed at that age by a teen with untreated mental illness after a childhood of brutal sexual abuse and neglect. Slemmer’s mother wants the lethal injection to go forward, saying she has waited decades to see Pike’s sentence carried out.

The killing rocked the city of Knoxville. Prosecutors said Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large chunk of asphalt. Shipp has admitted that he was the one who carved a pentagram, a star-shaped symbol associated with Satanism, into her body.