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Summary: Christa Pike is scheduled for execution Sept. 30, 2026, nearly 32 years after the Knoxville murder that sent her to Tennessee’s death row.
“A federal court on Wednesday ordered a pause on the execution of Christa Pike, convicted of the murder of a classmate in 1995, just hours before she was set to die by lethal injection in Nashville,” according to The New York Times.
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September 29, 2026 — Nearly 32 years after a teenage murder shocked Knoxville, Tennessee, Christa Pike is approaching a scheduled execution that could make her the first woman executed by the state in more than 200 years.
Pike, now 50, was sentenced to death for the Jan. 12, 1995, killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at the Knoxville Job Corps Center. Pike was 18 at the time of the crime.
The 1995 killing
According to court records, Pike and two other Job Corps students, Tadaryl Shipp and Shadolla Peterson, took Slemmer to an isolated area of the University of Tennessee’s agricultural campus on the night of Jan. 12, 1995.
Prosecutors said the attack grew out of a conflict involving Pike, Slemmer and Shipp, who was Pike’s boyfriend. Evidence presented at trial established that Slemmer was beaten and cut during the attack and that a pentagram was carved into her chest.
Pike was arrested and ultimately convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. A Knox County jury imposed the death penalty in 1996.
The other two participants received substantially different sentences. Shipp, who was 17 when the killing occurred, was sentenced to life imprisonment. Peterson pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the murder and received probation.
Decades on death row
Pike has remained Tennessee’s only woman on death row. The Tennessee Department of Correction lists her as having entered the state prison system in March 1996.
Over the years, her attorneys have challenged both her conviction and death sentence. Her legal filings have raised questions about her age at the time of the crime, her childhood history and mental health, as well as the legal representation she received.
Tennessee courts have repeatedly upheld the conviction and sentence. The Tennessee Supreme Court set Pike’s execution for Sept. 30, 2026.
Final legal efforts
Gov. Bill Lee denied Pike’s request for clemency Sept. 28. Her attorneys have continued seeking relief in federal court, including a request to the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the execution.
As of Sept. 29, Pike remains scheduled to be executed Sept. 30 at 10 a.m. Central time. If carried out, the execution would bring an extraordinary legal chapter to a close — one that began with a 1995 murder involving three teenagers and continued through decades of appeals.
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