Christa Gail Pike is scheduled to be executed in Tennessee on September 30, 2026, after nearly three decades on death row.
She was convicted for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville.
Pike is one of the youngest American women ever sentenced to death.
The 1995 Murder and Conviction
According to the case, Slemmer was lured to a secluded park area, where she was beaten, bludgeoned, and slashed with a boxcutter.
A pentagram was carved on her chest.
Pike admitted guilt shortly after her arrest.
Her youth was marked by neglect and abuse.
At 15, she was sent to the Juvenile Evaluation Center in Swannanoa, North Carolina, where she stayed over a year due to behavioral infractions.
During that period, she earned her GED and became a teacher's assistant.
Clemency Petition and Execution Details
Pike's lawyers submitted a clemency petition highlighting her traumatic upbringing, including untreated mental illness and sexual abuse beginning at age two.
The petition included letters from people who knew her, including a former juvenile defense lawyer who expressed regret over the handling of her case.
"I regret to tell you, Governor, that we in North Carolina — myself included — failed Christa," wrote the retired judge.
He urged the governor to show mercy and consider Pike as more than the darkness surrounding her past.
Pike's execution will be by lethal injection at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution.
She would be the 19th woman executed in the US's modern death penalty era and the first woman executed in Tennessee in two centuries.
