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    "original_url": "https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/09\/28\/us\/christa-pike-tennessee-execution.html?emc=edit_na_20260929&nl=breaking-news&segment_id=227224",
    "parsed_content": "AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTSupported bySKIP ADVERTISEMENTAfter a Life in Isolation, a Tennessee Woman Waits for Her ExecutionChrista Pike could be the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. Her supporters say she has changed in isolation; her victim\u2019s family wants her to die.Listen \u00b7 10:05 min Share full articleChrista Pike and her lawyers have mounted a last round of appeals to stop her execution, including during a recent hearing in state court.Credit...Jessica Tezak for The New York TimesBy Emily CochraneEmily Cochrane reviewed hundreds of pages of legal documents and spoke with lawyers, experts, supporters of Christa Pike and Colleen Slemmer\u2019s mother. Christa Pike\u2019s lawyers agreed to share questions with Ms. Pike and record her answers without outside editing or approval.Sept. 28, 2026Updated 3:31 p.m. ETSee more of our coverage in your search results.Encuentra m\u00e1s de nuestra cobertura en los resultados de b\u00fasqueda. Add The New York Times on GoogleAgrega The New York Times en Google For the better part of three decades, Christa Pike has waited alone on Tennessee\u2019s death row.She tortured and murdered a classmate, Colleen Slemmer, with her boyfriend and a friend. They slashed at Colleen with a box cutter, carved a pentagram into her chest and removed a piece of her skull. Only Ms. Pike received the death penalty. She was 18 at the time of the killing.If her execution goes as planned on Wednesday, she will be the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.\u201cI run through this execution every day in my heart,\u201d Ms. Pike said in an unedited audio recording, shared by her lawyers in response to questions from The New York Times. \u201cWhatever happens on Sept. 30, this will not be my hell anymore.\u201dAmericans have increasingly opposed the death penalty and have shown particular reluctance toward sentencing women and teenagers. Women account for about 2 percent of new death sentences issued since the modern era of capital punishment began in 1973; Missouri was the last state to execute a woman, in 2023.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTMs. Pike, now 50, does not deny her guilt. Still, some experts question whether she would be sentenced this way today. Her abusive childhood never came up at trial, something defenders now ask judges and juries to consider in sentencing. In isolation, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, which her lawyers say contributed to her mental state during the murder.ImageChrista Pike looking at her mother after the jury read the guilty verdict in 1996.Credit...Byron Small\/Knoxville News Sentinel, via ReutersHer age is another factor; she was just above the legal threshold to be considered for the death penalty.\u201cChrista Pike would likely not be sentenced to death if she were tried today,\u201d said Robin Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. \u201cA lot has changed.\u201dBut the death sentence for Ms. Pike was never a question for Colleen\u2019s mother, May Martinez. She clings to her daughter\u2019s memory, condemning a lack of support and scrambling to piece together the funds to travel to the execution in Nashville.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT\u201cNobody,\u201d she said, \u201cremembers Colleen.\u201dA Gruesome CrimeImageMay Martinez has struggled with grief and anger since the murder of Colleen Slemmer, her daughter. She moved houses in Florida and has worked to preserve her daughter\u2019s memory. Credit...Zack Wittman for The New York TimesOn the night of her murder, Colleen tried to call her mother.Colleen, 19, lived hundreds of miles from the family home in Florida, having enrolled in a Job Corps educational program in Knoxville, Tenn., that would allow her to pursue an interest in computers. The call quickly ended because of a shaky phone signal.When Ms. Martinez called back, her daughter \u201cwas already gone,\u201d she said.The grisly details of what happened that night in January 1995 gripped eastern Tennessee.Three students from the program \u2014 including Ms. Pike and her boyfriend at the time, Tadaryl Shipp \u2014 had lured Colleen into the woods on the University of Tennessee campus. They tortured her, slamming her head with chunks of asphalt. Mr. Shipp later described carving a pentagram in Colleen\u2019s body, inflaming fears of Satan worship.Ms. Pike confessed two days later, after the body was found. She had taken a piece of the skull, showing it to at least one person.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTDuring her trial, prosecutors displayed the broken skull and the missing piece.\u201cThat was the hardest thing in the world \u2014 to watch your daughter\u2019s skull be passed around,\u201d Ms. Martinez said. Over a decade would pass before a court ordered the return of the skull to her family.\u201cI\u2019m not the same person I used to be,\u201d Ms. Martinez said.She remembers her daughter as a vibrant, generous presence, who volunteered at the Special Olympics and loved bowling and computer games. Her world collapsed after Colleen died.She has held onto every memento of her daughter\u2019s life, from the books Colleen read to a teddy bear she fashioned out of Colleen\u2019s old T-shirt. Every year, she hangs the Christmas tree ornaments her daughter made, with purple lights for Colleen\u2019s favorite color.Her fury at Ms. Pike \u2014 and the lengthy appeals process \u2014 has burned since the trial. In 1996, she told The Knoxville News-Sentinel that \u201cthey should kill her right away.\u201dMs. Pike was the only student to receive the death penalty. Mr. Shipp, then 17 and shielded by Tennessee law from capital punishment, was sentenced to life in prison. AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTMs. Martinez does not remember receiving a direct apology in court.\u201cI\u2019m very remorseful now; I wasn\u2019t in the beginning when I first caught this charge,\u201d Ms. Pike said. \u201cI didn\u2019t care what I had done.\u201dShe added, \u201cI didn\u2019t care about anyone but myself and my co-defendants and maybe our families.\u201dImageMay Martinez has held onto dozens of pictures of Colleen, along with mementos of her childhood. Credit...Zack Wittman for The New York TimesIsolation in PrisonWhen Ms. Pike was moved to prison in Nashville, her world shrank. She was confined to her cell for 23 hours a day. Only one other woman, Gaile Owens, was ever on death row in Tennessee at the same time. Before her sentence was commuted in 2010, Ms. Owens spent three years in a cell near Ms. Pike, but the two did not have physical contact.Ms. Pike compared her experience to being locked in a bathroom with a meal tray, a television and a radio. \u201cThe biggest punishment was taking me away from people and human contact,\u201d she said.In 2001, Ms. Pike and two other women were evacuated to another part of the prison because of a fire. The two women, who had a history of confrontation, began to argue, and Ms. Pike used a shoelace to choke one of them until she was unconscious.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTMs. Pike was found guilty of attempted first-degree premeditated murder.ImageMs. Pike, now 50, has been in prison for about three decades. Credit...Tennessee Department of Correction, via Associated PressShortly after the attack, doctors diagnosed Ms. Pike with bipolar disorder. Her lawyers attribute the violence to her mental health and her past. According to court records and psychological assessments, Ms. Pike was physically and mentally abused by immediate family as a child. As early as kindergarten, she endured repeated rape and assault, first by men she knew and then by a stranger.Her lawyers said that since being medicated and attending therapy, Ms. Pike has not been disciplined for violence. Practicing Buddhist meditation in recent years, Ms. Pike said, has also been a way to \u201ctrain my chaotic mind.\u201dIn statements and interviews, women imprisoned alongside Ms. Pike said she was welcoming from afar, despite the restriction on her physical interactions. She dispatched hygiene items from the prison commissary, cooked food over a lamp and called out greetings on her shackled walks to shower. (In 2024, a settlement with Tennessee allowed her to physically interact with other women in the prison.)\u201cI\u2019ve always seen her show kindness,\u201d said Ashlee Sellars, 48. \u201cI\u2019ve seen her be protective.\u201dMarcy Graves Wilson, 60, recalled her fear in 2017 when she learned that her daughter, Teddy, would be housed nearby. But Ms. Pike sent the new girl shower shoes when she didn\u2019t have any, a gesture that deepened into a heartfelt relationship until Teddy died from an overdose.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT\u201cKnowing Christa has changed my feelings about the death penalty,\u201d Ms. Wilson added. \u201cI feel like she has so much that she could offer.\u201dSupporting other incarcerated women, Ms. Pike said, is an attempt to atone for the harm she caused.\u201cOver years of sitting in here with deep contemplation and reflection, I know and understand the life that I have taken and how much it matters, how much it means, how many effects she could have had on the world, just like the effects I could have on the world,\u201d Ms. Pike said.ImageMarcy Graves Wilson\u2019s daughter, Teddy, developed a deep friendship with Christa Pike while incarcerated. In letters, Ms. Pike encouraged Teddy to remain healthy while she battled addiction, and stayed in touch with Ms. Wilson after Teddy died from an overdose. Credit...Landon Edwards for The New York TimesThe Final DaysMs. Pike\u2019s lawyers have spent recent weeks trying to stop the execution. Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, said early Monday afternoon that he would not intervene to allow her to serve the remainder of her life in prison.Her lawyers had argued that she could support other women in prison and that her crime could not be separated from a traumatic childhood. In a statement, they said they were \u201cdeeply saddened and heartbroken\u201d by Mr. Lee\u2019s decision.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTThey also had questioned whether medical staff can administer the lethal drugs without causing excessive pain. And they have appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to pause the execution, questioning whether \u201cthe mental suffering and psychological terror she will experience\u201d under the protocol qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment.\u201cI don\u2019t think that someone should kill me to teach me that killing someone is wrong,\u201d Ms. Pike said. \u201cI\u2019m not going to be the one here left to suffer anymore after they do this.\u201dTwo weeks before her execution, Ms. Pike was isolated again, part of Tennessee\u2019s new pre-execution protocol. She had been moved, and her things were in garbage bags. She had given up unpacking.In Florida, Ms. Martinez and her husband have struggled with a surge of grief, scrounging for money to fund the drive to Nashville. Ms. Martinez has been enraged by the attention on Ms. Pike. To her, even in isolation, Ms. Pike has had access to comfort and support denied to her daughter.\u201cNobody could ever, ever convince me she\u2019s changed,\u201d Ms. Martinez said.Ten days before Ms. Pike\u2019s scheduled execution, they celebrated what would have been Colleen\u2019s 51st birthday.Kitty Bennett contributed research.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT",
    "published_at": "2026-09-28T09:01:43+00:00",
    "author_name": "Emily Cochrane",
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    "ai_headline": "After a Life in Isolation, a Tennessee Woman Waits for Her Execution",
    "ai_simplified_title": "Christa Pike Awaits Execution in Tennessee After Decades on Death Row",
    "ai_excerpt": "Christa Pike, who murdered a classmate at 18, is set to be the first woman executed in Tennessee in over 200 years. Her lawyers argue for clemency due to her traumatic past and mental health, while the victim's mother seeks justice.",
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