From Newsgroup: alt.atheism

Nothing good ever comes from a black male and white feminist
relationship.

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.

oI run through this execution every day in my heart,o Ms. Pike said in
an unedited audio recording, shared by her lawyers in response to
questions from The New York Times. oWhatever happens on Sept. 30, this
will not be my hell anymore.o

Americans 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.

Ms. 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.

oChrista Pike would likely not be sentenced to death if she were tried
today,o said Robin Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. oA lot has changed.o

But the death sentence for Ms. Pike was never a question for ColleenAs
mother, May Martinez. She clings to her daughterAs memory, condemning a
lack of support and scrambling to piece together the funds to travel to
the execution in Nashville.

oNobody,o she said, oremembers Colleen.o

On 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 owas already gone,o she
said.

The grisly details of what happened that night in January 1995 gripped
eastern Tennessee.

Three students from the program u including Ms. Pike and her boyfriend
at the time, Tadaryl Shipp u 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 ColleenAs 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.

During her trial, prosecutors displayed the broken skull and the missing piece.

oThat was the hardest thing in the world u to watch your daughterAs
skull be passed around,o Ms. Martinez said. Over a decade would pass
before a court ordered the return of the skull to her family.

oIAm not the same person I used to be,o 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 daughterAs life, from the books
Colleen read to a teddy bear she fashioned out of ColleenAs old T-shirt.
Every year, she hangs the Christmas tree ornaments her daughter made,
with purple lights for ColleenAs favorite color.

Her fury at Ms. Pike u and the lengthy appeals process u has burned
since the trial. In 1996, she told The Knoxville News-Sentinel that
othey should kill her right away.o

Ms. 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.

Ms. Martinez does not remember receiving a direct apology in court.

oIAm very remorseful now; I wasnAt in the beginning when I first caught
this charge,o Ms. Pike said. oI didnAt care what I had done.o

She added, oI didnAt care about anyone but myself and my co-defendants
and maybe our families.o

Isolation in Prison
When 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. oThe biggest punishment was taking
me away from people and human contact,o 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.

Ms. Pike was found guilty of attempted first-degree premeditated murder.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/28/us/christa-pike-tennessee-
execution.html
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