A murderer who brutally tortured and killed a 19-year-old girl is set to be the first woman executed by Tennessee in two hundred years.
Tennessee will execute 50-year-old Christa Pike after she was sentenced to death for the brutal 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer. Pike tortured and murdered Slemmer, carving a pentagram into her forehead and chest, the Tennessee Supreme Court wrote.
Pike’s execution will move forward after Republican Governor Bill Lee declined to grant her clemency. Pike’s attorneys argued she should receive a commutation of her sentence to life in prison, citing her experience of sexual assault as a toddler, rape as a young girl, and subsequent mental disorders.
“After deliberate consideration of Christa Gail Pike’s request for clemency, and after a thorough review of the case, I am upholding the sentence of the State of Tennessee and do not plan to intervene,” Lee said Monday.
As an 18-year-old attending the Knoxville Job Corps, Pike invited Slemmer into the woods with her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp. Pike cut Slemmer’s throat, struck her with a meat cleaver and with a piece of asphalt before they carved a pentagram into her forehead and chest, according to court...