ONE of America’s most notorious female killers has learned the date of her execution.
Christa Pike got the death penalty in 1995 for the satanic torture slaying of her classmate at the age of 18 – when she carved a pentagram into her victim’s chest.
WBIR Channel 10Christa Pike, now 49, received the death penalty for a satanic murder she committed at the age of 18[/caption]
YouTube/FirstCoastNewsColleen Slemmer, murdered by Christa Pike at the age of 19[/caption]
Pike, now 49, will become the first woman to be executed in Tennessee in over 200 years if it goes ahead as planned in September 2026.
At the age of just 18, Pike lured fellow Knoxville Job Corps student Colleen Slemmer into the woods with her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, and brutally murdered her.
She sickeningly took away a piece of Colleen’s skull as a souvenir.
Pike, who became the youngest prisoner on America’s death row when she was sentenced at 20, had apparently become convinced that Colleen was trying to steal Shipp from her.
The pair, who dabbled in devil worship, took the 19-year-old Colleen into the woods on the grounds of the University of Tennessee’s Agricultural campus.
Pike beat and tortured her for 30 minutes – etching a satanic pentagram into the skin of her chest with a box cutter.
Colleen’s misery finally came to an end when Pike bludgeoned her to death with a chunk of asphalt.
Her skull was smashed to pieces.
The teenager’s body was discovered by a groundskeeper who “testified that the body was so badly beaten that he had first mistaken it for the corpse of an animal,” according to court records.
Pike was also convicted in 2004 for trying to strangle a fellow inmate during a prison fight, which added 25 years to her sentence.
Pike is likely to be executed by lethal injection – the most common method used on condemned inmates in Tennessee.
Her attorneys have desperately fought to have her sentence reduced.
They previously asked the Tennessee’s High Court to consider her youth and severe mental health issues at the time of the murder.
Pike suffered physical and sexual abuse and neglect as a child, they said.
The reconstructed skull of Colleen Slemmer after the brutal assault
A 2016 photo of Pike released by the Tennessee Department of CorrectionAP
She also suffered from bipolar and post-traumatic stress disorders that were not diagnosed until years after her arrest.
Her attorneys said on Wednesday: “With time and treatment […] Christa has become a thoughtful woman with deep remorse for her crime.”
Shipp, who was 17 at the time of Colleen’s murder and not eligible for the death penalty, received a lifetime prison sentence and will be up for parole in November.
Pike was one of four death row inmates to have their execution dates set.
WBIR Channel 10Christa Pike crying in court at the time of her sentencing[/caption]
WBIR Channel 10Colleen was a student at Knoxville Job Corps when she was murdered[/caption]
Tennessee began a new round of executions in May after a three-year pause after it was found the state was not properly testing lethal injection drugs.
A review concluded that none of the drugs prepared for the seven inmates executed in Tennessee since 2018 had been fully tested.
Kelley Henry, a federal public defender who represents several death row inmates, said the state still has questions to answer over its last execution.
Byron Black, executed in August, said he was “hurting so bad” while he lay on the gurney.
Find a GraveColleen’s grave stone and memorial[/caption]
His autopsy found pulmonary edema, meaning fluid in the lungs, which his attorneys said would feel like drowning or suffocating.
Henry said: “We will continue to fight to bring the truth of what happened to light before these executions move forward to protect our clients from being tortured the way Byron was.”
The court on Tuesday also set execution dates for Tony Carruthers, Gary Sutton, and Anthony Hines.
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