TENNESSEE — More than three decades after the killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, Christa Pike is scheduled to become the first woman executed by Tennessee in more than two centuries, unless her execution is halted or her sentence is changed.

Pike, now 50, is Tennessee’s only woman on death row. Her execution is currently scheduled for Sept. 30, 2026, at 10 a.m. CDT.

The case dates back to January 1995, when Pike was 18 and participating in a Job Corps program in Knoxville. Slemmer, 19, was also enrolled in the program.

According to court records, Pike believed Slemmer was interfering with her relationship with her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp. On Jan. 12, 1995, Pike, Shipp and another student, Shadolla Peterson, lured Slemmer away from the Job Corps center to an isolated area near the University of Tennessee agricultural campus.

According to Pike’s later account to investigators, the attack lasted between approximately 30 minutes and an hour.

Slemmer was beaten and attacked with several objects, including a box cutter, a small meat cleaver, rocks and asphalt. The Tennessee Supreme Court later noted evidence that a pentagram had been carved into Slemmer’s chest while she remained alive and conscious.

Pike ultimately struck Slemmer in the head with a large piece of asphalt, causing her d*ath.

Investigators later said Pike removed a piece of Slemmer’s skull and kept it as a souvenir. Witnesses testified that Pike subsequently discussed the killing with other students.

In 1996, a jury convicted Pike of premeditated first-degree mrder and conspiracy to commit first-degree mrder. The jury found aggravating circumstances that included a finding that the killing involved torture or serious physical abuse beyond what was necessary to cause d*ath.

Pike was sentenced to dath for Slemmer’s mrder and received an additional 25-year sentence for conspiracy. The Tennessee Supreme Court later upheld the conviction and d*ath sentence.

But decades later, Pike’s case remains the subject of legal challenges.

Her attorneys argue that the jury that sentenced her did not hear the full extent of the abuse and trauma she allegedly experienced during childhood. Court records cited by her legal team include testimony from a former juvenile-center employee who said Pike had previously disclosed physical, verbal and Sєxual abuse.

Her attorneys also argue that evidence concerning Pike’s psychological functioning, traumatic history and age at the time of the crime was not adequately presented during the original penalty phase.

Those arguments do not dispute the fact that Slemmer was killed. Instead, they form part of the current legal debate over whether Pike’s death sentence should be carried out more than 30 years later.

Earlier in September, Pike’s attorneys submitted a 226-page clemency peтιтion to Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, asking that her sentence be changed to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Pike has also challenged aspects of Tennessee’s execution procedures, with her attorneys raising medical, psychological and religious concerns. State officials have disputed several of those claims.

As of Sept. 16, Tennessee was continuing preparations for the scheduled execution, including selecting official media witnesses and issuing execution guidelines.

Pike is now 50.

Slemmer would also be 51.

The legal questions surrounding Pike’s sentence continue to receive attention, particularly concerning her age at the time of the crime, her alleged childhood trauma and whether those circumstances should affect the punishment imposed decades later.

But any discussion of Pike’s future also involves remembering the person whose life ended in 1995.

Her name was Colleen Slemmer.

She was 19 years old.

She deserved the chance to grow up, too. 🕊️

Her story should remain part of the record—not simply as a name in a death-penalty case, but as a young woman whose life was taken far too soon.