https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QExeUVXOao?si=C4W3cGBI0CJq-suA
The woman in the photo is Christa Gail Pike. She is currently the only woman on Tennessee's death row and, having been sentenced at just 20 years old, is often noted as the youngest woman ever sentenced to death in the U.S.
The crime occurred in January 1995 when Pike was an 18-year-old attending a Job Corps program in Knoxville, Tennessee .
Driven by jealousy involving her boyfriend, Pike and two accomplices (her boyfriend and another student) lured 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer into the woods. For over about 30 minutes, they tortured and beat Slemmer, carving a pentagram into her chest. Pike delivered the fatal blow by striking her skull with a chunk of asphalt .
Prosecutors described it as an act of "extraordinarily brutal" cruelty.
After nearly 30 years of appeals, Pike's execution is currently scheduled for September 30, 2026 . If carried out, she would be the first woman executed in Tennessee in over 200 years .
Though her lawyers are currently fighting the sentence through a clemency petition and a religious-liberty lawsuit regarding the lethal injection process.
Do you think she should be executed?
🇺🇸 TENNESSEE WILL EXECUTE ITS FIRST WOMAN IN OVER 200 YEARS, ON SEPTEMBER 30.
Christa Gail Pike was 18 when she tortured and killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1995, cutting her throat, carving a pentagram into her chest, and crushing her skull.
She kept a piece of the… pic.twitter.com/gfQJuuh1Oa
— Coinvo (@Coinvo) September 5, 2026
Tennessee woman, Christa Pike, makes special request days before execution
Christa Pike has “horrible nightmares.” Her “nerves are shredded.”
In eight days, the 50-year-old who killed her friend when she was a teenager will have her worst nightmares realized inside the execution chamber in Nashville, Tennessee.
Pike is set to become the first woman put to death in Tennessee since 1819 if Governor Bill Lee does not put a stop to the scheduled execution before 10 a.m. local time on September 30.
Her lawyers, who filed a 226-page clemency petition, are still waiting for a last-minute reprieve.
Under the state’s updated lethal injection protocol, a single-drug chemical dose of pentobarbital will enter her system while she is strapped to a gurney.
The reason, her lawyers say, is that she has post-traumatic stress disorder from the widely documented abuse she suffered at the hands of men as a young girl, including when she was just two years old.
They also say her death by lethal injection will be “prolonged and agonizing” because she has a rare blood disorder that could make finding a vein more difficult and affect the way she reacts to the drug.
