Convicted Tennessee murderer Christa Pike is in critical condition after two unsuccessful lethal injection attempts, her attorneys said Thursday, one day after she was scheduled to die for the 1995 killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer.
“Christa is alive right now,” attorney Randy Spivey said during a Zoom news briefing Thursday afternoon. “We don’t have a sense of her prognosis or much update on her health at the moment.”
Spivey said limited information and medical privacy laws prevented the attorneys from discussing specific details about Pike’s condition.
“She is in critical condition receiving lifesaving care. That is the extent that we have at the moment,” he said.
Christa Gail Pike during her trial for the murder of Colleen A. Slemmer March 18, 1996, in Knox County Criminal Court. (USA Today Network via Reuters Connect)
Attorney Stephen Ferrell said the needle appeared to have either become dislodged or passed completely through the veins, preventing the injection from being delivered properly. He also said the attorneys could not provide additional medical information because of privacy restrictions.
Pike, now 50, was 18 when she orchestrated the torture and murder of Slemmer, a classmate she viewed as a romantic rival. She was expected to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years Wednesday evening, after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an emergency request to halt the execution.
The execution took place at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, where Pike received two injections. Neither dose killed her.
“I’m haunted by last night,” Spivey said during the briefing.
An undated portrait photograph of Colleen Slemmer provided by her mother. (May Martinez/Special to the News Sentinel)
Pike remained conscious during the procedure and at one point lifted her head to ask prison officials whether the sensation in her arm was normal. Witnesses said she was still breathing after the second dose was administered.
Before Wednesday’s failed execution, Pike had requested an alternative execution method because she feared the lethal injection might fail. Her requests were rejected.
Pike’s attorneys did not dispute that the Tennessee Department of Correction honored her request for an all-female execution team, though they declined to discuss details because of medical privacy rules.
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University of Tennessee forensic anthropologist Murray Marks testifies about the wounds to Colleen A. Slemmer’s skull during Christa Gail Pike’s murder trial in Knox County Criminal Court March 25, 1996. (USA Today Network via Reuters Connect)
Slemmer’s mother traveled from Florida to Nashville to witness the execution attempt. She did not respond to News Outlet’s requests for comment.
“I cannot imagine what this was like for the family of Ms. Slemmer or anyone who loves that family or is close to that family or anyone who loves Christa or is close to Christa,” Spivey said. “This is awful, and this kind of thing should never happen again.”
Christa Gail Pike was scheduled to be executed Sept. 30, 2026, which would have made her the first woman executed in Tennessee since 1820. But after two doses of a lethal injection drug, she did not die. Her attorneys said Thursday that she’s in an undisclosed hospital in critical condition. (Tennessee Department of Correction via AP)
Pike was one of three teenagers convicted in Slemmer’s brutal killing. Prosecutors said Slemmer was tortured, cut, beaten and ultimately had her skull crushed with a piece of asphalt.
Pike was 18 when the attack occurred in January 1995. She, her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp and a friend, Shadolla Peterson, lured Slemmer away by saying they planned to visit a music store and retrieve marijuana they had hidden in a park near their vocational school.
The Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, which houses a majority of Tennessee’s death row inmates. (Google Maps)
Pike then attacked her. As Slemmer tried to escape, Shipp grabbed her and held her down, according to court records.
Phil Keith, who was Knoxville’s police chief at the time, told News Outlet the assailants tortured Slemmer for up to an hour before she died. Pike took a piece of her shattered skull as a trophy, which she showed off the next day in school, and Shipp carved pentagrams into her chest and face.
“Pike was the catalyst,” Keith said. “She was the one that was planning out all the events, the luring, all that.”
The failed execution prompted Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to halt the state’s remaining scheduled execution this year and order “a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred.”
