A Tennessee execution has been scheduled for next year, marking the first woman in over two centuries to be executed in the state.
Earlier this week, Christa Gail Pike, 49, received her execution schedule. The State of Tennessee filed a motion to set the date, which has been granted and scheduled for September 30, 2026, despite multiple appeal attempts, as noted in documents reviewed by FOX News Digital.
Pike’s sentence follows her conviction for the murder of Colleen Slemmer, 19, of Knoxville, in 1995. At the time, Pike was 18 years old.
On January 12, 1995, Pike, along with her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, and her friend, Shadolla Peterson, lured Slemmer into a wooded area near the University of Tennessee.
Court records indicated that Pike cut Slemmer’s throat with a box cutter, carved a pentagram into her chest, and struck her with a cleaver and a piece of asphalt.
Slemmer’s body was later found by a groundskeeper who “testified that the body was so badly beaten that he had initially mistaken it for the corpse of an animal,” according to CBS News court records.
After Pike smashed Slemmer’s skull in with a chunk of asphalt, she kept fragments of the skull and showed them off to classmates.
The motive behind the brutal murder was reportedly due to Slemmer possibly being interested in Pike’s boyfriend.
Pike’s boyfriend, convicted while he was a minor, received a life sentence in prison. Shipp is up for parole this November.
Pike’s friend, Peterson, was given probation in exchange for her testimony against Pike.
A jury convicted Pike in 1996 of first-degree murder and sentenced her to death.
During Pike’s incarceration, she was given an additional 25 years for the attempted strangulation of an inmate in 2004.
At the time of Pike’s sentencing, she was 20 years old and was the youngest person on death row. She has also been the only female on Tennessee’s death row during the nearly 30 years she has been incarcerated.
According to the Tennessee Department of Correction, Pike’s execution will make her the fourth woman in Tennessee’s history and the first since 1820.
[Feature Photo: Colleen Slemmer (l), Find a Grave/Christa Pike (r), undated photo released by the Tennessee Department of Correction shows Christa Pike. (Tennessee Department of Correction via AP)]
