The execution date for Christa Pike has been set by the State of Tennessee. Pike was found guilty of the brutal stabbing and murder of a co-worker at the Knoxville Job Corps in 1995.

According to the court’s decision, Pike, now 49, is scheduled to be executed by September 30, 2026, unless a different court ruling changes this. If carried out, she would be the first woman executed in Tennessee since 1819. Additionally, she would be the first person executed in Tennessee for a crime committed at age 18 since the death penalty’s reinstatement in 1972.

The court document mentions that Pike has exhausted the normal three-step appeals process, and no valid reasons were found to prevent her sentence from being carried out. Although Pike previously asked the court to dismiss the state’s request for setting an execution date and sought a commutation, her requests were denied. Pike had also pursued a sentence commutation in 2021.

After the order was released, Pike’s attorneys issued the following statement.

There is disappointment with the Tennessee Supreme Court’s decision to approve the state’s request for Pike’s execution. Advocates argue her death sentence should be reconsidered because of her age and severe mental illness at the time of the crime. Christa was sentenced to death in 1996 for a crime she committed at 18, along with two other individuals.

Pike’s early life was filled with years of abuse and neglect. With time and treatment for bipolar and post-traumatic stress disorders, diagnosed years later, she has become a remorseful and thoughtful woman.

Kelly Gleason, Randy Spivey, Stephen Ferrell and Molly Kincaid, attorneys from Christa Pike.

In 1996, Pike received the death penalty for Colleen Slemmer’s murder on January 12, 1995. Tadaryl Shipp and Shadolla Peterson also faced convictions related to the crime. All were employees of the Knoxville Job Corps, a federal program aimed at helping troubled youth, during the incident.

News Channel 11’s Knoxville sister station previously reported that Pike and others lured Slemmer into a remote area of the University of Tennessee Agriculture Campus, where she was “brutally beaten,” investigators said at the time. Investigators also said that Pike took a piece of Slemmer’s skull as a souvenir. According to investigators, Pike originally said she killed Slemmer because of satanic beliefs, but they later found she believed Slemmer was involved in a love triangle.

Shipp was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole as well as 25 years. Peterson, who acted as a lookout during the beating, was sentenced to probation after they became an informant in the state’s case against Pike and Shipp.

Following her 1996 conviction, Pike was also convicted of attempted first-degree murder in 2004 after she was accused of strangling a fellow inmate and nearly choking her to death with a shoestring in 2001. In 2012, TDOC records also state that Pike attempted to escape, but her attempt was foiled by TDOC and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.