The execution was expected to take about 30 minutes.
By the end of it, Christa Pike was supposed to be dead — becoming the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than two centuries.
Instead, 11 hours after her scheduled execution, the woman dubbed a Satanic killer was still alive, lying on the gurney and snoring loudly after surviving two doses of lethal injection that were intended to kill her.
The ordeal was both disturbing and chaotic. At various points, Pike sang, laughed and thrashed as officials struggled to carry out the execution.
As of Thursday night, the 50-year-old remained hospitalized in critical condition, according to her lawyers. They said she had endured at least seven needle attempts, including one that bent as staff tried to administer the execution drugs.
The failed execution is the latest extraordinary development in the case of Pike, who was 18 when she tortured and murdered Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old fellow Job Corps student, more than 30 years ago.
The killing became linked to the country’s so-called “Satanic Panic.” In January 1995, Pike lured Slemmer to an isolated part of the University of Tennessee campus. There, alongside her boyfriend and a friend, she tortured Slemmer for up to an hour, stabbing her more than 100 times with a box cutter before beating her to death with a piece of asphalt.
Slemmer’s body was discovered the following day. She was nude from the waist up, with a Satanic pentagram carved into her skin and part of her crushed skull missing — a piece Pike reportedly took as a grisly souvenir.
Pike was sentenced to death the next year. After 31 years of legal delays, the sentence was finally scheduled to be carried out on Wednesday.
But in a stunning reversal, the execution failed.
Christa Gail Pike, now 50, remains alive and in critical condition after surviving her botched execution
She sang, groaned and snored as lethal injection drugs failed to kill her at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution
As officials face mounting questions over what went wrong and what will happen next, new details have emerged about the events inside the death chamber. The incident has been described as one of the most severely botched executions in US history.
WVLT anchor and senior reporter William Puckett, one of the few people to witness the failed execution, has now provided a minute-by-minute account from inside Nashville’s Riverbend Maximum Security Institution.
Speaking to Our News Outlet, Puckett said Pike appeared nonchalant during her final statement. She did not apologize to Slemmer’s family and instead took a swipe at her “haters.”
He described an unsettling scene in which Pike cheerfully sang about love and released what he called a “joyous cackle and laugh” as barbiturates — drugs that suppress brain activity to the point of death — entered her body.
The situation became even more surreal after the second attempted dose failed, when Pike began snoring “like an old man.”
Twice, officials placed a symbolic rock beside the observation window to indicate that Pike had died. On both occasions, it had to be taken away.
Puckett said members of the media were escorted into a viewing chamber at 6:41 p.m. CT.
The execution had initially been set for 10 a.m. However, an appeals court granted an 11th-hour stay that morning. The US Supreme Court later overturned the order, allowing the execution to proceed.
The chaos of the morning foreshadowed what was to come.
Journalists spoke out about the unprecedented situation that unfolded inside the death chamber
Emergency responders were seen rushing to Riverbend Maximum Security Institution after the botched execution
In the viewing room sat seven media witnesses, five Tennessee Department of Correction officers and Pike’s lawyers.
In another viewing room, not visible to the media, sat Slemmer’s family members including her mother May Martinez and stepdad Raul Martinez, who had traveled from Florida to see their daughter’s killer take her last breath with the help of $3,000 donated through GoFundMe.
None of Pike’s own family attended. Her sister later described Pike’s survival as an ‘act of God.’
The curtains obscuring the view to the death chamber finally opened at 7.27pm, revealing Pike lying strapped down onto the gurney.
To Puckett, she appeared calm and unfazed by what was about to unfold.
Lying on her back, she stared at the ceiling as she gave what should have been her final statement.
In it, she offered no apology to Slemmer’s family and showed no remorse for her actions, Puckett said.
Instead, she took what appeared to be ‘a veiled shot’ at ‘the people who have hated on’ her.
‘I even love the people who have hated on me. They’re the ones who need love the most,’ she said.
‘I’m going to leave this world the way I’ve spent most of my life – in love. I’m good now. I’m at peace. I’m ready to be free. I’m going to celebrate my freedom. This is a good day.’
Puckett added that despite her lawyers challenging the execution and petitioning for it to be called off, ‘She very much seemed like somebody who was happy that it had gotten to this point.’
Then the executioners began administering the lethal injection, which should have killed her within minutes.
Pike caved in Slemmer’s skull and took a piece of it as a trophy that she later showed off to classmates
Christa Pike’s sister Alicia Wills has claimed that her survival is a matter of God’s will
Instead, at 7.33pm, she began to speak again.
‘A vein in my arm feels like it is about to burst,’ she said. One minute later, she said: ‘One spot is really throbbing.’
A single tear rolled down her cheek. Whether she was crying or simply had watery eyes was unclear. Still, she did not seem in distress but rather seemed to be calmly describing something she had noticed, according to Puckett.
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At 7.37pm, she then took four deep breaths and broke into song.
Her high-pitched voice echoed off the walls and glass separating the killer from the spectators sitting in the viewing chambers.
‘Be kind and gentle to yourself and may you be at peace,’ she said repeatedly, reciting the lyrics of a traditional Buddhist meditation.
Pike had moved away from the Satanic symbolism and occult interests associated with her 1995 crime, turning instead to Buddhism during her imprisonment.
While singing, a clearly lucid Pike looked around the room – first at the warden, then at the media viewing chamber and then finally to the chamber where her victim’s family members sat watching.
To those watching, Pike seemed as though she was addressing the words of love and peace to them.
‘It felt like she was looking at us for a moment, knowing that we were back there, almost like she was saying a prayer for us,’ Puckett said.
She was also constantly moving her feet as ‘though she was paddling’ – so much so that a prison officer had to replace the blanket over her.
To Puckett, they didn’t appear to be involuntary spasms but deliberate movements as though she was in control of her body.
At one point, Pike then let out what sounded like ‘a joyous laugh and chuckle.’
Pike (pictured in 1996) did not apologize to her victim’s family when she gave her last statement
Colleen Slemmer’s mom May Martinez, and stepfather Raul, traveled to Tennessee to witness the execution
At 7.41pm, a rock was placed by Tennessee Department of Corrections staff in sight of the viewing chamber – a signal used to tell witnesses that the drug had been fully administered.
Pike’s eyes closed – but she was not dead.
At 7.44pm, Pike spoke again to her spiritual advisor but it was too quiet to be picked up by the microphone.
The curtain dropped at 7.46pm – typically a sign that the execution is complete and the inmate is dead.
But, behind it, Pike began to snore.
It was a ‘loud, deep in the back of the sinus cavity snore’ like an old man sleeping, Puckett described.
‘It was like she was getting the best sleep of her life.’
Three minutes later at 7.49pm, the curtain rose again.
The rock was gone and Pike’s spiritual adviser, who had entered the viewing room after the curtain first dropped, was summoned back into the chamber, while executioners administered a second dose.
Between 7.51pm and 7.56pm, Pike continued to snore heavily.
The rock was then placed back at 8.01pm, indicating that the second dose was complete.
Four minutes later, Pike’s body moved ‘pretty abruptly,’ and she gave a ‘significant gasp for air.’
The curtain then immediately came down a second time at 8.05pm – blocking the viewing chamber from seeing what happened next.
But the snoring did not stop.
Colleen Slemmer pictured as a child. Her stepfather said that her ‘soul cannot rest until this monster succumbs’ to the drugs
For almost 50 minutes, the media could hear it continuing to come from Pike.
A commotion could also be heard in the death chamber, with doors opening and closing, people moving about and inaudible voices.
Inside the viewing chamber, the confusion and chaos was palpable as Pike’s lawyers went in and out of the room.
By the time the microphone was cut and the media was escorted from the viewing chamber at 8.53pm, Pike was still snoring consistently – a clear sign, to those listening, that she was still alive and breathing.
To Puckett, who had never witnessed an execution before, one of the things that stood out to him was that Pike never visibly appeared to be in distress.
‘There seemed no sadness in the way she reacted,’ he said.
Pike was rushed by ambulance to hospital where she received life-saving measures. As of Thursday afternoon, her lawyers confirmed she remained alive in critical condition.
And as news of the failed execution spread, both families began to react.
To Pike’s sister Alicia Wills, he survival is a matter of God’s will.
‘People have their opinions of my sister, Christa Gail Pike, but the truth is not being told,’ she wrote in a post on social media. ‘I don’t have the mental capacity to tell the story now, but if God wanted her dead, she would be.’
But for the family of Pike’s victim Colleen Slemmer, the botched execution is continuing to prolong their fight for justice – and their daughter’s ability to rest in peace.
‘Unfortunately Colleen’s soul cannot rest until this monster succumbs to the 2 doses of Pentobarbital that she was given,’ Slemmer’s stepfather Raul Martinez wrote on social media. ‘This b**ch will haunt Colleen’s heavenly journey until she’s been wiped off the face of the earth.’
