Christa Pike To Be Executed in 42 Days, She Begs Tennessee To Hang Her Instead 

Hanging was once again brought up and its effectiveness versus the lethal injection. Both experts from the state and from Pike’s team testified that it is typically quicker for someone to die if they were to be hanged. However, Tennessee hasn’t used judicial hanging in over 100 years. Pike’s team brought out emergency medicine professor Scott Goldstein.

 He said although he’s not an expert in hanging, he knows there’s a greater likelihood that a person will die by hanging them than lethal injection.  I think I deserve to be in here for the rest of my life. I did something horrible that is unacceptable and I realize that, but I don’t deserve to knew exactly what I was doing.    Everything that I did that night, I knew what I was doing.

And I think I was taking things out on her that had happened to me years ago.  She claims she suffers from a rare condition of blood and small veins which could cause pain as the state puts her to death. We learned Monday that inmate would opt for hanging rather than lethal injection.  There is a death warrant active in the state of Tennessee and for the first time in more than 200 years, that warrant has a woman’s name on it.

 Her name is Christa Gail Pike. She has spent 30 years inside a prison cell. She was 20 years old when a judge sentenced her to die. She is now 49. And the state of Tennessee is finally ready to carry out that sentence. But here is where this story stops being straightforward. Her legal team walked into a Tennessee courtroom and made a request that stunned everyone in that room. They did not ask for mercy.

 They did not ask for more time. They put it in writing in open court before a sitting judge. And what they asked for was this, let her hang. Not as a figure of speech, as a formal legal argument filed in official court documents backed by medical experts and sworn testimony. That alone would make this case remarkable.

 But there is one more detail, and this one is harder to ignore. The doctor confirmed to oversee Christa Pike’s execution is the same doctor who oversaw a lethal injection just months earlier. One that had to be stopped because the team could not find a usable vein. That execution never happened. The condemned man was sent back to his cell.

 Christa Pike is next on that table. Before this story is over, you will understand exactly why that detail changes everything. Welcome back to the channel. If you are new here, this channel covers the cases the headlines reduced to three sentences. We go much deeper than that. Hit subscribe and let us get into it. Before we talk about what happened on January 12th, 1995, we need to talk about Colleen Slemmer because Colleen was not just a name in a case file.

 She was a 19-year-old girl who came to Knoxville, Tennessee with one simple goal. She wanted a better life. Colleen was born in 1975. She came from a working-class family. People who knew her described her the same way every time. Warm, outgoing, quick to laugh. The kind of person who made a room feel lighter just by being in it.

 She enrolled at the Knoxville Job Corps Center in late 1994. For those who do not know, Job Corps is a federally funded program. It exists specifically for young people from low-income backgrounds. It gives them vocational training, a path forward. Colleen was exactly who that program was built for. Inside that program, she met Christa Gail Pike. They were classmates.

They lived in the same dormitory-style housing. They shared the same social circle. What began as simple proximity would, within weeks, turn deadly. The reason, according to court records, came down to a young man named Tater Roul Ship. He was Christa’s boyfriend, and Colleen allegedly had some kind of intimate encounter with him.

 Whether that encounter was real or simply something Krista believed in her own mind, it did not matter. In Krista’s world, Colleen Slemmer had crossed a line. That jealousy would cost Colleen everything. But here is the detail that stays with you long after the case is closed. After Colleen’s murder, her mother spent years begging Tennessee authorities for one thing, not justice, not answers, just a piece of her daughter’s skull kept by her killer as a trophy so that Colleen could finally be buried whole. The state said no. It

remained locked in evidence storage. It is still there today. To understand what Krista Gail Pike did, you have to understand what was done to her first. That is not a defense. It is context, and the context matters. Krista Gail Pike was born on March 10th, 1976 in Beckley, West Virginia. She was premature. She came into the world small and fragile, and the world she came into did not get much better from there.

 Her parents married, divorced, remarried. Her father alleged that her mother drank alcohol and used tobacco throughout the pregnancy. Her mother denied it. What is not disputed is what came after. An aunt who visited the family home described floors covered in animal waste. She said she regularly had to bring food for Krista and her older half-sister because their parents were not feeding them.

 That was the house Krista grew up in. By third grade, she had already attempted an overdose on acetaminophen. She received some psychiatric treatment, fragmented, inconsistent, not nearly enough. Around that same time, she was drawing sexualized images in school. Years later, she told authorities those drawings were connected to abuse she was experiencing at home.

 Then came Claude Davis, a neighbor. According to court records, Davis raped Krista when she was a preteen. He was convicted. He served 2 years. Krista told her mother what happened. Her mother did not believe her. At 12 years old, the one person in her life who had shown her any consistent love died, her grandmother.

 After that loss, Krista attempted to take her own life again. Again, the support that followed was minimal. The violence did not stop. One of her mother’s boyfriends punched her in the face. A man threatened to assault her. She and a friend beat him with a stick in a parking lot. At 17, she reported being dragged into the woods and raped by a stranger.

 She fought back. She struck him with a rock and escaped. She went to a hospital. A rape kit was completed. No one was ever charged. She was expelled from school. She ran away from home. She spent time in a juvenile facility. It was there that she first heard about Job Corps, a program that trained young people for careers.

 She applied hoping to become a nursing assistant. She arrived in Knoxville with a goal. What she found instead was a boyfriend who would change everything. And not in any way she expected. Job Corps was supposed to be a fresh start. For young people like Colleen and Krista, it was marketed as exactly that. A structured, federally funded program designed to give disadvantaged youth a real shot at a future.

 What it actually looked like inside those dormitory walls was something very different. Students carried razor blades and box cutters, not for class, but for protection. Gang activity was a documented presence inside the center. The environment was tense, unsupervised in ways that mattered, and already dangerous long before January 12th, 1995.

It was inside this environment that Krista met Taterel Ship. Ship was a fellow student. Peers described him as feared. Court records paint a picture of a young man who was deeply absorbed in occult and satanic beliefs, and who pulled Krista into those same beliefs. He was physically abusive toward her. He hit her. He kicked her.

 He controlled who she was and was not allowed to speak to. Then he cheated on her and according to court records, the person he cheated with was Colleen Slemmer. That information landed on top of a jealousy that was already there. And then something happened that pushed it over the edge entirely. Krista found Colleen inside her dormitory room going through her personal belongings.

 That moment changed everything. From that point on, Krista began telling other students that Colleen was trying to steal Ship from her. Her language grew sharper. Her anger became more open. Court records document the escalation in her words and behavior in the days leading directly up to January 12th, 1995. People around them could see it building. No counselor intervened.

 No staff member flagged the conflict. No one inside that center stepped between these two young women and what was clearly becoming something dangerous. The warning signs were there, visible, documented, and every single one of them was ignored. This was not a spontaneous act of violence. What happened to Colleen Slemmer on January 12th, 1995 was planned.

There were three people involved in that plan and each one had a role. The first was Krista Gail Pike. The second was Tederall Ship, her boyfriend, the same man at the center of the jealousy that had been building for weeks. The third was Shadolla Peterson, 18 years old, a fellow Job Corps student, and one of Krista’s close friends.

Together, they chose a location, the grounds near an abandoned steam plant close to the University of Tennessee Agricultural Campus. Wooded, secluded, far enough from the dormitory that no staff member would hear anything. Then they needed a reason for Colleen to walk out there willingly. So they gave her one.

 They told her they wanted to make peace. They offered marijuana as a gesture of goodwill. Colleen believed them. She had no reason not to. As far as she knew, this was a group of people she lived alongside every day, offering her an olive branch. She went with them. Shadolla Peterson’s role, according to court records, was not to participate in the attack itself.

 She was positioned as a lookout, watching the surrounding area, ready to warn if anyone came close. That left Krista and Ship alone with Colleen. One detail from the trial is difficult to set aside. Evidence presented in court documented Ship’s deep fixation on occult and satanic material, material he had introduced to Krista months earlier.

 The pentagram that would later be carved into Colleen Slemmer’s chest during the attack was not random. Prosecutors argued it was consistent with that same ideology. No weapon was purchased beforehand. The chunk of asphalt used to strike Colleen was picked up from the ground at the scene. But the location, the timing, and the cover story were all chosen deliberately.

 This was planned, every part of it. If you have made it this far, you already know this case is unlike anything else on this channel. Drop a comment right now. Just the word Pike, so I know who is watching. And if you have not subscribed yet, now is the time. Let us keep going. January 12th, 1995, evening.

 The dormitory log at the Knoxville Job Corps Center records four names signing out that night. Krista Pike, Tadaryl Ship, Shadolla Peterson, and Colleen Slemmer. Four people walked out of that building together. Colleen walked out believing she was going to settle a dispute. She thought this was going to be a conversation.

 She thought the marijuana was a peace offering. She thought these were people she knew. She was wrong about all of it. The group walked toward the wooded area near the abandoned steam plant on the University of Tennessee Agricultural Campus. It was dark. It was isolated. No one else was around. That was the point.

 Once they reached that location, the plan was set in motion. Shadola Peterson moved to the perimeter. Her job was to watch, to listen, to warn if anyone came near. That left Colleen alone with Krista and Ship. What followed lasted approximately 30 minutes. Court records document every part of it. Colleen was taunted.

 She was beaten. She was slashed with a sharp object. She could not escape. There was nowhere to go and no one to hear her. At some point during the assault, Ship used a blade to carve a pentagram into Colleen’s chest. This was not done in a moment of panic. Court records confirm it was deliberate.

 Colleen Slemmer was 19 years old. She was still alive through parts of what was done to her. Then Krista Pike picked up a large chunk of asphalt from the ground. She brought it down on Colleen’s skull with enough force to kill her. That was the blow that ended Colleen’s life. But Krista did not leave after that. Before walking away from that location, she removed a fragment of Colleen’s skull from the scene.

 She took it with her. What she did with that piece of skull in the 36 hours that followed is the reason she was caught. And it is the detail that will stay with you long after this video ends. Three people signed back into the dormitory that night. The dormitory log made it plain. Four had signed out. Three came back.

 Colleen Slemmer’s body was discovered at the scene. She had been beaten, slashed, and struck with a piece of asphalt. A pentagram had been cut into her chest. A piece of her skull was missing. She was 19 years old. She had come to Knoxville to build a future. She had enrolled in a program designed to help young people like her.

 She had walked out of that dormitory that evening believing she was going to clear the air with a classmate. She never walked back in. Colleen Slemmer was dead. Her body was still out there in those woods. And Krista Pike walked back into the dormitory and started showing people what she had taken. The fragment of Colleen’s skull.

 She carried it like a souvenir. She showed it to other students inside the Job Corps dormitory, openly, without hesitation. No remorse, no panic. No attempt to hide what she had done. Neither Krista Tattaralchip nor Shonda Peterson attempted to leave the campus. None of them fled. None of them worked to build any kind of serious alibi.

 They simply returned to their normal dormitory routine. As though the previous 30 minutes in those woods had never happened. But this was a closed residential campus. Word traveled fast. Students began talking. Details spread from room to room. Within hours, the names of the three people who had walked out with Colleen and come back without her were already circulating through the dormitory.

When detectives arrived and began questioning students, it did not take long. They searched Krista Pike. Inside her jacket pocket, they found it. The piece of Colleen Slemmer’s skull. She was still carrying it. She had not discarded it, hidden it, or thrown it away. She had kept it on her body. That single piece of evidence, carried openly, shown off to witnesses, and found in her pocket by law enforcement, would become one of the most damning details of the entire case.

 As for her family, court records reflect no significant immediate response. Krista had spent most of her life estranged from any stable family structure. There was no one waiting for her call. Detectives did not need weeks to build this case. They did not need complex forensic analysis or months of interviews.

 The evidence was sitting right in front of them from the very first hour. It started with the dormitory sign-out log. A written record. Simple, clear. Four names signed out on the evening of January 12th, 1995. Three names signed back in. That log alone told investigators everything they needed to begin.

 There was no strong alibi to break through. No conflicting witness accounts to sort out. No complicated timeline to reconstruct. Krista Pike, Taren Ship, and Shanda La Peterson had returned to campus and resumed their normal routine. And students were already talking about what had happened in those woods. When detectives brought Krista in for questioning, she made a decision that would seal her fate.

 She waived her Miranda rights. Then she confessed. She told investigators that the group had gone to that location intending only to frighten Colleen. She described the night. She acknowledged her role. But she insisted that things had gotten out of control. That what happened was not fully planned. Investigators documented her account.

Then they compared it against what the physical evidence showed. The assault lasted approximately 30 minutes. Court records confirmed that. 30 minutes is not a moment of lost control. 30 minutes is sustained deliberate violence. And the evidence reflected exactly that. Shanda La Peterson also cooperated with investigators early in the process.

 She spoke to law enforcement. She agreed to testify for the prosecution. With a signed confession, a cooperating witness, physical evidence, and a dormitory log, the case against Krista Pike was already built before a single day of trial had begun. There was no manhunt. No nationwide search. No months of waiting.

 Within 36 hours of Colleen Slemmer’s murder, all three were in custody. Krista Pike, Taren Ship, Shanda La Peterson arrested, charged, and the evidence stacked against them was not thin. The dormitory sign-out log placed all three of them leaving that building with Colleen on the night of January 12th, 1995. The skull fragment had been found inside Krista’s jacket pocket.

 She had already given a confession. And Shanda La Peterson had agreed to cooperate fully with investigators. Court records show that the case came together rapidly and with very little ambiguity. All three were charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. Then the charges began to separate.

 Shadola Peterson accepted a deal. She pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact. In exchange for her full cooperation and testimony against the other two, she received probation. She would not go to prison. Tatterson Ship was 17 years old at the time of the murder, just 2 months past his birthday. Despite his age, prosecutors successfully argued that he should be tried as an adult.

 The prosecution sought life without parole for Ship. For Christa Pike, they sought something else entirely. They wanted the death penalty. March 1996, Knox County, Tennessee. Christa Gail Pike sat in a courtroom and faced a jury. The prosecution came prepared. They had her signed confession. They had the physical evidence.

 They had Shadola Peterson ready to take the stand and testify to everything she witnessed that night. The defense had very little to work with. On March 22nd, 1996, after only a few hours of deliberation, the jury returned its verdict. Guilty on both counts, first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. Eight days later, on March 30th, 1996, Christa Pike was sentenced to death by electrocution for the murder charge.

 She received an additional 25 years for the conspiracy conviction. She was 20 years old, one of the youngest women sentenced to death in the United States during the modern era. Tatterson Ship went to trial in January 1997. He was convicted. But when the jury could not unanimously agree on life without parole, the judge imposed a life sentence with parole eligibility, plus a consecutive 25 year term for conspiracy, ensuring he would not be eligible for release until his late 40s or early 50s.

He was denied parole in October 2025. He remains incarcerated. Christa’s road through the appeals process was not straightforward. She filed an appeal, then she dropped it, then she reinstated it. In 2001 and 2002, she went against her lawyer’s advice and asked the court to allow her to be executed.

 A date was set, August 19th, 2002. Then she changed her mind again. A higher court intervened and the date was withdrawn. In 2014, her attorneys filed in federal court. They argued ineffective counsel, raised questions about her mental state, and cited constitutional violations. A 61-page ruling in 2016 rejected every single claim.

 The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling in 2019. Her legal options were nearly exhausted, but the story inside prison walls was not finished. In 2001, while still incarcerated, Christa and another inmate attempted to strangle a fellow prisoner named Patricia Jones with a shoestring. She was convicted of attempted first-degree murder and received an additional 25-year sentence.

Then in 2012, a planned prison escape was uncovered. A corrections officer and a man from New Jersey, who had developed a romantic fixation on Christa through written letters, had been working on a scheme to break her out. It was shut down before it progressed. Christa was not charged. She was running out of road, and Tennessee was running out of patience.

Christa Gail Pike has been inside a prison cell since 1996. That is 30 years. For nearly 28 of those years, court records describe her living conditions as functional solitary confinement. A cell roughly the size of a parking space, no shared meals, no meaningful time outside those walls, almost complete isolation day after day, year after year for nearly three decades.

 Then, in September 2024, following a legal settlement, that changed. She was moved into general population. For the first time in close to 30 years, she was allowed to work, eat with other inmates, and spend real time outside her cell. That change came just 12 months before Tennessee signed her death warrant. On September 30th, 2025, the Tennessee Supreme Court issued that warrant.

 The execution date was set exactly 1 year later, September 30th, 2026. Under Tennessee law, Christa was given a choice between two methods, lethal injection or electrocution. Her legal team chose neither. What followed became the most unusual legal battle in Tennessee execution history. Her attorneys did not argue that she should be spared.

 They argued about how she should die. At the center of their argument was a rare blood disorder, essential thrombocytosis. This condition causes an excess of blood platelets in the body. According to expert testimony filed in court, it creates two simultaneous risks during lethal injection. First, clotting that can block the delivery of the drug through the IV line.

 Second, a depletion of the proteins the body needs to manage bleeding, meaning the drug could leak from the vein into surrounding tissue, causing burns that court filings compare to the effect of drain cleaner on skin. Her attorneys also argued that Christa’s veins are small and damaged from years of blood draws, making reliable IV access genuinely difficult.

 The state’s own nursing expert acknowledged that the risk of the drug leaking into surrounding tissue was real. Then came the testimony of Dr. Bethany Brand, a licensed clinical psychologist. Dr. Brand described Christa’s history of sexual violence as among the most severe she had encountered in her entire clinical career, beginning before kindergarten and continuing through age 17. Dr.

 Brandt testified that being physically restrained, transferred to an all-male prison 24 hours before her death, and strapped to a table by strangers would not simply be distressing. It would force Christa’s mind to relive past assaults, not as distant memories, but as flashbacks experienced as though they were happening in that moment.

 Against all of that, Christa’s attorneys formally proposed judicial hanging as an alternative execution method. Their argument was direct. Defense expert Dr. Scott Goldstein testified that a properly administered judicial hanging causes near instantaneous death through spinal cord separation or loss of consciousness within 10 to 20 seconds.

He placed the failure rate of hangings at 3.12% lower than the 7.2% failure rate he cited for lethal injections. The state’s response was equally direct. Warden Kenneth Nelson testified that Tennessee has no hanging equipment. More importantly, hanging is not authorized under current Tennessee law.

 Only lethal injection and electrocution are legal options. The state’s anesthesiology expert argued that pentobarbital, the drug Tennessee uses, induces unconsciousness within 20 to 30 seconds before any pain response is possible. But Christa’s legal team had one more argument, and it was hard to dismiss. Court records confirm that Dr.

 Mark Walton Fowler, the same physician who oversaw the failed execution of Tony Carruthers on May 21st, 2026, when staff could not locate a usable vein, has been named as the doctor who will oversee Christa Pike’s execution. That day, Tony Carruthers was sent back to his cell. He was given a 1-year reprieve.

 For Christa’s attorneys, that was not a background detail. That was the entire argument. The Tennessee Supreme Court took the matter seriously enough to appoint senior judge Mark Ward as a special master, an independent fact-finder assigned to hold multi-day hearings and report findings on four specific constitutional questions.

 His deadline for that report is August 21st, 2026. The court has not yet made its final decision. Meanwhile, Shadola Peterson lives free under probation. Tatro Ship remains in prison, denied parole in October 2025, and Christa Gail Pike waits. Colleen Slemmer’s mother spent years making one request to the state of Tennessee.

 Not money, not a public statement, just a piece of her daughter’s skull taken as a trophy on January 12th, 1995, so that Colleen could finally be buried whole. The state refused for as long as the case remained active. That fragment of bone sat in an evidence storage room for over 30 years. It may still be there today.

 And here is the part of this story that is difficult to sit with. A woman convicted of one of the most brutal murders in Tennessee history is now standing before a court asking it to consider her trauma, her pain, her dignity in her final moments, and the court, because that is how the law works, is legally required to take that argument seriously.

 Colleen Slemmer went to Knoxville to build a future. She was 19 years old. She never got the chance. That is the part of this story that stays. Tell me in the comments what moment in this case hit you hardest. Was it Colleen’s mother asking for her daughter’s skull back, the failed execution just months earlier, or the formal plea for hanging? Let me know below.

 And if this is your first time here, subscribe. New cases drop every week. I will see you in the next one.