The First Woman To Be Executed in Tennessee in Over 200 Years — The Christa Pike Case

Developing tonight, the only woman on Tennessee’s death row is suing the state. Christa Pike faces execution in September. The death row inmate is claiming her medical condition could make a lethal injection cruel and unusual punishment. A blood clotting diagnosis could lead to her lungs filling with fluid.

 State leaders say like other people convicted prior to 1999, she too can opt for the electric chair. Pike says forcing her to pick a method goes against her Buddhist beliefs. She was convicted in the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Prosecutors say she led a brutal attack with her then boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp on UT’s agriculture campus, taunting Slemmer as she died.

 You can read much more about that case right now at wbir.com. >> September 30th, 2026. Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, Nashville, Tennessee. A woman is scheduled to die today. Her name is Christa Gail Pike. She is 49 years old. And what is about to happen inside these walls has not happened in this state in over 200 years. A woman executed in Tennessee.

She would also be the first person put to death in Tennessee for a crime committed at the age of 18 in the modern death penalty era. But before she was ever strapped to that table, her lawyers filed a lawsuit with one terrifying claim, that the state’s execution method would essentially drown her in her own blood.

 That detail alone should stop you cold, and there is another detail, one from the morning after the murder, something so dark, so deeply disturbing that every detective, every juror, and every journalist who covered this case carried it with them long after the trial ended. You will understand exactly why before this video is over. But first, you need to know who Colleen Slemmer was because her name is the one that deserves to be remembered.

 Welcome to the Execution Archive. If this is your first time here, hit that subscribe button right now. Every story on this channel is told fully, honestly, and with the people who were lost kept at the center. Let’s begin. Her name was Colleen Slemmer. She was 19 years old. She was social. She was determined. People who knew her describe someone who looked at life as something worth fighting for.

 She was not someone who sat back and waited for good things to happen. She went after them. Colleen enrolled in the Knoxville Job Corps program in Tennessee. Job Corps was a government initiative built specifically for young people from difficult backgrounds. It offered vocational training, life skills, and a clear path towards something better.

 Colleen was not there because she had run out of choices. She was there because she was actively building one. She had a mother who loved her. That mother is still alive today. She has spent more than 30 years in a world without her daughter. That fact will come back before this story ends. At the Job Corps Center, Colleen crossed paths with Krista Pike.

They were not friends. They were not rivals. They were simply two young women living and studying in the same building, nothing more. But Krista Pike decided it was more than that. With no documented evidence, not a single confirmed incident, Pike convinced herself that Colleen was after her boyfriend, Tatterall Ship.

 That was enough. For a 19-year-old who had done absolutely nothing wrong, that was enough. Colleen Slemmer had plans. They did not include January 12th, 1995. Krista Gail Pike was born on March 10th, 1976 in Beckley, West Virginia. She came into the world premature, small, fragile, and already behind.

 Her parents’ marriage was not a stable one. They married, divorced over infidelity, remarried after her mother attempted to take her own life, then separated again and again. The instability inside that home was not something that came and went. It was constant. It was the air Krista breathed every single day. At 9 years old, a man living near her family sexually abused her.

 It was reported to state authorities. No charges were filed. No psychological support was offered. No one followed up. She was left completely alone with it. That same year, she attempted to take her own life using over-the-counter pain medication. She received brief psychiatric care. Then she was sent back home. The same home, the same walls.

 At 12, the one adult who had consistently shown up for her, her paternal grandmother, died. Another suicide attempt followed. Three months of inpatient care, then home again. At 13, her mother’s boyfriend assaulted her. At 17, she was assaulted again by an unknown individual. Hospital records confirmed it.

 Investigators did not meaningfully follow through. She changed schools repeatedly. She fought constantly. At 16, she ended up in juvenile detention. It was there, inside that facility, that she first heard about Job Corps. She enrolled with a specific goal to become a nursing assistant. She had already completed her GED. On paper, it looked like progress.

She arrived in Knoxville in late 1994. What she built there was not a future. It was the final chapter of everything that had been done to her and everything she was about to do. When Christa Pike met Turl Ship at Job Corps, things moved fast. Ship was 17 years old, quiet, easily influenced.

 Those who observed them together did not describe the relationship as affectionate. They described it as possessive. Christa was dominant. Ship followed her lead almost completely. Together, the two developed a shared fixation on occult material, dark rituals, cult ideology, the kind of content that raises immediate red flags in any supervised setting.

 But, the Knoxville Job Corps Center was not that kind of setting. Staff oversight was poor. Resident-on-resident violence was already a documented problem inside those walls. No one flagged what Christa and Ship were reading. No one intervened. Then, Christa fixed her attention on Colleen Slemmer. There was no documented flirtation, no confirmed conversation between Colleen and Ship that crossed any line.

 No evidence, not a single piece, that Colleen had any romantic interest in him. None of that mattered. In Christa’s mind, Colleen was a threat. And threats, in the world Christa had grown up in, were not reasoned with. In the days leading up to January 12th, 1995, Christa made direct statements to at least one fellow resident about exactly what she intended to do.

Court records would later reveal those conversations in precise, damning detail. One of those conversations happened the night before the murder. The person she told did not call anyone. That decision would haunt this case for years. The plan was not a sudden outburst. It was spoken aloud. It was discussed.

 It had a location, a method, and at least two other people who already knew. Three people knew what was going to happen to Colleen Slemmer before it happened. Krista Pike, 18 years old, Tattro Shipp, 17, and a fellow Job Corps resident named Shadolla Peterson, also 18. Peterson would later make a decision that changed everything.

 She cooperated fully with prosecutors and agreed to testify against both Pike and Shipp. Her account of the days leading up to January 12th, 1995 became one of the most important pieces of evidence in establishing that this was not a spontaneous act. It was planned step-by-step. According to court records, the approach was straightforward.

 Krista would invite Colleen to join the group under the cover of something casual, a walk, marijuana, a chance to settle whatever tension existed between them. Friendly, low pressure, safe. The location was not chosen at random, an isolated steam plant near the University of Tennessee Agricultural Campus. Dark, secluded, far from any path someone might cross by chance at night.

 A box cutter was carried to the scene. The weapon that would ultimately kill Colleen Slemmer, a heavy piece of asphalt, was already there. It was found on the ground and used with full deliberate intent. The night before the murder, Krista told a fellow resident named Kimberly Loylo directly that she was going to kill Colleen Slemmer. Loylo asked why.

Krista’s answer was four words. She said she felt evil. Loylo did not report it to anyone. Three people walked into those woods knowing exactly what was going to happen. Only one of them would ever face a death sentence. The other two, that part of the story will make your jaw drop.

 Before we go any further, if you have not subscribed yet, do it now. This story only gets harder from here. The night of January 12th, 1995 started like any other night at the Job Corps dormitory in Knoxville, Tennessee. Four residents signed out together. Four names on the log. The time was noted. Nobody stopped them.

 Nobody asked where they were going. That sign-out log would later become exhibit A in a murder trial. Colleen Slemmer walked out that door believing she was going to settle a disagreement. That was what she had been told. A walk, a conversation, a chance to clear the air between her and Krista. She went willingly.

 She had no reason not to. She walked alongside three people who already knew she was not coming back. Court records placed the group moving through the darkness toward the isolated steam plant area on the University of Tennessee Agricultural Campus, away from lights, away from people, away from any chance of someone walking past by accident.

 When they reached the clearing, the assault began immediately. Colleen was beaten. She was cut repeatedly with a box cutter. Then something happened that stopped investigators cold when they later processed the scene. A pentagram, a five-pointed symbol directly connected to the occult material Krista and Ship had been consuming together, was carved into Colleen’s chest, deliberately, carefully.

 That kind of wound is not inflicted in a struggle. It requires the victim to be still. It requires the attacker to be focused. It requires time and intent. Shadola Peterson stood at the outer edge of the clearing the entire time watching to make sure no one approached. Tatterall ship took part in the assault but court testimony and physical evidence established one thing without any doubt.

 Krista Pike directed every single stage of what happened in that clearing. Every stage. Colleen begged them to stop. She cried. She asked them over and over to stop hurting her. According to testimony presented in court, Krista did not stop for one specific reason. Colleen was still talking, still breathing, still making sound.

 The assault continued until that sound stopped entirely. Krista Pike picked up a large heavy piece of asphalt from the ground and brought it down onto Colleen Slemmer’s skull with enough force to end her life. Colleen Slemmer was 19 years old. She died in that clearing on the night of January 12th, 1995. But what happened next, what Krista did in the seconds immediately after, is the detail this story warned you about at the very beginning.

 After the fatal blow, Krista reached down into the dirt where the impact had scattered fragments and removed a piece of Colleen Slemmer’s skull. She placed it inside the pocket of her jacket. She walked out of those woods with it. She carried it back to the dormitory. She kept it through the entire night.

 The following morning, Krista walked into the job corps cafeteria and sat down for breakfast. Kimberly Loylo, the same person Krista had told the night before that she was going to kill Colleen, spotted her and asked about it. Krista reached into her jacket pocket, took out the skull fragment, held it over her breakfast tray and said, “I’m having breakfast with it.” She was not in shock.

 She showed no remorse. By multiple accounts, she was energized. She laughed. She described what had happened in that clearing the way someone describes the best night of their life. 30 years later, the law enforcement officer who first arrived at the scene told investigators he had never encountered anything like it in nearly two decades of service.

 He said that when he first looked at what was in that clearing, he did not immediately recognize it as a human being. Three residents returned to the Job Corps dormitory that night. One did not. The sign-out log showed four names leaving. Only three signed back in. That discrepancy sat there in plain sight until morning. Christa did not hide.

 She did not go quiet. She talked. She described what had happened to at least two other residents before the sun came up. The skull fragment stayed in her jacket pocket. She made no attempt to get rid of it. Nobody called the authorities that night. The next morning, a groundskeeper at the University of Tennessee Agricultural Campus arrived for work and discovered Colleen Slemmer’s body.

 He later testified that in a lifetime of working outdoors, he had never encountered anything like what he saw in that clearing. First responders were called. Investigators were dispatched. The body was identified. The Job Corps administration was contacted immediately. Colleen Slemmer’s mother was notified that her daughter was gone.

What she did not know yet was that a piece of her daughter’s remains had spent the night in someone’s jacket pocket. First as a trophy and soon to become courtroom evidence. Within 36 hours, investigators had three people in custody. What they found on Christa Pike at the moment of her arrest confirmed every detail of what had happened and stopped the arresting officers cold.

Investigators did not need long to find their starting point. The dormitory sign-out log told the story in four names and three returns. Pike, Ship, and Peterson were identified as persons of interest within hours of Colleen Slemmer’s body being found. Shadolla Peterson made a decision quickly. Facing serious criminal charges, she chose full cooperation with prosecutors.

 She gave a detailed account of the conversations in the days before January 12th, what was said, what was planned, and everything that happened that night at the steam plant. Her testimony became the foundation of the prosecution’s entire timeline. Krista Pike, under questioning, confessed. She described the attack in detail, but she also attempted to reframe it, suggesting the plan was only meant to frighten Colleen and that things got out of hand.

Prosecutors rejected that position entirely. The pentagram carved into Colleen’s chest required sustained, focused action. It was not something that happened in the heat of a moment. And the skull fragment recovered from Pike’s jacket at the time of her arrest was not an accident. It was a choice. Physical evidence collected at the scene matched testimony at every point.

 The box cutter, the location, the skull fragment, every detail lined up. No alibi was offered. No alternative suspect was ever raised. Within 48 hours of Colleen Slemmer’s murder, the case was, in evidentiary terms, completely airtight. Within 36 hours, it was over. Krista Pike, Tatteral Ship, and Shadolla Peterson were all taken into custody.

All three. Before two full days had passed since Colleen Slemmer’s body was found in that clearing. When investigators searched Krista Pike at the time of her arrest, the skull fragment was exactly where she had left it, inside her jacket pocket. Forensic analysis confirmed it. The fragment belonged to Colleen Slemmer.

 Pike had carried it on her body from the moment she walked out of those woods. Shadola Peterson’s cooperation agreement was formalized. In exchange for her testimony against Pike and Ship, she was offered a plea arrangement. Her account covered the planning conversations, the days leading up to January 12th, and the events at the steam plant.

 At every key point, physical evidence backed up exactly what she said. Kimberly Loylo was identified as a material witness. She testified to two separate conversations, the one the night before the murder, when Christa told her what she planned to do, and the one the following morning in the cafeteria, when Christa held the skull fragment over her breakfast tray.

 Formal charges were filed. Christa Pike was charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. Tateroll Ship was charged separately and tried as an adult. The investigative phase was closed. What came next, the courtroom, would take far longer to resolve. Christa Gail Pike walked into a Knox County courtroom in March of 1996.

She was 20 years old. The prosecution laid out its case piece by piece. Her own confession, the skull fragment pulled from her jacket at arrest, the dormitory sign-out log, Kimberly Loylo’s testimony about the cafeteria the morning after the murder, and Shadola Peterson’s full account, the planning, the conversations, the night of January 12th.

 Every detail corroborated by physical evidence. The defense did not dispute that the killing happened. Instead, they asked the jury to look at the full picture of who Christa Pike was before that night, the abuse, the neglect, the repeated failures of the state to protect a child who had been crying out for help since the age of nine.

 A psychiatrist testified that in her professional opinion, Pike was not grounded in reality at the time of the murder. A neurology professor from Georgetown University described her childhood as an almost unbearable environment of abuse. The jury heard all of it, then they deliberated not for days, for a few hours. Guilty on both counts.

 First-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. Eight days later, on March 30th, 1996, Christa Gail Pike was sentenced to death. At 20 years old, she became the youngest woman in the United States condemned to death in the modern death penalty era, the era that began when capital punishment was reinstated nationally in 1976.

Tadaryl Shipp was tried as an adult in January 1997. His jury could not unanimously agree on the death penalty. The judge sentenced him to life with the possibility of parole, plus a consecutive 25 years for conspiracy. He was denied parole in October 2025. Shondola Peterson received six years of probation.

 She walked out of court and returned to her life. Three people entered those woods. One received a death sentence. One received life. One went home. Christa Pike spent the next 30 years in a cell her attorneys described as the size of a parking space. For nearly three decades, she was the only woman on Tennessee’s death row.

 Almost no meaningful human contact. Day after day, year after year. In August of 2001, Pike attacked a fellow inmate named Patricia Jones inside the prison. She tied a shoestring around Jones’s neck and pulled with enough force to nearly kill her. Jones survived. Pike was convicted in 2004 and received an additional 25 years for attempted first-degree murder stacked on top of a death sentence she was already carrying.

In 2012, investigators uncovered an escape plot. A man from New Jersey named Donald Kohut had been writing to Pike since 2011 and traveling nearly 2,500 km round trip each month to visit her. He had arranged for a prison key to be duplicated and had recruited a corrections officer named Justin Heflin who agreed to help Pike escape in exchange for money.

 The plot was discovered before it could be carried out. Kohut received 7 years in federal prison. Heflin was dismissed from his position. Pike was never formally charged, though investigators stated they believed she had full knowledge of the plan. In September of 2024, after 28 years in functional solitary confinement, Pike reached a legal settlement with the state.

 For the first time, she was granted access to general population activities, shared meals, a job assignment, more time outside her cell. It did not stop the clock. In December of 2024, Tennessee introduced a new execution protocol using pentobarbital as a single drug, replacing the former three-drug method.

 In January of 2026, Pike’s attorneys filed a lawsuit challenging the protocol directly. They argued it was unconstitutional as applied to her specifically. Pike has a blood clotting condition called thrombocytopenia and thrombocytosis. Her veins are documented as difficult to access. Her attorneys warned that the pentobarbital protocol could cause pulmonary edema, the filling of the lungs with fluid.

 They described it plainly as death by drowning in one’s own blood. They also argued that the exclusion of her Buddhist spiritual adviser during her final hours violated her First Amendment rights. Her legal team pointed to the attempted execution of Tony Carruthers, which had to be called off entirely after medical staff could not successfully place a second intravenous line. Their position was direct.

 The state of Tennessee is not able to constitutionally carry out executions. Her execution is scheduled for September 30th, 2026. Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, Nashville, Tennessee. If it proceeds, she will be the first woman executed in Tennessee since 1819. Colleen Slemmer’s mother is still alive. She has lived more than 30 years without her daughter. She sat through hearings.

She endured appeal after appeal after appeal. And for years, she waited for a fragment of her daughter’s own remains to be released from a state evidence room so that Colleen could finally be whole again in death. That is what this case cost a mother. That cost never appeared in any legal filing. It was never weighed in any sentencing calculation.

 But it is part of this story. It will always be part of this story. Krista Pike survived abandonment, abuse, and neglect at every stage of her childhood. She survived things that should never happen to any child. And then, in the end, she chose to abandon every human thing left inside herself. Colleen Slemmer was 19 years old.

 She walked into a program designed to give young people a second chance because she was determined to build something real. She deserved every year that was taken from her. What moment in this story hit you hardest? Tell me in the comments below. And if you stayed until the very end, you already know what this channel is about. Subscribe.

 Every name we cover here deserves to be spoken clearly. Colleen Slemmer’s name is one of them.