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A condemned Tennessee killer — the first woman sentenced to death in the state in 200 years — is demanding an all-female lethal injection team to carry out her execution, claiming she could be traumatized by having men involved in her final moments.
Christa Pike, 50, was just 18 when she lured fellow Job Corps student Colleen Slemmer, 19, to an isolated spot on the University of Tennessee campus in Knoxville and tortured her to death alongside her boyfriend on Jan. 12, 1995.
Now, decades after her conviction for the gruesome murder, the death row inmate, set to be executed on Sept. 30, is making the bizarre request for an all-female execution crew — citing past sexual abuse.
If this request isn’t possible, then Pike will ask to be hanged instead.
May Martinez, Slemmer’s mother, said Pike’s request is complete baloney.
“I don’t think she should be allowed to have any special treatment,” she told the Daily Mail, adding that “she didn’t consider how my daughter felt — she’s just playing the system … It’s all bullcrap.”
Despite the last-ditch effort to have her execution of choice, her legal team is also asking Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to grant her clemency and commute her sentence to life without parole, according to the newspaper.
Lawyers claim that Pike’s horrific childhood trauma involving sexual and physical abuse, neglect and domestic violence was never addressed by the institutions and adults she depended on.
The 226-page clemency petition, filed in September, claims Pike was sexually abused between the ages of 2 and 5. At 11, she was allegedly raped by a 37-year-old neighbor who received a suspended sentence.
Afterward, at 17 years old, Pike says she was dragged into the woods and raped by a stranger while walking to a store. The attacker was never identified, attorneys claim.
After she was sentenced to death, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and PTSD.
No evidence of past sexual abuse was considered when the jury was deliberating the death penalty, according to the newspaper.
Her legal team argues that leaving out those details prevented jurors from fully understanding the troubled teenager they were sentencing to death — context they acknowledge does not excuse the killing but could have spared her life.
“Christa was broken, not evil,” her attorneys wrote in the petition.
“She was broken by a mental health system, juvenile system, and a criminal justice system that ignored, misdiagnosed, and mistreated her at every turn.”
But court documents from Pike’s original trial paint a grisly picture of Slemmer’s final hours.
According to court documents obtained by news.com.au, Pike told her friend and fellow student, Kim Iloilo, on Jan. 11 that she intended to kill Slemmer simply because she “felt mean that day.”
The following evening around 8:00 p.m., Pike lured Slemmer away under the guise of going to a Blockbuster video store.
Accompanied by her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, and acquaintance Shadolla Peterson, Pike and Shipp brutally attacked Slemmer, beating her, slashing her throat and carving satanic symbols into her body.
By 10:15 p.m., the group returned without Slemmer.
Pike said she heard voices telling her to continue brutalizing Slemmer as she screamed to keep her quiet, according to court documents.
The morning after the bloodbath, Pike celebrated Slemmer’s death.
Pike was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder and sentenced to death on March 30, 1996, making her one of the youngest women sentenced to death in the US.
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