Woman Sliced Her Classmate’s Throat, Carved A Pentagram On Her Forehead, And Kept Her Skull Piece As ‘Souvenir’— Now She Wants To Avoid Execution

Christa Gail Pike is set to face her execution in five months' time for the murder of Colleen Slemmer in 1995. However, she is taking a new measure halt the process before she is executed by a lethal injection on 30 September, 2026.

Pike has filed a lawsuit against the state, hoping to stop the execution from going forward as planned. However, if she fails, Pike will be the first woman to be executed in Tennessee in 200 years.

Pike has been behind bars since 1995. When she committed the murder, Pike was only 18 years old. She believed that her classmate, Collen Slemmer, who was 19 at the time, was trying to steal her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, 17.

With the help of Shipp and another friend, Shadolla Paterson, Pike lured Slemmer into the woods in the city of Knoxville, Tennessee. According to police reports, Peterson was on the lookout, while the former couple launched a ferocious attack on the victim.

Slemmer was brutally beaten, stabbed, and bludgeoned before her throat was sliced with a box cutter by Pike. The killer also carved a pentagram into her forehead and chest. In a disturbing revelation, it came to light that Pike reportedly kept a piece of the victim’s skull as a “souvenir.”

According to court records, she showed it off to her fellow pupils. Pike reportedly bragged about Slemmer “begging” for her life as she killed her. She even “danced in a circle, smiling and singing” as she narrated the incident to one of her classmates.

A groundskeeper who discovered Slemmer’s body was horrified, as the victim was “so badly beaten that he had first mistaken it for the corpse of an animal.” Although Pike confessed to her crimes, she claimed that her initial plan was to just scare the victim.

In 1996, she was found guilty of first-degree murder. She became the youngest person on death row at the age of 20. In 2003, another 25 years was added to Pike’s sentence after she was found guilty of trying to kill a fellow inmate.

In her lawsuit against the state, her legal team argues that the lethal injection method “violates her constitutional rights and conflicts with her religious beliefs.” The lawsuit further claims that she suffers from a blood-clotting condition known as thrombocytopenia, which will leave her “drowning in her own blood” following the injection.

Her attorneys also claimed that she “was forced to live in solitary confinement for over 25 years and suffers from severe mental illness." In her lawsuit, her legal team said there is a “sub­stan­tial risk that she will expe­ri­ence unnec­es­sary super­added pain and suf­fer­ing, ter­ror, and disgrace.”

In a response to her lawsuit, the state said that “the Eighth Amendment does not guarantee a prisoner a painless death,” according to USA Today. Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said, “Pike has offered nothing but speculation that the well-established, constitutional lethal injection method poses any unique risk in her case." We wish Pike’s commitment to the sanctity of life had arrived in time to save Colleen Slemmer.”