Christa Gail Pike (born March 10, 1976) is an American convicted murderer, and the youngest woman to be sentenced to death in the United States during the post-Furman period.[1] She was 20 when convicted of the torture murder of her classmate Colleen Slemmer, which she committed at age 18.
Christa Pike was born in 1976 to Carissa Hansen and Emil Glenn Pike in Beckley, West Virginia. Her parents had a tumultuous relationship, being married for two years, divorced for a year after Hansen was found to be cheating, and remarried for another two years after Hansen attempted suicide.[2] Both of them were frequently negligent. An aunt noted that infant Pike would be "crawling around through piles of dog stool all over the house," and that Hansen wanted to keep partying when she received news that her toddler was experiencing severe seizures.[3] Pike's paternal grandmother would frequently help care for her; Pike believed she was the only one who ever loved her.[3] When her grandmother died in 1988, Pike made her first suicide attempt at age 12, for which she received little support.[3]
Pike's living situation continued to be unstable throughout her teenage years as she was both the recipient, and perpetrator, of violence. One of her mother's boyfriends punched her in the face; criminal charges were filed, then settled.[2] While staying with her father's new family, one of her young half-sisters claimed to have been molested by Pike, causing her father to send her away.[2] Pike additionally claimed to have been sexually assaulted or molested at several points in time; her friends and family doubt these occurrences, noting that she is a pathological liar.[2] In one incident, a man phoned claiming that he was going to rape her; in response, Pike and a friend beat him with a stick in a parking lot.[2]
Although she had been bright as a child, her unstable home life caused her to frequently change schools, causing her performance in school to deteriorate.[4] In tenth grade, she was sent to a juvenile facility for a year, where she became interested in the Job Corps, a government program aimed at helping low-income youth by offering vocational training and career skills.
In the fall of 1994, Pike attended the now-closed Job Corps center in Knoxville, Tennessee. Pike began dating a man a year her junior named Tadaryl Shipp. Together, they developed interest in the occult and devil worship.[5]
Crime
Christa became jealous of her Job Corps classmate, 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, who she thought was trying to "steal" her boyfriend from her; friends of Slemmer denied the accusations. Along with friend Shadolla Peterson, 18, Pike planned to lure Slemmer to an isolated, abandoned steam plant near the University of Tennessee campus.[5]
On January 12, 1995, Pike, Shipp, Peterson, and Slemmer signed out of the dormitory and proceeded to the woods, where Slemmer was told they wanted to make peace by offering her some marijuana.[5] Upon arrival at the secluded location, Slemmer was attacked by Pike and Shipp while Peterson acted as lookout. According to later court testimony, for the next thirty minutes Slemmer was taunted, beaten, and slashed; and a pentagram was carved in her chest.[6][7] Finally, Pike smashed Slemmer's skull with a large chunk of asphalt, killing her. Pike kept a piece of Slemmer's skull.[5]
Pike began to show off the piece of skull around the school, and within thirty-six hours the three were arrested. The log book showed that Pike, Shipp, Peterson, and Slemmer left together and only three returned. Detectives found the piece of skull in Pike's jacket pocket. Soon after her arrest, Pike confessed to police of the torture and killing of Slemmer, but insisted they were merely trying to scare her and it got out of control.[5]
Trial
During Pike's trial, the prosecution was aided by evidence and Pike's confession. Pike was charged with first degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. On March 22, 1996, after only a few hours of deliberation, Pike was found guilty on both counts. On March 30, Pike was sentenced to death by electrocution for the murder charge and 25 years in prison for the conspiracy charge. Shipp received a life sentence with the possibility of parole plus 25 years.[5] Peterson, who had turned informant, received probation for pleading guilty to being an accessory after the fact.[7]
Appeals of conviction
Following the guilty verdict, Pike "launched, cancelled and then re-launched" an appeal of her conviction in the Tennessee state courts.[8] In June 2001, then again in June 2002, against the advice of her lawyers, Pike asked the courts to drop her appeal and sought to be executed via electrocution. Criminal Court Judge Mary Beth Leibowitz granted the request and an execution date of August 19, 2002, was set. Pike soon thereafter changed her mind and on July 8, 2002, defense lawyers filed a motion to allow the appeal process to continue. This motion was denied. However, on August 2, 2002, a three-judge state appeals court panel ruled that the proceedings should be continued and the execution was not carried out.[9] In December 2008, Pike's latest request for a new trial was turned down and she was returned to death row.[8] With this denial Pike's allowed appeals under the rules and procedures of the State of Tennessee's criminal justice system were exhausted.[10]
In May 2014, Pike's lawyers entered an appeal in the federal court system.[11] Her lawyers sought a commutation of the sentence from death to prison on the following grounds: ineffective assistance of counsel; Pike suffered from mental illness; and capital punishment as administered in Tennessee is unconstitutional. In a 61-page ruling by U.S. District Judge Harry Sandlin Mattice Jr. issued on March 11, 2016, all grounds were rejected and the requested commutation was denied.[12][13] On August 22, 2019, having heard the same appeal by Pike's lawyers on October 1, 2018, the three judge panel on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit panel unanimously upheld the lower court ruling and denied relief.[14]
Attempted murder conviction
On August 24, 2001, Pike (with alleged assistance from inmate Natasha Cornett) attacked and attempted to strangle fellow inmate Patricia Jones with a shoe string, and nearly succeeded in choking her to death. Jones had been serving a life sentence for the 1994 murder of 84-year-old Alberta Coker in Knoxville at the time of her attack.[15] Pike was convicted of attempted first degree murder on August 12, 2004.[16] Although it is the position of the Tennessee Department of Corrections that Cornett assisted in this crime, their investigators concluded there was insufficient evidence to charge her with helping Pike attack Jones.[17]
Attempted prison escape
In March 2012, it was revealed that Pike had made escape plans involving corrections officer Justin Heflin and a New Jersey man named Donald Kohut.[18] Though it has never been determined how it exactly began, Kohut, who worked as a personal trainer and was then in his early thirties, entered into a letter-writing correspondence with Pike around the beginning of 2011. By July of that year, Kohut was making the nearly 1700-mile (by car) round trip from Flemington, New Jersey to Nashville, Tennessee to visit Pike in person on visiting days once or twice a month. Eventually Kohut communicated a plan for her escape to Pike and enlisted the help of corrections officer Heflin, who agreed to participate in return for cash and gifts.[19]
Because of security concerns, the Tennessee Department of Corrections has not provided many details about the plan; however, the eventually unsealed indictment laid out a scenario where a prison key would be traced and then a duplicate created.[20] Early in 2012, prison personnel received information about the escape plot.[19][21] This led to the attempted prison break being thwarted by a joint investigation involving the Tennessee Department of Corrections, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) and the New Jersey State Police.[18] According to the TBI, the plan was not very far along when uncovered and "the jailbreak was not imminent".[19]
In March 2012, Kohut was arrested and charged with bribery and conspiracy to commit escape, while Heflin was arrested and charged with bribery, official misconduct and conspiracy to commit escape.[22] Pike was not charged and it was unclear to the investigators if she was a participant in the conspiracy other than being aware of it.[19]
On May 31, 2012, Kohut was sentenced to seven years in prison to be served at the Tennessee State Northeast Correctional Complex.[23] Heflin, who cooperated with authorities after his arrest, served no prison time, but was terminated from his job with the Tennessee Department of Corrections.[19]
Scheduled execution
On August 27, 2020, Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery's office requested the Tennessee Supreme Court to set an execution date for Pike. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Tennessee and various other factors, Pike's attorneys were granted extensions by the court, allowing them more time to argue as to why Pike should not be executed. The state did not oppose the extensions. On June 7, 2021, Pike's attorneys filed a motion to oppose the execution date and request a Certificate of Commutation. The motion was denied.
Prior to November 2022, Pike had completely exhausted all appeals processes. However, in November 2022, the state Supreme Court found that the state's law for juveniles automatically sentenced to life in prison without a chance at parole was unconstitutional. (See Knoxville case State v. Booker, for complete ruling).
On August 30, 2023, lawyers for Pike used the November 2022 Supreme Court ruling (State v. Booker) in an attempt to reopen her bid to have her 1996 conviction and sentence thrown out. Pike's lawyers argued her young age and damaged mental health at the time of the killing should spare her from facing execution.
In October 2023, Knox County Criminal Court Judge Scott Green denied Pike's request, saying the November 2022 Supreme Court ruling didn't apply to her. "The Booker case addressed only juvenile offenders in Tennessee," Judge Green noted. "The high court, in the opinion written by now retired Justice Sharon Lee, specifically addressed the question of juveniles, not adults. This ruling applies only to juvenile homicide offenders - not to adult offenders," the decision states.
Pike, however, was legally an adult, Green wrote.[24]
As of May 21, 2024, the state had not yet set an execution date for Pike.[25]
If Pike is executed, she would be the first woman to be executed in Tennessee in roughly 200 years.[26][27]
In popular culture
The murder of Colleen Slemmer was featured on the TV shows Deadly Women,For My Man, Killer Kids, Martinis and Murder, Snapped: Killer Couples, and Mean Girl Murders.[25] Christa Pike was also featured on season one episode four of the TV show World's Most Dangerous Criminals. A book was written about the murder, called A Love To Die For, by Patricia Springer.
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