The state of Tennessee may soon carry out its first execution of a woman in more than two centuries after the Tennessee Supreme Court approved a request to move forward with the death sentence of Christa Gail Pike. Pike, now 49 and the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, was just 18 when she committed one of the state’s most infamous murders.
On January 12, 1995, Pike lured 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer into a wooded area near the University of Tennessee’s agricultural campus. Both were students in the Knoxville Job Corps program, but investigators later said Pike had become convinced that Slemmer was interested in her boyfriend, 17-year-old Tadaryl Shipp. Jealousy quickly escalated into a brutal, premeditated attack.
