Christa Pike has spoken out about her fear of a botched lethal injection days before her scheduled execution.
Pike, 50, is set to die on September 30 at a Tennessee prison, which would make her the first woman executed in the state in roughly two centuries. She was 18 when she was sentenced to death in 1996 for the torture and murder of Colleen Slemmer, 19, on the University of Tennessee campus. Having spent nearly three decades behind bars, she is currently the only woman on Tennessee’s death row.
In the new documentary “Dead Woman Walking: Pike Vs Tennessee,” Pike described the psychological toll of knowing her execution date a full year in advance. “I know I said I believed a date would never be set, but now that one has been set, it’s like a roulette wheel of thought and your actual brain is the ball bouncing around,” she said in the film. “My nerves are shredded. When I do sleep, my brain eats itself. I have the most horrible nightmares, but I think what has been worse is that they told me a year ahead of time. And so, every day I’ve woken up and lived that thought all day, every day, every waking moment.”
Her specific terror centers on the possibility that prison staff will fail to establish an IV line, a scenario that played out during the botched execution attempt of fellow Tennessee death row inmate Tony Carruthers in May. Carruthers was granted a one-year reprieve after officials could not find a suitable vein.
“The only place they can draw my blood is in my hands with a very tiny needle, and I know from reading our protocol that they aren’t allowed to put the IV in my hands,” Pike explained in the documentary. “So I don’t know what they’re going to do, and I’m so scared that what just happened to Tony Carruthers will happen to me.”
Pike’s legal team secured one concession after failing to delay the execution itself: she will be put to death by an all-female injection team. Her lawyers successfully petitioned for this arrangement, arguing that her history of sexual abuse meant being injected by men would cause additional trauma.
The crime that placed Pike on death row occurred on January 12, 1995, when she lured Slemmer to an isolated spot on the University of Tennessee campus. There, with the help of then-boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, Pike tortured and killed the 19-year-old while friend Shadolla Peterson witnessed the attack. Investigators discovered satanic symbols engraved on Slemmer’s body, leading to Pike being branded a devil worshipper, a label she has denied.
Shipp received a life sentence with the possibility of parole for his role in the murder. Peterson pleaded guilty to being an accessory and received six years of probation. Pike was convicted of murder and conspiracy to commit murder and sentenced to death, becoming the youngest woman in American history to receive a death sentence at the time.
Pike repeated her nightmare description in the documentary, emphasizing the relentless nature of her anxiety. “I have the most horrible nightmares. But I think what has been worse is that they told me a year ahead of time. And so every day, I have woken up and lived that thought all day, every day, every waking moment,” she said.
Pike’s September 30 execution date remains scheduled.