There are 53 inmates on death row in Tennessee. The only woman is 43-year-old Christa Pike. This month marks 25 years since the crime that landed her on death row. 10 News reporter Jim Matheny takes us through the case that still lingers after a quarter century. A warning, this report contains graphic details of a violent crime.

>> Her name is Christa Gail Pike, born March 10, 1976 in Beckley, West Virginia. And as of 2026, she is 50 years old, having spent 30 of those years on death row in Tennessee. Let that settle. 30 years. She was 18 years old when she committed her crime. She has now spent more of her life on death row than she ever spent free.

And in June 2026, new details are emerging from that death row. Details that raise a question nobody in Tennessee has had to answer in over 200 years. Can this state actually carry out this execution? In May 2026, Tennessee attempted to execute another inmate and failed. The execution team punctured him more than a dozen times.

 They could not find a vein. After more than an hour, the governor called it off. Within days, Christa Pike’s attorney went public. He warned that her medical condition, small veins, and a blood disorder could make her execution torturous. Her execution date is September 30, 2026. That is confirmed. That is approaching. And right now, in June 2026, there are serious questions about whether Tennessee is capable of carrying it out without causing her to suffer.

 Tennessee has not executed a woman in over 200 years. Christa Pike is scheduled to be the first. This video covers the new details emerging from death row in June 2026, what they mean for her scheduled execution, and what the case of Christa Pike reveals about justice, time, and the machinery of death in America. Knoxville, Tennessee.

1994. A mid-size city tucked into the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, where the University of Tennessee campus stretches along the Tennessee River, and the streets around Fort Sanders hum with the particular energy of young people trying to build something out of nothing. Just north of that campus, on Dale Avenue, sat the Knoxville Job Corps Center.

It was a government-funded vocational training program, one of hundreds across the country, designed specifically for young people who had fallen through every other crack the system had to offer. No college fund, no safety net, just a bed, a meal plan, and the promise of a skill that might change the direction of a life.

 For a lot of the kids there, it was the last door still open. In the autumn of 1994, a young woman from North Carolina arrived at that center. She signed in. She was assigned a room. She joined the program like everyone else. Unremarkable, unnoticed, just another teenager who needed a fresh start. Nobody looked twice. This is the world Krista Pike walked into in 1994.

And 30 years later, in June 2026, what she did inside it is still not finished. Drop your location and time. I want to know where in the world this case is reaching. Her name was Colleen Ann Slemmer. She was 19 years old. In the autumn of 1994, she packed up her life in Orange Park, Florida, and traveled to Knoxville, Tennessee, for one reason: computers.

Her family could not afford to send her to college, so Colleen did what a lot of determined young people do. She found another way. The Job Corps Center in Knoxville offered computer training. The one closer to home in Jacksonville did not, so she chose Knoxville. She moved hundreds of miles from everything she knew alone at 19 to chase the one thing she was most passionate about.

 Now, her mother, May Martinez, has described Colleen as someone who lit up around children. Since she was 8 years old, Colleen had gone out of her way to help and look after disabled kids in her community. She roller skated every weekend. She ran marathons. Martinez called her an awesome giving person, and that is not a mother reaching for words at a funeral.

That is 30 years of fighting to make sure the world remembers who her daughter actually was, not just how she died. Colleen Slemmer had no history with Krista Pike, no rivalry, no reason to feel threatened. She was simply a young woman living in the same building, walking the same corridors, and showing up to the same computer classes every day.

On the night of January 12, 1995, Colleen Slemmer stepped out of the Job Corps dormitory on Dale Avenue and into the dark. Krista Gail Pike was born prematurely on March 10, 1976 in Beckley, West Virginia. Her parents, Carissa Hansen and Emel Glenn Pike, had a relationship that court records described as deeply unstable, cycling through marriage, divorce, and remarriage, fractured by infidelity and a suicide attempt by her mother.

Both parents were documented as frequently negligent. An aunt who knew the family well later confirmed that basic care was inconsistent and unreliable. Krista was not raised in any meaningful sense of that word. She was simply present in a household that was falling apart around her. So, what did the people around her actually see? Well, by the time she arrived at Job Corps in the autumn of 1994, Krista Pike presented as a functioning 18-year-old.

She had a boyfriend. She had friendships. She attended classes. To the staff and residents around her, she was unremarkable. Just another young person trying to get her life on track. Nothing about her outward representation signaled what court records would later reveal about the interior reality she was living with every single day.

Now, here is where the documented picture becomes significant. Psychiatric assessments conducted after her arrest identified two conditions: bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. Neither had been diagnosed before the crime. Neither had been treated, not once. Her attorneys later confirmed both conditions were present and active at the time of the offense, completely invisible to everyone around her because no clinical assessment had ever been completed.

Then, when you look at the behavioral indicators that court testimony and psychiatric reports documented from her earlier years, a pattern emerges. Krista had experienced sustained physical and sexual abuse beginning in early childhood. Not a single incident, but years of repeated trauma that went undisclosed and unaddressed.

By her teenage years, she had already served time in a juvenile facility. Every institution that had contact with her, family, school, and the juvenile system, had passed her along without intervention. By January 1995, Krista Pike was 18 years old, undiagnosed, untreated, and 3 months into living in the same building as Colleen Slemmer. January 12, 1995.

Approximately 8:00 in the evening, a pathway on the University of Tennessee Agricultural Campus near Tyson Park, Knoxville, Tennessee. Court records established that on that night, Krista Pike, along with her boyfriend Tadaryl Ship and a third Job Corps resident, Shadalla Peterson, enticed and lured Colleen Slemmer away from the dormitory on Dale Avenue under the pretense of obtaining a video and smoking cannabis.

According to trial evidence, the four walked together from the Job Corps Center toward the University of Tennessee Agricultural Campus. At some point along that pathway, Pike and Ship turned on Slimmer. The Knox County Criminal Court trial record documents that Colleen Slimmer sustained multiple wounds in the attack.

That is the language of the court record, not a reconstruction, not an interpretation. That is what the evidence established and what the jury heard. One piece of physical evidence was specifically identified and entered into the trial record. A box cutter, confirmed by court documentation as the primary instrument used by Pike during the attack.

 The following morning, January 13, 1995, a groundskeeper discovered Colleen Slimmer’s body on the agricultural campus pathway. His account, entered into the trial record, states that the condition of the body made immediate identification impossible. Pike and Ship were arrested two days later on January 14, 1995. Now, here is the detail that has never left this case.

Court records confirm that following the attack, Pike retained a fragment of Colleen Slimmer’s skull and showed it to other Job Corps residents the following day. That fragment was recovered as evidence and has remained in state custody ever since. May Martinez, Colleen’s mother, has been fighting to get it back for 30 years.

Tennessee’s official position, documented and confirmed, is that the fragment will not be returned to the family until after Pike’s execution. Colleen Slimmer cannot be fully buried. Not yet. Because the appeals are still running, because the case is still open, because a piece of her daughter is still sitting in an evidence box in Tennessee.

That is the fact the jury knew. That is the fact May Martinez has lived with every single day since January 1995. And that is the fact that investigators carried with them when they sat Krista Pike down, pressed record, and asked her to explain herself. The investigation moved quickly. Knoxville Police Department detectives were on the agricultural campus pathway within hours of the groundskeeper’s discovery on January 13, 1995.

The body had been found. The location was secured. What investigators did not have yet was a name. There was no immediate forensic lead pointing to a suspect. No witness had come forward. The investigation in those first hours had direction but no target. That was the challenge. And it dissolved within 24 hours, not because of investigative brilliance, but because of what Krista Pike did next.

That same night, she went to her friend Kim Loylo’s room at the Job Corps dormitory and told her she had just killed Colleen Slemmer. She said she had brought back a piece of the skull as a souvenir. Word moved through that building quickly. Within 2 days, investigators had everything they needed.

 But here is the moment that stopped investigators cold. The afternoon after the body was discovered, January 13, 1995, a young woman walked up to the cordoned crime scene on the agricultural campus. She approached a University of Tennessee police officer named Harold James Underwood Jr. She asked him why the area was marked off.

 She asked whether police had identified the victim. She asked whether they had any suspects. And then, according to Officer Underwood’s trial testimony, she giggled. She moved around the scene. She was wearing a pentagram necklace. That young woman was Krista Pike. Officer Underwood reported her behavior to his superiors the following morning after learning at roll call that a pentagram had been found carved into the victim’s body.

That necklace, that giggle. That is what cracked the case open. Pike and Tatterall ship were arrested on January 14, 1995, 48 hours after Colleen Slemmer’s body was found. When investigators sat Pike down and pressed record, she talked. Her taped confession, played in full at the Knox County Criminal Court trial, documented her account of the attack in her own words.

 And in the middle of that confession, she said this, “She wouldn’t shut up. She kept talking and talking. I didn’t want to hear her talking.” That is not remorse. That is a documented statement on tape in which Christa Pike described her victim’s final moments as an inconvenience. The investigation closed in 48 hours.

 The question of what to do with Christa Pike, that one would take 30 years. What time is it where you are right now as you are watching this? And where in the world are you watching from? Drop both answers in the comments below. I genuinely want to know because the legal questions in this case look completely different depending on where you are sitting.

Because in June 2026, Tennessee is 111 days away from executing a woman for the first time in over 200 years. And whether that feels like justice or whether it feels like something else entirely depends completely on where you are watching this from. Knox County Criminal Court, Knoxville, Tennessee, March 1996.

The presiding judge was the Honorable Mary Beth Leibowitz. Christa Pike was charged with premeditated first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. She pleaded not guilty on both counts. The case went to trial. The single most powerful piece of evidence the prosecution placed before that jury was not forensic.

 It was Pike’s own voice. Her taped confession, recorded 2 days after the murder, played in full in that courtroom, documented her account of the attack in her own words. The prosecution also presented the testimony of Kim Laile, who confirmed that Pike had told her the night of the murder that she had just killed Colleen Slemmer and had brought back a piece of her skull.

Slemmer’s DNA recovered from Pike’s clothing corroborated the physical account. The dormitory logbook confirmed the timeline. The prosecution’s case was constructed almost entirely from what Christa Pike herself had said and done. Now, the defense argument deserves to be stated fairly because it matters enormously to what is happening in June 2026.

Pike’s defense attorneys argued during the penalty phase that her actions were the product of documented psychological vulnerability, sustained childhood trauma, and untreated mental illness, rather than fixed depravity. They presented her age, her history of abuse, her borderline personality disorder diagnosis, and the complete absence of any prior clinical intervention as mitigating circumstances.

They argued she was not beyond rehabilitation. That argument did not succeed in 1996. It has never gone away, and it is the same argument her attorneys are still making today as her September 30 execution date approaches. On March 22, 1996, after only a few hours of deliberation, the jury convicted Christa Pike on both counts.

 The jury found two statutory aggravating circumstances, that the murder was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel in that it involved torture or serious physical abuse beyond that necessary to produce death, and that it was committed for the purpose of avoiding arrest or prosecution. The Tennessee Supreme Court, in its published opinion, affirming the conviction and sentence, addressed the case directly.

The court stated on record, in its exact words, that the evidence established that the killing placed Pike into the class of defendants for whom the death penalty is an appropriate punishment. Read that again. The class of defendants for whom the death penalty is an appropriate punishment.

 That sentence was written in 1998. It is the legal foundation that Tennessee is now to act on in September 2026. Nearly 30 years later, those words are still standing. May Martinez, Coleen’s mother, was in that courtroom when the verdict was read. She has stated publicly that she has fought every single day since 1995 to make sure the world remembers who her daughter was.

In June 2026, she is still fighting. On March 30, 1996, Judge Mary Beth Leibowitz formally imposed the sentence the jury had recommended. Death by electrocution for the first-degree murder conviction, a consecutive 25-year sentence for the conspiracy conviction. That is the legal record. That is what was handed down in that Knox County courtroom.

Now, let us convert that into human terms. She was sentenced to death on March 30, 1996. That was 30 years ago. She is still alive, still on death row, still inside the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center in Nashville, Tennessee. And in June 2026, new details are emerging from that exact facility.

 Details about what her execution will actually look like, and whether Tennessee is physically capable of carrying it out without causing her to suffer. There is no minimum tariff on a death sentence. There is no parole board. There is no earliest release date to calculate. The The handed down in 1996 had one endpoint, and Tennessee has now named it, September 30, 2026.

For May Martinez, the time between that sentencing and this moment has been 30 years of reliving January 12, 1995 every single day. Without a complete burial for her daughter, without closure, without an end. And for Christa Pike, those 30 years inside that facility have not been quiet. What happened on that death row is something most people watching this video do not know about.

This is the part of the story that most coverage misses entirely. Everyone knows the 1995 and 1996 death sentence. What almost nobody covers is what happened in the 30 years between that courtroom and June 2026. So, let us go through it because every entry on this timeline is a new detail from death row, and every entry matters.

1996, Deborah K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center, Nashville, Tennessee. Pike enters death row as the only woman in Tennessee under a capital sentence. Isolation begins immediately. What this revealed, the system had no framework for her. She was alone from day one. 2001, Deborah K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center.

 Pike attacks fellow inmate Patricia Jones and attempts to strangle her to death with a shoestring. Jones survives. What this revealed, 30 ft from an execution chamber, Pike was still willing to kill. 2004, Knox County Criminal Court. Pike is convicted of attempted first-degree murder for the 2001 attack. A consecutive 25-year sentence is added to her death sentence.

What this revealed, the legal system had to formally sentence a death row inmate to additional prison time because she tried to kill someone while waiting to be executed. 2012, Deborah K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center. Tennessee Department of Correction records confirm Pike attempts to escape. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is brought in.

The attempt fails. What this revealed, 26 years after being sentenced to die, she was still fighting to survive. 2012, New Jersey. A former prison guard named Donald Kohut is arrested and charged with bribery and conspiracy to commit escape. Money had already changed hands. There was an active plan. What this revealed, Pike had recruited help from inside the system itself.

2021, Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center. After more than 25 years in de facto solitary confinement, Pike’s attorneys secure a legal settlement granting her limited interaction with other inmates. What this revealed, Tennessee had been holding its only female death row inmate in conditions her own attorneys successfully argued were unlawful.

2023, Knox County Criminal Court. Judge Scott Green denies Pike’s motion to reopen her appeal ruling that the brain science argument her attorneys cited applies only to juveniles. What this revealed, the 1-month age gap between Pike and her co-defendant Taterel Ship, who avoided death, remains the legal wall she cannot climb.

2024, Tennessee Supreme Court. The court refuses to hear Pike’s challenge to her sentence. Standard appeals exhausted. What this revealed, every legal door is now closed. The only path left is executive clemency or a successful challenge to the execution method itself. May 2026, Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, Nashville.

Tennessee attempts to execute Tony Carruthers. The team cannot find a vein. The procedure was halted after more than an hour. Within days, Pike’s attorney publicly warns that her medical condition, small veins and thrombocytopenia, could make her own execution torturous. What this revealed, the new details emerging from the death row in June 2026, are not just legal arguments.

 They are warnings about what September 30 could actually look like. That is where the timeline ends. That is where June 2026 begins. So, here is where I want you to stay with me because what you are about to hear about 2026 is where everything we have covered splits into two completely different conclusions.

 On one side, a mother who has waited 30 years for justice, and a state that has a confirmed date. On the other side, a woman whose attorneys are warning right now, in June 2026, that the execution Tennessee is planning could go catastrophically wrong. Everything we have covered in this video has been building to this moment. Stay with me.

In June 2026, Christa Pike is 111 days away from a confirmed execution date. And the new details emerging from death row are raising questions that Tennessee has never had to answer before. Here’s where things stand right now. The execution date is confirmed. September 30, 2026. The Tennessee Supreme Court said it.

 The standard appeals process is exhausted. The only legal challenge still active is the lawsuit Pike filed in January 2026 challenging the state’s lethal injection protocol, arguing it violates her constitutional rights and conflicts with her Buddhist religious beliefs. That challenge is currently pending before the Tennessee Supreme Court.

 It has not been resolved. And in the wake of the botched Carruthers execution in May 2026, it has become significantly more urgent. So, here is the conflict at the heart of June 2026, and it is a genuine one with two documented positions in direct opposition. The state of Tennessee, in its March 2026 response to Pike’s lawsuit, contends that she has not sufficiently demonstrated that lethal injection would violate her constitutional rights.

 Her attorney, Stephen Ferrell, contends publicly and on record that her medical condition, small veins and thrombocytopenia, means the state cannot execute her without causing her to suffer in a way that the Carruthers attempt has now proven is not theoretical. It is not a hypothetical anymore. It happened. It was documented.

And Christa Pike’s execution is next on that same schedule. What has been decided? The date. What has not been decided? Whether the method is constitutional as applied to her specific medical condition. The authority that holds that question right now is the Tennessee Supreme Court. May Martinez, Colleen Slemmer’s mother, has one position.

 She stated it publicly in October 2025, and she has not moved on from it. Her exact words, “I want this to happen before I die. Otherwise, nobody will see justice.” 30 years after Colleen Slemmer walked out of that dormitory on Dale Avenue and into the dark, the question this case has always been building toward is finally here. Was 18 years old old enough to die for? The reason this debate is happening right now, in June 2026 specifically, is because the new details emerging from death row have made it impossible to ignore any longer. A botched execution

next door. A public warning from her own attorney. A pending legal challenge that has not been resolved. The execution date is 111 days away. This is not a historical debate. This is happening now. And I’m not going to tell you what to think. I am going to give you both sides, the strongest version of each, and then I want to hear from you.

The Tennessee Supreme Court stated on record that the evidence placed Christa Pike into the class of defendants for whom the death penalty is an appropriate punishment. Those are the court’s own words. Colleen Slemmer was 19 years old. She begged for her life. May Martinez has spent 30 years fighting for an ending to this.

The appeals are exhausted. The date is confirmed. And while Pike sat on death row, she attempted to strangle another human being to death with a shoestring. This is a documented pattern, not a single moment of teenage impulse. Christa Pike was 18 years old, 4 months past the legal threshold that would have made her execution constitutionally prohibited.

Her co-defendant, Tederall Ship, who was 17, will be eligible for parole. 4 months of age. That is the entire distance between life and death in this case. Pike was undiagnosed, untreated, carrying documented childhood trauma no system ever addressed. After 30 years, her attorneys describe her as genuinely remorseful.

 And the new details from death row in June 2026, the Carruthers botched execution, Pike’s documented medical condition, the pending constitutional challenge, raise a question that was not on the table a month ago. Can Tennessee carry this out without causing unconstitutional suffering? Both positions are documented. Both are defensible.

 So, here’s the question, and I want your answer in the comments right now. Should Tennessee carry out the execution of Christa Pike on September 30, 2026? Yes or no? And tell me why. In 111 days, Tennessee will either make history or the courts will stop it. Where in the world are you watching this right now, and what time is it where you are? Drop both in the comments below.

 Should Tennessee carry out the execution of Christa Pike on September 30, 2026? Yes or no? Tell me why. Next on this channel, Sharon Carr, 30 years inside maximum security, and the argument that what she is living through right now in 2026 is actually worse than execution. If this video made you think, like, share, and subscribe because this conversation is just getting started.