Teen killer Christa Pike has had her execution for the grisly 1995 murder of a 19 year old classmate dramatically halted with just one hour to go before she was due to be put to death.
Pike, now 50, was set to be executed in a Nashville prison at 10am on Wednesday, US time (12am, Thursday, AEST).
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It was to be the first execution of a female death row inmate in Tennessee for 200 years.
But in an unexpected turn of events on Wednesday, a US federal appeals court ordered execution proceedings be stopped. Pike had already refused her last meal when the decision came through.
The judges declared they wanted to look into claims that Pike’s allegations she suffered sexual abuse and rape as a child were not fully considered when she was sentenced.
“The interests of justice and the finality of Pike’s impending execution compel the entry of a short stay of execution in order to properly analyse the parties’ fully briefed arguments and resolve the issues on the merits,” the court said.
‘Serious concerns’
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee and the US Supreme Court had already said they would not intervene.
Pike’s lawyer, Stephen Ferrell, said the stay of execution recognised the “serious concerns about Christa’s scheduled execution”.
There was no indication of how long the judge’s deliberations would take but Tennessee has made moves to get the execution back on track
The state’s Attorney General, Jonathan Skrmetti dismissed the stay on a “technical issue” and said an appeal would be made to the US Supreme Court to “advocate for the lawfully-imposed sentence”.
‘I am not afraid to die’
Thirty years ago, Pike broke down in tears as Judge Mary Beth Leibowitz told her she would be executed.
It was March 30, 1996, when the then 20-year-old learned her fate and instantly turned to face
“Can I please hug my mom before I go?” she begged the court as tears streamed down her face, but she was not allowed.
In a letter to media Pike wrote in the days before her planned execution, she said: “I am not afraid to die, I’m only nervous about the process”.
The 50-year-old, who was 18 when she and boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp murdered Slemmer and carved a demonic symbol into her chest, requested an all-female execution squad in the days before her scheduled death.
“(Lethal injection administered by men) will increase the likelihood that an 8th amendment violation will occur,” Mr Ferrell said in reference to cruel and unusual punishment. “There is an increased risk of pain and suffering”.
Speaking as part of a documentary that aired in recent weeks titled: Dead Woman Walking: Christa Pike vs. Tennessee, the death row inmate explained the torment she was experiencing as the execution date neared.
“I’ve been in here for over 31 years. I know I said I believed a date would never be set (for my execution). But now that one has been set, it’s like a roulette wheel of thoughts and your actual brain is the ball bouncing around,” she said.
“My nerves are shredded. When I do sleep, my brain eats itself”.
Shipp, who was 17 at the time of the murder and avoided the death penalty because of his age, was “into Satanism and demonology” and responsible for the pentagram engraved on Slemmer’s body, Pike claimed.
“The media painted me as being an evil person, as being a devil worshipper. Tadaryl was into Satanism and demonology. That’s where that stems from,” Pike said.
She also expressed her remorse over the horrific crime.
“I’ve always felt bad for her mother, that I took someone’s child, someone’s sister, someone’s friend away.
“I feel remarkably remorseful for what I did.”
Pike not only requested an all-female execution squad, she also expressed that if that request failed she would prefer to be hanged.
May Martinez, Ms Slemmer’s mother, said Pike’s request as unreasonable.
“I don’t think she should be allowed to have any special treatment,” she said, adding that “she didn’t consider how my daughter felt. She’s just playing the system … It’s all bullc**p”.
Court documents described the “brutal” murder of Colleen Slemmer in great detail.
“Pike and Slemmer were both students at the Job Corps Centre in Knoxville, Tennessee at the time.
“They had a strained relationship; Pike claimed that Slemmer ‘had been ‘trying to get [her] boyfriend’ and … ‘running her mouth’ everywhere.
“These bad feelings unfortunately resulted in the following events.”
The Tennessee Supreme Court description, obtained by news.com.au, details how Pike lied to Slemmer about a trip to a Blockbuster video store before Pike and her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp beat their victim, slashed her throat and engraved satanic symbols on her body.
“On January 11, 1995, Pike … told her friend Kim Iloilo … that she intended to kill another student, Colleen Slemmer, because she ‘had just felt mean that day’.
“The next day, January 12, 1995, at approximately 8pm, Iloilo observed Pike, along with Slemmer, and two other Job Corps students, Shadolla Peterson and Tadaryl Shipp, Pike’s boyfriend, walking away from the Job Corps centre toward 17th Street.
“At approximately 10.15pm, Iloilo observed Pike, Peterson, and Shipp return to the Centre. Slemmer was not with them. Later that night, Pike went to Iloilo’s room and told Iloilo that she had just killed Slemmer and that she had brought back a piece of the victim’s skull as a souvenir.
“Pike showed Iloilo the piece of skull and told her that she had cut the victim’s throat six times, beaten her, and thrown asphalt at the victim’s head. Pike told Iloilo that the victim had begged ‘them’ to stop cutting and beating her, but Pike did not stop because the victim continued to talk.
“Pike told Iloilo that she had thrown a large piece of asphalt at the victim’s head, and when it broke into smaller pieces, she had thrown those at the victim as well. Pike told Iloilo that a meat cleaver had been used to cut the victim’s back and a box cutter had been used to cut her throat.
“Finally, Pike said that a pentagram had been carved onto the victim’s forehead and chest. Iloilo said that Pike was dancing in a circle, smiling, and singing ‘la, la, la’ while she related these details about the murder.
“When Iloilo saw Pike at breakfast the next morning she asked Pike what she had done with the piece of the victim’s skull. Pike replied that it was in her pocket and then said, ‘And, yes, I’m eating breakfast with it’.”
A University of Tennessee employee found Slemmer’s body on January 13. The employee testified that it was so badly beaten than he had “first mistaken it for the corpse of an animal”.
It did not take long for authorities to turn their attention to the 18-year-old Pike who, upon being interviewed, waived her rights to silence and gave a complete statement admitting to her involvement.
“According to Pike, as she slammed Slemmer’s head against the concrete, Slemmer repeatedly asked, ‘Why are you doing this to me?’,” the court documents read.
“As Slemmer ‘screamed and screamed’, Pike recounted how she began to hear voices telling her that she had to do something to prevent Slemmer from telling on her and sending her to prison for attempted murder.”
At the beginning of September, Pike’s lawyers filed a 226-page clemency petition to Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, the only person with the power to put a stop to the single drug planned to enter Pike’s system in 19 days.
In it, they detailed a history of violence, sexual abuse and tragedy that Pike was subjected to as a little girl — matters they say cast the killer’s crimes in a new light and should have prevented her becoming the first woman put to death in Tennessee since 1819.
At the heart of the petition was a photograph, below, showing Pike as a toddler.
“There is a picture of Christa as a child that I often think about,” her lawyers wrote in the petition.
“She is outside, her curly red hair is slightly blown by the wind. She has big brown eyes, and her mouth is drawn tight in a straight line.
“I think of this picture because I know that it was taken about the time Christa was first sexually abused. Her grandmother’s boyfriend had already begun orally raping her. To me, this picture represents a devastatingly sad turning point, where the chaos that surrounded Christa began to leave marks on her that were too much to overcome,” her lawyers wrote.
“A point where the chaos that surrounded Christa started to lead to cycles of depression, mania, self-medication, and abuse. Cycles that were compounded by what one expert called an ‘almost unbearably abusive background’.”
The petition relied on the horrific abuse she suffered, her diagnosis of bipolar and her 30 years served so far in solitary confinement as reasons enough for clemency.
Pike was 18 when she killed her friend. But Shipp, her boyfriend and co-offender, was only 17. Under Tennessee law, he was barred from execution because he had not yet turned 18.
“Decades of being brutally raped, molested, beaten, humiliated, emotionally abused, ostracised and screamed at profoundly damaged her, leaving her with a multitude of untreated psychological disorders.
“Without protection from the adults who were supposed to have protected her, and without treatment for bipolar disorder and her other psychological disorders, Christa managed her volatile emotions and trauma-related problems as she had learned from her parents: through self-medication with marijuana and drinking.
“Tragically, she was unable to manage the upsurge of extreme rage and fear she felt when triggered by taunts and threats to the source of love she believed she had found with her boyfriend.
“The impact of trauma and untreated psychiatric disorders had tragic consequences.”
The last woman executed in Tennessee was Eve Martin in 1820. She was convicted of accessory to murder and hanged.
