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Convicted Tennessee killer Christa Pike is hospitalized in critical condition a day after two botched lethal injection attempts in connection with the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, her attorneys said Thursday.
“Christa is alive right now,” Randy Spivey, one of her lawyers, told reporters in a news briefing delivered over Zoom Thursday afternoon. “We don’t have a sense of her prognosis or much update on her health at the moment.”
Due to limited information and HIPAA rules, he said he couldn’t go into specific details.
“She is in critical condition receiving lifesaving care, that is the extent that we have at the moment,” he said.
TENNESSEE DEATH ROW INMATE SURVIVES 2 LETHAL INJECTION DOSES IN FAILED EXECUTION ATTEMPT
Christa Gail Pike is seen during her trial for the murder of Colleen A. Slemmer March 18, 1996, in Knox County Criminal Court. (USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect)
Another of her attorneys, Stephen Ferrell, said it appears that the needle “either became dislodged or pierced all the way through the veins,” and the injection was not properly administered, but specific medical details were not available due to HIPAA rules.
Pike, now 50, was the 18-year-old orchestrator of the torture and murder of Slemmer, a classmate and perceived romantic rival. She was supposed to be the first woman executed in Tennessee in over 200 years Wednesday evening after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned an emergency stay of execution.
She received two injections at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. Neither proved lethal.
“I’m haunted by last night,” Spivey told reporters in a news briefing delivered over Zoom.
THREE DEATH ROW INMATES EXECUTED BY LETHAL INJECTION IN RARE SAME-DAY STRING ACROSS US
An undated portrait photograph of Colleen Slemmer provided by her mother. (May Martinez/Special to the News Sentinel)
Pike remained awake and at one point raised her head, asking prison officials whether her arm was supposed to feel that way. Witnesses reported that Pike continued breathing even after the second dose had been administered.
Prior to Wednesday’s failed execution, Pike had asked for alternate methods of capital punishment, fearing that the lethal injection could go wrong. Her requests were denied.
Without getting into specifics due to privacy rules, Pike’s attorneys did not dispute that the Tennessee Department of Correction upheld her request for an all-female execution team.
University of Tennessee forensic anthropologist Dr. Murray Marks testifies about the wounds to Colleen A. Slemmer’s skull during Christa Gail Pike’s murder trial in Knox County Criminal Court on March 25, 1996. (USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect)
Slemmer’s mother also drove from Florida to Nashville to witness the botched procedure. She has not responded to Digital’s attempts to reach her.
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“I cannot imagine what this was like for the family of Ms. Slemmer, or anyone who loves that family or is close to that family — or anyone who loves Christa or is close to Christa,” Spivey said. “This is awful, and this kind of thing should never happen again.”
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Christa Gail Pike was scheduled to be executed on September 30, 2026, which would have made her the first woman executed in Tennessee since 1820. But after two doses of a lethal injection drug, she did not die. Her attorneys said Thursday that she’s in an undisclosed hospital in critical condition. (Tennessee Department of Correction via AP)
Pike was one of three teens convicted of Slemmer’s brutal slaying, in which the victim was tortured, slashed, beaten and had her head crushed with a chunk of asphalt.
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Pike was 18 in January 1995 at the time of the attack. She, her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, and a friend named Shadolla Peterson lured Slemmer out by claiming they wanted to go to a music store and pick up marijuana they’d hidden in a park near their vocational school.
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The Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, which houses a majority of Tennessee’s death row inmates. (Google Maps)
Pike then attacked her. As Slemmer tried to escape, Shipp grabbed her and held her down, according to court records.
Phil Keith, who was Knoxville’s chief of police at the time, told Digital that the assailants tortured Slemmer for up to an hour before she died. Pike took a piece of her shattered skull as a trophy, which she showed off the next day in school, and Shipp carved pentagrams into her chest and face.
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“Pike was the catalyst,” Keith said. “She was the one that was planning out all the events, the luring, all that.”
The failed execution prompted Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to halt the state’s remaining scheduled execution this year and order “a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred.”
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‘ Landon Mion contributed to this report.
