Christa Pike

Christa Gail Pike (born March 10, 1976) is an American convicted murderer who is incarcerated on death row in Tennessee. In 1995, when she was 18, Pike murdered her 19-year-old Job Corps classmate Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville. Pike and two friends led Slemmer into the woods, where they tortured and killed her. In 1996 (when she was twenty) Pike was sentenced to death, making her one of the youngest women to be sentenced to death in the United States during the post-Furman period. She is scheduled to be executed on September 30, 2026. If carried out, she will be the 19th woman executed nationwide since 1976 and the first woman executed in Tennessee in over 200 years. Pike's sentence remains controversial, as experts have opined that her legal defense failed to present mitigating evidence at trial, including the effect of her youth and childhood trauma on her decision-making abilities.