Tennessee is set to execute 50-year-old Christa Gail Pike by lethal injection at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville on Wednesday, in what would be the state's first execution of a woman in more than 200 years. Pike was 18 when she was convicted of the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at a Job Corps training centre in Knoxville. The case drew national attention after a pentagram carved into the victim's body fuelled fears associated with the era's so-called "satanic panic".
The US Supreme Court on Tuesday denied Pike's request for a stay of execution, while Governor Bill Lee rejected her clemency plea a day earlier.
"I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realise the gravity of what I'd done," Pike said in a statement included in her clemency petition. "Even more to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone's child, sister and friend. It sickens me now to think I could commit such a crime."
Slemmer's mother wants the execution to proceed, saying she has waited decades to see Pike's sentence carried out.
"Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run," May Martinez said in a telephone interview.
Martinez said a group helped raise money so that she and her husband could travel from Florida to witness the execution.
The killing shocked Knoxville in 1995. Prosecutors said Pike murdered Slemmer on January 12, 1995, believing she was trying to take her boyfriend.
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Who Is Christa Gail Pike?
- Christa Gail Pike is a Tennessee woman convicted of the 1995 murder of her 19-year-old classmate, Colleen Slemmer, in Knoxville.
- Pike was 18 at the time of the killing and was attending a job-training programme with Slemmer and her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp.
- Prosecutors said Pike lured Slemmer to a wooded area, where she was beaten and cut. They alleged that Shipp carved a pentagram into Slemmer's body.
- Pike was sentenced to death, while Shipp, who was 17 at the time, received life imprisonment with the possibility of parole.
- The case has drawn renewed attention because of Pike's age at the time of the crime, her reported history of severe abuse and mental illness, and the rarity of executions involving women in the United States.
(With inputs from agencies)
