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Few people who walk down the corridor leading to an execution chamber in an American prison live to tell the tale. Christa Pike, convicted of murder back in 1995, is one of the rare few who did. But long before the state of Tennessee tried to execute her, Pike had already tried to take her own life. As a 12-year-old.
Christa Pike was born into a childhood marked by horrifying abuse and neglect. Court filings show she was sexually abused and raped multiple times throughout her lifetime, leaving Pike deeply traumatised and scarred for life.
Pike was 50 when Tennessee finally carried out its attempt to execute her on September 30.
The execution was attempted for the 1995 murder of a fellow Job Corps student, Colleen Slemmer. It was supposed to be the first recorded execution of a woman in the American state of Tennessee since 1820.
Instead of killing her, two doses of the lethal injection drug pentobarbital left Pike critically ill and with severe injuries to her arms.
By Wednesday, October 7, she was awake, angry and confused, lying handcuffed and shackled to a hospital bed. And by Thursday, she was reported to be "up and walking". This is the story of Christina Pike, the abuse she endured as a kid, the crime that put her on death row, and how neither she nor Tennessee could take her life.
CHRISTINA PIKE ENDURED ABUSE THROUGHOUT HER CHILDHOOD, TRIED TO KILL HERSELF
Christina Gail Pike was born on March 10, 1976, in the town of Beckley, West Virginia, to parents whom lawyers later described as alcoholics.
Her lawyers also argued that her mother drank heavily during pregnancy, causing brain damage, while her childhood was marked by severe neglect, instability and violence.
A 2020 petition filed with the US Supreme Court said Pike's mother frequently left her with relatives and that she was exposed to repeated abuse within the family. She was also repeatedly sexually abused as a child. According to a 2026 Supreme Court filing, her lawyers stated that the abuse started when she was still a toddler.
Her grandmother's boyfriend, Ernest Johnson, allegedly abused her and threatened her family and pets if she spoke about it. At 11, a neighbour allegedly raped her, and left Pike battling an infection, reported USA Today, citing court documents.
This abuse led to Pike attempting to take her own life, when she was only 12.
When Pike was 17, a stranger attacked her while she was walking, forced her into the woods and raped her, according to court documents.
A psychologist who evaluated Pike decades later described her history as "extraordinarily severe extreme trauma", according to Cornell Law School's account of her case.
According to a report in a US-based magazine, The Intercept, in 1991, Pike was moved to the Swannanoa Juvenile Evaluation Centre in North Carolina. She stayed at the place for over a year, before eventually earning a high school diploma and working as a teacher's assistant before entering the Jobs Corps programme in Knoxvilledf in 1993.
WHY WAS CHRISTA PIKE ON DEATH ROW?
It was while being enrolled at the Jobs Corps Programme in Knoxville that Christa Pike would commit the crime that put her on death row.
According to court filings from the Tennessee Supreme Court, on January 11, 1995, Pike had told fellow student Kim Iloilo that he intended to kill 19-year-old Collen Slemmer because she had "felt mean that day". The BBC later reported Pike had accused Colleen of insulting her and trying to steal her boyfriend.
The following day, Pike, her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, and another student by the name of Shadolla Peterson accompanied Slemmer to a remote area near the University of Tennessee campus.
The court said that Pike and Shipp attacked Slemmer, with Pike later telling a fellow student she had cut Slemmer's throat six times, beaten her with a meat cleaver, and hurled pieces of asphalt at her head, and even carved a pentagram symbol into her chest. Pike also kept a piece of Slemmer's skull as a souvenir, which she later showed to her friend Iloilo.
In 1996, a Knox County jury convicted Pike of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, and sentenced her to death. The Tennessee Supreme Court upheld both the conviction and the death sentence in 1998, while the US Supreme Court declined to hear her appeal.
Pike's accomplices were more lucky. According to a report in The Intercept, Shipp, who was charged with first-degree murder, escaped the death penalty as he was a juvenile at the time of the act, receiving 25 years in prison. Peterson, meanwhile, pleaded guilty to being an accessory to the crime and received a six-year probationary sentence.
PIKE WAS ON DEATH ROW FOR MORE THAN 30 YEARS PRIOR TO HER BOTCHED EXECUTION
Christa Pike would spend more than 30 years on death row, with Tennessee Department of Correction data stating she had been so since March 1996.
This was because Pike continued to challenge her sentence multiple times, even after the Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the death sentence in 1998. Over the years, her lawyers would repeatedly highlight the abuse Pike received as a child which they say was not brought up during the original trial.
Dr Bethany Brand, who assessed Pike in 2023, told the BBC that her childhood abuse contributed to the crime. "Her childhood was replete with physical, sexual and emotional abuse," Brand said, adding that Pike's untreated bipolar disorder and PTSD "absolutely influenced" how threatened she felt by Slemmer and her ability to control her emotions.
Her final legal challenges were rejected shortly before her scheduled execution on September 30, after the US Supreme Court vacated an appeals court stay that had temporarily halted it, reported The Washington Post.
That evening, at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, the execution began at around 7.30 pm. Officials administered two doses of pentobarbital over the course of an hour, but Pike remained alive.
The Washington Post reported that she complained of arm pain after the injection and continued breathing and making snoring sounds for more than an hour before the execution was halted at 8.53 pm. An ambulance arrived at the prison shortly after 9 pm, and Pike was taken to a hospital in critical condition.
WHAT NEXT FOR CHRISTA PIKE? LAWYERS PUSH TO GET DEATH SENTENCE COMMUTED
Following her botched execution, Christa Pike remained unconscious and on life support for several days at a Nashville hospital.
Reuters, citing her lawyers, reported that she suffered significant injuries to both arms after the pentobarbital allegedly entered her tissue instead of her bloodstream because of problems with the IV lines.
The Associated Press, citing Pike's lawyers, reported that she regained consciousness on Tuesday, October 6, after her lawyers had been told she was brain-dead and would be taken off life support. On Wednesday, October 7, AP reported that her lawyers described her as "angry and confused" and said she remained in critical care. By Thursday, she was reported by the BBC to be "up and walking."
Pike, for the time being, still remains on death row. Tennessee's Governor, Bob Lee, has halted all the state's scheduled executions after the September 30 incident and ordered an independent third-part review of what went wrong, reported News Agency Reuters.
The Washington Post reported on Wednesday, October 7, that a Nashville court was having ordered Tennessee prison officials to preserve all evidence in connection with the botched execution, while AP reported that lawyers were continuing to petition Lee to commute Pike's sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
For now, Pike remains on death row, having survived both the abuse that drove her to attempt suicide as a child and, decades later, the state's failed attempt to execute her.
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