Christa Pike, who remains on ventilator after her failed execution, was not the only one who was found guilty of the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer. However, Pike was the only one who ended up on death row.
Slemmer was a 19-year-old Job Corps participant when she was tortured and murdered behind the agriculture campus steam plant on January 12, 1995, per the University of Tennessee Knoxville. Pike had two accomplices – 17-year-old Tadaryl Shipp and 18-year-old Shadolla Peterson.
UTK said that Slemmer endured a “lengthy beating and torture.” “Testimony indicated that Pike created the plan because she thought Slemmer was interested in her boyfriend (Shipp),” the university said.
Where is Shadolla Peterson now?
Peterson, 18 at the time of the murder, became an informant and was convicted of being an accessory. UTK says that she just received parole.
Peterson is believed to have served as the lookout during the crime.
WVLT reported that Peterson served six years probation. She has maintained a private life since. Her current whereabouts are unknown.
Shipp was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy first-degree murder. He remains in prison.
Phil Keith, who was the Knoxville Police Chief during the 1995 murder, described the murder scene as “an incredibly grotesque crime scene, one of the most brutal I’ve ever seen,” per WSMV4.
Pike, 50, was sentenced to death in 1996 in connection with the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Badass. Pike was 20 at the time.
Shocking details about the case shocked the United States, including the fact that a pentagram had been carved into Slemmer’s chest. Pike famously kept a piece of Slemmer’s skull after the murder.
“It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done,” Pike had said in an earlier petition for clemency. “Even more to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime.”
Christa Pike health update
Pike remains on a ventilator with hospital staff working to save her life and clear the pentobarbital she was administered from her system, her attorneys said, according to The Guardian. She received two doses of the drug in a failed attempt by the state of Tennessee to execute her on Wednesday, September 31.
Pike’s attorneys stated in a court filing that they believed problems with intravenous lines caused the pentobarbital to flow into her body instead of her bloodstream.
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“Apparently at no point did any member of the execution team realize that the IV lines were not correctly placed or that the veins had blown and that the pentobarbital was, in whole or in part, entering Ms Pike’s body,” they wrote.
They added that instead of “remedying this failure,” the execution team went on to prepare and administer a backup set of pentobarbital syringes.
In a statement reported on X by NewsNation journalist Brian Entin, Pike’s attorneys described her as “critically ill and … receiving medical care for the devastating effects of Wednesday nights events”.
The Death Penalty Information Center states that the last execution of a woman in Tennessee was in 1820. This means Pike would have been the first woman to be executed in the state in more than 200 years.