Death row inmate Christa Pike, convicted of murdering a schoolmate three decades ago, is due to be executed by lethal injection in Tennessee on Wednesday, becoming the first woman that state has put to death in more than two centuries.
Pike, whose clemency petition highlighting childhood trauma and sexual abuse was denied by Governor Bill Lee, would also be the only person in the modern era of US capital punishment to be executed in Tennessee for a crime committed as a teenager.
The US Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an 11th-hour bid for a stay of execution, which is set to take place at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, the state capital.
Pike, now 50, was 18 in January 1995 when she, a 17-year-old boyfriend and a third companion lured 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a classmate at their Knoxville Job Corps vocational center, into a wooded area where they tortured and killed her.
The grisly nature of the slaying, which involved the perpetrators carving the shape of a pentagram in the victim’s chest and taking a chunk of her skull as a souvenir of the carnage, drew intense media coverage at the time.
Trial testimony indicated that Pike viewed Slemmer as a rival for the affections of her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Death row inmate Christa Pike, convicted of murdering a schoolmate three decades ago, is due to be executed by lethal injection in Tennessee on Wednesday, becoming the first woman that state has put to death in more than two centuries.Pike, whose clemency petition highlighting childhood trauma and sexual abuse was denied by Governor Bill Lee, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n