US state will execute a woman for the first time in 200 years: Inside her chilling crime

It’s been nearly three decades since Christa Gail Pike brutally murdered 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville, Tennessee — and now, the state has set the date when she’ll pay the ultimate price.

The Tennessee Supreme Court has scheduled Pike’s execution for September 30, 2026. If carried out, she’ll become the first woman executed in Tennessee in 200 years and only the 19th woman in modern U.S. history to face the death chamber.

Back in 1995, Pike was just 18 years old when prosecutors say jealousy drove her to lure Slemmer, a fellow student at the Knoxville Job Corps, into the woods.

Christa Pike believed that Colleen was trying to steal away her boyfriend.

Over the course of an hour, Pike beat, stabbed, and carved a pentagram into Slemmer’s chest. According to court records, she even bragged afterward — showing classmates a fragment of Slemmer’s skull she kept as a trophy.

When a groundskeeper discovered Slemmer’s body the next day, it was so badly beaten he first thought it belonged to an animal.

Showed up giggling at the crime scene

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