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

For Colleen Slemmer’s family, there is no sympathy. Her mother, May Martinez, has been outspoken in her demand that Pike’s death sentence be carried out.

“I just want Christa down so I can end it,” Martinez told local reporters.

“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about Colleen or how she died and how rough it was.”

What happens now

Unless appeals or clemency petitions succeed, Pike will be executed at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville — the site of Tennessee’s death chamber.

Her execution would mark not only a historic moment for the state but also one of the rarest outcomes in America’s criminal justice system: a woman put to death.