The Botched Execution

In September 2026, Christa Pike became the first woman executed in Tennessee in over 200 years—except the execution didn't work. Twice. After two separate lethal injections, she was still breathing, reportedly able to lift her head and ask what was happening. The state suspended the procedure and took her to a hospital. Governor Bill Lee called it a tragedy, not because a convicted murderer was still alive, but because the system had failed.

The Crime That Sent Her to Death Row

The story begins in 1995 in Knoxville, Tennessee. Christa Pike was an 18-year-old student at the Job Corps Center. She believed a 19-year-old classmate, Colleen Slemmer, was trying to steal her boyfriend, Darrell Shipp. According to Pike, Slemmer was "running her mouth" and spreading rumors. Pike later said she "felt mean that day."

Pike, Shipp, and another woman, Shadolla Peterson, lured Slemmer to an abandoned steam plant. Over 45 minutes, they beat her, carved a pentagram inside a circle on her chest, slashed her throat (leaving a six-inch wound), hit her in the head with a mini meat cleaver, and crushed her skull with a piece of asphalt. The autopsy described a hole in the skull "like a Halloween decoration." Slemmer was left naked from the waist up. Her body was found on Friday the 13th.