What to know about Christa Pike, first woman to be executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years

September 29, 2026 / 1:00 PM EDT / CBS News

Tennessee is set to execute Christa Pike, the only woman on its death row, by lethal injection on Wednesday. If the procedure happens as scheduled, Pike would also become the only woman executed in the state in the last 200 years.

Now 50, Pike has been incarcerated since 1995 for the murder that year of her former classmate, Colleen Slemmer. According to court records, Pike and Slemmer were students at the Job Corps Center in Knoxville when Pike, then 18, tortured and killed her, allegedly over comments Slemmer, 19, had made about her relationship.

Pike's boyfriend and another friend helped carry out the attack and murder, the records said.

Pike's case has drawn international attention and some outcry, with the United Nations recently joining local advocacy groups in their calls for Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to commute her death sentence.

Their criticisms mainly center on the childhood abuse and untreated mental illness from which Pike suffered when Slemmer was killed, factors that play much larger roles in how juries make sentencing decisions now than they did at Pike's trial. U.N. experts also said the decades Pike spent in isolation on…

Original source: https://www.cbsnews.com/moneywatch/