Christa Pike was 18 when she took part in the murder of Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville. She was 50 when Tennessee tried to execute her by lethal injection on September 30, 2026.
The procedure was halted after more than an hour. According to her lawyers, Pike was still alive, snoring loudly, and was taken by ambulance to a hospital. She would have been the first woman executed in that state in more than 200 years. After the attempt, Governor Bill Lee suspended all executions for the year and ordered an independent investigation.
May Martinez, Colleen’s mother, had raised money with her husband to travel from Florida and witness the execution. She said she had been waiting for decades. Pike never denied her guilt: her defense argues that she was a young woman with a mental illness and a childhood marked by abuse.
