Christa Pike to be first woman executed in Tennessee in 200 years - but her defence say she's a victim too

Ashlee Sellars last heard from her friend Christa Pike earlier this week, when Pike texted her from her cell on death row as she prepares to be killed by lethal injection by the US state of Tennessee.

Pike told Sellars she does not want any of her loved ones to be present on Wednesday when she is executed.

"She doesn't want us to experience that," Sellars says.

Sellars finds it hard to reconcile this woman, whom she has only known to be kind and protective, with the person who committed a heinous crime 31 years ago.

Pike, now 50, was 18 when she and her boyfriend at the time, Tadaryl Shipp, beat, tortured and murdered Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old they met at a job training camp for troubled teens.

The murder created a media frenzy in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1995 when Colleen was found with a pentagram, a symbol of Satanic ritual, carved into her chest.

Pike had accused Colleen of insulting her and trying to steal her boyfriend. Two other residents at the camp later testified that Pike had bragged about the murder before and after, and showed them a piece of Colleen's skull.

A year later she was sentenced to death, while Shipp - who was 17 at the time - was given a life sentence with the possibility of parole.

Now, after years of failed appeals, Pike's execution has been set for Wednesday. If it goes ahead, she will be the first woman put to death in Tennessee in more than 200 years. Only 18 women have been executed in the US since the 1970s, compared to 1,663 men.

Colleen's mother has said she wants Pike's execution to happen so that her daughter "finally can be resting".

But Pike's lawyers, who filed a 226-page clemency petition, are still hoping for a last-minute reprieve, and UN human rights experts have also called for the execution to be stopped.

Pike has a documented history of childhood sexual abuse, abandonment and neglect. Her lawyers believe that if she was found guilty of the same crime today as a teenager she would not receive a death sentence.

In the years since her sentencing, her defence team have uncovered details about her childhood that they say the jury never had the chance to consider.

"It is mind-boggling that they did not present any of her history of abuse and rape, even though they knew about it," says Sandra Babcock, an expert in gender and the death penalty at Cornell Law School, who has worked on Pike's defence.

"Her case is so uniquely compelling, not just because of her really incomprehensible history of sexual violence but the combination of that with her youth and her mental illness."

In 1995, forensic psychologist Dr Diana McCoy was hired by Pike's defence team and found she was severely neglected by both of her parents. McCoy's report found Pike was physically and sexually abused by several of her mother's husbands and boyfriends, and raped several times, once when she was 11 and again aged 17. Later it was discovered that she was repeatedly raped as a toddler by her grandmother's boyfriend. McCoy said Pike's mother didn't believe her that these rapes happened.

But Pike's trial lawyer did not put McCoy on the stand or call many of the witnesses she recommended. These details emerged more than a decade later in a court hearing reviewing her case, when a new team of lawyers claimed ineffective assistance of counsel, a claim that was denied by the judge.

In 2021 Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in prison and has been medicated since.

Later, another forensic psychologist working for Pike's defence, Dr Bethany Brand, who assessed Pike in 2023, said her case was extremely rare because she was abused by so many people who should have protected her.

"Her childhood was replete with physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. She was sexually violated by a number of men, starting before she was school age," she says.

Brand says Pike had untreated manic episodes due to bipolar disorder and untreated PTSD. "Both of those things together absolutely influenced how threatened she felt by the girl she ended up killing and her lack of emotional control in that situation."

Babcock adds: "If they let her be executed, then what it tells us is that the death penalty in this country is just a joke. It's not for the worst of the worst. It is for the people who receive the worst legal representation and who are the most damaged and vulnerable."

Last year, Tennessee's Supreme Court ruled Pike had not shown circumstances that would justify commuting her sentence. Her appeals process had been exhausted and a date was set for her execution.

A federal appeals court had earlier ruled that the jury had already heard about her difficult childhood during testimony from her mother, father, and aunt during her trial. And that new evidence of bipolar disorder, PTSD, and brain damage "mostly repeated" what the jury had heard and would not have changed the verdict.

The row has some parallels with the high-profile case of murderer Lisa Montgomery, whose lawyers also argued she was a mentally ill victim of abuse who deserved mercy.

Montgomery's legal challenges failed to commute her sentence, and she was executed by lethal injection in Indiana in 2021.

Unless she is granted clemency by Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, Pike will be executed on 30 September. That decision is unlikely to come until the last moment, and Lee has never granted clemency in a death penalty case before.

The Tennessee Supreme Court this week denied Pike's request to halt the execution. Her counsel say they have been discussing next steps.

On her execution day, Pike has requested an all-female team. She says being held down by a group of men will exacerbate her trauma. The state of Tennessee has said the goal is that female guards will transfer Pike to the prison where she will be executed but hasn't guaranteed it.

Colleen's mother May Martinez supports Christa's execution.

"She did the crime. I think she should pay for it," she said on Knoxville TV station WBIR in 2021, and told the BBC this week she still stands by those comments.

Pike should suffer before she dies, Martinez told WBIR. "I would feel better that she felt the same pain that Colleen did."

"My heart breaks every single day because I keep reliving it and reliving it, and I can't no more, and I want this to happen before I die," she added.

"There's not a day goes by that I don't think about Colleen or how she died and how rough it was. I just want Christa down so I can end it, relieve my daughter, so she finally can be resting."

The Justice Coalition, a victim's rights advocacy group, has raised money to help Martinez travel to Tennessee to watch the execution.

The group's executive director, Robert Bracewell, said this sentence was determined by a jury of Pike's peers and it is what Colleen's family want.

"We stand firm with the family that on the 30 September her execution ought to proceed."

Ashlee Sellars grapples with two seemingly conflicting beliefs: that Colleen's mother has a right to feel justice has been served and that everyone, including her friend Christa, deserves a chance at redemption.

"When I think about reconciling who you see on TV or the horrible tragedy that happened with Colleen, the only thing that makes sense to me is around mental health and trauma and the way that people process stuff in a moment when they don't have the things that they need," Sellars says.

"These horrible things happen in your youth and then those traumas moved through you, in our community, and you cause harm to somebody else."

Sellars met Pike in prison while serving a 25-year sentence for her involvement in a robbery-murder. They spoke to each other through the meal flaps in their doors on the high security unit. Now, Sellars works as an advocate for justice reform and victims of crime.

"People want to know that everyone's life matters, right? They want to know that Colleen's life mattered," she says.

"Christa in this moment, I think she is fighting much more for her life to matter than she is to actually live."