NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WGNS News) - Tennessee is just days away from carrying out an execution unlike any the Volunteer State has conducted in more than two centuries. Christa Gail Pike (Pictured Above), the only woman currently on Tennessee’s death row, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection this Wednesday, September 30, 2026, at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. If the execution proceeds as scheduled, Pike will become the first woman put to death by the State of Tennessee in more than 200 years. Further confirming the execution moving forward, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced Monday, September 28, 2026, that he will not intervene to stop the scheduled execution of the 50-year-old woman, allowing the execution to move forward as planned.
Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, who was participating in the Job Corps program in Knoxville. According to court records, Slemmer was lured to a secluded area near the University of Tennessee Agricultural campus, where she was beaten, cut and stabbed during a prolonged attack involving Pike and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp. A pentagram was carved into Slemmer’s chest, and investigators said Pike later possessed a piece of the victim’s skull. Shipp, who was 17 at the time and therefore was not eligible for the death penalty, received a life sentence. A third teenager, Shadolla Peterson, testified against Pike.
According to the State of Tennessee, “Inmate Christa Pike is the only woman currently serving a sentence on Tennessee’s death row. In 1996, Pike was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of Collen Slemmer, a fellow Jobs Corps worker from Knoxville, Tennessee. Pike was 19 years old when the crime occurred in a remote area of the University of Tennessee Agricultural campus. At the time of her incarceration, she was the youngest person on death row at age 21. On March 30, 1996, Pike entered the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center (formerly the Tennessee Prison for Women). On August 24, 2001, while incarcerated, Pike was convicted of attempted first degree murder in the assault on inmate Patricia Jones.”
The execution of women has remained comparatively rare in the United States since executions resumed following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1976 decision allowing revised death-penalty laws. Since then, Texas has executed six women: Karla Faye Tucker in 1998, Betty Lou Beets in 2000, Frances Elaine Newton in 2005, Kimberly LaGayle McCarthy in 2013, Suzanne Margaret Basso in 2014 and Lisa Ann Coleman in 2014. Oklahoma has executed three women - Wanda Jean Allen, Marilyn Kay Plantz and Lois Nadean Smith, all in 2001 - while Florida executed Judy Buenoano in 1998 and Aileen Wuornos in 2002. North Carolina executed Margie Velma Barfield in 1984, making her the first woman executed in the United States after 1976. Arkansas executed Christina Marie Riggs in 2000; Alabama executed Lynda Lyon Block in 2002; Virginia executed Teresa Wilson Bean Lewis in 2010; Georgia executed Kelly Renee Gissendaner in 2015; and Missouri executed Amber McLaughlin in 2023. The federal government executed Lisa Marie Montgomery in 2021.
Determining the identity of the last woman executed in Tennessee is more complicated because records from the early 1800s are incomplete and, in some instances, disputed. Some historical execution lists identified Eve Martin as having been executed in Tennessee in 1820, but more recent historical research cited in court proceedings indicates Martin was actually a murder victim rather than the person executed. That research points instead to an unnamed Black woman who was hanged in Sumner County in 1819 following a murder conviction as the last documented woman executed by the state. The identity of the woman executed in Sumner County remains unknown as historical records cited by The Tennessean indicate she was enslaved and legally treated as property at the time. Due to that detail, her name was not preserved in the available public records. Tennessee also cautions that it does not have complete official records identifying everyone executed during that period.
Regardless of the uncertainty surrounding those early records, Pike's scheduled execution would mark Tennessee's first known execution of a woman in more than two centuries.
