A female death row inmate, Christa Gail Pike, is poised to become the first woman to face execution in Tennessee in over two centuries for the heinous murder of a young woman named Colleen Slemmer in 1995. Pike, then 18, along with her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, led Slemmer into a wooded area near the University of Tennessee’s agricultural campus, where she brutally attacked her by slashing her throat, striking her with a cleaver, carving a pentagram on her chest, and ultimately smashing her skull with a piece of asphalt, as detailed in court documents. Shockingly, Pike even kept a part of Slemmer’s skull as a macabre keepsake.

Following her conviction for first-degree murder in 1996, Pike was sentenced to death by a jury. In contrast, Shipp received a life sentence with the possibility of parole. Pike faced additional legal trouble in 2004 when she was found guilty of attempting to strangle another inmate, resulting in an extra 25-year sentence.

After almost three decades since her death sentence, Tennessee’s Supreme Court has now set a date for Pike’s execution, scheduled for September 30, 2026. If the execution proceeds as planned, Pike, now 49, will make history as the first woman executed in Tennessee since 1820 and only the fourth in the state’s history, according to reports.

Despite her impending fate, Pike’s legal team has argued for her exemption from execution due to her troubled upbringing, history of abuse, and diagnoses of bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. In a statement, Pike’s attorneys highlighted her remorse for the crime, emphasizing her troubled past and expressing her deep regret for the irreversible consequences of her actions.

Notably, the last woman to be executed in the US was Amber McLaughlin, who faced lethal injection in Missouri in January 2023, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Since the modern implementation of the death penalty in 1976, records indicate that 18 women have been executed in the United States.