The Christa Pike execution is scheduled for Wednesday at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, where the 48-year-old Tennessee inmate is set to die by lethal injection for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer.
Ahead of the execution, Pike compared herself with Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother whose murder trial ended with a divided jury. The comparison is Pike’s, and it does not make the two cases equivalent.
Why Pike says she identifies with Lindsay Clancy
Speaking in a recent interview with The Times, Pike said she felt connected to Clancy because both women faced what she described as gender-specific circumstances.
“I feel a kinship with Lindsay,” Pike said. “We are both females who got into trouble because of uniquely female issues. One thing is different, however, is that times have changed a lot on awareness of women’s issues since I was put on trial.”
Pike also said she was pleased that Clancy’s trial ended in a mistrial and that Clancy was receiving psychiatric treatment. Clancy is currently a patient at a psychiatric hospital.
According to Pike, many women with serious mental health needs do not receive appropriate care. She did not, however, explain how Clancy’s postpartum mental health defense directly compared with the circumstances of Slemmer’s killing.
What happened to Colleen Slemmer in 1995
In January 1995, Pike was 18 when she, her 17-year-old boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp and their 18-year-old friend Shadolla Peterson took 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer to a secluded wooded area in Tennessee. They told her they were going there to smoke marijuana.
Once they arrived, Pike and Shipp attacked Slemmer for roughly 30 minutes while Peterson watched, according to court records. The assault involved repeated punches as well as a meat cleaver and box cutter. During the attack, Slemmer repeatedly asked, “Why are you doing this to me?”
Pike delivered the fatal injury by striking Slemmer in the head with a piece of asphalt. She then carved a pentagram into Slemmer’s chest and removed a fragment of her skull, which she kept as a trophy.
Police arrested Pike three days later. She confessed and said she believed Slemmer was trying to take Shipp away from her.
How Pike and her co-defendants were sentenced
Pike was sentenced to death in March 1996. Her execution will take place more than three decades after the murder.
Shipp received life in prison with the possibility of parole. His latest request for release was denied in 2025.
Peterson avoided prison after testifying against Pike and Shipp. She received a suspended sentence for her role in bringing Slemmer to the isolated location and remaining at the scene during the attack.
The different punishments have remained part of the case’s history, although Pike’s conviction and death sentence reflected the evidence that she personally carried out the fatal assault and mutilated Slemmer’s body.
Where the Lindsay Clancy case stands
Clancy was accused of strangling her three young children at the family’s Massachusetts home. She then jumped from a second-floor window in an apparent suicide attempt, leaving her paralyzed from the waist down and reliant on a wheelchair.
At trial, prosecutors argued that Clancy understood her actions when she killed the children. Her defense maintained that she was experiencing postpartum psychosis and therefore was not criminally responsible.
Eleven of the 12 jurors accepted the defense’s position. One juror, Michael Desronvil, disagreed, preventing a unanimous verdict and leading the judge to declare a mistrial.
Desronvil later spoke to Fox News about the criticism surrounding his decision. He said attention should remain on the deaths of Clancy’s three children rather than on him.
A status conference was scheduled for Tuesday to determine the next steps, including whether prosecutors will pursue another trial. Pike, meanwhile, remains scheduled for execution on Wednesday.
