With her execution days away, the lone woman on Tennessee’s death row says she is prepared to die but “nervous” about how the state intends to carry it out.Before learning Monday that Gov.Bill Lee would not be intervening in her case, Christa Pike wrote in a letter to NBC News, shared by her spiritual adviser: “Whether my clemency is granted or not, I am at peace.”“I am not afraid to die,” wrote Pike, who has been on death row for over three decades.
“I’m only nervous about the process.”Tennessee is poised to execute Pike, 50, on Wednesday by lethal injection — the first time in more than 200 years that the state will put a woman to death, according to historical records.In 1995, Pike was 18 when Knoxville police say she and two teenage accomplices tortured, slashed and fatally beat Colleen Slemmer, 19.Police say Pike and the others lured Slemmer, a classmate in their Job Corps training program, to an abandoned steam plant at the nearby University of Tennessee and attacked her.The case became sensationalized when investigators said it was tied to the occult because someone had carved a pentagram into Slemmer’s chest and Pike bragged to another student that she had kept a fragment of the victim’s skull as a “souvenir.”University of Tennessee forensic anthropologist Dr.
Murray Marks testifies about the wounds to Colleen Slemmer's skull during Christa Pike's murder trial in Knox County Criminal Court on March 25, 1996.Margaret Bentlage / Knoxville News Sentinel / USA TODAY Network via Reuters filePike doesn’t dispute her role in the grisly killing.But details about her upbringing, marked by years of sexual and physical abuse and neglect, were not shared with the jury that sentenced her to death.
Her lawyers believe that if such evidence of abuse were presented at a trial now, a death sentence would not be guaranteed.They have asked the Supreme Court to halt Pike’s execution, saying that she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorde...