At the age of 18, Christa Gail Pike committed the torture murder of her classmate Colleen Slemmer, and was later convicted of the crime at 20 years old. As a result, she became the youngest woman to receive a death sentence in the United States during the post-Furman era.
Pike’s Childhood
Christa Gail Pike, who was born on March 10, 1976, had a troubled upbringing, with a mother who prioritized partying over parenting and a father who was not involved in her life. She was primarily raised by her grandmother, but when her grandmother passed away when Pike was only 12 years old, she had to move back in with her mother.
Pike’s mother introduced her to marijuana when she was just a teenager, and Pike’s life became even more tumultuous due to poverty, family instability, and drug addiction. Pike’s interest in devil worship and the occult, combined with irrational jealousy, ultimately led her to brutally murder her classmate.
Inside The Murder of Colleen Slemmer
After dropping out of high school and being arrested for shoplifting, Christa Pike served a one-month sentence in juvenile detention. She then joined Job Corps to train as a nurse technician, but her focus shifted to boys, particularly Tadaryl Shipp. Shipp also came from a difficult background, dropping out of high school and becoming involved with gang members before joining the Knoxville Job Corps to study culinary arts.
Unfortunately, Pike’s infatuation with Shipp led to a tragic chain of events that culminated in the murder of Colleen Slemmer, an innocent girl.
Their shared fascination with Satanism and the occult, or a distorted interpretation of it, drew them together, and this fixation also caught the attention of other attendees of the Job Corps program, such as Shadolla Peterson.
Pike, Shipp, and Peterson
Colleen Slemmer was a young and cheerful woman from Jacksonville, Florida, who had enrolled in the Knoxville Job Corps to pursue computer technology studies.
However, within three months of Slemmer’s arrival, she had a conflict with Christa Pike. Pike claimed that Slemmer was making advances towards Shipp and trying to take him away from her. Slemmer and her friends denied Pike’s allegations, but she managed to convince Shipp and Peterson that Slemmer needed to be sacrificed to Satan.
On January 11, 1995, Pike confided in her friend Kim Iolio that she planned to kill Slemmer because she was feeling cruel that day. Although Iolio thought it was just idle talk at the time, she would soon come to regret not taking Pike’s words seriously.
Slemmer’s mother received her daughter’s skull as a gift, but the fragment that Christa Pike had taken as a souvenir remains missing.
Slemmer’s skull in court
The following night, Christa Pike, Tadaryl Shipp, and Shadolla Peterson enticed Slemmer to go to the woods by offering her some marijuana. However, once they got there, Pike and Shipp launched a brutal attack on Slemmer, while Peterson stood guard.
Over the course of thirty minutes, Slemmer was subjected to verbal abuse, physical assault, and knife wounds, with Pike even carving a pentagram into her chest. In the end, Pike killed Slemmer by striking her with a large piece of asphalt, and she kept a fragment of Slemmer’s skull as a macabre memento.
Body Discovery, Arrest and Trial
Thanks to Pike’s self-incriminating behavior, including showing off the piece of Slemmer’s skull to her friends, police were able to trace her involvement in the crime and questioned her on January 15, 1995. Pike immediately confessed to the murder in her own words, after waiving her Miranda rights. Initially, she claimed that she only wanted Slemmer to leave her alone, but the extent of the violence indicated otherwise.
The mutilations on Slemmer’s body
Pike admitted that she escalated the brutality towards Slemmer as she begged for her life. The more Slemmer pleaded, the more Pike kicked her in the face, and the more she begged, the more Pike slashed her throat.
Less than two days after the murder, all three suspects, Christa Pike, Tadaryl Shipp, and Shadolla Peterson, were arrested for their involvement in the killing of Colleen Slemmer.
During the trial, Pike’s lawyers tried to argue that her “diminished mental capacity” was responsible for the murder.
Christa Pike in court
However, Dr. Eric Engum testified that although Pike had a severe case of borderline personality disorder, along with cannabis dependency and depression, she exhibited no signs of brain damage or mental illness. Despite this testimony, Pike was found guilty and sentenced to death.
Tadaryl Shipp was found guilty of murder by the jury and was sentenced to life in prison, with the possibility of parole after 25 years.
Shadolla Peterson entered a plea of guilty for being an accessory after the fact and testified for the state in exchange for probation.
Christa Pike is still on death row
Christa Pike was convicted of capital murder and conspiracy to commit murder after only two-and-a-half hours of jury deliberation. She was sentenced to death by electrocution for the murder charge on March 30, 1996. She is yet to be sentenced.