The US state of Tennessee may soon carry out its first execution of a woman in over 200 years after its Supreme Court gave the green light to carry out the sentence handed down to Christa Gail Pike.
Pike – currently the sole female on Tennessee’s death row – was 18 years old when she lured 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer into a wooded area close to the University of Tennessee’s agricultural campus in Knoxville on January 12, 1995.
According to Fox News, Pike and Slemmer were both involved in the Knoxville Job Corps, a career-training program. Pike allegedly convinced herself that Slemmer was interested in her boyfriend, 17-year-old Tadaryl Shipp, and in a fit of jealously became the ringleader of a shocking plan.
Having contrived to get Slemmer into the aforementioned wooded area with the help of Shipp and a third accomplice, Shadolla Peterson, Pike slashed her fellow teenager’s throat with a box cutter, attacked her with a meat cleaver, carved a pentagram into her chest, and ultimately crushed her skull with a piece of asphalt.
