Death row inmate Christa Pike, the first woman sentenced to death in Tennessee in over 200 years, has compared herself to Lindsay Clancy, saying she feels a 'kinship' with her.
Pike, now 50, was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp beat and tortured 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer to death. Her execution is scheduled for Wednesday, and she made the comparison to Clancy just weeks after Clancy's trial over the killing of her children Cora, five, Dawson, three, and eight-month-old Callan collapsed.
Pike's comments on Clancy case
While Clancy does not deny killing her children by strangling them with an exercise band in the basement of their home, her defence claimed she was in a state of postpartum psychosis at the time and therefore not criminally responsible for her actions.
Speaking about how the case brought Clancy's mental health issues into focus, Pike said: 'We are both females who got into trouble because of uniquely female issues.'
She added: 'One thing [that] is different, however, is that times have changed a lot on awareness of women's issues since I was put on trial.'
Pike's claims about her trial
Pike said that if she had been on trial today, she estimates jurors may have shown her more sympathy because 'science about brain development has evolved'. She also said the fact her accomplice was black may have played a part in her punishment.
'While racism has not gone away, it has diminished some,' Pike insisted. 'I think I was more harshly judged because of my relationship with Tadaryl.'
Pike killed Slemmer, a fellow Job Corps student, on January 12, 1995, after she, Shipp, and another student, Shadolla Peterson, lured her to a remote corner of the campus at the University of Tennessee and tortured her before bludgeoning her to death. At the time, Pike believed Slemmer was trying to steal Shipp away from her, although friends of the victim denied this.
Details of the crime and sentencing
Prosecutors said Slemmer was kicked, beaten, and slashed for half an hour, and that Pike carved a pentagram into her chest while she was still alive, before she died from blows to the head with a chunk of asphalt. Slemmer's half-naked body was found the next morning, with her blood-soaked clothes hanging above her on tree branches.
All the teenagers involved were arrested within 36 hours, with investigators discovering a satanic Bible and altar in Pike's room, along with a fragment of Slemmer's skull. Pike became the youngest woman ever to be sentenced to death in the US, while Shipp was given a life sentence without parole, and Peterson was sentenced to probation after being found to be an accessory after the fact.
Pike's legal representatives have continued to fight her case, claiming she would not have received a death sentence had she been found guilty of the same crime as a teenager today. Pike was also neglected and sexually abused as a child, with some details about her youth now being shared by her lawyers — details they say jurors weren't able to consider.
A report by forensic psychologist Dr Diana McCoy found that Pike was abused by her mother's partners and husbands and was raped at least twice, aged 11 and 17. Dr Bethany Brand, another psychologist who studied Pike's case in 2023, said her case was rare because of the number of people who abused her when they had a responsibility to protect her. She said that Pike's traumatic childhood helped to explain why she felt threatened by Colleen and was unable to control her emotions when she killed the young woman.
Pike is due to be executed by lethal injection on Wednesday after the governor of Tennessee denied a plea for clemency.
