Tennessee prepares to execute woman convicted of murder 31 years ago

Final message from death row

Ashley Sellers received a letter from her friend Krista Pike, who is on death row in Tennessee, at the beginning of this week. Pike is preparing for her execution by lethal injection, scheduled for Wednesday. In the letter, the convicted woman asked that none of her loved ones be present during the execution procedure.

“She doesn’t want us to go through this,” Sellers said. For her, it is difficult to reconcile the image of the kind and caring woman she knows Pike to be with the accusation of committing a horrific crime 31 years ago.

Circumstances of the crime

Krista Pike is 50 years old today. When she was 18, she and her then-boyfriend Tadaril Shipps murdered 19-year-old Collin Slemmer. The girls met at a vocational training camp for troubled teenagers. According to case materials, Pike and Shipps beat, tortured, and killed Slemmer. Pike justified her actions by claiming that Slemmer had insulted her and tried to take her boyfriend away.

Public resonance

In 1995, this incident caused a major media frenzy in Knoxville (Tennessee). The victim’s body was found with a pentagram carved into her chest — a symbol associated with satanic rituals.

Two other camp residents later testified that Pike boasted about the murder both before and after it was committed. According to them, she also showed them a piece of Collin Slemmer’s skull.

If the sentence is carried out, Pike will become the first woman executed in Tennessee in the last 200 years. The defence maintains that she is herself a victim of circumstances.