Tennessee is ready to run a woman for the first time in more than 200 years. What did she do?

The only woman in the Tennessee death corridor has been scheduled for execution more than 30 years after she brutally killed a romantic adolescent rival and showed part of the victim’s skull to schoolmates.

The Tennessee Supreme Court scheduled the execution of Christ Gail Pike, 49, on September 30, 2026. Pike was only 18 years old when she and two others attracted Colleen Slemmer, 19 years old to the forest in Knoxville on January 12, 1995, and carried out the attack that led the national headlines for their brutality.

When a gardener found Slemmer’s body the next day, the teenager had been beaten, stabbed and beaten and had a pentagram carved in his chest, according to judicial records.

If Pike’s execution is carried out, he would become the first woman executed in Tennessee in 200 years and only the 19th woman executed in the modern history of the United States.

“That is a very, very small number,” said Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Information Center based in Washington, DC, a non -profit organization that tracks the use of the death penalty in the United States without taking a position on it.

“Only 18 women have been executed since 1976,” Maher added. “It’s extremely rare.”

Pike’s execution date has been established in the midst of an increase in executions in 2025 and an expansion of the execution methods used. So far this year, states have executed 34 inmates, a figure that has not been seen in a decade, and another nine are scheduled to be executed.

This is what the case and women should know in the death corridor in the United States

What was condemned to Christa Gail Pike?

Christist Gail Pike and Colleen Slemmer were students from the Knoxville Job Corps, a professional training program, when Pike started dating a 17 -year -old boy in the program and then feared that Slemmer was trying to steal him, they told prosecutors to jurors in the trial.

Pike, a friend and the boyfriend attracted Slemmer away from the center of Job’s body and in the forest before the attack, largely made by Pike for a period of one hour on January 12, 1995, according to judicial records.

Later, Pike boasted to kill Slemmer, telling another student in the center who had cut the teenager’s throat six times with a box cutter, cut his back with a meat blade, a pentagram was carved on his forehead and chest, and violence continued despite the fact that Slemmer “begged” to stop, according to the registers of the court.

Pike said that “he threw a large piece of asphalt at the victim’s head”, which is believed to be a fatal blow and maintained a skull fragment, then showing it to his companions, according to judicial records.

Pike was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to death. Pike’s boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, was sentenced by first -degree murder, sentenced to life imprisonment and will be eligible for probation in November, according to prison records. Pike’s friend, Shadolla Peterson, who, according to prosecutors, watched during the attack, testified against Pike and was sentenced to probation.

What does Christa Gail Pike say about crime?

In a letter he wrote to the Tennessean part, part of the USA Today’s network, Pike said that he is responsible for the murder and has “changed drastically” since he was a teenager.

“Think of the worst mistake you made as reckless teenager. Well, mine turned out to be huge, unforgettable and ruined innumerable lives,” he wrote. “I was a mentally sick 18 -year -old boy. He took numerous years even realizing the seriousness of what I had done. Even more, accepting how many lives I made (sic). I took my life from the son, sister, friend of someone. Now he gets sick now to think that someone as loving and compassionate as I had the ability to commit a crime.”

Pike spent 27 years in what his lawyers say that lone confinement was effectively as the only woman in Tennessee’s death corridor before winning the ability to interact with other inmates during religious meals, classes and services.

Her lawyers argue that if Pike had been tried today, she would never have received the death penalty given her short age and mental health struggles at the time of crime. They believe he deserves life in prison without the possibility of probation instead of the death penalty.

“Christ’s childhood was full of years of physical and sexual abuse and negligence,” said his legal team in a statement to USA Today. “With time and treatment for bipolar and post -traumatic stress disorders, which were not diagnosed until years later, Christ has become a reflexive woman with a deep regret for her crime.”

For more information about Pike, including background on your childhood, visit here.

Clemmer’s mother, May Martínez, has been firm in his support for the death penalty for Pike.

“I just love Christn Down to finish it, relieve my daughter, so that I can finally be resting,” Martínez told Wbir-Tv in 2021. “There is no day that I don’t think about Colleen or how he died and how rough it was.”

How many women have been executed in the United States?

Only 18 women have been executed in the US since 1976, compared to 1,623 men, according to the death penalty information center. That means women represent only 1% of all modern executions in the United States.

Pike is not only the only woman in the Tennessee death corridor, but is among 48 female inmates in the nation. That compares with a male population of just under 2,100, approximately 2 percent.

The last execution of a woman in the United States was that of Amber McClaughlin in 2023. McClaughlin, who was the first execution of the transgender person in the nation, was convicted as a man of rape and fatally stabbed Beverly Guenther, 45, on November 20, 2003. Guenther was McLaughLin’s former friend.

The last execution in Tennessee was that of Byron Black on August 5 for the murder of his 1988 girlfriend and his two young daughters.

How many women have Tennessee executed?

Citing the death penalty information center, Pike’s lawyers say that only three women have been executed in Tennessee, and they are all happening between 1807 and 1819.

They list the pendants of three black women in 1807, 1808 and 1819, although they did not identify their crimes. Only one of the names of women is known: that of Molly Holcomb in 1807. Two of them are listed as slaves by Deathpenaltyusa.org, which names crimes as murder, although many slaves were unfairly held by false accusations or without any reason.

Contributing: Evan Mealins, The Tennessean

Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime reporter who covers executions for USA Today. Follow her in X in @amandaleeusat.

This article originally appeared in the USA Today: Tennessee establishes the execution of Christist Pike 30 years after the rival murder