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Add The New York Post on Google The cameras cannot see her face yet, but her tiny shoulders, hitching violently upwards, tell the story.
Inside the Knox County Criminal Court that day, on March 30, 1996, 20-year-old Christa Pike is becoming the youngest woman to be sentenced to death in the modern era.
When she turns around, her face sprinkled with adolescent acne, the tears are freely flowing.
“It is ordered that you shall be put to death by electrocution … on the 12th day of January, 1997, your body shall be subjected to shock by sufficient current of electricity. May God have mercy upon you,” Judge Mary Beth Leibowitz said.
Panicked now, Pike begs for the smallest of mercies.
“Can I please hug my mum before I go?” she asks Leibowitz.
“Please, let me just hug my mum,” she wails as she is led away, her mother reassuring her that she is loved on the way out the door.
It is a jarring scene. A young woman, her hair tied up in a scrunchie, set to die at the hands of an executioner.
Thirty years on from her day in court, Pike is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection in the execution chamber at Nashville, Tennessee on September 30.
Whether she deserves it or not is disputed — and it matters now more than ever. Her story is anything but black and white.
Court documents describe the “horrific” and “brutal” murder of Colleen Slemmer in great detail.
“This case began with the horrific and brutal 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer ,” they read.
“Pike and Slemmer were both students at the Job Corps Centre in Knoxville, Tennessee at the time.
“They had a strained relationship; Pike claimed that Slemmer ‘had been ‘trying to get [her] boyfriend’ and … ‘running her mouth’ everywhere.
“These bad feelings unfortunately resulted in the following events.”
The Tennessee Supreme Court description, obtained by news.com.au, details how Pike lied to Slemmer about a trip to a Blockbuster video store before Pike and her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp beat their victim, slashed her throat and engraved satanic symbols on her body.
“On January 11, 1995, Pike, a student at the Job Corps Centre in Knoxville, told her friend Kim Iloilo, who was also a student at the facility, that she intended to kill another student, Colleen Slemmer, because she ‘had just felt mean that day’.
“The next day, January 12, 1995, at approximately 8pm, Iloilo observed Pike, along with Slemmer, and two other Job Corps students, Shadolla Peterson and Tadaryl Shipp, Pike’s boyfriend, walking away from the Job Corps centre toward 17th Street.
“At approximately 10.15pm, Iloilo observed Pike, Peterson, and Shipp return to the Centre. Slemmer was not with them. Later that night, Pike went to Iloilo’s room and told Iloilo that she had just killed Slemmer and that she had brought back a piece of the victim’s skull as a souvenir.
“Pike showed Iloilo the piece of skull and told her that she had cut the victim’s throat six times, beaten her, and thrown asphalt at the victim’s head. Pike told Iloilo that the victim had begged ‘them’ to stop cutting and beating her, but Pike did not stop because the victim continued to talk.
“Pike told Iloilo that she had thrown a large piece of asphalt at the victim’s head, and when it broke into smaller pieces, she had thrown those at the victim as well. Pike told Iloilo that a meat cleaver had been used to cut the victim’s back and a box cutter had been used to cut her throat.
“Finally, Pike said that…