Christa Pike Biography: Age, Parents, Net Worth, Height, Husband, Children, Execution, Family, Interview
Christa Gail Pike is an American convicted murderer and the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, known for the 1995 killing of a fellow student and for surviving a failed execution attempt in 2026.
Pike was born in 1976. She was 18 when she murdered Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old fellow student at the Knoxville Job Corps center, in January 1995.
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Prosecutors said Pike, who believed Slemmer was a romantic rival, lured her to a secluded site and tortured her to death with two accomplices. Pike’s lawyers acknowledged at trial that she killed Slemmer but denied the killing was premeditated.
Pike was sentenced to death in March 1996, which made her one of the youngest women ever sentenced to death in the modern American justice system.
The Tennessee Supreme Court set her execution for September 30, 2026. The attempt failed: officials spent over an hour trying to place an IV, a federal appeals court issued a late stay during the delay, and Pike’s lawyers said she was alive after two doses of lethal-injection drugs were administered.
She was taken to a hospital by ambulance. Governor Bill Lee ordered an investigation and halted executions for the remainder of the year, and a Tennessee judge ordered the state to preserve all evidence from the attempt.
Had the execution gone ahead, Pike would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee since 1820.
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| Wiki Facts & About Data | |
| Real Name: | Christa Gail Pike |
| Stage Name: | Christa Pike |
| Born: | March 10, 1976 (age 50 years old) |
| Place of Birth: | Beckley, West Virginia, United States |
| Nationality: | American |
| Ethnicity: | White |
| Education: | GED, Job Corps (Knoxville, Tennessee) |
| Religion: | Christianity |
| Parents: | Glenn Pike, Carissa Hansen |
| Relationship: | Tadaryl Shipp (1994), Donald Kohut (2011-2012) |
| Occupation: | Convicted Murderer |
| Net Worth: | $0 |
Early Life & Education
Christa Gail Pike was born on March 10, 1976, in Beckley, West Virginia, United States. Her zodiac sign is Pisces. She is American by nationality and White by ethnicity, and her religion is Christianity.
Her parents are Emil Glenn Pike, known as Glenn Pike, and Carissa Hansen. The couple married, divorced, remarried and divorced again, and court records describe a household marked by alcohol and drug use, violence and neglect.
Glenn Pike was described in court proceedings as physically abusive, and Carissa Hansen as neglectful. Pike has half-sisters on her father’s side, and a half-sister from her mother’s earlier relationship is also reported, though their names are unconfirmed.
Pike spent much of her early childhood with her paternal grandmother, who gave her the most stable home she had. Her grandmother died in 1988, when Pike was 12, and she then moved between her parents’ households.
Her schooling was disrupted from the start: she reportedly failed the third grade, dropped out of high school as a teenager, and later earned a GED.
A shoplifting arrest led to about a month in juvenile detention, and she then enrolled at the Job Corps center in Knoxville, Tennessee, where she trained toward a career as a nursing assistant.
Career
Christa Gail Pike has no documented employment history. Her only recorded work-related path is vocational training: she enrolled at the Job Corps center in Knoxville, Tennessee, hoping to qualify as a nursing assistant, after earning a GED.
Her time there ended in January 1995, when she and her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp killed fellow student Colleen Slemmer, with Shadolla Peterson acting as lookout. All three were arrested within 36 hours, and Pike confessed after waiving her Miranda rights.
Pike was found guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy on March 22, 1996, and on March 30 was sentenced to death by electrocution for the murder, plus 25 years for conspiracy. Her trial lawyers had never tried a capital case and presented no mitigating evidence about her abuse or mental illness.
Shipp, who was 17 at the time, received life with the possibility of parole plus a consecutive 25 years, and Peterson pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact, testified for the prosecution and received probation.
Her years on death row have been defined by appeals and prison incidents. In June 2001 and again in June 2002, she asked to drop her appeals and be executed, and a judge set an August 19, 2002 execution date.
She reversed course the following month, and a state appeals panel ordered the proceedings to continue. In August 2001, she and another inmate, Natasha Cornett, were accused of attacking fellow inmate Patricia Jones.
Pike was convicted of attempted first-degree murder and received a 25-year sentence, while investigators found insufficient evidence to charge Cornett. In 2012, a plot to help her escape involving Donald Kohut, a man who had corresponded with her, and a corrections officer was foiled. Pike was not charged, and Kohut received seven years.
State appeals ended in December 2008 with the denial of her latest new-trial request. A federal judge rejected her claims in March 2016, and the Sixth Circuit upheld that ruling in August 2019.
She petitioned the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in November 2020, which granted precautionary measures the following month. In 2022, she sued the Tennessee Department of Correction over conditions unequal to those of male death-row inmates, and the state settled in September 2024, agreeing to equalize her treatment. She has been held in solitary confinement since 1996.
The Tennessee Supreme Court set her execution for September 30, 2026. Her legal team challenged the execution protocol, citing a blood condition that complicates IV placement and an all-male execution team, but a special master declined to intervene in August 2026.
International pressure grew in September, when UN experts urged a halt and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights found that her trial violated her right to a fair trial.
Her case also became the subject of the documentary Dead Woman Walking: Pike vs. Tennessee. The execution attempt on September 30 failed, and Governor Bill Lee halted executions for the rest of the year.
Personal Life
Christa Gail Pike is 50 years old, born on March 10, 1976. She was 18 at the time of the Colleen Slemmer murder in January 1995 and 20 when she was sentenced to death in March 1996.
She has no publicly confirmed husband, no recorded marriages and no publicly confirmed children, having spent every adult year in custody. Pike’s height has not been publicly confirmed.
Pike’s only well-documented relationship is with Tadaryl Shipp, a fellow Job Corps student a year younger than her. They began dating at the Knoxville center in late 1994 and shared an interest in the occult.
Her belief that Slemmer wanted Shipp led to the January 1995 murder, which both carried out. Friends of Slemmer denied she had any interest in him. Shipp was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole plus a consecutive 25 years, and he was denied parole in October 2025.
In 2011, a New Jersey personal trainer named Donald Kohut began writing to Pike and later visited her at the Tennessee Prison for Women. The exact nature of their relationship was never fully established.
His visits led to an escape plot involving a corrections officer, Justin Heflin, which authorities foiled in early 2012.
Controversies
The murder of Slemmer remains the central controversy in Pike’s life. Prosecutors said she lured Slemmer to a secluded site near the University of Tennessee agricultural campus and attacked her with Shipp, while Shadolla Peterson acted as lookout.
Pike kept a fragment of Slemmer’s skull and showed it to classmates the next morning. Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, supports the execution and said she received the fragment from the state after sixteen years of requests.
Pike has also faced violence charges while in custody. In August 2001, she and fellow inmate Natasha Cornett were accused of attacking Patricia Jones with a shoestring.
Pike was convicted of attempted first-degree murder and received a 25-year sentence, while Cornett was not charged. In 2001 and again in 2002, she asked to drop her appeals and be executed, then reversed course in July 2002, and a state appeals panel ordered the proceedings to continue.
The fairness of her sentence has drawn sustained criticism. Her trial lawyers had never handled a capital case and presented no evidence of her childhood abuse or mental illness, including post-traumatic stress disorder and bipolar disorder diagnosed only after her conviction.
In September 2026, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights found that her trial violated her right to a fair trial, and UN experts urged Tennessee to halt the execution. Her lawyers also challenged the execution protocol, citing a blood condition that complicates IV placement and an all-male execution team.
The September 30, 2026 execution attempt added a new controversy. Officials spent over an hour trying to place an IV, and Pike was alive after two doses of lethal-injection drugs were administered.
Her lawyers called the episode torture and demanded commutation, and Governor Bill Lee halted executions for the remainder of the year and ordered an investigation.
In a separate dispute, she sued the Tennessee Department of Correction in 2022 over conditions unequal to those of male death-row inmates, and the state settled in September 2024.
Net Worth
Christa Gail Pike has a net worth of $0. She has been in custody continuously since her arrest in January 1995, which has left her with no employment history beyond Job Corps training and no known property, savings, royalties or other assets.
Her income is limited to small prison commissary funds and occasional support from advocates. The legal costs of her case, which include her appeals, her 2022 lawsuit against the Tennessee Department of Correction and the September 30, 2026 execution attempt, have been carried by the state and her appointed defense lawyers, not by Pike herself.
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