Lawyers for Pike, who killed a fellow student in 1995, say she should get clemency and would not be sentenced to death if the crime happened today.

Christa Pike's lawyers have filed a clemency petition seeking to commute her sentence ahead of the 30 September execution date

Published27 September 2026, 00:04 BST

Ashlee Sellars last heard from her friend Christa Pike earlier this week, when Pike texted her from her cell on death row as she prepares to be killed by lethal injection by the US state of Tennessee

Pike told Sellars she does not want any of her loved ones to be present on Wednesday when she is executed

"She doesn't want us to experience that," Sellars says

Sellars finds it hard to reconcile this woman, whom she has only known to be kind and protective, with the person who committed a heinous crime 31 years ago

Pike, now 50, was 18 when she and her boyfriend at the time, Tadaryl Shipp, beat, tortured and murdered Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old they met at a job training camp for troubled teens

The murder created a media frenzy in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1995 when Colleen was found with a pentagram, a symbol of Satanic ritual, carved into her chest

Pike had accused Colleen of insulting her and trying to steal her boyfriend. Two other residents at the camp later testified that Pike had bragged about the murder before and after, and showed them a piece of Colleen's skull