A botched lethal injection of Christa Pike has stolen focus from her murdered teenage victim and may halt Tennessee executions for good, the former Knoxville police chief says.
Tennessee’s attempt to execute 30-year death row inmate Christa Pike collapsed Wednesday evening after officials struggled to carry out the lethal injection, leaving her alive in critical condition and shifting the entire story away from the young woman she tortured to death three decades ago.
Former Knoxville police chief Phil Keith, who oversaw the original murder investigation, told Fox News Digital on Thursday that the failed procedure has erased attention from 19-year-old victim Colleen Slemmer and left him doubting whether the state will carry out any more executions soon, if ever.
“I’ll be surprised if there are any executions in Tennessee in the near term, if again, ever,” Keith said.
"Why don't we talk about Colleen's potential future, about her life, you know, do a deep dive on her family, talk about what she was trying to do?"
Keith led the Knoxville police department from 1988 to 2004 and handled the 1995 case that sent Pike to death row. He made clear where the public’s attention belongs.
In 1995, Christa Pike and two others lured Colleen Slemmer to a park, then beat, slashed, and tortured her for up to an hour. Pike’s boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, stopped Slemmer from running and held her down. He later carved pentagrams into her chest and face. Friend Shadolla Peterson took part in the attack. Pike kept a piece of Slemmer’s fractured skull as a trophy and showed it off to classmates.
The three met at a Job Corps Center, a vocational school for youths from difficult backgrounds. Slemmer was by every account the innocent party. Keith described her as a bright young woman interested in computers who was applying herself and trying to get her life on track after a troubled early childhood.
“She was a bright young woman,” Keith said. “She had interest in computers. She was applying herself there. She was clearly an innocent party in this, she was not involved in any of the violence that went on at Job Corps.”
He added: “She was just a child that was trying to, that had been through a troubled early life and was trying to get her life on track.” Her mother, May Martinez, was a big supporter, though there were limitations. Martinez did not respond to outreach Thursday.
Pike was the planner. “Pike was the catalyst,” Keith said. “She was the one that was planning out all the events, the luring, all that sort of thing.” A psychiatrist at trial described satanic elements in the crime. In the interrogation room afterward, Pike showed no remorse. Keith’s verdict was blunt: “She represents pure evil.”
Dr. Murray Marks, a University of Tennessee forensic anthropologist, testified about the wounds to Slemmer’s skull during the March 1996 trial in Knox County Criminal Court. Pike was convicted and has sat on death row for 30 years. Her execution had been set for Sept. 30.
Days before the date, Pike drew national notice with a last-minute appeal, a clemency petition, and requests for alternate methods of capital punishment plus a team of all-female executioners. An appeals court stay delayed the process, but the Supreme Court ruled the execution could proceed before midnight. Officials then spent roughly nine hours before the lethal injection attempt finally began.
What followed was a failure. Doctors spent about an hour attempting to place an IV, using at least seven needles in her left arm; one needle appeared bent. Officials then administered two full doses of pentobarbital. Pike continued showing signs of life. She survived and was moved to an off-site medical facility, where she remains in critical condition receiving life-saving care. She was the first woman scheduled for execution in Tennessee in more than 200 years.
Breitbart reported the critical condition and the prolonged IV struggle. Attorney Randy Spivey said his client was alive and under care, though he lacked a clear prognosis.
“Christa is alive right now,” Spivey said. “We don’t have a sense of her prognosis or much update on her health at the moment, but we do know that she is alive right now and receiving life-saving medical care.”
In comments to Just the News, Spivey went further: “I’m haunted by last night. Last night was not just inefficient; it was cruel and it was torturous.” He noted she kept showing signs of life after the two doses.
The Washington Examiner confirmed that as of Thursday morning Pike was alive and had been transported per the Tennessee Department of Correction.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee ordered an independent review of the failed procedure and postponed the state’s only remaining execution scheduled for the year. “This is a process that has been used over 100 times in this country without this outcome,” Lee said Thursday. “We need to know why the outcome is different this time than ever before.”
Protocol problems under Correction Commissioner Frank Strada had already drawn scrutiny. The botched attempt on Pike has now become the dominant story, exactly the outcome Keith feared.
Keith returned again and again to the young woman who never got to finish rebuilding her life. While cameras and commentators fixate on the inmate’s medical status and the state’s procedural breakdown, the former chief asked why the public is not examining what Colleen Slemmer might have become, what her family endured, and what was stolen from a shy teenager focused on her studies.
Pike’s attorneys framed the night as torturous for their client. Keith framed the larger picture: a killer he called pure evil has now survived the sentence a jury and the courts imposed, and the victim’s name is again pushed to the margins.
Thirty years after Slemmer was tortured in a park and left for dead, the state still has not carried out the judgment. A botched injection, an independent review, and a postponed execution calendar now stand between the sentence and its completion. Keith, the man who once ran the department that arrested Pike, does not expect that gap to close anytime soon.
Lawful capital sentences exist so that the worst offenders face final accountability and so victims’ families eventually see the end of the case. When the process itself becomes the story, the teenager who was only trying to learn computers and build a future is the one who disappears from view all over again.
