Ahead of rare execution, lone woman on Tennessee’s death row says ‘I am at peace’

Christa Pike, 50, was an accomplice in a murder she committed at 18. She would be the first woman executed by the state in over 200 years.

With her execution days away, the lone woman on Tennessee’s death row says she is prepared to die but “nervous” about how the state intends to carry it out. Before learning Monday that Gov. Bill Lee would not be intervening in her case, Christa Pike wrote in a letter to NBC News, shared by her spiritual adviser: “Whether my clemency is granted or not, I am at peace.” “I am not afraid to die,” wrote Pike, who has been on death row for over three decades. “I’m only nervous about the process.” Tennessee is poised to execute Pike, 50, on Wednesday by lethal injection — the first time in more than 200 years that the state will put a woman to death, according to historical records.

In 1995, Pike was 18 when Knoxville police say she and two teenage accomplices tortured, slashed and fatally beat Colleen Slemmer, 19. Police say Pike and the others lured Slemmer, a classmate in their Job Corps training program, to an abandoned steam plant at the nearby University of Tennessee and attacked her. The case became sensationalized when investigators said it was tied to the occult because someone had carved a pentagram into Slemmer’s chest and Pike bragged to another student that she had kept a fragment of the victim’s skull as a “souvenir.” Pike