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People are only just finding out that Christa Pike was convicted of trying to commit another murder while on death row
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Christa Pike is currently in hospital, recovering after surviving two execution attempts, but people are only now finding out about her attempted murder of a fellow inmate.
Pike, 50, was in line to become the first woman in over 200 years to be executed in Tennessee, 31 years after murdering 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer.
She was set to be executed on Wednesday (September 30), but after the prison team had struggled to establish an IV line for over an hour, she survived both doses of Pentobarbital.
A health expert has suggested that a certain health condition may be the reason behind her surviving, as her legal team revealed she was undergoing life-saving treatment.
Christa Pike's attorney Stephen Ferrell explained today (October 4) to CNN that Pike's condition 'remains the same' and that she's 'still in the hospital on a ventilator.'
He admitted that 'we may not know' a prognosis for 'several days'.
Following the botched execution, many have just discovered that Pike attempted to kill another incarcerated woman behind bars.
Christa Pike tried to murder an inmate
Pike was already awaiting execution for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer after she had become jealous of her boyfriend at the time, believing that Slemmer was interested in him while they were part of the Knoxville Job Corps program.
She would respond by murdering her classmate, using a cleaver, a box cutter, and a piece of asphalt after luring her to the woods, beating and stabbing her before carving a pentagram into her chest.
Her legal team argued that her upbringing was riddled with violence, sexual assault and substance abuse, causing her to develop mental illness.
Pike had been on death row since being convicted in 1996, but five years on, she tried to kill inmate Patricia Jones, strangling her with a shoestring on August 24, 2001.
She did so during a fire-related evacuation - Jones had been serving a life sentence for the 1994 murder of 84-year-old Alberta Coker.
Pike would later argue that she was trying to protect another inmate, Natasha Cornett, but the former would subsequently be convicted of attempted first-degree murder in August 2004.
Jones testified that Pike intervened during a fight between Jones and another inmate, likely saving the other woman's life.
Appellate Judge John Everett Williams stated at Pike's appeal that 'her stated intention was to protect' Cornett, a convicted killer.
However, he stated: "There was ample evidence by her actions and (Pike's) own words that contradicted this position."
Where is Christa Pike?
Pike's lawyers revealed on Friday (October 2) that she is unconscious and on a ventilator in hospital, where she is being treated.
It was reported by Sky that hospital staff were working to save her life by clearing the lethal injection drug pentobarbital from her system.
A court filing revealed that the inmate's attorneys weren't happy with the problems caused by IV lines, which led to the drug going into her body instead of her bloodstream.
At the time, Pike asked after the first dose: “My arm feels like it is about to burst open.
“Does this happen like that?”
The legal experts detailed that her arms were 'swollen, burned and blistered' when she arrived at a hospital.
They claimed that instead of 'remedying this failure', they prepared and administered another dose of pentobarbital from a syringe.