US4 min(s) read
The mother of a woman killed by Christa Pike, who is set to be executed within days, has spoken out.
Colleen Slemmer 19, was murdered in Tennessee in 1995 in what became known as the Job Corps Murder.
Pike, who was dating Tadaryl Shipp, became jealous of Slemmer, who she believed was trying to steal her boyfriend while they were all enrolled in the Job Corps program.
Along with her friend Shadolla Peterson, Pike hatched a plan to lure Slemmer to an isolated, abandoned steam plant near the University of Tennessee campus, where she told Slemmer they wanted to make peace by offering her some marijuana.
As they arrived at the secluded location, Slemmer was attacked by Pike and Shipp as Peterson acted as a lookout.
The young woman was brutally beaten and slashed, before Pike smashed her skull with a large chunk of asphalt, killing her.
The three of them were arrested within 36 hours after Pike began showing off a piece of Slemmer's skull that she had kept, which police found in her jacket pocket.
Pike confessed to the murder but insisted that she, Shipp, and Peterson had only tried to scare Slemmer, but the plan had spiraled out of control.
After over 30 years on death row, Pike is set to be executed on September 30, should it go ahead as planned.
Slemmer's mom, May Martinez, has now spoken out about the tragic loss of her daughter and how her grief was compounded by state institutions allegedly repeatedly mishandled her daughter’s remains, including shipping body parts to her home in cardboard boxes without prior warning.
Speaking in the documentary Christa Pike's Last Fight to Stop Her Execution, Martinez revealed that the institutional insensitivity compounded the already overwhelming grief of losing her daughter in such horrifying circumstances.
Martinez claims she spent 16 years fighting to recover the physical evidence that authorities had retained after her daughter’s autopsy and criminal proceedings.
She stated that the trauma began in the courtroom where she was shown graphic evidence including fragments of her child's skull without being warned ahead of time.
Martinez claimed: "The state of Tennessee has really failed me. They put my life upside down. When I get to the courtroom and here I see my daughter's skull in front of me, that's a little hard to take."
After many years, Martinez as eventually able to retrieve Slemmer's skull, but says that further anatomical evidence was returned to her by the University of Tennessee in a manner which left her traumatized.
She explained: "After 16 years of me fighting and writing letters and going back and forth, I got Colleen’s skull back, and then Tennessee University sent me body parts in a box and they wouldn't tell you what it was.
"The first time was her genitals. Second time was her nose and the piece on her chin. The third one was two pieces that was here. And then I got the layer of the outer skin of the pentagram [which had been carved into her chest]."
She added: "I didn't get no warning. I got a little brown box, opened it up, and I couldn't figure it out. It was just pieces."
Martinez claimed that when she was finally offered trauma counseling by the state, the therapist allegedly dismissed her grief, telling her in the first session: "Well, that's life. You have to deal with it."
She added: "The state should bear some responsibility," stating that some of the scars left by the way the case was handled will never fade.
Pike's execution date has been set for September 30, but she has launched a bid for clemency.
However, Martinez believes that only the death sentence would be appropriate justice for what Pike did to her daughter, rejecting the killer's claims that it stemmed from her own childhood trauma.
She added: "Most kids do go through a lot of stuff and they don't go out and kill. Christa committed and admittedly committed - and that's a big thing in this case is admittedly committed - a heinous, vile, disgusting, cruel murder. So, does she deserve any different?
"I don't think Christa should have any kind of privilege. She do something like that to somebody, you need to pay the price... I want to see Christa look at Colleen’s picture lasting in her mind when she dies."
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