US3 min(s) read
After more than three decades on death row, Christa Pike faces her final punishment in just two days, but why was she sentenced to death and her accomplice allowed to walk free?
Christa Pike, 50, was just 18 when she was sentenced to life on death row after she tortured and killed fellow student Collen Slemmer, 19, with the help of her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp in 1995. She is set to receive the lethal injection in just two days' time, on September 30.
While Tadaryl received life in prison with the possibility of parole, Shadolla Peterson, 19, another Knoxville Job Corps student who was involved in Collen’s brutal murder, walked from the courtroom free. While the other two defendants faced severe prison sentences, she walked free on probation.
According to reports from the time, Christa was dating Tadaryl, and the young couple were good friends with Shadolla. Soon Christa was convinced that another student at the job center where she was training to become a nursing assistant had taken a romantic interest in her boyfriend.
On January 12, 1995, the twisted trio lured Collen to an isolated area near the University of Tennessee's campus after telling her that they wanted to make peace.
Instead, the group viciously attacked their victim for around 30 minutes. They beat and cut her, while Christa was also accused of carving a pentagram into Collen’s chest and reportedly keeping a piece of her skull, which is what ultimately led to her arrest.
In the days following the violent murder, Christa showed her sickening trophy to another student, and she was arrested alongside her friend and boyfriend swiftly after.
Christa was sentenced to death in 1996 after being convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder, making her the youngest woman in modern US history to receive a death sentence, and the first woman in Tennessee in over 200 years.
Her boyfriend Tadaryl was only 17 at the time of the killing, so he was not eligible for the death penalty, meaning the maximum punishment he could receive was life without parole.
The participant who got off the lightest by a long shot, Shadolla, received only a six-year probationary sentence after she testified against Christa and Tadaryl and pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact.
Unlike the other defendants, little is known about Shadolla’s life since the trial, and she has not spoken publicly about it since.
