The cameras cannot see her face yet, but her tiny shoulders, hitching violently upwards, tell the story.
Then the audible sobs fill the room.
Inside the Knox County Criminal Court that day, on March 30, 1996, 20-year-old Christa Pike is becoming the youngest woman to be sentenced to death in the modern era.
When she turns around, her face sprinkled with adolescent acne, the tears are freely flowing.
“It is ordered that you shall be put to death by electrocution … on the 12th day of January, 1997, your body shall be subjected to shock by sufficient current of electricity. May God have mercy upon you,” Judge Mary Beth Leibowitz said.
Panicked now, Pike begs for the smallest of mercies.
“Can I please hug my mum before I go?” she asks Leibowitz.
The answer is no.
“Please, let me just hug my mum,” she wails as she is led away, her mother reassuring her that she is loved on the way out the door.
It is a jarring scene. A young woman, her hair tied up in a scrunchie, set to die at the hands of an executioner.
Thirty years on from her day in court, Pike is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection in the execution chamber at Nashville, Tennessee on September 30.
Whether she deserves it or not is disputed — and it matters now more than ever. Her story is anything but black and white.
Court documents describe the “horrific” and “brutal” murder of Colleen Slemmer in great detail.
“This case began with the horrific and brutal 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer,” they read.
“Pike and Slemmer were both students at the Job Corps Centre in Knoxville, Tennessee at the time.
“They had a strained relationship; Pike claimed that Slemmer ‘had been ‘trying to get [her] boyfriend’ and … ‘running her mouth’ everywhere.
“These bad feelings unfortunately resulted in the following events.”
The Tennessee Supreme Court description, obtained by news.com.au, details how Pike lied to Slemmer about a trip to a Blockbuster video store before Pike and her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp beat their victim, slashed her throat and engraved satanic symbols on her body.
“On January 11, 1995, Pike, a student at the Job Corps Centre in Knoxville, told her friend Kim Iloilo, who was also a student at the facility, that she intended to kill another student, Colleen Slemmer, because she ‘had just felt mean that day’.
“The next day, January 12, 1995, at approximately 8pm, Iloilo observed Pike, along with Slemmer, and two other Job Corps students, Shadolla Peterson and Tadaryl Shipp, Pike’s boyfriend, walking away from the Job Corps centre toward 17th Street.
“At approximately 10.15pm, Iloilo observed Pike, Peterson, and Shipp return to the Centre. Slemmer was not with them. Later that night, Pike went to Iloilo’s room and told Iloilo that she had just killed Slemmer and that she had brought back a piece of the victim’s skull as a souvenir.
“Pike showed Iloilo the piece of skull and told her that she had cut the victim’s throat six times, beaten her, and thrown asphalt at the victim’s head. Pike told Iloilo that the victim had begged ‘them’ to stop cutting and beating her, but Pike did not stop because the victim continued to talk.
“Pike told Iloilo that she had thrown a large piece of asphalt at the victim’s head, and when it broke into smaller pieces, she had thrown those at the victim as well. Pike told Iloilo that a meat cleaver had been used to cut the victim’s back and a box cutter had been used to cut her throat.
“Finally, Pike said that a pentagram had been carved onto the victim’s forehead and chest. Iloilo said that Pike was dancing in a circle, smiling, and singing ‘la, la, la’ while she related these details about the murder.
“When Iloilo saw Pike at breakfast the next morning she asked Pike what she had done with the piece of the victim’s skull. Pike replied that it was in her pocket and then said, ‘And, yes, I’m eating breakfast with it’.”
A University of Tennessee employee found Slemmer’s body on January 13. The employee testified that it was so badly beaten than he had “first mistaken it for the corpse of an animal”.
It did not take long for authorities to turn their attention to the 18-year-old Pike who, upon being interviewed, waived her rights to silence and gave a complete statement admitting to her involvement.
She told police she used a box cutter and meat clever and that she had asked Slemmer to accompany her to the Blockbuster store before lying about a “bag of weed” she had hidden in the park.
“According to Pike, as she slammed Slemmer’s head against the concrete, Slemmer repeatedly asked, ‘Why are you doing this to me?’,” the court documents read.
“As Slemmer ‘screamed and screamed’, Pike recounted how she began to hear voices telling her that she had to do something to prevent Slemmer from telling on her and sending her to prison for attempted murder.”
The details of exactly what Pike did to Slemmer are too graphic to share in detail, but they involve one of the parties carving a pentagram into the victim’s chest.
‘Christa bears a network of scars from childhood beatings’
As the clock ticks down towards Pike’s execution, the now 50-year-old’s lawyers are making every effort to save her life.
At the beginning of September, they filed a 226-page clemency petition to Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, the only person with the power to put a stop to the single drug planned to enter Pike’s system in 19 days.
In it, they detail a history of violence, sexual abuse and tragedy that Pike was subjected to as a little girl — matters they say cast the killer’s crimes in a new light and should prevent her becoming the first woman put to death in Tennessee since 1819.
At the heart of the petition is a photograph, below, showing Pike as a toddler.
“There is a picture of Christa as a child that I often think about,” her lawyers write in the petition.
“She is outside, her curly red hair is slightly blown by the wind. She has big brown eyes, and her mouth is drawn tight in a straight line.
“I think about this picture for two reasons. First, it is a beautiful picture not unlike the pictures I have of my own daughter at the same age. I am sure you have similar pictures of your daughters.
“Second, I think of this picture because I know that it was taken about the time Christa was first sexually abused. Her grandmother’s boyfriend had already begun orally raping her. To me, this picture represents a devastatingly sad turning point, where the chaos that surrounded Christa began to leave marks on her that were too much to overcome.
“A point where the chaos that surrounded Christa started to lead to cycles of depression, mania, self-medication, and abuse. Cycles that were compounded by what one expert called an ‘almost unbearably abusive background’.”
The petition relies on the horrific abuse she suffered, her diagnosis of bipolar and her 30 years served so far in solitary confinement as reasons enough for clemency.
It also leans heavily on scientific and research developments in the years after her conviction.
Pike was 18 when she killed her friend. But Shipp, her boyfriend and co-offender, was only 17. The difference in brain development is almost insignificant, but that’s not how the courts saw it in 1996.
Under Tennessee law, he was barred from execution because he had not yet turned 18.
“Christa Pike’s life demonstrates the tragic and lifelong consequences of growing up with constant abuse, violence, and abandonment, with no protection,” he lawyers write at the end of the 226-page plea for mercy.
“Decades of being brutally raped, molested, beaten, humiliated, emotionally abused, ostracised and screamed at profoundly damaged her, leaving her with a multitude of untreated psychological disorders.
“Without protection from the adults who were supposed to have protected her, and without treatment for bipolar disorder and her other psychological disorders, Christa managed her volatile emotions and trauma-related problems as she had learned from her parents: through self-medication with marijuana and drinking.
“At 18 years old, her immature, traumatised brain made her exceptionally vulnerable to impulses and extremely poor decisions. Unmedicated and untreated, she was not able to put the ‘brakes on’ her bipolar and trauma-triggered emotions.
“Tragically, she was unable to manage the upsurge of extreme rage and fear she felt when triggered by taunts and threats to the source of love she believed she had found with her boyfriend.
“The impact of trauma and untreated psychiatricdisorders had tragic consequences.”
The last woman executed in Tennessee was Eve Martin in 1820. She was convicted of accessory to murder and hanged.
Pike’s execution is scheduled for 10am at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.
If the schedule does not change, she will wake at 5.30am, clean her cell, shower, dress and be given a last meal before being allowed final family visits or contact with a spiritual adviser.
Under the state’s updated lethal injection protocol, a single-drug chemical dose of pentobarbital will enter her system while she is strapped to a gurney.
The blinds to the witness room will be drawn and Pike will be asked for her final words.
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