KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WKRC) – A woman who murdered her classmate and carved a pentagram into her chest and forehead will be the first woman to be executed in her state in over 200 years.
Christa Gail Pike was a member of Job Corps, a program for troubled teens, when she was 18 years old in 1995. On January 12 of that year, Pike and two co-defendants coerced a classmate, 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, into the woods, and brutalized her.
Pike and her codefendants allegedly beat, stabbed, and sliced the victim, culminating in Pike carving a pentagram into Slemmer’s chest and forehead, per court documents obtained by Law&Crime. When the body was discovered by a groundskeeper from the University of Tennessee, he said it was so disfigured that he could not immediately tell it was a human corpse.
The other two individuals involved were reportedly Pike’s boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp who was 17 at the time, and Shadolla Peterson, who kept watch during the murder. Shipp was sentenced to life in prison and Peterson was sentenced to probation for their involvement in the attack.
Much of the information surrounding the murder was revealed when Pike told another student, Kim Iloilo, about what she had done. Iloilo testified that Pike told her on the day before the murder that she was going to kill a classmate because she “just felt mean,” per court documents.
Iloilo testified to the Tennessee Supreme Court in 1998 the story that Pike spun for her when she returned to the campus after committing the murder.
“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,” the testimony began. ” 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.'”
