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American murderer (born 1976)
Christa Gail Pike is an American convicted murderer. In 1995, when she was 18, Pike murdered her 19-year-old Job Corps classmate Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville, Tennessee. Pike and her boyfriend lured Slemmer into the woods where they tortured and killed her. In 1996, at the age of 20, Pike was sentenced to death, making her one of the youngest women to receive a death sentence in the United States during the post-Furman period. As of 2026, 18 women have been executed nationwide since 1976, and a woman has not been executed in Tennessee in over 200 years.
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U.S. state
Tennessee, officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina to the east, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi to the south, Arkansas to the southwest, and Missouri to the northwest. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. According to the United States Census Bureau, the state's estimated population as of 2024 is 7.22 million.
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Pike survived a lethal injection execution Wednesday. She was sentenced to death for the 1995 killing of her classmate, Colleen Slemmer.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said he had ordered a review of the incident after the inmate survived two doses of pentobarbital.