The State of Tennessee spent Wednesday trying to carry out a death sentence it has had on the books for thirty years, and ended the night with the condemned woman in an ambulance.
Christa Gail Pike, 50 - the only woman on Tennessee's death row - was still breathing, audibly snoring, and maintaining a heartbeat after prison staff administered two doses of pentobarbital at Nashville's Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. Media witnesses were escorted out around 8:53 p.m. local time while her snoring could still be heard. Pike was subsequently rushed to an off-site hospital, prompting Governor Bill Lee to halt all remaining executions for the year and order a third-party review.
Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 for the torture-murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a Job Corps classmate she lured into the Knoxville woods in January 1995 at age 18 - where she bashed the girl's skull in with a chunk of asphalt after carving a pentagram into the victim's chest with a friend. Pike started showing off pieces of Slemmer's skull at school, at which point she was arrested (with a chunk of skull found in her pocket).
Fox 17 investigative reporter Kelly Avellino posted that Pike "appeared to receive 2 doses of pentobarbital, and she was still awake 40 minutes after" before being transported.
Unbelieveable. Officials were un
