Mother of Christa Pike's victim speaks with heartbreaking statement ahead of her execution
The mom of the teenager murdered by Christa Pike has spoken out as she prepares to witness her daughter's killer's execution.
Pike is scheduled to die by lethal injection in Tennessee today (September 30) after spending over three decades on death row.
The 50-year-old was sentenced to death in March 1996 for the premeditated torture and murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer.
Pike, who was just 18 at the time, committed the crime in January 1995 alongside 17-year-old Tadaryl Shipp.
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The pair lured Slemmer into the woods, beat her for 30 minutes, carved a pentagram into her chest, and killed her by smashing her head with asphalt.
Now, Pike is set to become the first female inmate executed in Tennessee in more than two centuries.
The victim's mother, May Martinez, has made the journey from Florida to the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville to witness the conclusion to Pike's sentence.
She plans to hold up a picture of her late daughter during the lethal injection to remind the condemned inmate of exactly what she did.
Speaking to WBIR ahead of the execution, Martinez said: "I’m very happy because she’ll never kill anyone else. Plus I want Colleen to be at rest without having constant reminders.
“She has never reached out to me, and she is not remorseful at all… You see the pictures now, she still has that smile…"
She concluded: "If she did talk to me, I wouldn’t talk to her or give her the satisfaction.”
In a 2021 interview with the same outlet, Martinez detailed the daily agony of living without her daughter.
“She did the crime. I think she should pay for it. I would feel better that she felt the same pain that Colleen did," Martinez said.
“My heart breaks every single day because I keep reliving it and reliving it, and I can’t no more, and I want this to happen before I die."
She continued: "There’s not a day goes by that I don’t think about Colleen or how she died and how rough it was.
"I just want Christa down so I can end it, relieve my daughter, so she finally can be resting."
Martinez confirmed to the BBC this week that she stands by those comments as the execution draws closer.
During her final 24 hours, Pike has been held in a dedicated deathwatch cell, stripped of standard privileges, and monitored constantly.
State officials confirmed the inmate opted out of the tradition of requesting a personalized final meal before being put to death using pentobarbital.
While Martinez insists the killer lacks empathy, the inmate recently claimed she is deeply sorry for her actions.
In a statement included in her unsuccessful clemency petition, Pike argued she had changed since committing the murder.
“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realise the gravity of what I’d done," Pike claimed.
"Even more to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend."
She concluded: "It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime.”
Pike's final legal appeals collapsed when Tennessee Governor Bill Lee formally denied her petition for executive clemency on Monday.
Her execution is scheduled to take place at 11am EDT.
Topics: True crime, US News
Joe Yates