Christa Pike’s family break silence on botched execution: The horrific aftermath, a miracle when doctors feared she was brain dead… and what comes next

Christa Pike’s aunt thought their phone call late last month would be the last time she ever spoke to her killer niece.

Carrie Ross had wanted to be there for Pike, whom she ‘loves as a daughter,’ when she was put to death for a brutal and sadistic murder of a student three decades ago.

But Pike begged her to stay away.

‘”Aunt Carrie, I really don’t want you to come because it’s just gonna be painful for you. And it’s painful for me – I don’t want you to remember me that way,”‘ Ross recalled Pike telling her.

‘So we agreed that I wouldn’t go. I said: “Okay, Christa, I love you. See you later and I’ll meet you on the other side.”‘

On September 29, Pike was transferred from her all-women’s prison in Nashville to Riverbend Maximum Security Institution to be placed on ‘death watch’ – a 24-hour countdown to her scheduled execution. 

But nothing went the way it was supposed to.

On September 30, Pike survived a botched execution after being given two supposedly lethal doses of pentobarbital, a drug that works by slowing the brain down to the point of death.

One week later, the sole woman on Tennessee’s death row remains very much alive, awake and talking from her hospital bed.

Now, in an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail, the aunt who helped raise the killer has told the story of the botched execution and the chaotic days that followed and how difficult it is loving someone the world hates.

‘It’s been up, down, up, down. I have cried more tears in the last week than I’ve cried in my whole life,’ Ross said.

‘This whole week has been a blur.’

Ross, the sister of Pike’s late mother Carissa, believes her niece’s survival is divine proof that God does not want her put to death.

‘When God puts his hand on someone, God is in control,’ she said. ‘Not the Department of Correction, not us, but God.’

It is a striking claim about a killer whose crime helped fuel America’s ‘Satanic Panic.’

On January 12, 1995, Pike, then 18, lured Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old fellow Job Corps student, to an isolated area of the University of Tennessee’s campus.

Alongside her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp and friend Shadolla Peterson, she tortured Slemmer for up to an hour, slashed her more than 100 times with a box cutter and bludgeoned her to death with a block of asphalt.

Slemmer’s body was found the next day, nude from the waist up with a Satanic pentagram carved into her chest and a piece of her caved-in skull missing, taken by Pike as a souvenir.

Shipp, who was 17, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Peterson, who largely acted as a lookout, took a plea deal and served just one year. Pike, who was tried as an adult, was sentenced to death. 

After three decades on death row, her execution was finally set for September 30 – a conclusion welcomed by Slemmer’s mother May Martinez, who feared she might die before her daughter’s killer.

Ross said her niece was ready to die that day – so ready that she was dismayed when, with minutes to spare, an appeals court granted a stay over arguments that jurors never heard about Pike’s childhood sexual abuse.

‘The first words out of Christa’s mouth to her sister Alicia was, “Oh no, they can’t do that to May.” She knows how bad May wants her to die,’ Ross said.

‘She didn’t want the stay. She was ready to go. She was at peace. She had accepted that whatever happened was not in her control. It was in God’s control.’

The stay was lifted by the US Supreme Court hours later.

‘Our hearts were up, and then our hearts were down,’ Ross said.

Pike was strapped to the gurney and given a lethal dose of pentobarbital. When that failed to kill her, a second was administered.

But she did not die. Witnesses recalled Pike snoring loudly behind a curtain as they were ushered out of the execution chambers.

‘When they said she’s still breathing, we got excited thinking that she was going to make it,’ Ross said.

Then on Monday evening, the family was told doctors had declared Pike brain dead.

‘They were taking her off the ventilator,’ Ross recalled. ‘They were going to let her go – let her die – at 1 o’clock.’

Again, Pike did not die. She woke up on Tuesday and began to talk – asking where she was and who the doctors were.

None of Pike’s family has been able to speak to her since. They have had to rely on information from Pike’s lawyers.

‘We know that Christa knows who she is and where she is,’ Ross said.

Pike’s attorneys say she faces a long road to recovery: she has pneumonia and a blood clot in her arm, cannot swallow and has no movement in her swollen arms.

Her death sentence also remains uncertain, with her lawyers renewing calls for clemency from Governor Bill Lee while death penalty opponents question the constitutionality of a second execution attempt.

‘That would be horrible. Torture. Don’t do that to a human,’ Ross said. ‘She has completed her execution. She went willingly.’

In her eyes, Pike’s sentence should be commuted to life without the possibility of parole.

‘None of us excuse what she did,’ Ross said. ‘We know she committed a horrible, heinous crime, and she has to pay the price for that.’

But Ross said Pike regretted her actions from the get-go, recalling a tearful conversation days after the murder in which she said: ‘Aunt Carrie, I don’t know why we did that. How could we do that?’

Based on what her niece has told her, she also feels Pike unfairly shouldered more blame than her accomplices.

‘She was 18 going on 10 emotionally. She was so naive and easily swayed,’ she said.

‘She’s not the monster she’s been portrayed to be,’ Ross insisted. ‘She is a sweet, kind, giving, loving person. She has grown up and matured to the point where all she wants to do is help people.’

But Ross’ characterization of Pike and her version of events sharply contradict the evidence presented at trial.

Jurors heard how Pike hatched a plan to lure and attack Slemmer because she believed Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend.

Slemmer begged for her life as Pike and Shipp slashed, beat, kicked and bludgeoned her.

Rather than showing instant regret, Pike showed off the piece of skull to other students, prosecutors said.

Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, isn’t fooled by Pike’s claims of remorse. She told the Daily Mail before the execution that she has never had an apology from Pike or her family in 31 years.

‘If a person’s very remorseful because she knows she’s going to get the death penalty and they’re going to act on it, then why didn’t she show her remorse years ago?’ she said.

Pike also offered no apology in her final statement from the execution chamber.

‘I think Christa probably felt like she had apologized enough,’ Ross said. ‘She has apologized and apologized. I’ve heard Christa apologize and say how bad she feels numerous times.’

‘She can’t take it back. She can’t make this whole problem go away. If she could, she would.’

Ross said she too would like to apologize to Martinez if ever given the chance.

‘I would tell May I’m very sorry that she’s had to suffer as much as she has. My heart goes out to her, and her family,’ Ross said.

‘I understand how May feels. I’m not blind to that. But we hurt, too. With all the back and forth they have done to her, can they not just stop?’