The only woman on Tennessee's death row has been scheduled for execution more than 30 years after she brutally killed a teenage romantic rival and showed off a piece of the victim's skull to schoolmates.

The Tennessee Supreme Court scheduled the execution of 49-year-old Christa Gail Pike on Sept. 30, 2026. Pike was just 18 years old when she and two others lured 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer to the woods in Knoxville on Jan. 12, 1995, and carried out the attack that made national headlines for its brutality.

When a groundskeeper found Slemmer's body the next day, the teen had been beaten, stabbed, and bludgeoned, and had a pentagram carved into her chest, court records say.

If Pike's execution is carried out, she would become the first woman executed in Tennessee in 200 years and just

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