Court halts Tennessee’s first execution of a woman in 200 years

Tennessee’s execution of Christa Gail Pike for a murder she committed at age 18 was halted Wednesday about an hour before it was set to begin, as a federal appeals court sought to review whether her allegations of childhood sexual abuse and rape were fully considered at her sentencing.

This would have been the state’s first execution of a woman in at least 200 years.

Pike, now 50, and her boyfriend were convicted of stabbing and beating 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their classmate at a job training facility in Knoxville in 1995.

The case garnered widespread attention at the time in part because a pentagram that was carved on Slemmer’s body and other elements of the crime stoked fears of Satan worship during the “satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s.