The convicted murderer who will be the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than two centuries said she feels a “kinship” with killer mom Lindsay Clancy — claiming she was also driven by mental illness.
Christa Pike, now 50, was just 18 when she lured 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer to a wooded area on the University of Tennessee campus in Knoxville and horrifically tortured her to death with the help of her boyfriend in 1995.
She now blames her mental health — as well as racism, because her boyfriend at the time was black.
“I feel a kinship with Lindsay,” Pike told the Times of London of the mom who blames postpartum psychosis for her killing her three young children.
“We are both females who got into trouble because of uniquely female issues,” said Pike, who is scheduled to die by lethal injection Wednesday
Pike is “pleased” Clancy received a mistrial after one holdout juror refused to find her not guilty by means of insanity — and believes jurors would have been more sympathetic toward her case today “because science about brain development has evolved.”
“There are so many women who don’t get the help they need: me and others,” she said in a written interview through her attorneys.
“One thing is different, however, is that times have changed a lot on awareness of women’s issues since I was put on trial,” she added.
“There are so women who don’t get the help they need: me and others.”
Unlike Clancy, whose defense team claimed she was suffering from postpartum psychosis when she strangled her three young children at her Massachusetts home in 2023, Pike’s attorneys never presented her history of mental illness or abuse during her trial.
Pike also said she believes she was punished so severely because her boyfriend at the time, Tadaryl Shipp, was black.
“While racism has not gone away, it has diminished some. I think I was more harshly judged because of my relationship with Tadaryl.”
