“We are both females who got into trouble because of uniquely female issues,” Pike said
Credit: J. Miles Cary, Knoxville News Sentinel; Greg Derr / POOL / AFP via Getty
NEED TO KNOW
- Christa Pike has commented on Lindsay Clancy’s mistrial days before her scheduled execution for a murder she committed when she was 18 years old
- “I feel a kinship with Lindsay. We are both females who got into trouble because of uniquely female issues,” Pike told U.K. newspaper The Times
- Clancy is expected to appear in court again on Tuesday, Sept. 29, while Pike is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection in Tennessee on Wednesday, Sept. 30
Christa Pike, who is scheduled to be executed Wednesday, Sept. 30, in Tennessee for a 1995 killing she committed at 18, has said she feels “a kinship” with Lindsay Clancy.
Pike, now 50, is expected to become the first woman the state has executed in over 200 years this week, over 30 years after she stabbed and beat fellow Knoxville Job Corps student Colleen Slemmer, 19, to death in January 1995.
Days before her scheduled execution by lethal injection, Pike spoke to U.K. newspaper The Times from prison in Nashville, Tenn.
During the conversation, she commented on Clancy’s highly publicized murder trial, which ended with a deadlocked jury earlier this month.
Credit: Tennessee Department of Correction via AP file
In January 2023, Clancy’s ex-husband, Patrick, discovered that she had strangled their three children — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan — in the family’s Duxbury, Mass., home before she attempted suicide.
Clancy’s defense has argued that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis brought on or exacerbated by overmedication and inadequate mental health care.
Pike told The Times of the case, “I feel a kinship with Lindsay. We are both females who got into trouble because of uniquely female issues. One thing is different, however, is that times have changed a lot on awareness of women’s issues since I was put on trial.”
“I am pleased she received a mistrial and is getting the help she needs. There are so many women who don’t get the help they need: me and others,” Pike added to the outlet of Clancy, who has been hospitalized in a psychiatric facility.
Pike’s lawyers conducted the interview with her in person on the paper’s behalf on Sept. 24 at the Debra K Johnson Rehabilitation Center, The Times noted.
The Tennessee Office of the Post-Conviction Defender didn’t immediately respond when contacted by PEOPLE for comment.
Credit: Jonathan Wiggs/The Boston Globe via Getty
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Clancy is expected to appear in court for the first time since her murder trial ended in a mistrial on Tuesday, Sept. 29.
During a status conference in Plymouth County Superior Court on Tuesday, prosecutors are expected to determine whether they plan to retry Clancy for the Jan. 24, 2023 murders of her three children, The Boston Globe reported. If they decide to proceed, Judge William F. Sullivan may set a date for the retrial, the Globe noted.
After her children’s deaths, Clancy attempted suicide by jumping out of a second-story window and was left paralyzed from the waist down.
Prosecutors, on the other hand, argued that Clancy willfully and knowingly murdered her children.
Pike, meanwhile, is accused of luring her victim, Colleen Slemmer, to a remote area of the University of Tennessee’s agricultural campus with her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, and their friend Shadolla Peterson, according to the Associated Press.
A pentagram was carved into Slemmer’s chest during the attack, and Pike removed part of her skull and took it as a souvenir.
Pike was subsequently convicted of murder and conspiracy to commit murder, the AP reported. Shipp received a life sentence with the possibility of parole because he was 17 and ineligible for the death penalty.
Peterson received six years of probation after pleading guilty to being an accessory after the fact, according to USA Today.
PEOPLE reported on Monday that Pike’s attorneys were asking Tenn. Gov. Bill Lee to commute her sentence to life without parole while also seeking relief from the U.S. Supreme Court, according to court documents obtained by PEOPLE.
The court documents stated that, if Pike were to be executed, she would be the only person Tennessee has executed in the modern era for a crime committed at age 18.
“More than 3,100 people in Tennessee have been convicted of first-degree homicide,” the court documents read. “Of those thousands, only eight were 18 years old at the time of offense and death-sentenced. All seven male death sentences predated Ms. Pike’s, and all have subsequently been vacated.”
The seven men committed the offenses between 1981 and 1991, according to the court documents.
Pike’s attorneys are fighting the execution in part by pointing to Pike’s history of childhood trauma, abuse and undiagnosed mental health conditions.
They claimed in the court documents that, at 18, her “immature, traumatized brain made her exceptionally vulnerable to impulses and extremely poor decisions.”
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