Christa Pike, Tennessee’s only woman on death row, has refused to request a last meal ahead of her scheduled execution on Wednesday, which would make her the first woman executed in the state in more than 200 years.
Pike, 50, was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer and later received an additional 25-year sentence after being convicted of attempting to strangle fellow inmate Patricia Jones with a shoestring in 2001.
The Tennessee Department of Corrections confirmed that Pike has not requested a final meal, despite death row inmates typically being allowed to choose what they want to eat before their execution, WJHL 11 reported.
Her execution is expected to take place by lethal injection on Wednesday morning at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.
Pike’s lawyers had sought clemency from Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, citing abuse she suffered during childhood. Lee rejected the request on Monday and said he would not intervene in the execution.
‘Whether my clemency is granted or not, I am at peace,’ Pike wrote in a letter to NBC News before learning her last-ditch attempt had failed.
‘I am not afraid to die,’ she added. ‘I’m only nervous about the process.’
Pike was 18 when she, her then-boyfriend and a female friend lured Slemmer to an isolated area of the University of Tennessee’s Knoxville campus, where they tortured her to death on Jan. 12, 1995.
Six years later, in August 2001, Pike was convicted of attempting to murder Jones and had 25 years added to her sentence.
In March 2012, authorities also thwarted a plan to help Pike escape from the Tennessee Prison for Women in Nashville. The plot involved a corrections officer and a New Jersey personal trainer with whom Pike had been corresponding.
Ahead of her execution, Pike also spoke about Lindsay Clancy, saying she felt a ‘kinship’ with her and was ‘pleased’ after the accused child murderer received a mistrial, according to the Times of London.
‘We are both females who got into trouble because of uniquely female issues,’ she told the outlet of Clancy.
‘I was a mentally ill 18-year-old girl who committed a crime with two other individuals and I was the only one to receive this sentence. There are so many women who don’t get the help they need: me and others.’
Pike has also requested that an all-female lethal injection team carry out her execution, arguing that having men involved could traumatize her.
Tennessee corrections officials have said they may grant her request.