Social Media Obsession with Murderers - Christa Pike

It has been a wild day on X. I open the app to see Christa Pike’s face on every post. The debate this week is about the morality of the death penalty. Hundreds of posts claim the death penalty is inhumane, cruel, and barbaric, while supporters argue it’s what is necessary to punish the worst of us. Now, who is Christa Pike?

On January 12, 1995, Christa Pike (18) murdered Colleen Slemmer (19), a classmate at the Job Corps center in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Pike believed Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp (17). With Shipp and another student, Shadolla Peterson (18), Pike brought Slemmer into woods on the pretense of making peace.

Peterson kept watch while Pike and Shipp attacked Slemmer for roughly 30 minutes to an hour. Court records and Pike’s own confession describe her being thrown down, kicked and beaten, cut with a box cutter, and having her throat slashed. A pentagram was carved into her chest; Shipp later testified that he did the carving. When Slemmer tried to run, they caught her. Pike then smashed her skull with a large piece of asphalt. Pike took a fragment of the skull and later showed it to other students.

Slemmer’s body was found the next day, so badly beaten that a grounds worker first thought it was an animal. The dorm log showed the four had left together and only three returned. Pike, Shipp, and Peterson were arrested within about 36 hours. Pike confessed after learning Peterson was cooperating. A piece of skull was found in Pike’s jacket.

In 1996 a jury convicted Pike of first degree murder and sentenced her to death. She was 20, one of the youngest women given a death sentence in the modern era, and has remained Tennessee’s only woman on death row. Shipp, too young for the death penalty, received life in prison. Peterson, the lookout, received a much lighter sentence after cooperating.

Christa Pike was scheduled for lethal injection on September 30, 2026. HOWEVER, after two rounds of pentobarbital, the substance used to carry out lethal injections, she survived. She is currently in a hospital being treated.

As everyone who is ever on social media knows, the great debate about Lindsay Clancy’s innocence was polarizing. Thousands of women rushed to her defense on the internet, claiming mental instability caused her to strangle her three children. Another fresh example of murder defense.

What is it with this sudden victim complex for these evil women? WHO CARES if someone who smashed a girl’s head in, then carried a piece of her skull and showed people to brag, dies? We are a civilized society. We can not allow people who are capable of actions like this to exist. People are calling it barbaric that the lethal injections failed… That is still much less than she deserves for what she put that poor girl through.

With the specific argument about Pike, you see the typical arguments against the death penalty circulating. I’d like to comment on a few of these points, because trying to reply to 100 people on X just isn’t effective.

“The death penalty has been proven to be more expensive than a life sentence.”
If my money is going to be spent by the state, I prefer it allocated to removing the scum of the earth from society, not feeding them for 30+ years while we wait for our broken justice system to finally give them what they deserve.

“The state should not have the power to take someone’s life.”
Our world would be better off if we swiftly removed these people. I do not want to breathe the same air as someone who committed such a heinous crime that it warranted the death penalty.

“The death penalty does not deter these crimes.”
Deterrence is nice, but not the main reason why we should be doing it. It has nothing to do with would be criminals. The only person I’m concerned about is the perpetrator. This circles back around to “these people should not exist in our society.”

“How are we any better than the murderers if we are willing to do it ourselves?”
Innocence is why we’re better. The state isn’t going to grab someone off the street and put them in the death penalty chair. The people who commit these crimes did just that. They chose an innocent victim and made the last moments of their lives some of their worst. They forfeit their right to live when they stole someone else’s. A life for a life.

Bottom line is, society should not be burdened with having to care for the evil in this world. Research the requirements a crime must meet to be eligible for the death penalty and consider if you would like to financially support that person for the rest of their life.

Christa Pike is in the company of the Boston Marathon Bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Charleston church mass shooter, Dylann Roof, and the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter, Robert Gregory Bowers.

Is defending these criminals the hill you want to die on?