The last time Ashley Sellars heard from her friend Krista Pike was earlier this week, when Pike texted her from her cell on death row in Tennessee.
Pike told her friend Sellars that she did not want any of her loved ones to be present Wednesday at her execution, saying "she did not want us to witness this experience."
Sellars finds it difficult to reconcile this woman, who was only known to be kind and protective of those around her, and the woman who committed a heinous crime 31 years ago.
Pike, now 50, was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, beat, tortured and killed Colleen Slimer, a 19-year-old girl they had met at a vocational training camp for troubled teenagers.
The crime caused widespread shock and a major media sensation in the city of Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1995, after the body of Colin Slimer was found with a five-pointed star engraved on her chest, a symbol associated in some circles with satanic practices and rituals.
Baek accused Collin of insulting her and trying to steal her lover. Two other camp residents later testified that Pike bragged about the crime before and after it occurred, and showed them a piece of Cullen's skull.
A year later, she was sentenced to death, while Shipp - who was 17 at the time - was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
After years of failed appeals, Pike's execution date was set for Wednesday.
If the sentence is carried out, she will be the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. Since the 1970s, only 18 women have been executed in the United States, compared to 1,663 men.
Colleen's mother stated that she wanted Pike to be executed so that her daughter could "finally be at peace."
However, Pike's lawyers, who filed a 226-page clemency petition, said they still hoped the execution would be postponed at the last minute, and UN human rights experts have also called for a halt to the execution.
Pike has a documented history of being sexually abused, neglected, and abandoned as a child. Her lawyers believe that if she had been convicted of the same crime today when she was a teenager, she would not have been sentenced to death.
In the years since her sentencing, the defense team has revealed details about her childhood that they say the jury did not have the opportunity to consider.
“It's puzzling that they didn't provide anything about her history of abuse and rape, even though they knew about it,” says Sandra Babcock, an expert on gender and death penalty issues at Cornell Law School, who worked on Pike's defense.
She adds that her case is “uniquely compelling, not only because of her poorly understood history of sexual violence, but because of the combination of this with her young age and mental illness.”
In 1995, Pike's defense team retained Dr. Diana McCoy, a forensic psychologist, who concluded that she had suffered severe neglect from her parents.
McCoy's report showed that Pike was physically and sexually abused by several of her stepfathers and boyfriends, and was raped several times, once when she was 11 years old, and another time when she was 17 years old.
Later, it was discovered that she had been repeatedly raped as a child by her grandmother's boyfriend. McCoy said Pike's mother did not believe her that these incidents occurred.
However, Pike's attorney did not call McCoy at trial to testify, nor did she call many of the witnesses she recommended. Those details emerged more than a decade later at a court hearing reviewing her case, when a new team of lawyers claimed her lawyers were incompetent, a claim the judge rejected.
In 2021, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in prison, and has been receiving treatment ever since.
Later, Dr. Bethany Brand, another forensic psychiatrist working for Pike's defense, who evaluated Pike in 2023, said her case was extremely rare because she was abused by many who should have protected her.
“Her childhood was filled with physical, sexual and emotional abuse,” she says. “She was sexually assaulted by a number of men, even before she reached school age.”
Brand says Pike had untreated manic episodes due to bipolar disorder and untreated post-traumatic stress disorder, adding, "These two things together greatly influenced her feeling threatened by the girl who ultimately killed her, and her lack of emotional control in that situation."
Babcock adds: "If they allow her to be executed, it means that the death penalty in this country is a farce. It is not for the worst criminals, but for those who receive the worst legal representation, who are the most affected and vulnerable."
Last year, the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled that Pike presented no circumstances that warranted a reduction in her sentence. All avenues of appeal have been exhausted, and a date has been set for her execution.
A federal appeals court previously ruled that the jury had already heard details of her difficult childhood through testimony from her mother, father and aunt during her trial, and that new evidence of her bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and brain damage was "mostly a repeat" of what the jury had already heard previously and would not change the verdict.
This dispute is somewhat similar to the case of notorious murderer Lisa Montgomery, whose lawyers also argued that she was a mentally ill abuse victim who deserved mercy.
Montgomery's legal appeals failed to reduce her sentence, and she was executed by lethal injection in Indiana in 2021.
Pike is scheduled to be executed on September 30 unless Tennessee Governor Bill Lee grants her a clemency, a decision that is unlikely to come until the last minute. The state governor has never granted pardon in a death penalty case before.
This week, the Tennessee Supreme Court denied Pike's request to stay the execution. Her lawyers say they are discussing next steps.
Pike requested that her team be all-female on the day of her execution, saying that being restrained by a group of men would increase her psychological trauma. The state of Tennessee has stated that the goal is for female guards to transport Pike to the prison where she will be executed, but has not guaranteed that.
Colleen's mother, May Martinez, supports Christa's execution.
“She committed the crime,” she told local television in Knoxville in 2021. “I think she has to pay for it,” and told the BBC this week that she still stands by that position.
"Pike has to suffer before she dies," Martinez told local station WBIR. "I would feel more comfortable if she felt the same pain that Colleen felt."
She added: "My heart breaks every day because I live this over and over again, and I can't take it anymore, and I want this to happen before I die."
“Not a day goes by that I don't think about Colleen and how she died and how hard it was,” she says. “I just want Krista to rest so I can get this over with, and comfort my daughter, so she can finally be at peace.”
The Justice Alliance, a victims' rights advocacy group, raised money to help Martinez travel to Tennessee to witness the execution.
That sentence was determined by a jury of Pike's peers, which is what the Cullen family would like, said the group's executive director, Robert Braswell.
“These horrific things happen in your youth, and then those traumas travel through you, into our society, and cause harm to someone else,” she adds.
Sellars met Pike in prison while she was serving a 25-year sentence for her involvement in an armed robbery resulting in murder. They spoke through the food slots in the doors of their cells in the maximum security unit. Sellars now works as an advocate for justice reform and for victims of crime.
"People need to realize that every human life matters, right? They need to realize that Colleen's life mattered," she says.
She adds: "I think that at this moment, Krista is fighting for her life to have value, much more than she is fighting to survive."
