Christa Pike's Victim’s Mom Watched Failed Lethal Injection: 'I Did Not Take My Eyes Off of Her'

May Martinez, who lost her daughter, Colleen Slemmer, at the hands of Christa Pike back in 1995, watched closely as Tennessee tried and failed to carry out Pike’s execution on Wednesday, September 30.

“I stood in front of that window, and I watched her very, very carefully. I did not take my eyes off of her,” she said in a recent interview.

“I wanted her to remember who Colleen was and what they’ve done and never forget that thought, no matter where she goes,” she added.

Martinez and her husband, Raul, traveled 11 hours from Florida to attend the execution at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. The couple spoke about what they saw while driving back to Florida after Pike was taken from the prison to a hospital.

Martinez said the couple still don’t understand how so many things could have gone wrong. She said she had been informed that Pike “was taken to the hospital,” but the state’s corrections commissioner told her he “doesn’t know much about the drugs and if she was going to be alive or dead.”

“She has no remorse. She’s never had any remorse in 31 years,” Martinez told a publication, adding, “We can’t get justice for my daughter.”

Martinez also called the failed execution “a mess,” TMZ reported.

Although prison officials administered two doses of pentobarbital to Pike, she managed to survive. At 7:34 p.m., a witness reported hearing Pike say, “My arm feels like it’s about to burst open,” and media witnesses stated that Pike was still snoring when they left the area at 8:53 p.m.

Attorneys for Pike filed a court motion stating that she “could be heard crying, whimpering, and breathing loudly” while the doses were administered. Pike’s attorneys also wrote that upon arrival at the Nashville-area hospital, both of her arms were “swollen, burns, and blistered.”

Pike, 50, remains “critically ill,” unconscious, and on a ventilator, her attorneys said on Friday, October 2, according to a report.

Her attorney Randy Spivey said, “After having endured solitary confinement for more than 20 years and a full attempt to kill her by lethal injection, Christa has endured punishment greater than any other person in the history of the American death penalty. The governor must commute Christa’s sentence now.”

Gov. Bill Lee has directed that a third-party review be conducted into the failed execution, and all further executions have been halted through the end of the year. Before the execution, Pike’s attorneys had expressed concern that her blood disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and poor vein quality would result in significant pain during the execution.

In January 1995, Pike, who was 18 years old, conspired with two other individuals to lure Slemmer, a 19-year-old fellow student at the Knoxville Job Corps, to an isolated area on the University of Tennessee agricultural campus, where she was tortured and killed. Pike kept a piece of Slemmer’s skull, which Martinez has said is now in state custody, and she was sentenced to death in 1996.

Martinez has long pushed for Pike’s execution. “I just want Christa down so I can end it, relieve my daughter, so she finally can be resting,” Martinez said during a local television interview in Knoxville in 2021.