Tadaryl Shipp Remains in a Tennessee Prison After Parole Denial as Christa Pike Survives Execution Attempt

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Tadaryl Shipp, convicted of helping torture and kill a fellow Job Corps student in 1995, remains in a West Tennessee prison after the state denied him parole last year, even as the case of his co-defendant, Christa Pike, has thrown Tennessee's death penalty schedule into doubt.

Shipp, now in his late 40s, has been in custody since January 1995. A Knox County jury convicted him in 1997 of first-degree murder in the killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Because he was 17 at the time, jurors could not consider a death sentence. He is serving life with the possibility of parole, plus 25 years to be served consecutively, at the Northwest Correctional Complex in Tiptonville.

The Tennessee Board of Parole declined to release him in October 2025. A spokesperson said the board acted "due to the seriousness of the offense." Four members were required for a final decision. An earlier review by board member Tim Gobble had recommended another look in October 2030. The full board set the next hearing for October 2031 and urged Shipp to finish programming tied to a "Strong R" risk assessment and to keep a clean institutional record.

That timeline now runs alongside a separate crisis in Pike's case. Pike, 50, was scheduled to die by lethal injection on Sept. 30, 2026, at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. She would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years, and she is the only woman on the state's death row. The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way that morning by overturning a lower-court stay about an hour before the execution was set to begin.

It did not end as the state planned. Officials administered two doses of pentobarbital. Pike remained alive, her attorneys said, with a heartbeat and audible snoring. Attorney Kelly Gleason, relaying what co-counsel Randy Spivey reported from the death chamber, said, "She's alive and snoring." Lawyers told courts she had not lost consciousness and needed immediate medical care. Media witnesses described ragged breathing, and one said Pike lifted her head and complained of a burning spot.

The Tennessee Department of Correction said it followed "every step of the State's lawful, established execution protocol" approved by the attorney general's office, that the protocol did not allow further procedures, and that Pike was taken to an off-site medical facility. Gov. Bill Lee ordered "a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred" and said the one remaining execution on the 2026 calendar would not go forward this year. As of early Oct. 1, Pike's condition and exact location were not fully public.

Pike had spoken to The New York Times earlier in September about the date. "I run through this execution every day in my heart," she said. "Whatever happens on Sept. 30, this will not be my hell anymore." She has not denied guilt in Slemmer's killing.

The crime that put both of them in prison happened on the night of Jan. 12, 1995. Slemmer, Pike, Shipp and Shadolla Peterson, all residents of the Knoxville Job Corps center, went to the University of Tennessee agricultural campus. Prosecutors said Pike and Shipp, who were dating, lured Slemmer there on the pretense of smoking marijuana. Pike believed Slemmer was interested in Shipp.

Once there, Pike turned on Slemmer. Over roughly 30 minutes to an hour, Slemmer was stabbed, cut, beaten and bludgeoned as she tried to run. She died at the scene. Her body was found the next morning in brush. Days later, Pike told police what she had done. Shipp also admitted he had helped in the attack.

Pike, then 18, was convicted in 1996 of premeditated first-degree murder and conspiracy and sentenced to death. Shipp's age kept capital punishment off the table and, according to accounts from the time, shaped how jurors weighed his punishment. Peterson, then 18, cooperated as an informant, received a six-year sentence with credit for time served and was placed on probation. She has not remained a public figure.

Slemmer was from Florida. An undated family photo released through her mother, May Martinez, has circulated for years as the public face of the victim. Martinez has spoken in past coverage about the loss; the parole board's 2025 decision cited the gravity of the offense rather than a new public statement from the family.

Shipp's 2025 hearing was held at the Tiptonville prison where he is housed. The board's written reason was narrow: the seriousness of the offense. It did not grant release on the basis of time served, his age at the crime or his prison record. The next formal review is six years out, in October 2031. Until then, the conditions the board set are programming and conduct, not a promise of release.

The two cases have always moved on different tracks. Shipp's sentence includes a parole date. Pike's did not, until a failed execution and a governor's review froze the calendar. Legal fights over Tennessee's lethal-injection protocol, Pike's medical condition and whether another attempt can proceed are now in front of courts and the governor's office. None of that changes Shipp's custody status.

For Knoxville, the killing has remained a reference point for three decades: four teenagers from a jobs program, a campus path, a body found at dawn. The 1997 verdicts split the outcomes — death for Pike, life with parole for Shipp, probation for Peterson — and those outcomes are still the ones on the books.

What happens next for Pike depends on the third-party review Lee ordered and on whatever courts decide about a second attempt. What happens next for Shipp is already scheduled. Barring a change in his sentence or a successful later bid, he will still be at Northwest Correctional Complex when the board looks at his case again in the fall of 2031. He will have been in custody for more than 36 years by then.