A MOTHER IS STILL WAITING FOR JUSTICE FOR HER DAUGHTER — COLLEEN SLEMMER’S STORY LIVES ON
More than three decades after 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer was killed in Tennessee, her mother, May Martinez, is once again facing the pain of seeing her daughter’s case return to the headlines.
For May Martinez, January 12, 1995, is a date that can never simply become part of the past.
That was the night her 19-year-old daughter, Colleen Slemmer, was killed in Knoxville, Tennessee — a tragedy that would change her family forever.
More than 31 years later, Colleen’s name has once again become part of a national conversation after the state of Tennessee failed in its attempt to carry out the execution of Christa Pike, the woman sentenced to death for her role in Colleen’s killing.
For May, the event was supposed to represent the final chapter of a decades-long wait for justice.
Instead, it left her facing another painful uncertainty.
A DAUGHTER WHO HAD HER WHOLE LIFE AHEAD OF HER
Colleen had moved to Tennessee in 1994 to take part in a Job Corps program. Her mother has remembered her as a kind and easygoing young woman who cared about helping children and had an interest in computers.
She was only 19.
On January 12, 1995, Colleen was lured into a wooded area in Knoxville by Pike and others she knew through the Job Corps program.
According to court records, Colleen was subjected to a brutal ᴀssault before she was killed. Pike was later convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death.
For May, however, the legal language could never capture what was lost.
Colleen was not simply a victim in a court case.
She was her daughter.
THREE DECADES OF WAITING
Pike remained on Tennessee’s death row for decades as her case moved through the appeals process.
When an execution date was finally set for September 30, 2026, May and her husband, Raul, traveled from Florida to Tennessee to witness what they believed would be the final stage of a painful journey.
They reportedly spent hours waiting at Riverbend Maximum Security Insтιтution before the execution began.
May watched from the witness room as officials attempted to administer lethal doses of pentobarbital to Pike.
But something went terribly wrong.
Pike survived the procedure.
Witnesses reported that she continued breathing and moving after the first injection, and a second dose was administered. The execution was ultimately halted, and Pike was transported to a hospital for emergency medical treatment.
For May, the experience was devastating.
She had traveled hundreds of miles believing she would finally see justice carried out for her daughter.
Instead, she left without the closure she had expected.
“THIS ISN’T JUSTICE FOR COLLEEN”
After witnessing the failed execution, May spoke publicly about her anguish.
She said she watched Pike throughout the procedure and was deeply upset that the sentence could not be carried out.
In an interview with the ᴀssociated Press, Martinez said she did not feel that she had received justice for Colleen.
She later told PEOPLE that she and her husband had spent roughly 12 hours waiting before witnessing the failed procedure.
The moment she had imagined for more than three decades had turned into something completely different.
“I think that the state owes me a big apology,” Martinez said, according to ABC News.
PIKE’S CONDITION HAS CHANGED AGAIN
In the days following the failed execution, Pike’s condition was initially described as critical. Her lawyers said she had been unconscious and placed on a ventilator, with serious swelling and injuries to her arms.
But her condition later changed.
On October 6, Pike’s attorneys said she had regained consciousness and was speaking.
Her prognosis remained unclear, and she continued receiving critical medical care. Her lawyers renewed their request for Tennessee Governor Bill Lee to commute her death sentence to life imprisonment without parole.
Meanwhile, Tennessee has halted executions for the remainder of 2026 while officials conduct a review of what happened.
The state’s prison commissioner, Frank Strada, has also announced his resignation following the failed execution.
A Tennessee judge has since ordered state officials to preserve evidence connected to the execution attempt, including records and other materials that could help determine what went wrong.
BUT COLLEEN REMAINS AT THE CENTER OF THE STORY
Amid the legal arguments, medical developments and national debate over capital punishment, it can be easy to lose sight of the person at the heart of the original case.
Colleen Slemmer was 19 years old.
She had a mother who loved her.
She had interests, hopes and plans.
And she had a future that was taken away from her.
For May Martinez, those facts have never changed.
The pᴀssage of more than three decades has not erased Colleen’s memory. If anything, the failed execution has brought the old wounds back to the surface.
May traveled to Tennessee expecting to witness the conclusion of a case that had shaped her life since 1995.
Instead, she found herself leaving with more questions.
A MOTHER’S WAIT CONTINUES
The failed execution has also created a new chapter in a case that May believed had finally reached its end.
Tennessee officials are now investigating the procedure, while Pike remains hospitalized. The judge’s preservation order could become important as questions continue about how the execution was carried out.
What happens next remains uncertain.
But one thing is not.
Colleen Slemmer’s name has not disappeared.
More than three decades after her life was cut short, her mother is still speaking about her daughter, still remembering who she was and still asking for the justice she believes Colleen deserved.
Behind the headlines about a failed execution is the story of a 19-year-old woman whose life ended far too soon — and a mother who has carried that loss for more than 30 years.
For May Martinez, the story never really ended on January 12, 1995.
And it did not end on September 30, 2026, either.
Colleen was 19.
She had a future.
Her mother has never stopped remembering her.
💔 STELLA PARTON BREAKS HER SILENCE — What She Said About Dolly’s Health Has Fans Looking Back
Dolly Parton’s Sister Breaks Silence What Really Happened - GMT - G1
Stella Parton was born May 4, 1949, the sixth of twelve children raised by Robert Lee and Avie Lee Parton in Sevierville, Tennessee — a household defined by noise, limited money, and almost no privacy, the kind of environment that produced strong, determined personalities.
Stella was one of them.
By seven, she was appearing alongside her older sister Dolly on a Knoxville television program; by her teens, she was writing her own songs, though marriage and motherhood pulled music to the margins of her life for a stretch.
The dream never fully disappeared.
In 1967, she recorded a gospel album with her mother and sisters, and later worked clubs in Washington, D.C., before founding her own record label in 1975 and releasing “I Want to Hold You in My Dreams Tonight,” which climbed to number nine on the country charts.
Long before any of that commercial success, Stella had already shown a willingness to take positions others avoided.
At 26, amid backlash against Australian singer Olivia Newton-John for winning recognition in country music, Stella recorded “Ode to Olivia” in her defense — a stand that offered her no career benefit and real risk of criticism, but one she took anyway simply because she believed staying silent was the wrong choice.
That instinct defined the rest of her career: hits like “The Danger of a Stranger” and “Steady as the Rain” (written by Dolly) built a genuine, independent following, including in the U.K., while Stella also worked in New York theater and spoke openly, often controversially, about poverty, domestic violence, and the treatment of women in the music industry.
She was named the Christian Country Music Association’s Female Vocalist of the Year in 2004.
Through all of it, she remained defined publicly, more often than not, as simply “Dolly’s little sister” — a label she spent five decades quietly proving didn’t tell the full story.
That same directness is why her comments in the fall of 2025 carried real weight.
Stella had never positioned herself as the family’s image manager or spokesperson; she was, by reputation, someone who believed difficult truths shouldn’t stay hidden indefinitely.
What she described wasn’t dramatic or accusatory — it was a portrait of a woman who had spent years prioritizing everyone else’s needs over her own.
The context mattered.
Carl Dean, Dolly’s husband of nearly sixty years, died in March 2025 at 82, after a long illness during which Dolly had devoted herself almost entirely to his care.
She later acknowledged that in the process, she’d neglected her own health significantly.
The loss reverberated through the whole extended family — the Partons had lost three brothers in the years surrounding this period, compounding grief that, for a family that had once crowded twelve children into a single small home, meant losing pieces of a shared childhood one after another.
Stella herself went seven years without releasing new music during this stretch, later describing the period simply as one shaped by sorrow, while still speaking about the importance of finding moments of laughter within it.
Looking back, one moment reads very differently in hindsight than it did at the time: in late September 2025, Dolly postponed her planned Las Vegas residency, citing health challenges — a rare cancellation for a performer whose six-decade career had included very few of them.
At the time, most fans treated it as a minor, temporary setback.
Stella’s later reflections suggested the signs had actually been building for some time, visible to family in ways the public smile made easy to miss.
That concern crystallized publicly not long after, when Dolly’s younger sister Frieda posted a simple request on Facebook asking fans to pray for Dolly.
What looked at first like an ordinary, well-meaning gesture spread rapidly, sparking widespread speculation about how serious Dolly’s condition actually was.
Dolly herself responded directly within days, appearing in a video from a Grand Ole Opry commercial shoot, insisting with her familiar humor that she wasn’t finished yet — the now widely remembered “I ain’t dead yet” moment that briefly quieted public concern.
In the months that followed, the pattern repeated: reassuring updates about kidney stones, dehydration, and treatment, paired with continued work on new projects, right up until Dolly Parton’s death on August 25, 2026, at 80.
Looking back across that full timeline — the postponed residency, the family’s public worry, Stella’s own account of a sister who consistently deprioritized her own wellbeing — it becomes easier to see what the people closest to Dolly understood well before the rest of the world did: that the warmth and resilience the public saw every time she appeared on camera came at a real, largely invisible cost.
