Mom of Pike Victim on Botched Execution: 'They F---ed Up'

Colleen Slemmer's family marked what would've been her 51st birthday last month, more than three decades after her killing turned her name into a brief national headline. Her mother, May Martinez, says she still thinks of her daughter as a warm, easygoing young woman who loved bowling, roller-skating, computers, and volunteering with the Special Olympics, reports the New York Times. Slemmer was 19 and enrolled in a Job Corps program in Knoxville in 1995 when classmate Christa Pike, Pike's boyfriend, and a friend lured her into nearby woods, tortured her, and killed her.

Pike, the only woman on Tennessee's death row, was supposed to be executed on Wednesday. After two doses of lethal injection of pentobarbital failed to kill her, the state halted the procedure; she's now in critical condition at a hospital. Martinez, who approved of Pike being put to death, isn't happy with how the botched execution went down. "They f---ed up," she tells NBC News, when asked what message she had for Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and the state's attorney general. She also said of Pike that she continued to show zero remorse for her daughter, noting that ahead of the execution attempt, Pike said "nothing ... about what happened ... to Colleen."

Martinez also tells People that she was watching very closely during the procedure. "I did not take my eyes off of [Pike]," she says. "I wanted her to remember who Colleen was and what they've done and never forget that thought, no matter where she goes." Her husband, Raul, is baffled about how everything went so awry with the execution. "A complete waste of time," he says. "It sounds cruel, but how do you botch up killing somebody?"

Martinez says, ultimately, she's distressed that her daughter hasn't been the focus of the headlines surrounding the case. "The criminals get so much attention. Why?" she says, per WBIR. "[Slemmer] has been lost in this." She adds that Tennessee "should work with their victims more instead of not helping anybody." Now, Martinez keeps her daughter's ornaments and childhood books close to help keep her memory alive, saying quietly, per the Times, "Nobody remembers Colleen."