NJ Man Who Plotted Christa Pike Jailbreak Speaks Out After Botched Execution: Report

A Hunterdon County man who was convicted for trying to break infamous killer Christa Pike out of death row is now desperate after her botched execution, according to an NJ.com report.

Donald Kohut Jr., 48, of Flemington, was convicted in 2012 for his involvement in a scheme to break Pike out of the Tennessee Prison for Women, which ultimately failed. Their pen-pal relationship kicked off in 2011, which is around the time when Kohut began to make the 840-mile trek to visit Pike in prison roughly twice a month.

Now, following the headlining-making botched execution of Pike last week, Kohut says it was exactly what she feared would happen, according to the report.

“I’m the only family she has left,” Kohut said in a phone conversation with NJ.com last week.

Background

Pike, now 50, made national news in 1996 when she became the youngest woman to be put on death row.

A year earlier, Pike, then 18, and two others lured Colleen Slemmer, 19, into a secluded spot near the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where they beat, tortured, and ultimately murdered her. Pike carved a pentagram into Slemmer’s torso and kept a piece of her skull as a trophy.

While on death row, Pike tried to strangle another prisoner with a shoelace and was convicted of attempted murder.

Fifteen years after the original conviction, Pike and Kohut began writing back and forth. Roughly a year later, the ill-fated jailbreak scheme took place.

Kohut was charged in the jailbreak attempt, and later slapped with further charges related to identity and mortgage fraud. He was sentenced to prison and released in 2018.

This past Wednesday, Pike was to be given what was meant to be a lethal injection for her 1995 crime.

She was given two doses of pentobarbital, meant to be fatal. After she was still alive roughly two hours after she was expected to be dead, Tennessee authorities made the call to move her out of the prison and into a hospital.

Pike, still alive as of Tuesday, passed out roughly an hour after the injection and has yet to wake up, according to the Associated Press.

The botched execution has sparked an intense debate on Tennessee’s death sentence laws and practices.