During the last few weeks, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about Christa Pike. Not as a murderer or as the youngest woman sentenced to death in modern Tennessee, whose execution is scheduled for Wednesday. The Christa Pike I remember is the vulnerable, anxious, eager-to-please young woman I met in 2006.

I can still remember the smell as I walked into Tennessee’s maximum-security Prison for Women, now known as Debra K Johnson Rehabilitation Center, in Nashville. It was pungent – a strange mix of barbecue turkey cooking and strong bleach. The type of smell you might recognise in a hospitality kitchen, when food and cleaning products mingle.

The huge red-brick maximum-security facility was the kind of building I’d only ever seen in films. There were no rickety old bars, but instead top-of-the-line, thick-glass security doors – very thick, and so clean. After being checked in, my colleague Brad Hunter and I didn’t have to walk far, just a few feet into another spotless but highly secure room with a window.

And on the other side of that window, she was already waiting for us.

Pike and her boyfriend were convicted over the 1995 killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a classmate at Knoxville Job Corps. Prosecutors stated that Pike feared Slemmer was a love rival and lured her to a secluded area, where the pair tortured and killed her.

The case attracted widespread attention owing to the brutal nature of the killing, the ages of those involved, and the fact that a satanic symbol was carved into the victim’s body. Eleven years later, Christa Pike, then 30, agreed to meet us to talk about the horrific crime she had committed and how she coped with being the youngest woman on death row.

Dressed all in white, she looked anxious, but I also remember lots of smiles and eye contact. She also had a very gentle demeanour which surprised me. I had walked into that prison expecting to meet a monster; instead, I found myself sitting opposite a vulnerable, nervous young woman, desperate to be liked.

Her long, thick, frizzy curls were immaculate, albeit a little dated. Her face was full of make-up, with long, carefully filed nails. I told her she looked pretty, and she visibly bounced off the compliment. Within minutes, she was so relaxed that she jumped onto the ledge on her side of the window so she could get as close to us as possible. It was difficult to reconcile this woman with everything I had read about the murder she had committed murder when she was 18.

Time was limited, but she wasn’t afraid of talking, and she quickly started to explain her childhood. ‘My life turned bad before I was even old enough to realise,’ she said.

Growing up in Beckley, a small, working-class city in southern West Virginia, in the heart of Appalachia. Young Christa had been severely neglected by both of her parents, Carissa Hansen and Glenn Pike, who she said were alcoholics. She was raped several times, once when she was just 11 by a neighbour and again at 17 by a stranger who she said dragged her into the woods. She was close to her grandmother and went to live with her for some time. But when Christa was 12, her grandmother was diagnosed with cancer and died. This, she said, catapulted her into a period of rage and suicidal thoughts. Eventually, at 18, she joined the Job Corps, a US government programme for disadvantaged young people.

“I wanted to be a nurse,” she told me. “I was looking forward to this opportunity and getting myself sorted.”

I was meeting her in my capacity as the real-life editor of a popular UK women’s magazine and she particularly liked that I was from the women’s press. We talked about hair and beauty products, and it was striking how important her appearance was to her. In a place where almost every part of her life was controlled, her appearance seemed to be one of the few things she could still claim as her own. She took obvious pride in her long, thick curls, her carefully filed nails and the make-up she ordered from the prison catalogue.

“I take care of my hair; it’s the only thing that makes me feel feminine in here,” she explained, still wanting to feel pretty and, perhaps most importantly, like a woman rather than a prisoner.

When we broached the subject of her crime, Christa became very matter-of-fact

It was an unexpected subject to be discussing with a woman on death row, but listening to her excitedly talk about beauty products, it was surprisingly easy to see the young woman rather than the murderer that she was known as.

She had already spent 11 years in prison by the time I met her. No contact with anyone, she said, explaining how much she missed a hug, how desperate she was for human touch. “You don’t realise how much you need it (a hug) until it goes,” she told me.

She was still in touch with her parents, speaking to them on the phone for 30 minutes every Sunday. She relied on them to put money into her prison account so she could buy snacks, and other bits from the prison catalogue. As we talked through the speaker system, I was very aware of the strange situation; our conversation often felt surprisingly ordinary.

When we broached the subject of her crime, Christa became very matter-of-fact. Christa had met Colleen Slemmer, the 19-year-old student she murdered at the Knoxville Job Corps, when they were living in the same building. As Christa spoke about her, I didn’t see any obvious evidence of emotion, but perhaps by then she had found a way of emotionally detaching herself from what she had done.

Colleen was a bright young woman who volunteered with disabled children at school. In past interviews, her mum May would say how Colleen loved computers and would take them apart and rebuild them with her stepfather. One of her favourite T-shirts read “computer geek”. Her family later had the shirt made into a teddy bear, which they still keep.

“I know I did an absolutely terrible thing but I can’t turn back the clocks,” Christa told me.

Christa said she and Colleen had never got on. “We had a big personality clash and we just didn’t like one another,” she said. As the months passed, Christa became convinced that Colleen was jealous of her relationship with her boyfriend and the two always bickered.

“I’d had enough of her; I just wanted to beat her up, teach her a lesson,” she said. “I know I did an absolutely terrible thing but I can’t turn back the clock,” Christa told me. ‘I had no intention of killing her; I was out of control, it was like something took over inside of me,’ she said.

Pike was convicted of first-degree murder the following year and sentenced to death, making her the youngest woman to be put on death row in modern US history. Since her sentence, her history as a victim of sexual abuse and mental health challenges has come to light, but now aged 50 and after more than 30 years on death row, Christa will today (Wednesday) be executed.

In a letter to NBC this week, she wrote: “I am at peace. I’m not afraid to die; I am only nervous about the process.”

If she had been given the right support, the right adults to care for her, I believe her life could have been very different

The woman I met 20 years ago was deeply troubled and had devastatingly gone down the wrong path. If she had been given the right support, the right adults to care for her, I believe her life could have been very different. “I just hope someone will see that if I had help when I needed it I might never have done what I did,” she told me.

I remember leaving that prison and feeling so much sadness and pity. Her lawyers are still arguing that the neglect and abuse she experienced as a child should have been given greater weight in deciding her fate. Pike, who has never denied her role in Slemmer’s killing, was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said Pike’s lawyers at the penalty phase of her trial did not present the jury with what he said was critical information about her past or argue that her age should be a consideration.

“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realise the gravity of what I’d done. Even more to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime,” Pike said in a statement included in her clemency petition. However, on Monday, Governor of Tennessee Bill Lee rejected her plea and said he will not intervene in Christa Pike’s execution.

Soon after my visit, she found my office address and sent me a card thanking me for being so nice to her and treating her like a woman. It was touching. But sadly, after many house moves and many boxes, I can no longer find the card. I sent her a copy of the article, and she never replied. Sometimes I thought about writing to her again over the years, but life got busy, and before you know it, 20 years have passed, and she is back in the news once more.

The Death Penalty Information Center said 275 people nationwide have been executed for crimes they committed at age 18, 19 or 20 in the modern death penalty era, but that death sentences for those in that age group have become increasingly rare. The last woman executed in Tennessee was in 1820, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Martin Eve, charged with being an accessory to murder, was executed by hanging.

“If Christa Pike was tried today, I do not believe a jury that knew about the documented sexual abuse and neglect she experienced as a child would sentence her to death,” Robin M Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said. Ferrell said other 18-year-olds who were sentenced to death in Tennessee have since had their sentences reduced.

I met Christa in the quiet time before she became a headline again. Twenty years on, I still find myself wondering how different her life might have been if someone had reached her before it was too late.

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