Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike, 50, is in critical condition after surviving her execution attempt on Wednesday. Pike reportedly survived two lethal doses of pentobarbital.
Journalist Helen Roberts, who interviewed Pike two decades ago for a women's lifestyle magazine, has been following the developments. Roberts met Pike in December 2006 at Tennessee's maximum-security prison for women, now known as Debra K Johnson Rehabilitation Center in Nashville.
Roberts, from Conwy in north Wales, described her conflicting encounter with Pike, noting it was difficult to reconcile the woman she met with the brutal murder Pike committed. Pike was 30 at the time of the interview and had served 11 years on death row, being the youngest woman in the United States to receive the death penalty.
Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Pike, then 18, and her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, beat, tortured, and murdered Slemmer, whom they met at a job training camp for troubled teenagers.