Ep. 135 | The UNFINISHED Case Of Colleen Slemmer & Christa Pike

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  In the fall of 1994, two young women arrived at the same job training center in Knoxville, Tennessee. One was a 19-year-old from Florida who wanted to work with computers. And the other was 18, hoping for a fresh start. But within three months, one of them would be dead. And within two years, the other would be sentenced to die. This is the story of Colleen Slemmer and Krista Pike. Crime, conspiracy, cults, serial killers, and murder. All things that I love to consume, and I know you do too. You sick, twisted, beautiful, intellectually-minded freak. Today is a highly, highly requested video, mostly because of what's been in the news lately. So without further ado, let's un-buckle our seatbelts, go march right down the highway,

• 2:12Speaker 02

  slam on the brakes, and bust through the windshield into this case together.

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• 3:55Speaker 02

  And let's get back to it. Colleen Slemer was born on September 20, 1975, in Orange Park, Florida, just outside of Jacksonville, where her mother, May Martinez, and her stepfather, Raul Martinez, raised her with her sister. And they were a close family. Her mother said of her, quote, "Colleen loved doing things. She babysat. She loved to do anything with kids. And I think it was part of me because I had a daycare for 40 years," unquote. Now, Colleen also loved computers. She and Raul were always putting computers together and taking them apart again. And the two of them also went out shrimping together in the early mornings. And Colleen went roller skating every weekend, run marathons, and loved to go bowling.

• 4:39Speaker 02

  And at school, she gave up her lunch period every day to work with and feed autistic students and students in wheelchairs. And she also volunteered with the Special Olympics, spending her time with children who had special needs. She was easygoing and playful, and her teachers found her quiet and gentle. And she was also independent and quick to help anyone who needed it. Now, Colleen wanted to make computers her career. So she signed up for Job Corps, a federal program that gives young people free job training, hoping to learn and make a better life for herself. Now, the center she enrolled in was in Knoxville, Tennessee, which meant leaving Florida at 19 years old.

• 5:21Speaker 02

  May wasn't excited to see her go away from home, but Colleen had set her mind on it. So Colleen said her goodbyes on Halloween 1994 and set off for Tennessee to start her training. So in Knoxville, Colleen's fellow students at the center included an 18-year-old named Krista Pike. Now, Krista Gale Pike was born two months premature on March 10, 1976, in Beckley, West Virginia. Her parents were Carissa Hansen and Glenn Pike, but neither of them were home much. And Carissa was drinking heavily and using drugs during those years. So Krista was raised mostly by her father's mother, Delfa. And the two of them were inseparable.

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  Now, Krista came to see Delfa as the one person who ever loved her. And Krista's aunt, Carrie Ross, said Carissa and Glenn's house was so filthy that as a baby, Krista would be, quote, "crawling around through piles of dogstool all over the house," unquote. And as a toddler, Krista had seizures severe enough to put her in the hospital. And Ross was at a bar with Carissa when Carissa got the call about the seizures and said she didn't want to leave. She seemed just totally unconcerned about her own child. So Krista's parents divorced twice. And after the second time, Carissa left North Carolina with a trucker she'd met over CB radio, the two-way radio truckers use to talk to each other on the road.

• 6:48Speaker 02

  And Ross said Carissa set no rules for Krista. And by age nine, Krista was growing marijuana pots at home, which Carissa smoked with her to, quote-unquote, "establish a friendship," as she put it. So in 1988, Delfa would die of cancer, and Krista would be devastated. And at 12, she overdosed on pills in an attempt to end her own life. However, Carissa never got her much psychiatric help afterward. And after that, Krista bounced between two states, living with her mother in North Carolina and her father in West Virginia, switching whenever one of them felt like she was too much to care for at the time. So she kept changing schools as she grew up, and she was held back twice in the third grade and the seventh grade.

• 7:32Speaker 02

  And Glenn admitted picking his second family over her. And by 1989, he'd completely thrown her out of his home again. Now, Carissa would have numerous boyfriends over the years, and one of them would whip Krista with a belt, and Carissa had him arrested. And at 12 years old, Krista pulled a butcher knife on him. And at 14, Krista had a boyfriend of her own living with her, with Carissa's permission. Later, North Carolina's Social Service Agency took Krista out of the home for a time after finding the man Carissa was living with was abusing her physically and sexually. Now, around then, Krista wrote a letter to a friend saying she planned to end her own life. And among her reasons, she listed that a neighbor had raped her when she was 11.

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  Now, that man was prosecuted, and he pleaded to a reduced charge. It was also suggested that her grandmother's boyfriend had sexually abused her when she was very small, though some in her family, including her father, doubted it. So Carissa said that from the age of eight, Krista had been out of control. And her aunt had once called her a pathological liar. And in North Carolina, Krista broke into a community center and stole some candy. So a juvenile court put her on probation, and she broke the terms. The counselor who supervised her saw a, quote-unquote, "smart girl with a lot of potential, but one who was drinking and huffing fumes from aerosol cans." So in November of 1991, at the age of 15 years old,

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  Krista was sent to a juvenile evaluation center in Swanonona, a state training school in the mountains near Asheville. Now, her stay was supposed to last months. But every time she got close to release, she broke another rule. She ended up staying more than a year, and staff members came to believe she was sabotaging herself so she wouldn't have to go home. And in that time, she was allowed 60 visits, and she got eight. Christina Hargis, a counselor who met with her every week, found her, quote-unquote, "struggling and depressed." So at Swanonona, Krista told one of her supervisors, Onus Perry, that she had been abused verbally, physically, and sexually, and Perry believed her. Krista often stayed up late, helping Perry clean,

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  talking about how she wished her mother would love her more. And her teacher, Marshall Muse, found her defiant at first, then made her his teacher's aide, and remembered her as delightful with a sense of humor. And she also earned her GED there. But Perry also once walked into a darkened hobby room to find Krista and some of the other girls holding hands and chanting with a pentagram drawn on a piece of paper. A bit suspicious. Now, Krista left Swanonona in March of 1993, planning to study nursing, and the staff helped her apply to the Job Corps. She'd liked going along to work with her mother, a licensed practical nurse, and tending to the elderly patients in nursing homes.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  And then at 17 years old, Krista was attacked by a stranger as she walked along a road at night, and he raped her. And she would get away to a friend's house and was taken to the hospital, where a rape kit was collected. But the man was never caught. And shortly before her 18th birthday, Glenn signed papers that would have let someone adopt her, though that never happened. So in the fall of 1994, at 18 years old, Krista left North Carolina for the Job Corps Center in Knoxville, hoping to become a nurse and to make a fresh start. And her health instructor there found her smart and nonviolent, and she finished her coursework, though she often slept through class.

• 11:08Speaker 02

  Now, another student, Kim Rhodes, became a close friend, and said the two of them both felt like they didn't fit in. Now Rhodes said she felt safe with Krista. But it wasn't long before Krista fell in with two other students, to Daryl Ship and Shadola Peterson. So Ship came from Memphis to the Knoxville Job Corps in 1994. Born in November 1977, he turned 17 that fall. Before he ever got there, one girlfriend said he'd hit, slapped, punched, and kicked her, and she and another former girlfriend both described him as abusive, manipulative, and controlling. Now, at the center, Ship belonged to the Gangster Disciples, a street gang.

• 11:51Speaker 02

  Now, another student, Andrew Trace, described gang members going into students' rooms, covering them with sheets, and beating them. And Trace said he was scared of Ship every day, and that Ship once tried to throw him from a bridge by the center. And when he did show up, he was often high, hungover, or drunk, and he was loud and rude. Not exactly an outstanding citizen. And soon after arriving, he and Krista started dating, and she said nobody had ever protected her the way he did. Now Ship called her his best friend, a caring girl who was also edgy, with mood swings in which she'd hit him even when he couldn't see a reason for doing so. However, people around them saw Ship as the one in control.

• 12:36Speaker 02

  Tyrone Comfort, one of Krista's closest friends at the center, heard the two of them argue many times, and sometimes saw bruises and marks on her. And Ship even threatened Comfort. And another student, Jermaine Bishop, remembered the couple fighting often. Krista was more serious about the relationship than Ship was. Ship, meanwhile, was going out with other girls and didn't think she knew. Now Ship had been dabbling in Satanism since he was about 10 years old. According to him, he and Krista got pretty deep into it, and both of them wore pentagram necklaces. And in his dorm room, he kept a hexagram earring, and a hat pin, and a satanic bible, and an altar. Red flags galore.

• 13:19Speaker 02

  So Shadola Peterson was 18 years old and from Cleveland, Tennessee, and was a friend to both of them and another student at the center. Like Ship, she was a member of the Gangster Disciples, though Krista never was. Now, one instructor, William Mode, knew Krista and Peterson, and knew about what he called the "devil-worshipping business." By then, Krista had also met another new student at the center, a quiet girl from Florida named Colleen. So the Knoxville Job Corps was housed in a former Holiday Inn on Dale Avenue. Krista's friend, Kim Rhodes, found the place "scary," with a lot of drug use and a great deal of hostility between different groups of students.

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  And Andrew Trace called it "a pretty rough, violent place," and said many students hid in their rooms because they were afraid for their safety. And the instructor, William Mode, was slapped and hit by students, and one even threatened to kill him. He said the supervisors did little to discipline students, and from what students told him, the dorms just weren't safe. So Colleen had a hard time fitting in there, and she complained to her mother that she was being bullied. But her instructors thought really well of her. And Mode remembered her as "a very sweet young lady," and her health instructor found her respectful and very skilled. But at some point, Krista came to believe that Colleen was after Ship.

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  Krista said Colleen had been "trying to get her boyfriend," and was running her mouth everywhere. But people close to Colleen denied that she had any interest in him at all. Krista said that trouble between them had been building for a while. And one night, she claimed she woke up to Colleen standing over her, holding a box cutter. And over Christmas, back home, Krista told her mother about it. She didn't want to go back to Job Corps after the holiday, but her mother and sister Alicia pushed her to finish the program. And Krista said she was one fight away from being thrown out of the program, and claimed Colleen knew it and was just trying to provoke her.

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  So on January 11, 1995, Krista told another friend, Kim Eloilo, that she was going to kill Colleen. And her reason, she said, was that she "had just felt mean that day." So on the night of January 12, 1995, Colleen called her mother in Florida. And the call kept dropping because of bad reception, and by the time May called her back, Colleen had already gone out for the night. Now Krista had asked Colleen to come along to the Blockbuster Music Store, and on the way, she told Colleen there was a bag of weed hidden in Tyson Park. Now, the meetup was described as a "peace offering," meant to settle things between the two of them.

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  So around 8:00 PM, the four of them signed out of the center together. Krista, Colleen, Ship, and Peterson. And Kim watched them walk away towards 17th Street. Now, from there, the group made its way onto the University of Tennessee's agriculture campus, to a secluded spot near a steam plant. And Krista had brought a box cutter, along with a small meat cleaver she'd borrowed from someone at the center. And by Krista's own account, she and Colleen exchanged words, and then Krista just started hitting her. And Colleen kept asking her, "Why are you doing this to me?" And for somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour, by Krista's estimate, she and Ship

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  beat, kicked, and cut Colleen while Peterson stood watch. Colleen tried again and again to run, and each time, she was caught and forced back down. She begged them to let her go, promising she'd walk all the way home to Florida and never come back to the center. At one point, Krista thought she had heard a noise and walked off to check whether anyone was nearby. And when she came back, Krista cut her throat several times, and finally hit her in the head with rocks and a large chunk of asphalt. And Colleen died of blunt force injuries to her head. Someone had also carved a pentagram into her chest.

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  And that's when Krista and Ship dragged Colleen's body to a spot near some trees and left her there, with her clothes thrown into the bushes. Before she left, Krista would actually take a piece of Colleen's skull. And afterward, they cleaned off their hands and shoes in a puddle and got rid of the box cutter. Then Krista returned the meat cleaver to the person she borrowed it from. And at a Texaco station on Cumberland Avenue, she dumped two of Colleen's IDs and Colleen's black gloves in the trash. So at about 10:15 PM, Kim saw Krista, Ship, and Peterson come back to the center without Colleen, and the three of them signed back in.

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  Later that night, Krista went to Kim's room and told her she'd just killed Colleen, and showed her the piece of her skull. Kim said Krista smiled as she talked, singing "La la la la la," while dancing in a circle. So on the agriculture campus the next morning, at about 8:05, a worker from the University of Tennessee's grounds department found a body lying close to the greenhouses. It had been beaten so badly that at first, he thought it was a dead animal. Then he saw the clothes, realized it was a woman, and called the police right away. Knoxville police officers and the university's own police came out to secure the area.

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  And as they examined the scene, every new patch of blood, piece of clothing, footprint, and broken branch they found pushed the boundary further out, until the scene measured 100 feet long by 60 feet wide. And they could see a struggle had taken place. In the mud were handprints, knee prints, and drag marks, and the bushes around them had been trampled. Randy York, an investigator with the Knoxville Police, took the case that day. York had described the scene as "one of the most disturbing crime scenes I have ever had to deal with." Back at the center that morning, Kim saw Krista at breakfast and asked her what she'd done with a piece of skull.

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  And Krista answered that she had it in her pocket, adding, "And yes, I'm eating breakfast with it." Now, later, in class, Krista pointed out brown spots on her shoes to another student, Stephanie Wilson, and told her, "That ain't mud on my shoes, that's blood." Then she took a napkin out of her pocket and held out a piece of bone for Wilson, telling her it was part of Colleen's skull. However, neither Kim nor Wilson went to the police right away. That day, Krista also went to the office of Robert Pollack, an orientation specialist at the center, about an ID card she'd misplaced. After she left, Pollack saw that her black leather jacket was still on the chair she'd

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  been sitting in, and at about 4:00 PM, he locked up with the jacket still there. Now between 4:00 and 5:00 PM, Krista and a few other girls walked up to the crime scene. She asked Harold Underwood, the campus police officer posted there, who the victim was, whether police had any suspects, and why the area was marked off. The other girls didn't say a word in the 15 minutes they were there. Underwood said Krista giggled and kept shifting around as if she were amused by the situation, and he noticed she had on an unusual pentagram-shaped necklace. So Dreis and a friend ran into Krista on Cumberland Avenue that same day while they were out with some liquor they just bought.

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  She joined them, drank through two plastic fountain cups of Mad Dog 2020, and was clearly drunk when she left, but she wanted to keep drinking. And after the murder, the center was put on lockdown with nobody allowed to leave, and students quit going to classes. And Detective Donald Cook of the campus police went with the body to the morgue, and once the body had been cleaned there, Cook noticed the pentagram carved into Colleen's chest. The medical examiner, Dr. Sandra Elkins, started labeling each of the wounds with the letters of the alphabet, but there were so many that she ended up only recording the most serious ones. She also found defensive wounds on Colleen's right arm. Now, back in Florida, Mae's phone rang again at around 11:15 on Saturday morning, two

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  days after Colleen's call, and a man on the line told her, "We think your daughter might have been killed. Can you identify some marks she has on her body?" And the body was officially identified as Colleen's through her dental records. Now, roll call on January 14th, Underwood heard about the pentagram carved into the victim's chest, so he reported Krista's strange behavior and her necklace to his superiors. York had sat through a course on cults and Satanism shortly before the murder, and he has said the pentagram was the key to open the case. By his account, the call that led him to Krista came from a woman who told police her daughter, a job corp student, was concerned about a satanic cult.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  And police also got a tip that Krista had shown a piece of Colleen's skull to someone. So on January 14th, York questioned Krista and Ship separately at the Knoxville Police Department. Krista waived her Miranda rights and agreed to talk. She was tape-recorded as she gave her statement, with the transcript running some 46 pages long. And on tape, she sobbed as she described how she'd started hitting Colleen and didn't stop, quote, "I literally thought I was going crazy because I'd never seen myself act like that before in my life," unquote. She wouldn't name anyone else who'd been there, referring to the person with her only as "he" and "the other person."

• 23:25Speaker 02

  And she denied carving the pentagram, saying "the other person" had cut Colleen's chest. And that's when she told York the bloodstained jeans she'd worn were still in her room, smeared with mud from her shoes to hide the blood. She also admitted throwing Colleen's IDs and gloves in the trash at the Texaco, and an officer went and recovered them. She let York search her room, then went back to the center with him and retraced her steps from that night, until she led him to the exact spot where Colleen's body had been found. So police photographed Krista and Ship at the station that day, and both of them were wearing pentagram necklaces. Ship told police it was Krista who brought the weapons, that she helped with carving the pentagram, and that taking Colleen out there had been her idea.

• 24:10Speaker 02

  And within 36 hours of Colleen's body being found, Krista, Ship, and Peterson were all under arrest. So at 7:30 AM on January 17th, Paula came back to his office and found Krista's jacket still hanging on the chair where it was left. Word had reached him over the weekend that she was a suspect, so he handed it straight to the center's security captain, who called the Knoxville Police. Now, in the jacket's inside pocket, Officer Arthur Bowen found a small piece of bone, and he took it directly to Dr. Murray Marks, a forensic anthropologist at the university. Meanwhile, blood from Krista and Ship's clothing went to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, where the lab matched it to Colleen's DNA.

• 24:54Speaker 02

  So with all three in custody and Krista's confession on tape, the question was no longer "who killed Colleen," but what a jury would do about it. Let's take a quick pause to talk about my wind-down ritual. It's pretty simple, because it just involves this, pretty much, my Lola blanket, my super soft Lola blanket. Or it was, until literally all five of my dogs decided that all these Lola blankets were theirs, and they laid on them, and they made them smell like dog, and got their hair all over it. Because the second I grab this, they are on top of me burrowing their heads into it because they love it so much. And honestly, I get it, okay? This is luxury faux fur with a four-way stretch, machine washable, no peeling, no shedding,

• 25:39Speaker 02

  over 20,000 five-star reviews, amazing blanket. And they call it the world's number-one blanket for a reason. And turns out, pets everywhere were stealing their owners' Lola's, so Lola made a pet collection, and I adore their pet collection, and so do my pets, including my cats, not just my dogs. So my puppers got the Lola pet bed probably like over six months ago now, but it has the same ultra-soft fur, but with an orthopedic foam base for their joints, and a removable cover that goes straight into the wash if you have any messes or anything, or if they're really dirty, and it's completely shed-free. So now I finally have my Lola blankets back, and you can too.

• 26:20Speaker 02

  And for a limited time, our listeners are getting 40% off select Lola blanket products with code CCCM at lolablankets.com. That's lolablankets.com, using code CCCM for 40% off. Not to mention, they also make an amazing gift. I've given people these every single Christmas for the past few years, and everybody raves about them. So check out Lola Blankets. Thank you so much to Lola Blankets for sponsoring the video and supporting the channel, and let's get back to it. So Krista's murder trial opened in March 1996 in Knox County Criminal Court with Judge Mary Beth Leibowitz presiding. And the Knox County District Attorney General's office tried the case with Assistant District Attorney William Crabtree as lead prosecutor, alongside Assistant District Attorney Joe Helm.

• 27:04Speaker 02

  And Krista was defended by two court-appointed lawyers, William Tallman and Julie Martin. Now, just before it began, prosecutors offered her life in prison if she'd plead guilty, but she said no. Now, her lawyers asked to move the trial out of Knox County because so many people there had already followed the case in the news. However, the judge refused, and any potential juror who said that they couldn't set aside what they'd heard about the case was sent home. And television cameras were in the courtroom for the whole trial, and Krista came to court day after day in modest floral dresses. And her lead lawyer, William Tallman, wrote that she seemed content with the crowds in the courtroom, and that at one point she told them she was happy.

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  And when he asked her why, she told him it was, quote, "the first time in her life that she could remember so many members of her family being there for her," unquote. So to show a killing was planned, the prosecution called Kim, who told the jury that day before the murder, Krista had said she was going to kill Colleen. And the jurors also heard about the brown spots on Krista's shoes and the piece of bone she'd shown Wilson in class. And Krista's own taped statements were played in the courtroom, with each juror listening through a set of headphones and following along in the transcript. Dr. Elkins used Colleen's skull, rebuilt by Dr. Marks, to show the jury the force of the blows.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  One gap in the skull had never been filled, and in front of the jury, the piece of bone from Krista's jacket pocket fit that gap perfectly. And for the defense, a clinical psychologist, Dr. Eric Ungum, testified that Krista had a severe borderline personality disorder, and that once the attack began, she just lost control. In his view, she hadn't acted with premeditation. But under cross-examination, he agreed that bringing weapons along pointed to deliberation, and that she'd had time to calm down when she walked off to check on the noise. And a Vanderbilt psychiatrist, Dr. William Burnett, saw the case as a teenager dabbling in Satanism inside a group that worked itself up into violence.

• 29:11Speaker 02

  He admitted, though, that he'd never spoken with Krista and couldn't say whether she'd planned the killing. So on March 22nd, 1996, the jury found Krista guilty of murder in the first degree and of conspiring to commit it. And after the conviction, Mae said that she believed Krista was evil and that the state, quote, "should kill her right away," unquote. Then the trial moved on to her sentencing, and the defense called her aunt, her father, and her mother to talk about the way she was raised. And the state answered with Underwood, the campus officer she'd questioned at the crime scene. And in closing statements, the prosecutor called Krista a, quote, "monster that we have to deal with," unquote.

• 29:53Speaker 02

  And in under 90 minutes, the jury came back with death as her sentence. They found that the murder was especially cruel, with torture far beyond what it took to kill, and that it was committed to avoid arrest. And that same day, back in her cell at the Knox County Jail, Krista wrote a letter to Ship and asked a corrections officer to pass it along. The officer gave it to her lieutenant instead, and prosecutors later read it out at her sentencing on the conspiracy charge. And it would say, quote, "You see what I get for trying to be nice to that hoe? I went ahead and bashed her brains out so she would die quickly instead of letting her bleed to death and suffer more," unquote. And she signed it, "Little Devil."

• 30:35Speaker 02

  So on March 30th, Judge Leibowitz set Krista's execution for January 12th, 1997, telling her that on that day, quote, "Your body shall be subjected to shock by sufficient current of electricity," unquote. Krista sobbed as she heard the sentence, and through her tears, she asked, quote, unquote, "Can I please hug my mom?" So at 20 years old, just weeks past her birthday, Krista became one of the youngest women anywhere in the US to be given a death sentence. And for the conspiracy conviction, the judge added 25 years to be served on top of the death sentence. Peterson never went to trial. Instead, she took a plea, admitting she was an accessory after the fact, and agreed to

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  testify against Krista and Ship. And prosecutors said they couldn't prove she'd taken part in the killing at all. And the roughly 460 days she'd already spent in jail counted toward a six-year sentence, and she served the rest of it on probation. Ship's own trial came in 1997, and jurors in Knox County convicted him of the same two charges that Krista was convicted of. And his lawyer has since written that the offense he was put on was, quote, "to shift as much blame as possible to Krista," unquote. Ship had been only 17 that night, and under state law, that ruled out the death penalty. So he was given a life sentence instead with a chance of parole one day. Now, May didn't realize at first that not all of Colleen had been buried, because some

• 32:04Speaker 02

  of her remains had been kept as evidence for the trial. But over the years, the medical examiner's office mailed the rest to her in pieces. Quote, "We had her buried in a Catholic cemetery," unquote, May would say, "and she had to be dug up every time they mailed me body parts," unquote. Meanwhile, Krista's own story behind bars was far from quiet. So on death row, Krista spent up to 23 hours a day in her cell. Doctors prescribed her Prozac for obsessive-compulsive disorder. And for all but three of her years there, she was the only woman on Tennessee's death row. The other, Gail Owens, was in the same prison, but the two never had any contact before. And Owens' death sentence was changed to life in prison in 2010.

• 32:49Speaker 02

  Now, Tennessee's Court of Criminal Appeals upheld Krista's conviction and sentence. The state Supreme Court did the same in October 1998, and in 1999, the US Supreme Court declined to hear her case. And in June 1999, Krista filed her own petition for post-conviction relief, the next stage of review. Two years later, at a hearing in June 2001, she told the court she wanted to drop it and have her execution date set. And two months after that, on August 24, 2001, staff had to clear part of the prison because of a fire, and they moved another inmate, Patricia Jones, into an exercise cage with Krista and her friend Natasha Cornet. Now, Jones and Cornet started fighting,

• 33:34Speaker 02

  and Krista jumped in, coming up behind Jones and choking her with a bootlace. Officers finally stepped in, and Jones survives. Krista later told an investigator, quote, "I don't want to say that I intended to kill her, but I would say that I didn't care if she died," unquote. But on a recorded call afterwards, she told her mother, quote, "I premeditated the hell out of this," unquote. She's a genius, folks. The attack earned her a conviction for attempted first-degree murder and 25 more years. And that September, she wrote to the court again, repeating that she wanted to drop her petition. And at a hearing that October, the judge appointed a psychiatrist, Dr. William Kenner,

• 34:16Speaker 02

  to evaluate whether she was competent to make that choice. And in June 2002, the judge found that she was competent and granted her request. Krista had, quote, "the right as a competent individual," unquote, to decide, the judge said. And then her petition was dismissed, and a new execution date was set. However, 29 days after that order, Krista changed her mind. In a handwritten note added to her sworn statement, she wrote, quote, "I still feel conflicted about what I want to do, but as of now, I feel this is the only logical decision," unquote. So the appeals court stayed her execution and sent the case back for a hearing. And there, in February of 2003, Krista testified that she hadn't understood, quote, unquote,

• 35:00Speaker 02

  "exactly how final her decision would be," or what it would do to her family. "Her life," she said, "meant more, quote, than being stuck in that little room," unquote. Yes, so did Colleen's. You stupid fucking monster. And she also said her mental health had greatly improved since Dr. Kenner had put her on the antidepressant along with lithium. So in 2005, the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled that a competent inmate on death row could give up these appeals, but would have 30 days to take that back. Krista had acted within that window, barely, so her petition was reinstated. So at the hearing on that petition, her new lawyers argued that her trial lawyers had

• 35:44Speaker 02

  failed her by not giving the jury the full story of her childhood, including the sexual abuse. And Tallman testified that he decided not to call the psychologist the defense had prepared, Dr. Diana McCoy, partly because shortly before the trial, they'd learned she was dating the lead prosecutor, William Crabtree. Dr. McCoy testified that the relationship had been brief, that it was over before she started on the case, and that she'd told Tallman early on. And Tallman had also asked Krista to sign over the rights to her story, quote, "My thought was, I would write a book on Krista, the human side of Krista," unquote, he would testify. Ship took the stand at the same hearing and said that he was actually the one who'd

• 36:27Speaker 02

  carved the pentagram into Colleen's chest, and that he'd done it because he felt like it. He acknowledged that this wasn't what he'd first told police. And the courts turned Krista down, with the appeals court affirming the denial in April of 2011, and the US Supreme Court declined the case the next year. Also, in 2012, investigators broke up a plan to help Krista escape from the Tennessee Prison for Women, because a 23-year-old guard there, Justin Heflin, had been getting gifts and money to help. He'd met the other man charged, Donald Coett, who was 34 years old, of New Jersey, during Coett's frequent visits to Krista. Both men were arrested in March of 2012, before anyone tried to carry the escape out, luckily.

• 37:12Speaker 02

  And Krista's case then moved to federal court, where a judge denied her petition, and in 2019, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. The court found that, even with everything her lawyers now offered, quote, "the sheer weight and degree of aggravation evidence before the jury outweighs the mitigation evidence raised on appeal," unquote. So one of the judges, Jane Strance, joined the ruling but wrote separately about sentencing someone so young to death. "We presume that she is incapable of reform, even though the stories of other teenage killers, many of whom have been rehabilitated behind bars, reveal other possibilities." So in 2022, Krista sued the state, arguing that it had kept her in solitary confinement

• 37:57Speaker 02

  in all but name for over a quarter of a century. The man on death row could work and spend time together, but she had, quote, "nearly no physical contact with another human being," unquote, in what her lawyer called, quote, "a cell the size of a parking space," unquote. Sounds too big to me, to be honest. So on September 16, 2024, she settled the case, winning a job, meals alongside other women prisoners, and more hours outside her cell. And at this point, Ship is still in prison. And in October of 2025, the parole board turned him down, saying, quote, "due to the seriousness of the offense," unquote, and his case won't be reviewed again until October 2031.

• 38:40Speaker 02

  Now, Peterson finished her sentence and has lived a private life ever since, never speaking publicly about the murder. For Krista, though, the appeals had run out in 2020, when the US Supreme Court declined to take her case. So the Tennessee Supreme Court set Krista's execution date on September 30, 2025. But it ended up being scheduled for September 30, 2026, exactly one year later, and at this point, she'd spent nearly 30 years on death row. Now, the state had asked the court for the execution date back in August of 2020, soon after the US Supreme Court turned Krista away. Her lawyers were given more time to respond, first because one of them was also defending a client on federal death row.

• 39:24Speaker 02

  And in June of 2021, they answered with a request of their own, that the court tell the governor her sentence should be commuted because of her mental illness and her youth at the time of the crime. In the meantime, her lawyers kept trying in the state courts. They used a 2022 Tennessee Supreme Court decision about life sentences for juvenile killers to try to reopen her case, but the attempt failed. And in September of 2024, the state Supreme Court refused to hear it. In the end, the same 2025 order that set the execution date turned their 2021 request down, finding nothing in her case that justified it. Now, if Krista's execution went ahead, she'd be the first woman Tennessee had put to death since at least 1820.

• 40:10Speaker 02

  Of the 17 people Tennessee had executed in the modern era, the youngest had been 23 at the time of the crime. Across the country, 18 women had been executed since 1976, about 1% of all executions. Krista's lawyers had spent decades building the case for sparing her life. And in 2023, they asked a psychologist who specialized in trauma, Bethany Brand, to evaluate her. Brand wrote that the level of trauma Krista had suffered, quote, "is almost impossible to grasp because it is so severe," unquote. And by then, Krista's diagnosis in prison included bipolar disorder as well as post-traumatic stress disorder, though her lawyers said neither had been diagnosed until years after

• 40:55Speaker 02

  her arrest. Brand said that with medication, Krista now had, quote, "empathy and great regret for what she had done." So in January of 2026, Krista's lawyers filed a challenge to Tennessee's lethal injection process. And in May, a doctor spent more than an hour trying to find a vein on another prisoner, Tony Caruthers, until the state gave up and halted his execution. Then in June, Krista's lawyers took their challenge to the Tennessee Supreme Court, pointing to what happened to that other inmate. They argued that her blood condition, her small veins, and her PTSD put her at risk of, quote, "unnecessary and super rated pain and suffering," unquote.

• 41:36Speaker 02

  And being the only woman surrounded by male guards in her last days would, quote, "trigger her PTSD and results in a torturous execution or mental decompensation to the point she will be incompetent to be executed," unquote, they would write. And they also proposed other methods, including hanging. The state Supreme Court appointed a senior judge, Mark Ward, to hear the evidence. And in August, he held a three-day hearing, and the state didn't dispute the abuse Krista had suffered. And in the state's closing argument, Will Ayers of the Attorney General's office said, "I think everybody in this courtroom wishes that those things had never happened to Ms. Pike. I think we all wish that we were not here today and that she was not on death row," unquote.

• 42:21Speaker 02

  But Ward found that her lawyers had, quote, "failed to prove she'd face needless suffering." And he said she'd be unconscious within 20 to 30 seconds of the injection, long before she'd be able to feel pain. So on September 2nd, her lawyer sent Governor Lee a 226-page clemency petition. It asked him to commute her death sentence so that she'd serve life without parole instead. And Ayers' words from the hearing were on its cover, that everyone wishes she wasn't on death row. The petition argued that Krista had been 18 and deeply mentally ill, and that if she were on trial today, she wouldn't get a death sentence. And of the eight people sentenced to death in Tennessee's modern era for crimes committed

• 43:04Speaker 02

  at 18, the other seven, all men, had since had their death sentences thrown out. Quote, "None of this is meant to justify the killing of Colleen Slemmer," unquote, the petition would say. It also carried a statement from Krista, saying, quote, "I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I'd done, even more to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone's child's sister, friend," unquote. And Schiff's own trial lawyer, Christopher Coffey, wrote to the governor, too, arguing that the gap between their sentences came from, quote, "their slight age difference rather than their respective role in the crime," unquote.

• 43:45Speaker 02

  And more than 100 groups of experts working to end violence against women asked Lee to commute her sentence as well. "Her history didn't excuse the crime," they wrote, "but it offered, quote, 'an explanation for how she came to commit the crime,'" unquote. And a group of United Nations human rights experts called on Tennessee to stop the execution, and a petition from Tennesseans for an alternative to the death penalty gathered more than 2,500 signatures. So less than a week before the execution date, the state Supreme Court turned down Krista's request to delay it, finding she hadn't shown she was likely to win. And on Sunday, September 27th, protesters gathered at the state capitol in Nashville.

• 44:27Speaker 02

  Then, on September 28th, two days before her execution date, Governor Lee announced his decision. Quote, "After deliberate consideration of Krista Gail Pike's request for clemency, and after a thorough review of the case, I am upholding the sentence of the state of Tennessee and do not plan to intervene," unquote. And her lawyers said they were deeply saddened and heartbroken. "Krista is a 50-year-old remorseful woman who understands her actions, receives proper treatment for her mental illness, and provides for and guides fellow incarcerated women," they would write. And in a letter written before she learned of Lee's decision, Krista said, quote, "I'm not afraid to die. I'm only nervous about the process," unquote. And her lawyers had also asked the U.S.

• 45:12Speaker 02

  Supreme Court to stop the execution, presenting the challenge to the lethal injection. Tennessee's attorney general urged the justices to let it go ahead, accusing Krista of, quote, "abusive tactical delay," unquote, and arguing that after 30 years, it was, quote, "long past time," unquote. But May had the peace she was looking for. And on Tuesday evening, the day before her scheduled execution, the court said no. And Colleen's mother, May, wanted to see the execution carried out. And when Ward rejected most of Krista's challenges in August, May said, quote, "She did the crime. I think she should pay for it," unquote. And she said Krista had never apologized to her family.

• 45:54Speaker 02

  Speaking from Florida in the days before the execution, she said, quote, "Not a day goes by or a minute goes by that I do not think about Colleen. Holidays are the worst. Colleen's birthday was last week. She would have been 51," unquote. She planned to watch the execution, saying, quote, "I will sit there with her picture in my hand, and as she gets hooked up to a needle to go to sleep, she can look at that picture," unquote. And she said she needed to watch, quote, "so I can remember that she is gone and I don't have to fear that she's going to pop up somewhere," unquote. And a victims advocacy group in Florida raised money for the trip, but not enough for a plane ticket, so she and Raul planned to drive the 600 miles to Nashville.

• 46:38Speaker 02

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• 47:22Speaker 02

  And my go-to is the Italian bergamot, but I've also really enjoyed the Australian sandalwood, and their other scents are divine as well. But what's cool is that every scent is made by actual perfumers, and it lasts until your next laundry day. I always get compliments if people think I'm wearing perfume or like some type of fancy cologne, and I'm just like, no, it's my Laundry Sauce. And the pods actually clean really well, because the pods are ultra-concentrated with bioenzymes, so iced coffee spills, barbecue, muddy dog prints are gone. Plus, I love the convenience of it just being pre-measured, so there's zero guesswork in how much needs to actually go in your laundry. Also, they don't have a laundry list of ingredients.

• 48:05Speaker 02

  They're made with super simple ingredients. Yes, that was a joke. Laundry list, because we're talking about laundry anyway. But what you wash your clothes in does actually matter, because you're putting it on your body, so that matters. And they actually just landed in Target, too, and there's a full money-back guarantee if you don't love it. And for a limited time, our listeners are getting 20% off your entire order with code CCCM at laundrysauce.com. That's 20% off at laundrysauce.com, promo code CCCM. And when they ask where you heard about them, just tell them that I sent you. Make laundry day the best day of the week and get Laundry Sauce today. Thank you so much to Laundry Sauce for keeping my clothes nice and divinely scented and

• 48:50Speaker 02

  fresh. And let's get back to the video. Krista was scheduled to die at 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday, September 30th, at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. And the reporters chosen as media witnesses were at the prison by 8:30 a.m. that morning. However, about an hour before it was set to begin, a federal appeals court stopped the execution. The Sixth Circuit voted 2 to 1 for a pause so it could consider whether the abuse Krista suffered as a child had been fully weighed when she was sentenced. And Judge Dan Strance, who had written separately about Krista's age back in 2019, wrote the order. The judge, who disagreed, Richard Allen Griffin, called it, quote, "another last-ditch, meritless

• 49:34Speaker 02

  effort to delay a lawful execution," unquote. And the state went to the U.S. Supreme Court to get the pause lifted, arguing once again that Krista's lawyers were stalling and that it was hurting Colleen's family. Meanwhile, the witnesses spent the day held at the prison, unable to leave the grounds. So at around 6:00 p.m., the Supreme Court lifted the stay, 6 to 3, without explaining why. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing the three dissenters, said she saw, quote, "no reason to short-circuit the ordinary process of appellate review, particularly in the light of the grave consequences of an erroneous decision," unquote. So once the witnesses were inside, the curtain over the chamber window stayed closed for

• 50:15Speaker 02

  45 minutes, when setting an IV usually takes 10 or 15. And behind it, according to her lawyer, Randy Spivey, the team worked for about an hour to get a line into a vein, going through at least seven needles. And Krista was trying to help them, he said, saying, quote, "Please try up on my shoulder higher. Please try here. Please try here," unquote. And at 7:27 p.m., the curtain went up. Krista was strapped to the gurney with an IV in her arm, and her spiritual advisor, Mikey Noachel, stood near her head. She faced the window of the room set aside for the victims' family, and May was watching. In her final statement, Krista said, quote, "I'm going to leave this world the way I

• 50:58Speaker 02

  spent most of my life, and that is in love," unquote. And she said she was at peace, and she ended by calling it, quote, "a happy day." No apology in sight. But not long after, she told a prison official her arm hurt and asked if that was normal. Prisoners usually show signs of the sedative within a few minutes, but Krista kept talking to Noachel. And at 7:41 p.m., a small rock was set on a ledge in the wall, which witnesses understand to mean the drug has all gone in. And three minutes later, Krista was still quietly talking to Noachel. And at 7:46, the curtain closed, but three minutes later, it opened again.

• 51:41Speaker 02

  Under Tennessee's protocol, a second round follows, quote, "if the inmate is not deceased", unquote. Krista began making a snore-like sound and kept breathing, and at about 7:56, her head came up slightly and turned to one side. A little after 8:00 PM, the curtain closed for the last time, and by 8:26, according to witnesses, the second dose had gone in. And for about 40 minutes, the witnesses could hear Krista snoring over the speaker from behind the curtain. And the protocol had no instructions for what to do if the second round failed. One reporter asked the prison spokesperson, quote, "Do they do a third round? Are you going to resuscitate her?", unquote. She had no answer.

• 52:26Speaker 02

  Inside, Spivey later said he had demanded a phone at about 8:22, insisting that the execution be stopped and that Krista get medical care. And at about 8:50, he was told an ambulance was on its way. And at 8:53 PM, the warden came over the loudspeaker and told the media witnesses to leave. So as they spoke to reporters outside, emergency vehicles pulled up to the prison, and the witnesses watched them leave again with their sirens on. Krista was in an ambulance on the way to the hospital now, still alive. No known person in the modern era had survived after execution drugs were actually given to them.

• 53:06Speaker 02

  Seven people had lived through failed executions before her, but in each of those, no IV line could be placed, so no drugs ever went in. So when Nashville's emergency dispatch office later released its recordings from the night of the execution, they showed that confusion had slowed down the help Krista needed. And the first 911 call was at 8:40 PM, but the caller couldn't give the code needed to prove the request was real. And at 9:03, a dispatcher said supervisors had been told it was a false call. There is no medical assistance needed at Riverbend Prison. And at 9:08, one of Krista's lawyers, Kelly Gleason, called 911 herself, saying Krista was, quote, "still alive and breathing and needs immediate life-saving care", unquote.

• 53:49Speaker 02

  And prison officials confirmed the call was real a few minutes later, and responders were let in at about 9:11. Now, the Department of Corrections said it had carried out each step of the protocol the Attorney General's office had approved, and that the protocol didn't allow for anything beyond what had been done. Governor Lee ordered a comprehensive third-party review of what happened and put off the only other execution Tennessee had scheduled in 2026. Speaking to reporters the next day, he would say, quote, "There is no one that wanted what happened last night to happen. It shouldn't have happened", unquote. And asked whether he'd spoken to Colleen's family, he said he had not. And on the phone with an AP afterward, May said, quote, "I didn't get justice for my daughter. I watched the whole thing.

• 54:34Speaker 02

  She was awake, she was moving her head, moving her feet, she was trying to sit up", unquote. The next day, on her way home to Florida, she told the Jacksonville TV station that when she asked officials what would happen next, the answer was, quote, "I don't know what we're doing with her yet. I said, quote, 'Here we are, 31 years, and you're laughing in my face again. I think that the state owes me a big apology, and as a mother, I failed her'". Back in August, before the execution, May had said she wouldn't feel justice was served until she got the last piece of Colleen's skull back. Getting Colleen's skull back took her 16 years, and when the time finally came, she had to collect it from the courthouse.

• 55:18Speaker 02

  And even then, she said, that final piece was still missing, the fragment Krista had carried in her pocket. Colleen's niece, Morgan Sealy, said May couldn't talk through her crying and hadn't eaten since the execution failed. Sealy said of her grandmother, quote, "She wanted to get justice. Pike-serving, being in prison, was not justice", unquote. And Sealy also wanted the state to move quickly, quote, "They need to figure out what's going to happen with her within the next couple of months. I'm not talking about two years from now", unquote. Raul posted on Facebook thanking the people who had paid for the trip and writing, quote, "Unfortunately, Colleen's soul cannot rest until this monster succumbs to the two doses of pentobarbital that she was given",

• 56:03Speaker 02

  unquote. Now, that Friday, Krista's lawyer said she was unconscious on a ventilator and, quote, "critically ill". And in a court motion, they said her arms had been swollen, burned, and blistered by the time she got to the hospital. They blamed the IV lines, believing the drug had flowed into her body rather than into her bloodstream. And on Saturday, Lee announced that Frank Strata, the head of Tennessee's Department of Corrections, would step down that month. And Strata said resigning was, quote, "in the best interest of Tennesseans", unquote. Krista's execution was the second one in Tennessee to fail since May, after Toni Caruthers. To lead review, Lee chose former U.S. Attorney Ed Stanton, who had reviewed an execution

• 56:45Speaker 02

  Lee called off in 2022 and found that Tennessee hadn't followed its own procedure for lethal injections. Krista's lawyers had come to believe she was brain-dead, and her life support was due to be switched off that Tuesday. Instead, quote, "To the shock of everyone", unquote, she woke up and began to speak. Spivey wasn't in the room, but he believed the first thing she said was, quote, "Where am I and who are you?". And she knew the state had tried to execute her, but Spivey said there was, quote, "a lot of cognitive confusion", unquote. And he also relayed that Krista asked about her team and the family of the victim. "She developed pneumonia at this point, along with a blood clot in one arm",

• 57:28Speaker 02

  and Spivey said, quote, "We don't know what, if any, function she will regain in her arms", unquote. So on Wednesday, October 7, a Nashville judge ordered a prison official to keep all evidence from the execution, from logbooks and medical waste to the messages officials had sent. Now, at the hearing, a lawyer from the state said it would be up to the Tennessee Supreme Court to decide when or whether to set a new execution date. One of Krista's lawyers, Luke Enon, said it would be, quote, "unconscionable that the state would try to execute her again", unquote. An expert said they knew of no state or federal law that barred a second attempt after a failed one. But Jordan Steicher, who co-directs the Capital Punishment Center of the University of Texas,

• 58:12Speaker 02

  said that unlike others who'd faced a second attempt, Krista, quote, "bore the brunt of lethal drugs". And he would say that the most obvious way to avoid litigation over this would be for the governor to commute the sentence", unquote. So by that Thursday, Krista could walk with some help, and she was eating again, though her lawyer said doctors couldn't yet say what the long-term effects would be. And that Saturday, October 10, they announced she'd been released from the hospital and sent back to the women's prison she'd lived in for 30 years to keep recovering there. Now, Lee leaves office in January, and the race to replace him will be decided on November 3. And the frontrunner, U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn, is in support of the death penalty.

• 58:54Speaker 02

  And after the failed execution, she posted, quote, "Bring back the electric chair and deliver justice for these victims swiftly. As your governor, I will do just that", unquote. And Krista's lawyers are still asking Lee for a commutation, so that she'd serve life in prison without parole instead. However, the state still hasn't said whether it will try to execute her again, as of recording this right now. So through every stage of the case, May has tried to keep people's attention on Colleen. Quote, "It's never about the victims", unquote, she would say in September. Quote, "It's like Colleen was never there", unquote. And before the execution, she said, quote, "The criminals get so much attention. Why? She has been lost in this.

• 59:38Speaker 02

  She's been forgotten, other than when it's brought up like this", unquote. And for years, she's spoken out for Colleen. Quote, "I'm her voice. Somebody's got to talk", unquote. And at home, May still hangs the Christmas ornaments Colleen made, and she keeps the books her daughter read as a kid. And one of Colleen's favorite T-shirts says "Computer Geek", and the family had it made into a teddy bear. And May said, quote, "So we have that at all times", unquote. Morgan Sealy never got to meet her aunt, since she wasn't born until 2003. And one of the stories her mother told was about a box of fruity pebbles. And shortly before Colleen left for Job Corps, she bought the cereal with her own money, and then her sister finished the box.

• 1:00:23Speaker 02

  It became one of the last memories her sister had of her. And Sealy's mother kept grieving for Colleen until her own death back in the early 2020s. And Sealy herself is a mother of three now, and she says her young daughter looks like Colleen. Quote, "I wish I could have met her", unquote, she would say. And she asked people to remember her aunt. Quote, "Just keep in mind my aunt and the pain that she suffered and the times that she missed out on", unquote. And two memorial photos of Colleen were on display outside the prison, and officials said May would get both of them. And May had hoped the execution would bring her some peace. And one more thing, that Colleen can always be remembered as the sweet little girl that

• 1:01:08Speaker 02

  she was. And I want to end it there on Colleen, because she truly is the most important part of this story, and I don't want her to get lost in this whole case, because what she went through was absolutely horrifying. And I appreciate everybody requesting that I deep dive into this case. I think we need to keep saying Colleen's name over what's-her-faces, but I really hope that May gets her justice for her daughter, one day, whatever that happens to be. But that is it for today's case. Let me know what other cases you would like me to deep dive into. I always read the comments, and until next time, I will see your beautiful face, and please, please, stay safe out there. Okay? Bye.

• 1:01:49Speaker 01

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