Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Jealousy, Murder, Death Sentence - The Conviction of Christa Pike

Episode Date: March 17, 2024

Christa Pike was 18-years-old when she thought her 19-year-old job corps classmate, Colleen Slemmer, was trying to steal her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp. Pike spent over 30-minutes beating Colleen Slemmer with her hands and feet, as well as a box cutter and a meat cleaver. Slemmer tried to escape. Shipp,17, caught her so Pike could continue the beating. Pike carved a pentagram into Slemmer's chest, used the box cutter to slice her throat. When she didn't die, Pike picked up a chunk of asphalt and slammed it onto Slemmer's head. The next day Pike brought a piece of Slemmer's skull to breakfast and told classmates what she had done. Convicted of murder and sentenced to death, Christa Pike now wants a judge to vacate her death sentence. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack detail the story that Joe Scott says is the worst case he has ever seen.  Subscribe to Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan : Apple Podcasts Spotify iHeart Transcript Highlights  00:00:31 Joseph Scott Morgan says he has never seen a crime so vile  00:02:10 Woman on death row in Tennessee   00:05:16 Talk about dynamic between suspects and victim  00:10:09 Description of box cutter and meat cleaver   00:15:03 Discussion of pentagram carved into chest  00:20:56 Description of wounds to victim  00:25:15 Talk about how to occult and satanism factor into case  00:30:40 Description of taking piece of skull as a trophy  00:35:50 Discussion about letting murderer out of prison  00:39:15 Talk about sadistic murder See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. If you ever come in contact with someone that works in forensics, specifically medical legal death investigation, and they tell you that they've seen it all or that they've seen everything, don't walk, run away from them because they're lying. No one ever sees everything. There's too many variables.

You've got geography. You've got modes of death. You've got circumstances. But most of all, you've got individuals. And all of those pieces come into play and they make each case unique. But there are those events that mark you as a death investigator. Those of us that I think that some people think that we're imbued with some kind of supernatural strength because we're around death all the time. There are those events that cross our paths over the years

that do in fact mark us that we can't quite seem to escape even in our dreams. Today I'm thinking about investigators in Knoxville, Tennessee, specifically Knox County. And a case that occurred back in 1995 and how many of those people might be retired by now, but I can guarantee you this, when they close their eyes at night, they can still see this crime scene and they can still see the body of Colleen Slimmer. Today, we're going to talk about one of the most brutal homicides that ever took place in that part of Tennessee.

I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and came across something the other day that really caught my attention. You know, you and I spent a lot of time researching cases. And the reason it's kind of popped onto my radar, I think, was the fact that it involved the only woman on Tennessee death row. And that was significant. She's the only person that is on death row. She was placed on death row. I think she was actually convicted when she was 19, but the event happened when she was 18. But that's not the only thing that drew me to this case.

From a forensic standpoint, when I began to read, because I had not heard of this case, when I began to read and I came across these three words, asphalt, box cutter, and pentagram, I couldn't help myself. I had to read about this case. And, you know, there's certain things that you wish you had never read but i felt like that we needed to tell this tale because this case her case this lady on death row this case has come back into the news just recently because she she's trying to get her case uh she's trying to get off death row essentially is what's happening she's trying to have her sentence

changed because of her age at the time the crime was committed yeah not i i can't you can't take the measure of what this poor victim went through and this that's what body bags is about dave that's what it's about the victims right it's not about the perpetrators the perpetrators are means to an end to tell the stories of the victims and this this poor young lady she was purely a victim. Krista Pike was 18. Colleen Slimmer, the victim, was 19. To Daryl Shipp, that's another name we need to throw in here. He was 17.

Now, let me show you very quickly. The reason we've been talking about this case is because to Daryl Shipp was boyfriends with Krista Pike. Krista Pike was 18 to Daryl ship 17 when they committed this heinous crime together. Colleen Slimmer was 19 and they were all part of job core. Krista Pike had dropped out of high school and floated around joint job where this is an abused girl. I'm not going to justify anything.

I'm just pointing out that Krista Pike had an upbringing of the worst kind. She was abused in every way that's possible. And her mother had her using drugs before she was a teenager. I only say that as knowing a little background. She's in Job Corps. It's now 1995. And Colleen Slimmer signs a two-year deal to be with Job Corps. Now, in that Job Corps in Knoxville, Krista Pike and Tadaryl Shipp hooked up. They became boyfriend-girlfriend, and Krista

Pike was jealous of Colleen Slimmer. She thought Colleen was putting the moves on her boyfriend, and Krista Pike started harassing Colleen Slimmer. It got so bad that Colleen actually called home and said, Mom, I got to get out of here. I got it. I've got to come home, please. And she said, you can't, dear. You signed it to your contract. You've got to do it. So Chris to Pike, to Daryl Shipp and another person get together and they invite Colleen Slimmer out, say, hey, we want to bury the hatchet. We stop the abuse, stop the harassment. We're going to let's go over here. We're going to go out in the woods. We're going to smoke some weed like a peace pipe. That's what we're going to do.

That's how they lured Colleen Slimmer out of the dorm that January 12th, 1995. They lure her to an area of the campus, Tennessee campus in Knoxville. And it was a very out of the way area where they could then beat this attack took 30 to 40 minutes according to krista pike now joe you mentioned a slab of asphalt a box cutter pentagram yeah when colleen slimmer had been lured out there it was to be attacked by krista pike and to daryl ship joined in the beating took 30 to 40 minutes and during that time time, Slimmer taunted, beat, slashed and carved with a box cutter and a meat cleaver. A mini meat cleaver was used in the attack. They abused Colleen Slimmer at 19 years old to the point where it was so vicious and evil. They carved

a pentagram into her chest. And then when she wouldn't die, Krista Pike said, the bee won't die. I want to see her brains flow. So she grabbed a slab of asphalt and slammed it down onto the head multiple times on Colleen Slimmer until her brains flowed out of her head. Then Krista Pike, as a souvenir, took a chunk of that skull from Colleen Slimmer. And the three people walked back to the dorm, went back to bed. And the next morning, went to breakfast, and Krista Pike showed off that piece of skull to people in the job corps. And told them what she had done told them what it was can you imagine what kind of person could do that well i think that it's the kind of person that a defense attorney would argue was not in their right mind and And the, of course the jury at the time didn't see it that way. As a

matter of fact, they, they held her fully responsible regardless of what kind of upbringing she had had, uh, how much trauma she had endured. Um, and the, the way they were, and I'm obviously no attorney, don't want to be. They had held that there's no delineation between brain maturity between the ages of 17, which makes you a juvenile, and 18, which gives you adult status okay and look uh yeah that that's that's you know that's that's arguable i suppose however there has to be a delineation it's somewhere in time in the state of tennessee has set that delineation at 18 and the reason this battle has come out is because as we said she uh krista pike has tried to get her death sentence removed. Now, by the way, at this taping, it's been 29 years. 29 years since the murder of Colleen Slimmer. The victim was 19. It's been 29 years, Joe.

And this woman is still on death row. She's lived. Yes, she's still. and she's arguing that she, the argument is, well, to Daryl Shipp, who was also there and also did contribute to the beating, he was 17 at the time of the murder, and his sentence was life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years,

something along those lines, or plus 25 years. Yeah, okay, sentence to life with the possibility of parole, whereas Krista lines or plus 25 years. Yeah. Okay. Sentenced to life with the possibility of parole, whereas Krista Pike was sentenced to death. And that's the argument. He was 17. She was 18. Now, the other person that was with him, I mentioned, I didn't deal with her a lot. Shadola Peterson was 19 at the time. She turned state's witness and received probation in the case. I don't agree with that, but that's another day for a lawyer to deal with. But she did. She walked away.

I've read through all of Krista Pike's statement on what she claims happened. And Joe, usually when I read a case and I see the statement by the suspect, I think it's probably 50 accurate and it's less than what i would expect this was the most difficult thing i've ever read yeah it it literally it literally makes vomit rise up in your throat as you're that's really um forgive me for saying that that's really the only way i could actually describe it uh because you're talking about a fellow human being that is capable of doing this and gloats over it, essentially. And fully admits that she didn't run from it. And when you think about the horror that was inflicted upon this poor victim, Colleen, there was actually one moment during this attack where

this person looks around at the others that are there and she says, forgive me, but she says this, this bitch just won't die. And so she's fully aware of what she is doing. And matter of fact, going back to, you know, the instruments that were used here, you can argue that the asphalt was probably there. It's a weapon of what we refer to as a weapon of opportunity or a weapon of convenience is a common term that's used but do you walk around dave with a meat cleaver in your back pocket do you i mean and i guess if you work at a grocery store which i did when i was a kid doing stock i carried a box cutter with me everywhere i went most people don't um you know but they came with a box cutter in hand they're working for job corp maybe they had jobs as stockers i don't know they had access to a box cutter but they purposed to go out there

with it and you know one of the things that she that pike had alluded to in here is that you said you know the peace pipe they they were going to smoke weed while they were out there. And this is actually the location on campus. On campus is adjacent to the old steam plant at UT. And it is isolated. I saw something quite fascinating in one of the newsreels from the time back then, which was kind of interesting to see within, I think it was about within 24 hours of this having been processed, the scene, the reporter was standing on the very location.

It was not locked down, standing on the very location where Colleen's body had been found. And he walks over Dave and this was like kind of this incredible moment he's he's standing there and Dave there is a pile of fractured asphalt and he walks over and he says this is where the asphalt came from and he reaches down he picks up a chunk of asphalt and he holds it up and he said they crushed her skull with a piece of asphalt similar to this. It's probably from that same grouping, you know, that it was all busted up. It was an old road and they just kind of dumped the stuff back there. They took her back there with the specific aim of taking her life and not just taking her life.

It's one thing to take someone's life, but it's altogether another thing to torture them. And in Colleen's case, that's what they did. When my memoir came out a few years ago, Blood Beneath My Feet, my publisher was kind of an off-the-beaten-path publisher, what they refer to as a boutique publisher, but he was well-known out in Hollywood and famously published a lot of stuff that other people would not touch because of the nature of it.

And I had kind of an uncomfortable moment because the publisher had actually befriended Anton LaVey and had republished the Satanic Bible. Some years back, I was like, oh, Lord, what have I gotten myself into? And all I could see at that moment in time was my book about death and my life around death being associated with the Satanic Bible. And, of course, you know, publishers publish all kinds of things. You know, it doesn't mean anything. But the idea of a pentagram kind of entering into this and entering into this particular case, it made me reflective for a moment the day that I found out some of the other works that have been published by this company. And I was thinking, what drives

someone to take what has been, you know, declared essentially, I guess, by the Church of Satan as the symbol of Satanism? What would cause a young woman, what would give her the thought in her mind, what would be the motivation for taking a box cutter? Which has got, roughly, if you've never seen a box cutter, the blade on it at its greatest length is diagonal in shape. It's got a very sharp point on it, but the blade surface itself is only about an inch and a half in length most of the time. And there's more of the blades inside of the device. It's got a handle with, it's actuated by the thumb. You can kind of press it out. And then once one gets dull, you kind of, you know, unscrew it and then re-engage with a new blade.

Very sharp initially. But how do you feel comfortable enough, I think, to not only carve onto another human being's body, but what are you trying to say by taking this young woman and carving a pentagram not only into her forehead, but also onto her chest, Dave? It's just, it's beyond the pale. There are several things when you pointed this story out to me, but back to the pentagram. When I was telling you about Krista Pike and her upbringing alluding to having a rough childhood, it led her down a path that was not your typical 18-year-old female at the time. And 17-year-old to Daryl Shipp, susceptible to a strong woman who they dabbled in the occult. They had dabbled in Satanism.

They had dabbled in these things. I say dabbled because that's the only way one can explain to young people of difficult backgrounds getting together and doing drugs and looking at things, thinking it's cool to worship Satan or whatever it is they were trying to do. But there are a couple of things. You mentioned torture. And when you were talking about the reporter being able to get out there on the crime scene the next day, they were able to find that during this torture, during this beating, that two different times, Colleen Slimmer was able to get up and run from them and was able to get away far enough that they ripped her shirt off. That's when they carved the pentagram in.

But more than that, it was to humiliate her. Yeah, you're absolutely right. They were away from her body, 30 feet from her body, 30 feet from where her body was found. They found a blood pool where she had, I don't know if she expired there and then they drug her body. But there was so much physical evidence in that area. That's why I'm shocked to even think that a reporter was standing in the midst of it, that they had cleared the crime scene so quickly. But when the body was found, the yard service individual said he didn't think it was a person. He thought it was an animal carcass until he got closer.

And I've seen and I think you may have, too. I saw the crime scene images here. And as a matter of fact, when she's observed, when Colleen is observed, when you take that, you know, there's a couple of, just so people understand how we do photography at crime scenes, we do what is referred to as macro views and micro views. And kind of let me break that down for you. If you imagine a compass being in the center of the scene, okay, north, south, east, and west. We start off very, very broadly. That's our macro shots. And we will take images initially.

They're called overall shots from all four points of the compass, okay, to give you orientation so that when – because that moment is only frozen. It's frozen for that moment in time when they're, because the remains are not going to be there forever. They're going to be removed. And so you have to capture that. It's part of documenting what we do. And then once you've gotten those overall shots, you move in about half the distance between that outer shot that you took, those overalls, to about half the distance. And then you repeat that process again. And then some people even come in closer and then do the 360-degree thing again, and then you start to take micro shots where you're focusing in on individual pieces of evidence. You know, you had mentioned the blood, for instance. There may have been drag marks.

There may have been bits of clothing. You know, they had talked about ripping her clothing off. But when you see her, Dave, you can tell, I think the only way you could really describe her remains is that she was pummeled. It looked as though she had been beaten into the ground and she was lying. anybody in in medicine kind of knows what i'm going to say she was in what's referred to as as a left recumbent position so that means that the left side of her body was actually contacting the ground her right leg is over her left she's still wearing her her jeans and her arms and like almost like a final cry are extended up above her head, almost as if, you know, she's pleading for no more. And the evidence itself

that when you begin to examine these injuries to her body, they belie a sense of horror that generally cannot be expressed to most people. When you see it, somebody had talked, I think that was the news people, they had said that she had sustained, initially they said, multiple stab wounds. Well, these are not stab wounds. These are what we refer to as incised injuries. So when you begin to see the difference between the way we define a stab wound versus an incised wound, a stab wound is narrow and deep. Okay. So if you imagine a knife being plunged into a body, an incised wound is what many people refer to as a cut. It's a slice, okay? She's got multiple slices all over her body. And these are not even part of the pentagram are slices, obviously.

But, Dave, her throat was cut multiple times. And you've got what are referred to as superficial incised areas that just go into what's referred to as the subcutaneous layer of the skin. But they refer to the gaping maw of her neck. There is. And here's the troubling thing about it. Let me, just so that I am just absolutely accurate with this, and I'm looking at the images as we speak, right now, from what I can see, I'm counting in this one view. In addition to this, you use the term, and right you are, gaping maw, I'm seeing one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Eight superficial, this is on her neck alone though. I'm seeing eight superficial incised wounds there.

You know what that means to me? That means that not only were they trying to cut her throat, but they were torturing her because this is a superficial event. If you wanted to kill her, you could take that box cutter and drive it into her throat and end her life pretty quickly. That's not what happened because she's got these marks in addition to her neck. She's got them all over her chest. She's got them all over her back in addition to the strikes that she sustained with the meat cleaver that's there, which are chopping injuries. Those are completely different in appearance than say, for instance,

an incised injury. And when you see her body overall, remember I was referring to the recumbent position. She almost, Dave, looks as though she's blended into the ground. She's covered in blood. It doesn't look human. So her body doesn't look human upon first glance. I can understand why this person, Dave, that discovered her thought that, this can't be real. This can't be real what I'm saying. Can you imagine?

He, when he actually described, he said, I went and read what he, what he said and he talked about, he said it in such a way that you could understand that he was talking about it in the nicest way he could. He said he didn't realize what he was looking until he saw her breasts. And that's when he knew it was a female, a young woman. And then he was horrified until then he didn't have enough information to go on to be mortified you know what he is saying but joe take it the next step because you mentioned i didn't realize how many cuts were

on the neck i'm i looked at the pictures too i wish you hadn't tell you the truth it's it's one of those things i hate and i feel guilty because I've subjected you to it. This is the stuff that I've had to look at my whole life. Here's the side of me that comes into this. The first thing I did is I read the report on Krista Pike asking for reconsideration of the death penalty. And I looked at that and I thought, well, when I was 18, I did some stupid stuff too, but this isn't a stupid stuff. This isn't a flight of fancy. This isn't, I'm mad because this girl upset me and trying to steal my boyfriend.

Um, and I'm going to hurt her. I'm going to, you know, that this is a planned, not even a chaotic event joke. This was a planned murder. There was never any plan for colleen slimmer to make it back to the dorm alive and i'm i'm saddened to be honest with you that uh that the witness who turned on him shadola um how they gave her a free ride when they had all the information they didn't need shadola peterson to turn state's witness they already had this. You're talking about Krista Pike the very next morning. Okay.

The next morning, Joe, she's sitting at the breakfast table with her other dorm mates. Talking about this piece of skull is from Colleen's head. I killed her last night. And there she is displaying it as if it's some kind of trophy. Well, upon further consideration, Dave, I have to say, I don't know that this is so much a case of someone dabbling in Satanism or the occult as much as it is sadism, because this is one of the most sadistic homicides I've ever borne witness to. I get all kinds of interesting phone calls, Dave, as you can imagine.

I'll have people that will reach out to me because they, I don't know, they have a case they want me to look into, or I'll have just the most bizarre questions that people might have regarding death. And it's okay, you know, to get those questions that people might have regarding death. And it's okay, you know, to get those questions because people are curious. But I think probably the first time I ever got this question asked of me, and it was not, it had nothing to do with a phone call. It had to do, I was at a party and I had someone walk up to me and say, um, say, hey, I was wondering, I'd read somewhere that you can donate your body to the body farm at UT, like an anatomical donation.

I was like, yeah, I think you can, actually. Do you know what that involves? I'm asking, physically. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We know that they do the decay studies on bodies and this sort of thing. And what's fascinating about this case that we're talking about today, Colleen's case, is that, you know, it's not stone's throw, but it's very close to actually the location of the body farm at UT. And, you know, did you know that the body farm actually plays a role in this particular case? Because arguably one of the best forensic anthropologists anywhere in the world, I'd

put him up against anybody in the world, actually was involved in this case. And it had to do with that bit of skull that Pike brought to the breakfast table with her that day. I couldn't imagine what kind of person would think it was a good thing. You know, the arrest on this case took 36 hours because of Pike. And so that's why I have such a problem with Shadola Peterson being let go by turning state's witness. How did that piece of skull that Krista Pike was showing off as a trophy, how did that play into what took place at trial? What you do have here is you're displaying an anatomical feature that's easily traced back to this young woman's skull.

And just imagine, it's kind of like, let me see, how can I put this? Could they have traced it back to her at that time? And is there a part of bone that would actually be untraceable that you could say, I found this on the road? Well, yeah. And I was actually going to be much more simplistic. I'm not going to talk about anything as sophisticated as DNA here. But what I was going to say is it is truly like a jigsaw puzzle. And when you have this fracturing of the skull, and if you can imagine, Colleen's skull looked like a fractured egg, essentially, with bits of the shell missing. That's the easiest way that I can

kind of describe that to a layman. And what happened was that a gentleman, and I urge anybody hearing this, please take a look at this guy. He's fascinating. Dr. Murray Marks, he's a forensic anthropologist. I don't know if he's still at UT or not, but he was he famously ran the body farm after Dr. Bass, who founded it. Dr. Bill Bass. Murray Marks took it over and managed the body farm. I don't know if Murray's still there or not. But anyway, he became involved in this case. And the key here is that they wanted, they, the prosecution, wanted to be able to demonstrate, I think, not just the physical assemblage that they would have, you know, because it's very common for a forensic anthropologist to take a fragmented skull or any other fragmented bone. And they have this unbelievable skillset, Dave. They have the patience of a watchmaker. They can take these little particulate bits and bring them back together. It's amazing to watch. And I think

that not only did they want to anatomically place this bit of skull back in there. But it was through this demonstration, I think, that they were able to say, okay, this is what they did to Colleen. This is what they did. Not only did they crush her skull, she sustained multiple fractures in her skull, but they took a trophy as well. And we have to begin to consider, you know, really what that means in this case and how does it,

how does it factor into the consideration as to whether or not she needs to be on death row? You know, are there mitigating factors here? I don't know because I'm not an attorney and I'm certainly not a psychologist. What I do know is that the physical evidence here demonstrates somebody that was very purposed in accomplishing this task. You've got this poor young girl that has been sliced all over her body. These photographs are just absolutely beyond the pale matter of fact, I can't believe that they're, they're actually, you know, spinning about out there on the internet. Um, the depth of them, the amount of pain that would have been associated just with those. And yeah, she's not, you know, what,

what this person said, she's not dying. Yeah, she's not going to die from these superficial injuries that you've inflicted, but it's going to cause such an amazing amount of pain in the last moments of Colleen's life. That's why I used the term sadistic earlier. It goes to torture. It absolutely goes to torture. Actually defined by Krista Pike. You know, I told you how reading her statement of what took place, and it's a very long statement.

She actually explains this in living color, like she's reliving it as she gives her statement to police telling them what transpired. There were several times in the beating process that lasted 30 to 40 minutes and i think it might have lasted a lot longer right you know this is from her from krista pike's account where she as soon as they got to the area krista immediately starts pounding on her colleen she hits her in the head with her knee several times. She is putting her knee, her head, her head on the ground several times. And Colleen is screaming, why are you doing this?

Why are you doing this? And she's, you know, because of him and they let her back up. She tried to run. Colleen or Krista said when she tried to run away, he, she didn't name him, but he, her boyfriend chased her down, brought her back. She, again, she's getting pummeled. She's getting hit. She's getting her head bashed in. She's getting kicked.

When she's on the ground, she's being kicked. And she gets up and runs again. Again, she is caught and drugged back. That's when, one of the times when she got up and ran, one of the cuts, and this is what Krista Pike said, the long cut on her back was the second time she tried to run. She cut her in the back because she was trying to kill her then, but she wouldn't die. I look at this over and over. I've read this and I can't think what kind of person, Joe, I mean, she wants us to believe that she should be taken off death row because it's been so many years that we're supposed to forget her description

of what she said she did to this 19 year old girl who did nothing but want to be in job core she terrorized her for weeks leading up to it lured her into an area where she could beat her she had two friends standing by to make sure the girl couldn't get away then she beat her repeatedly about the head, the body. She kicked her. She bruised her and she cut her. She used a mini meat cleaver. She used a box cutter.

And then when she wouldn't die, she threw us and she couldn't move. She was laying on the ground. She could no longer get up. She dropped a piece of asphalt on her head to crush her skull to make her brain come out and then had the temerity to grab a piece of that head and take it with her as a trophy. You know, and there's a statement that Pike made, too, that is kind of a curious statement. She is quoted as saying that I just felt mean that day. What does that entail? You just feel mean that day.

Because I've got to tell you, I've been mean before in my life. I've been mean to people. I think that many people in our audience can understand that. But this is not being mean, all right? This is not something that you slap your hand's child for or put them in the corner and say, don't do that. You're being mean to your brother or your sister or whatever the case might be. This is not mean. This is sadism because you're looking to torture someone. And, you know, sometimes I scoff at the saying, you know, and it's rote. People say it all the time.

Hurting people hurt people. You know, I've heard that over and over and again throughout my entire life. The problem is that hurting people hurt people. The hurting people that are hurting people are rarely if ever held accountable for their actions. And I'd go further with that. If she didn't beg for her life, if, if Colleen Slimmer, if Krista Pike didn't report how she begged for her life, Krista Pike took great pains to say that Colleen Slimmer said,

look, I won't tell anybody what you've done. Just let me go while she's kicking. Colleen, Krista Pike told Colleen, stop talking to me. Shut up. And she said the reason she told her to shut up, it's too hard to hurt somebody when they're talking to you. Yeah, I think that that's another factor that enters into this because you've got an individual that at that point in time, she was incapable of mercy, even though it's being asked of her. And that goes again to this idea, okay, well, if we don't keep you on death row, because I can only imagine that that date is approaching quicker and quicker and quicker, logic would dictate that it would have to be. What are you

going to do? Are you going to turn her out into the general population of the prison? I wonder how the other prisoners would feel about that having her there because you're talking about somebody that is not capable of displaying mercy and certainly in the instance involving colleen that's the case you know even on top of this show um this wasn't the only time that she tried to kill somebody she was successful in killing killing Colleen Slimmer, but after she was in prison, she tried to kill a cellmate with a shoestring. They actually charged her with attempted murder. It happened in 2001 after she had been in prison for five years. She strangled Patricia Jones. Now, that woman didn't die, but

they charged Krista Pike with attempted murder, and she was convicted of that. So, yeah, you want to let that person out that has no compunction about trying to take the life of somebody. Yeah. And I can't imagine that that would make any sense whatsoever. You know, it's kind of shocking when you think about the idea that, okay, you've already been convicted of arguably one of the most brutal murders that has taken place, certainly in Knox County, I would imagine. And that was well reported and this sort of thing. How's that rehabilitation going? It doesn't sound like it's going very well because five years afterwards, you've got her still attempting to murder someone that's in close proximity to her. So I would be really shocked.

And from what I understand, Dave, and correct me if I'm wrong, the judge denied this motion, didn't they? Yeah, a Knox County judge rejected the bid to vacate, which is the death sentence of Krista Pike. So, yeah, she's still on death row. They have not. I was looking it up to make sure they have not set a death date yet. That's something that goes through a different process. But they had to get through this last part of it, which they said, no, you know, you were 18. You were an adult in Tennessee at the time when it happened.

And their argument, of course, was that her boyfriend was 17 at the time and he was given life without, he wasn't given a death sentence and she was. I can tell you is that I felt differently when we started this case than after I read her statement. Having read a lot of statements where people admit things

and knowing that they're going to discount their own interaction, they're going to make it look less bad for themselves. And if that's her less bad version of what happened. Yeah. I'm horrified. I wouldn't want to even be in the prison with her now. Yeah.

Because the further you read, you realize that it gets darker and darker and darker. And for Colleen, for Colleen, she met her end at the hands of the sadistic woman. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. This is an iHeart Podcast.