Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Christa Pike Awake, Speaking After Botched Execution, Shackled to Bed

Episode Date: October 7, 2026

Christa Pike's scheduled execution, aborted after failed attempt to deliver fatal drugs.  Tennessee administered two doses of pentobarbital, but she did not die. Witnesses reported that she continued breathing and making snoring-like sounds long after the drugs were administered. She was eventually taken by ambulance to a hospital.   After being unconscious, and on a ventilator,  Pike has regain consciousness and is speaking.   The state's remaining execution for 2026 and has been halted.    Joining Nancy Grace today: Randolph Rice  -  Former Prosecutor and Current Criminal Defense & Civil Attorney at Rice Law, website: ricelawmd.com, IG, FB, X: @ricelawmd Phil Keith - Former Chief of Police for Knoxville Police Dept.     Dr. Janie Lacy - Licensed Psychotherapist and CEO of Life Counseling Solutions, Author of "How To Heal From A Toxic Relationship: A Guide To Reclaiming Your Mental Health and Happiness", Host of "Let's Talk About It with Janie Lacy” Podcast on YouTube, janielacy.com, Instagram & Facebook: @JanieLacy   Joseph Scott Morgan  - Professor of Forensics: Jacksonville State University, Author, "Blood Beneath My Feet", YouTube Host: "Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan", @JoScottForensic   John North - Senior Investigative Journalist at W-B-I-R in Knoxville, Tenn.  Witnessed the botched execution.    Dave Mack  - Investigative Reporter, 'Crime Stories' See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Tonight, the double-dose torture killer, Krista Pike, is alive. Not just alive. She is awake and speaking. After her botched execution, she is shackled to a bed. What's next?

Good evening. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. I want to thank you for being with us. Christa Pike survives execution, keeping a piece of the victim's skull as a souvenir of murder. And then the curtain suddenly closed,

and the media witnesses are confused because she's very much still alive. She was still continuously talking. I just kept hit during it. It is therefore ordered that you shall be put to death by electrician and the mother prescribed by law and that you shall be transferred to custody of the warden at the Tennessee Prison Committee. And further, on the 12th day of January, 1997, your body shall be subjected to shock by sufficient current of electricity. My God, have mercy upon you.

Can I please help me? Mr. Bates, please hold them tied to adoption. Please hold me. Colleen will never hug her mother again. Her mother will never hold her teen girl in her arms again. Colleen was lured to a remote area. She was tortured. Pentegrams cut into her skin,

held down by this group of goods. including the defendant. When the victim, the teen girl, tried to run, she, Krista Pike, chased her and stabbed her brutally in the back with a meat cleaver, bashed her head in with a chunk of asphalt so viciously with such velocity. It was like a major league pitcher

that Colleen's skull shattered. And what did Pike do? She salvaged a piece of Colleen's skull as a souvenir and showed it off to her ghoulish friends and danced a little jig around with the skull. But somehow tonight, The double-dose lethal injection survivor, Krista Pike, is alive, talking, coherent, cognizant, and the torture killer has somehow turned into the poster girl for anti-death penalties. That was from our friends at WBIR.

joining me right now, special guest, John North, joining us out of Knoxville, Senior Investigative Journalist WBIR in Knoxville. He was there at the botched execution. He's also spoken in-depth to Colleen Slimmer's mother, Miss May Martinez. I mean, another chapter of hell for Colleen's mother, but first John North, thank you for being with us tonight. What happened? What did you see and hear in the death chamber? Well, you know, I've been to a couple other executions here in Tennessee, Nancy, and I've seen them go the way they were supposed to.

One was when we had the three drug cocktail, that one worked fine. The inmate was gone in about 20, 25 minutes. The other one was the electric chair, and you know how quickly that works. It became pretty apparent within a few. minutes, Nancy, that this was going wrong, that things were not happening the way they were supposed to. I was expectant that within, I don't know, five minutes, six minutes, seven minutes, she would have become unconscious drifted off and then all of her systems would start to go down. That's the way it was supposed to happen. Didn't happen that way at all. I was with in the witness chamber six other folks,

journalists, many of whom had seen executions before. So most of us had been through this. Some had also witnessed a botched attempt in May. But essentially, what happened is that she never really went under with the first dose. She was talking, singing, chuckling. Believe me, I was astonished when we're 10 minutes in and she's moving her head and her foot is moving and she's still talking. And she had a spiritual advisor who at the start was sort of her, what you thought to be blunt about it was sort of leading her down the path of what we thought would be a peaceful death, singing, kind of chanting, stroking her forehead, being with her standing right next to her on the gurney.

But it just continued like that. After the first dose, well, I should say about three, four, five minutes into it, she said, because we could all hear because a microphone was dangling from the ceiling near her and it was piped into the witness chamber. She said, have they started it yet? And I thought, oh, yeah, they started it. You should be feeling the effects. But after the first dose, then abruptly, the blinds come down. The advisor comes into the room with us.

And I thought, huh, okay, maybe now this is where we kick into, if you will, the final phase. That didn't happen. I think they were administering the second dose. He stepped out from where he was with us in the darkened witness chamber. Somebody whispered the clergy needs to come back in. That referenced him. He goes a couple doors down. I can hear the doors clanging and opening.

Blinds come back up. There he is standing again by her side. And she's snoring at this point. And I was aware that that is a step that is. inmates may experience or anybody who has a serious dose of pinto barbitol. But then she would kind of, her breathing would be kind of quiet. Then we come back to snoring. Every once in a while there was involuntary noise.

I'm not going to go minute by minute through it with you. You get the idea. But that continued off and on with the snoring, sleeping, whatever, till 805. They clearly were administering a second dose. And at 805, the blinds came down again, and that was it for us. We never saw in whatever was happening. We could hear her very loudly and clearly, wheezing, snoring, all of that. We didn't see what was going on in the last 15 minutes, I would guess.

Believe it or not, her breathing kind of got a little bit more regular. And at least the thought hit me. I think she's kind of rallying. Wow. John North, joining us out of Knoxville in the death chamber when Pikes two unsuccessful attempts at lethal injection occurred. I was speaking to a lot of viewers and listeners, and they want to know how does it work. You mentioned blinds going up and down. I know you could see her because you stated her head was moving and her foot was fluttering. how do the blinds work and what did you see? I heard a lot of what you heard

and I'm trying to decipher it and figure out what does it mean in relation to this brand new lawsuit that Pike has just filed against Jonathan Scrimetti, the Tennessee Attorney General, that said, what did you see? We're led into the witness chamber at about 642, 643, somewhere in there. A prison officer had said, we're going to have the lights on for you, and then they're going to go off. And essentially, that's a signal that we're about to start

when the lights go off. And he said, your eyes will adjust. We're sitting in a room with about three rows of chairs. I'm in the front row on the left-hand side. There's a door that I believe leads straight into the execution chamber in front of me to the left. There are four windows, four panels of glass. They've got reflective film on them, something like that. So while we're sitting there with the lights on, we can only see ourselves. But you asked what's happening. For roughly 45 minutes while we're in that room, they're prepping her. We can hear it. I can hear under the door sounds of paper rattling, like tape unspooling. I hear something that sounds like a chair rolling around. I can hear her whimper. time or two. That's all with the blinds down. Then the lights go off and that's a signal to us that okay now it's about to happen. Blinds come up 727 p.m. and you know this is a standard procedure. The warden is sitting I can see through the glass right pretty close to me up here. Krista's in the back of the room diagonal to

us on a gurney strapped down with the advisor next to her and the warden says do you have any last words. She says, yes, I do. She proceeds to tell people that she's going out of this world the way that she lived in it, which was with love for the people who she knew hated her as well as those who loved her. And she essentially said, maybe especially for the people who hated her. Did she offer love? And she said, I'm at peace. I'm ready to go. So that's kind of how it all started out at 727 with her offering final words. At this hour, Krista Pike alive, she is off the ventilator, she is speaking, she is alert, she is cognizant, recalls her name, has memories of being in the hospital after surviving the two

botched lethal injections. What does it mean? The memories of the hospital, but no memory of the execution attempts. Pike is able to communicate. She had a very close guess at the date she thought it was the end of September. She's been off the ventilator for some time now after being intubated at the hospital. This is after two doses, lethal doses, a pentabarbital dose, using at least seven needles. One of them came out of her arm bent at a 90-degree angle, and somehow she is now the poster girl for anti-death penalty. in all of this somehow Colleen Slimmer

and what was done to her has been totally obscured I heard stated just then that everyone thought that Christa Pike was going to have

a peaceful death but Dave Mac joining us, Crime Stories investigative reporter. That's not what Colleen Slimmer endured before her death, did she? No, Nancy, what happened to Colleen Slimmer goes beyond what any of us could even imagine.

Now, she was lured to her death. There had been a time where Krista Pike had been terrorizing, had been bullying Slimmer for some time. And she lures her out that night by telling her, you know what, we're going to make amends, we're going to put all this behind us and we're going to be best buddies. And so as Colleen Slimmer is walking with Pike and with Tedrell and with Shodola, she thinks putting all the bad behind and it's going to be great from here on out. And once they got here to an isolated area, The terrorization turned into violence.

And Nancy, we've got a box cutter used to slice Colleen. We've got the cleaver, a small cleaver used to hack at her. The pentagrams. There were two. One, stretched into her chest and then her head. And so the damage that was done to Colleen Slimmer's head goes beyond anything we can imagine, but her skull was crushed. And Krista Pike got a piece of that skull and held it as a souvenir and showed it off to others later, almost as a threat and as a joyful experience for her to remember.

By the way, something that continues to mortify Colleenie Slimmer's mother is getting all of the pieces of her daughter's. shattered skull so it can be put to rest. That's what happened to Colleen Slimmer, Nancy. Joe Scott Morgan joining us, Professor Forensics Jacksonville State University. He is a star of body bags with Joe Scott Morgan on YouTube. He is a death investigator that has conducted over 10,000 death investigations. Joe Scott, did you know that Colleen, Colleen Slimmer, the victim in this scenario, had over 300, slices to her body, including being hewn, H-E-W-N, hewn in the back with a meat cleaver.

Her skull bashed in with a chunk of asphalt. What happened to the victim? Because all I'm hearing about is what's happening to Krista Pike, who is alive and well cognizant and speaking. clearly well enough to file this lawsuit I've got in my hands. Let's just say this plainly. The perpetrators in this case, chief among them, is going to be Pike. They should have prepared.

This is not like something where, you know, we're going to arbitrarily find a box cutter on the ground or find a meat cleaver on the ground. No, they showed up with this. And back to what David said regarding the luring, to bring her back to this isolated, abandoned area where they could do this for her. And Nancy, you know, part of this,

and I know this very horrific relative to the physical, but, you know, you had taunting that was going on with her where they're terrorizing her, threatening her with death, not showing any kind of mercy on any level whatsoever when they kind of laid hands on her and began to attack her. And here's one of the things that has stuck with me. when she would not die, when she would not die. And I'm going to say this very plainly, so hold your ears.

When she did not die, you know, Pike is alleged to have said, the bitch won't die. The bitch won't die. And so it's at this point that, you know, she also states, I want to see brains flow. So with that, a piece of asphalt is then taken, this dirty, filthy, ragged chunk of asphalt. And she has struck in the skull multiple times. There's a classic image of my old friend Murray Marks that's sitting on the stand there in Knoxville,

and he has her skull there, and he's showing it. And it is fractured in so many areas. And this piece that Dave had referred to is kind of in the parietal, occipital area, that was actually removed at the scene. And this is what she was celebrating, you know, when she goes to, I think it was to lunch or something the next day, and she's displaying this. And, you know, and it is, it is truly a trophy, Nancy. It is truly a trophy. It ranks right up there with stuff that Dahmer did. You know, I think that people want to separate this kind of evil, perhaps.

but it's just equally as evil. You know, this poor girl had done nothing to anyone was tortured, terrorized, and then literally obliterated. Her head was obliterated back there in that filthy, filthy surface back there in the ag area at UT. An I-Heart Radio Experience. Carly Pierce, live at the Opera House, October 16th. When your way in to the exclusive.

IHartRadio sound check party, an intimate pre-show performance and Q&A. And then stay for the full show. Harley Pierce, live in Toronto. Enter now for your chance to win at iHeartRadio.ca. Stream Carly's new album, Honest Woman. Available now. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Another special guest joining us tonight in the aftermath of a double.

double-botched lethal injection of Krista Pike. Convicted torture killer of a teen girl has been behind bars 31 years as the appellate process grinded to an end. Phil Keith was the chief of police in Knoxville. At the time, Colleen was slaughtered when she begged for Pike and her cohort to let her live. They did not. What do you recall happened, Fieldkeith? What did you learn about the murder? Well, the crime scene was gruesome.

It's one thing to look at a picture. It's another thing to be at the crime scene, see what the medical examiner was doing to extract facts. And there's been a lot of discussion, as you've mentioned, making Krista Pike almost a poster shelf. for whatever cause. The local, you know, our local media refers to her as Christop Gail Pike.

They never mention slimmer if they do, it's sparing. So it, there's so much, there's so many dynamics that go on in these kind of issues, particularly with the victim family. You know, they have to navigate a very complex criminal justice system. They're not often informed. I ran roundtables.

victim roundtables for the Department of Justice for better than 12 years. And the message that came out every time was the gruesome details that they would have to experience and the inconsistent messages they received either from the prosecutors or from other sources. So what Colleen's family has had to go through for 31 years is starts with the first notice of death. You know the last conversation her mother had with Colleen was the night, actually the night that she was taken. She mentioned to her mother that she was having trouble with a couple of students. And then the facts start to unfold. She's lured away as soon as they get over that remote area of the University of Tennessee Ag Camp.

campus. There was a hard concrete pad and Pike immediately grabbed her by the head of the hair, drove her head into his to her knee and the assault began and she had assistance from from ship who was 17 at the time very much playing a role in the attack and the torture. He's he's the one that actually carved the pentagram. There's been a mention of a second one, but there's no record of that in the medical examiner's report. Sandra Elkins, who was a medical examiner at the time, said that the cuts were so multiple. She quit counting.

But just going through watching parts of the investigation unfold with the investigator interviewing Pike and Shipp, there's just clearly no remorse. Pike planned this on the 11th. She told a friend at Job Corps that she intended to kill Pike, I mean kill Colleen. You know, after she came back, as you've mentioned already, she took a piece of Colleen still as a souvenir and bragged about it that night actually, and then the next day.

And then she was interviewed first, Pike was interviewed first on the, I think it was the 14th by Randy York. And I watched part of that interview as well as his ship's interview. What struck me about the lack of remorse, particularly with ship, he actually fell asleep during the interview. When the officers went to arrest him at Job Corps, he was found asleep. So there's just no indication of any kind of remorse. When Colleen fell to the ground after being hit in the head the second time,

Pike continued to beat her with a chunk of asphalt and stated she could hear Colleen breathing blood in and out and could see Colleen jerking. Her words, not mine. But Pike continued to hit her and hit her and hit her. Krista got down in Colleen's face and yelled, Colleen, do you know who's doing this to you? The victim only responded with groans.

Krista Pike and her cohort grabbed Colleen's feet and dragged her still alive to an area near trees, threw on a pile of dirt and trash. Later telling detectives, the whole thing took, what, about an hour? She removed the bandana from her own hair. and tied it around Colleen's mouth to prevent her from talking. It's overwhelming. Picking up a piece of Colleen's skull and putting it in her pocket as a trophy.

Proof she was the one to kill Colleen. What, Phil Keith, was the motive for murder? Well, she conjured up the story that it was. a love triangle and that's what we believed initially. But there was nothing to provide, you know, proof that that was actually existing. I mean, Colleen was basically a naive, pleasant, easygoing young 19-year-old who'd worked with her mother at daycare and been involved in helping children with disabilities and by all descriptions, she didn't have a vicious bone or her body. So Pike Connors, up the story about calling standing over with a box cutter love triangle and

ship in his comments said there was no relationship so you know this was all part of Pike's motivation to kill somebody she told her fellow student at Job Corps the day before that she intended to kill Colleen and she wanted to make it. It's hard. I broke down and tears. She was laying on a table, talking, still laughing, picking up her head.

Has anyone apologized to you for this? No, sir. Nobody apologized. Here we are, 31 years, and you're laughing in my face again. And that's what I feel like they did. I want to think about Colleen being there and saying, thank you, Mom. I'm her voice.

The criminals get so much. much tension. Why? She has been lost in this and they lost a piece of hers called that we still can't find. She's been forgotten other than when this brought up like this. That is Colleen's mother speaking from our friends at First Coast News and WHAS. Joining us now, Dr. Janie Lacey, licensed psychotherapist, CEO of Life Counseling Solutions. She's the author of How to heal from a toxic relationship and the star of Let's Talk About It with Janie Lacey. Dr. Janie, thank you for being with us. This mother.

I'm talking about Colleen's mother. 31 years, she waited for some type of closure. Of course, there's never any closure. You just somehow managed to trudge forward. And now this, Dr. Janie. You know, Nancy, I imagine, you know, I want us all to imagine, like, being, told for 30 years that a date is coming and you brace for it, the day arrives, and it doesn't end. You know, I think families in that position, they get caught in a loop of hope, right?

And then there's dread. And then right now we're looking at potentially reversal. So people talk about closure, as you stated, but there is no clean closure when the process keeps reopening Ms. Martinez's and the family's wound. and her mom who has said for years that she supported the death penalty for Pike. I mean, whatever happens next, I mean, I hope the state thinks hard

about what these families are told and when, so they are not just learning from headlines because there is a family that has been waiting for 30 years, Nancy. She went in there thinking that justice was going to get shoved, and of course, Chrisette Pike didn't make it, didn't. die. You had 31 years to do this. You had 31 years to make sure you guys got everything in order for this day to happen. And for that to stop an hour before, it just a slap in the face. From our friends at WVLT, that's Morgan Caley, Colleen's niece, speaking out.

An I-Heart Radio Experience. Carly Pierce, live at the Opera House, October 16th. Win your way in to the exclusive IHeartRadio sound check party, an intimate pre-show performance and Q&A. And then stay for the full show. I don't leave. I'm gonna stay. Charlie Pierce, live in Toronto. Enter now for your chance to win at Iheartradio.ca. Stream Carly's new album, Honest Woman.

Available now. Crime stories with Nancy Grace. 31 years to get this ready. They still screwed it up. Randolph Rice, I am reading this motion just filed by Krista Pike's lawyers, demanding that the Attorney General for the state of Tennessee maintain and preserve all evidence regarding the double-botched lethal injection. There's going to be a huge lawsuit for medical cause, for pain and suffering, but will her death say, sentence be commuted by the governor.

Nancy, that's a great question. And I don't know that it's necessarily going to be commuted by the governor, but certainly the courts are going to get involved here. And this may go all the way up to the Supreme Court because there are two big issues here. The first, the Fifth Amendment, that says you can't have double jeopardy, which means you can't punish somebody twice. And more importantly, I think the stronger argument... Put them up.

Double jeopardy revolves trying in. involves trying someone twice. It also has it. There's also a portion that talks about double punishment. Double punishment. That's why there's double jeopardy. There can't be double punishment on double trial. This does not mean you're really something.

Okay. Double jeopardy when when the sentence fails does not preclude the sentence being reenacted. I'm still making that argument. And I'm making it to the Supreme Court. And here's my second argument. Go ahead, spin it out, rumble stillskin. Eighth Amendment can't have cruel and unusual punishment. This was cruel and unusual punishment.

And this is distinguishable from all of the cases that the Supreme Court has talked about. Because in those cases, they couldn't get the needle in or the electricity wasn't powerful enough. They got her to the brink of death. Ms. Pike was almost dead. they had to resuscitate her, bring her back, and now she's injured. This is one of those ones where I don't think they're going to put another needle in her. And to be honest with you, I would let this group in Tennessee give me a flu shot. Good enough for government work. That seems to be the motto here. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, I've been a government worker my whole legal

career. I don't even know what you're talking about. Weren't you a former prosecutor? Isn't that the government? It was, but this group here. Okay, Pot, don't call them. that kettle black, good enough for government. Okay, let me direct Randolph Rice to the law, not just his fantasies, his legal fantasies. I direct you to Louisiana, Francis V. Reisweber. The U.S. Supreme Court condoned and allowed a second execution attempt after the initial of execution malfunction. Bam. So I guess you're going to argue against the U.S. Supreme Supreme Court ruling. And again, you heard Randolph Rice spinning out double jeopardy. Legal precedent states double jeopardy does not apply to a failed execution attempt.

The state is not barred from trying again. Double jeopardy deals with not being able to try someone twice for the same crime. Here's an example. O.J. Simpson, even if he had stated, okay, I did it, and I'll tell you how I did it. If he gave a full confession to murdering Nicole and Ron, he could not be tried again because he was tried and acquitted. You cannot try somebody again. And that is why you see, very often,

you see prosecutors wait a long time to bring a case to trial because they're trying to get enough evidence to convict. Because if you miss the boat, if you screw up and there's an acquittal, and then you get that big smoking gun too late. There's nothing you can do about it. Straight back to John North, senior investigative journalist W.B.I.R. Knoxville. What's happening?

Is the death penalty going to be commuted? Is she going to be given life without parole versus the D.P.? What's happening? Tennessee is a really red state, Nancy. So you start with that as kind of the assumption. This is a place where people are pretty hardcore about crime and they want people to be held accountable. On the other hand, as Randolph just said,

the state couldn't execute somebody after assuring everybody that we're going to be no problems and we've already had a botched execution attempt in May. They didn't get the drugs into that inmate system. This one, they did and she lived. What's going to happen is it's all going to play out, as you would imagine in multiple courts on multiple platforms. The death penalty is something we're already hearing from politicians, Republicans who are like, hey, never mind with lethal injection.

Let's go back to the electric chair right now. Lethal injection is the designated method for most inmates. If you're convicted today on the table, that's what you're going to get. This is not just a legal issue. It's a political issue too. you know, it's unprecedented. Will people as a result of this say, wow, we need to take a serious look at death penalty in Tennessee? Yes, they will. Will it go away completely? I couldn't give you that assurance. I did talk over the weekend with a district attorney general who handles death penalty cases and had one pending until there was a death of an inmate. But he said, you have to wonder now if Tennessee will ever be capable of carrying out another death sentence.

So we're talking about not just months, and we have a new governor who's going to be taking office in January, elections next month. But you're talking about years to try and figure this out. This is years. Now, meanwhile, just so everybody knows, Pike's not going anywhere. She's got this sentence, whether it's commuted or not, she attempted to murder another inmate in 2001. She's got 25 years for that as well. Stop everything. Well, but what, what? What? Yes, she, in 2001, she tried to kill another inmate here from Knoxville. Chief Keith would remember this case. The woman's name was is Patricia Jones. She murdered an elderly woman here in Knoxville. and she and Krista never liked each other.

That's what the record shows. And in 2001, Krista decided that, you know, she was going to take a bootlace and try and kill her. Didn't work. The guards intervened while, according to the court record, Krista is basically in control of her, saved Patricia Jones's life. A couple days after that, you may be aware there was a prison conversation. Those are recorded. Krista was talking to her mother and also a friend and basically said,

I premeditated the, you know what, out of it. If I had been given another 30 seconds, there'd be a white chalk mark out there in the yard. Okay. Randolph Rice, there you go. Even if she is not given the death penalty again, she's going to get behind bars and try to kill somebody else. That's new to me. I did not know she tried to kill a female inmate. Then convict her for that, and let's do have her, you have her sentence to death for that crime, but for this crime itself.

And again, I do, I disagree with you. I think double jeopardy, that commitment comes into it. I just want to make sure that what did you just say? Convictor on that and sit her and death on that case if you want to do that. But for this case here, the one that we're talking about where they couldn't complete the execution, that is the issue we're talking about here. And that's the issue where it's botched. And the Supreme Court, if it gets that far, is going to say, you had your chance, Tennessee, you failed miserably. The same people running the DMV seem to be running the execution chambers in Tennessee. You don't get to do it again.

So Joe Scott Morgan, what happened to the three-jog cocktail that seemed to work? Honestly, Nancy, I don't know why they went away from it. I'm sure that it was more lawyer speak relative to how they were going to go through this. because with the combination with each element that you combine into this so-called cocktail, that is a point that can be argued along the way that it's going to not be sufficient to do the job. So what do you do? Well, you drop down to a single agent, which is pentabarbital in this case. By the way, again, I'd like to emphasize this is the single most common standalone drug that is actually, used to euthanize dogs with. Just let that sink in. It's used every single day all across the

country by veterinarian offices. So with that said, they settle on this one drug. It is not the drug. Okay. It's not the methodology. This is what used to be referred to in computer speak as operator error here. They failed to get the delivery device. into her vessels. Okay? Now, I would love to tell you this and just so you understand. You mean they did not inject a blood vessel? Is that what that just meant?

Yeah, it is. They went into probably the interstitian. They couldn't find a vein between all of them. They couldn't find a vein. Yeah, and one of the things that's one of the tropes that's been put out, well, she dehydrated herself, you know, days prior. Let me tell you something. And there are wonderful nurses and CNAs all in paramedics and all kinds of people out there all across America right now as we speak that are setting up IVs.

And yes, sometimes you have problems and sometimes you don't. But Nancy, you're talking about going through, and you said this, going through seven needles. Okay. How many do you need in order to make this happen? And the way that this process is set up in Tennessee is that they have this 30-day window. It's like a spin-up. And then they have these markers they have to go through. It's like retraining, right?

So you have the initial contact, and then everybody's supposed to know what they do. Where in the hell did they fail here? How can you be this just blatantly incompetent? Agree. And it started the ball rolling in a little. legal and emotional nightmare. The bill already is estimated to approach $200,000 for the medical bills. Then there's going to be the lawsuits for pain and suffering on behalf of Krista Pike. But what about Slimmer's mother? John North joining a senior investigative reporter WBIR Knoxville.

You spoke with Colleen's mother. What is her response to all of this? disgusted, despondent. She's kind of given up. She's said things to us yesterday like this was never going to happen to begin with. She's called it fake. And I said, if you don't mind me asking, what would you like to see done? She said, it doesn't matter what I think. They don't care what I think. So that kind of summarizes where she is mentally. What was her demeanor as she spoke to you, John North? increasingly frustrated and angry, Nancy. We've known each other for 30 years. I've tried to stay in touch with her. There were many times where she was like, it's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. And I said, may, you just have to trust the legal process. We talked to her the night before the execution, went over and met her in her hotel room in Nashville. And she was kind of like, okay, you know, maybe this is going to happen. And I'll be there for Colleen to witness it. But, I mean, she was seeing the same thing that I was seeing Wednesday night, and she was back to being let down from her perspective, again, in thinking. Because it never ends.

First of all, the family of a murder victim, the rest of their life is altered. It never goes away, ever. Everything has changed. But this, I just don't know how Slimmer's family can keep going. Guys, you were seeing video just then from First Coast News, NWHAS, as John was speaking. Nancy, Krista Pike's attorney spoke this afternoon. They said, first thing she said was, where am I, and who are you? But she remains shackled to her bed, and her lawyer, Andy Spivey, says the murderer is still severely unwell,

cannot move her arms or swallow, has a blood clot and pneumonia, and a request to unshackle her was refused. Pike's attorneys filed an emergency motion to secure the execution materials, noting that she only regained limited consciousness and speech the day before the hearing yesterday. Davidson County Chancery Court Chancellor Ayesha L. Miles ordered the state of Tennessee to preserve all evidence connected to the failed execution of Pike. The judge's sweeping order requires Tennessee Department of Correction to save anything that was in the actual room. It's an extensive list including medical supplies like syringes, needles, unused drugs, and IV lines, records and documentation like execution logs, drug lot numbers, time logs, and medical records, as well as communications, emails, text messages, witness accounts, video footage, and any 911 calls made during the incident.

We wait as justice unfolds. And tonight, we remember an American hero, patrolman Cassie Johnson, Charleston PD, West Virginia, just 28 shot and killed in the line of duty, leaving behind her mother, Cheryl, and siblings, Chelsea and Charles. American hero, patrol person, Cassie Johnson.

Thank you to our guests, but especially to you for being with us. Nancy Gray, signing off for tonight, but I'll see you tomorrow night. And until then, good night, friend. This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed human.