[music]
[Beth] There are 53 inmates on death row in Tennessee.
The only woman is 43-year-old Christa Pike.
This month marks 25 years since the crime that landed her on death row.
10News reporter Jim Matheny takes us through the case that still lingers after a quarter century.
A warning, this report contains graphic details of a violent crime.
[papers shuffling]
[Randy] It was a unique case.
[Jim] Retired detective Randy York investigated more than a thousand deaths in his career.
[metal rattling]
None more notorious than the puzzle he solved in January 1995.
[microfiche clicking]
Putting it together painted a violent scene
where killers celebrated cruelty
and kept a souvenir of slaughter.
[Randy] This was probably toward the top of the most gruesome.
[Jim] But after 25 years, there's still one piece of the puzzle waiting to put this case in the past.
[Randy] Every time I hear a young girl disappeared, I think of her.
[Jim] 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer moved from Florida to Knoxville
to take computer classes with a Federal Job Corps program.
[car drives by]
On the night of January 12, 1995,
Slemmer went out with a few classmates.
[Randy] She didn't have a clue the danger she was in.
[Jim] The morning of Friday the 13th,
police recovered Slemmer's tortured body
behind the abandoned steam plant at the University of Tennessee.
[metal clanking]
Within one day, they arrested Job Corps students
Shadolla Peterson, Tadaryl Shipp, and Christa Pike.
[Randy] She was the ringleader out of the bunch.
[Jim] Pike and Shipp were in a relationship with each other
and the occult
and recruited other Job Corps students to Satanism.
[Randy] They wanted to sacrifice someone to Satan.
[Jim] Pike targeted Slemmer after the two had a run-in at school.
[Randy] Kind of an argument between two girls.
So she decided, "That's the person I'm going to sacrifice."
[Jim] The trio led Colleen where nobody could hear them
and then watched Christa Pike torture her for 45 minutes
before finally killing her.
[Randy] As she was slashing her,
she was still saying, "Let me go. Let me go. I'll go home. I won't tell nobody."
And they hacked and cut and slashed.
[Reporter] Authorities say she was then beaten over the head
with a large chunk of asphalt from this pile.
[Randy] There was two pentagrams carved on her body,
one on forehead
and then the main one here.
[Jim] York says the interrogation of Pike was this chilling as the crime.
[Randy] During the interview, she's very giddy, laughed, very cooperative.
She wanted to tell us all about it.
But she was giddy.
It was a happy thing for her.
It was the greatest thing ever,
and I've never seen anybody else like that...
like her, actually.
[chains clanking]
[Jim] Not only did prosecutors have a cheerful confession,
police found a keepsake from the killing.
[Randy] She had a piece of the skull wrapped up in a napkin in her coat pocket.
That's a trophy.
It showed that that piece she had fit exactly as a piece of puzzle in the skull.
[camera shutter clicks]
[Jim] Peterson was let off with probation
because she testified against Shipp and Pike.
Both were convicted of murder
and Shipp got life in prison.
As for Pike's punishment,
Colleen Slemmer's mother, May Martinez, wanted the jury to set a date with death.
[May] I would like to see her killed
and not go on living with taxpayers' money paying for her to live in jail, to get an education.
[Judge] It is, therefore, ordered that you shall be put to death.
[Christa sobs]
[Jim] The tears flowed when Pike was sentenced to die.
[Christa sobbing]
[Jim] But just a few minutes after this display,
she wrote Shipp a letter and was clearly walking the socio-path.
[Man reading] I miss you so much.
You see what I got for trying to be nice to that hoe?
I went ahead and bashed her brains out
so that she'd die quickly instead of letting her bleed to death.
[Randy] That statement was, "I didn't let her suffer."
Yeah, 45 minutes is about as long as it took and that's not quickly.
[man speaking indistinctly]
[Jim] The state sent Pike to death row in Nashville in 1996.
[Christa] There is nobody that's gonna take me out of this prison
and send me to Disneyland to live.
[Jim] And in 2002, a judge granted Pike's request to speed up the execution.
[Christa] Thank you.
[woman crying off screen]
[Christa] It's ok, Mommy.
[woman continues crying]
[Jim] But more appeals and the broader arguments over capital punishment
perpetually postponed her execution.
While Pike has waited,
she was convicted of attempting to murder an inmate in 2004,
and in 2012, convinced a former guard to help her escape.
[Randy] He thought he was in love with her.
And I understand he made an actual key
and he was fixing to spring her off death row,
which would've been the first-ever.
[May] I gotta fight for Colleen.
I'm her voice.
[Jim] In Florida, May Martinez says she needs Tennessee to give her closure
because the state will not release the final piece of Colleen's skull
until Pike's case is completely closed.
[May] They need to put Colleen to rest.
Execute her or give her life
and give me the rest of Colleen back so I can live.
[Jim] Pike's execution and the piece of skull she kept
are the final pieces left to end a cruel case
that weighs heavy on the family of Colleen Slemmer
and the detective who solved the puzzle of her brutal demise.
[Randy] I never met the victim in life...
But once you investigate a case, they become yours.
[choking up]
Yeah.
[sniffles]
[Jim] In Knoxville, Jim Matheny WBIR 10News
[Beth] Detective York says another tragedy in this case
is the wasted potential of Tadaryl Shipp.
He says Shipp is extremely intelligent and could have been a talented artist,
instead he's serving life in prison.
And there is still no execution date for Christa Pike.
The next inmate to be executed is choosing to die by the electric chair.
58-year-old Nicholas Sutton is convicted in several killings,
including the murder of his grandmother and a fellow inmate.
He is set to be executed February 20.