- [Narrator] On the Eve of Friday, the 13th, 1995.
Four teenage students took a walk into the desolate woods
near the campus of the University of Tennessee.
Three of them are said to have belonged to a satanic cult,
and the fourth, she was teen from Florida
who only tagged along for free weed.
But what happened to her in the woods that night,
has sparked a fascination that has spanned over 20 years.
What is up EWU crew?
Today, we are going to cover a horrific crime
spurred by jealousy.
One that would leave a young girl mutilated,
with a pentagram carved into her torso,
and a missing piece of her skull taken from her body.
There is no doubt that evil showed its face
in the Tennessee woods that night in 1995.
But did the devil make them do it?
Let's get into it.
Christa Gail Pike was born March 10th, 1976,
in West Virginia.
She was raised by her devout Christian grandmother,
and her playground was the slaughterhouse
where her grandfather worked.
As a child, Christa was allegedly abused
by her grandmother's friend, Ernest.
And sadly, it is speculated that if this abuse occurred,
it may have started when she was still in diapers.
At the age of 12, her grandmother died,
and following it is believed
that Christa attempted to take her own life
for the first time.
Stricken with grief, it was later reported
that Christa began to self mutilate in different ways
in an attempt to cope.
Matters only worsened for her
when she had to move in with her mother Carissa,
who at the time was a licensed registered nurse,
and was allegedly an alcoholic.
They did not have a great relationship to say the least.
Christa's mother ended up taking her troubled young daughter
to see a shrink.
However, most of the shrinks that Christa visited
didn't provide enough aid when it came to her mental health.
Things were only worsened by the revolving men
in her mom's life.
In an interview, Christa recalled
one of her mom's boyfriends saying,
"He made this leather strap with a wooden handle on it
"specifically to beat the hell out of me with.
"And he made this thing and hung it up on my bedroom wall
"like it was decoration."
All of these factors
undoubtedly were influential on Christa's psyche,
which may have led to her demonic shift in behavior.
Christa when 18 years old,
was enrolled in the Jobs Corp program
at the Knoxville Campus of the University of Tennessee.
In the nineties, Job Corps was described as
"providing vocational training for disadvantaged youth,"
giving them a chance for a promising career.
Christa was there to study nursing,
following in her mother's footsteps.
It was here that Christa would meet Colleen Slemmer,
who was enrolled in the same program.
To say that they were friends would be inaccurate.
Christa suspected Colleen was attempting to seduce
her 17 year old boyfriend.
The boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp was caught in the middle
of this love triangle.
At one point, Christa had traveled back home for a holiday,
while to Tadaryl stayed behind in Knoxville.
It was only because of Christa's absence
that he turned his attention to Colleen.
He later admitted that he and Colleen did hook up
during that break.
However, he never confirmed the fling to Christa,
leading her to act upon only her suspicions.
In an interview, Tadaryl can be heard saying about Colleen.
"I didn't even know she existed.
"She approached me."
Friends of Colleen Slemmer denied that she was attempting
to snatch away Tadaryl from Christa,
but with obvious tension between the two young women,
Christa attempted to extend an olive branch to Colleen,
by offering her as some of the cannabis
she had stashed away in the woods.
But that was not Christa's true intention.
The bag of weed she claimed was hidden,
was only the hook to reel Colleen to her grim fate.
The night before, Christa admitted to her friend,
Kim Iloilo, that she was planning on killing Colleen,
adding, "She just felt mean that day."
Enthralled by the occult,
it wasn't just Krista that voiced her sinister interests.
Tadaryl, a few days prior to the incident,
would tell another student that, "He had to make
"a human sacrifice because the celestial bodies
"were in alignment."
At approximately 8:00 PM on Thursday, January 12th,
the four students signed out of their dorms.
Christa Pike, Tadaryl Shipp, Colleen Slemmer,
and another friend named Shadolla Peterson.
Colleen, with the hopes of getting high with the group,
didn't appear to have a problem walking into the woods.
They led Colleen to an isolated area in Tyson Park,
near the University of Tennessee Campus.
It was here where the grizzly acts
would unfold on that chilly Tennessee night.
The tension grew thick between the group,
when Christa confronted Colleen,
accusing her of wanting to steal her boyfriend away.
As Colleen again, denied the accusation,
she quickly realized that they weren't in the woods
to smoke pot as she had eagerly anticipated.
Christa and Tadaryl were armed with a small meat cleaver
and box cutter.
While Shadolla stayed on the perimeter as a lookout.
They were ready for a fight.
Suddenly Christa grabbed Coleen's head
and slammed her face into her knee.
She then threw Colleen into the ground
and with an unrelenting fury,
kicked and punched her mercilessly.
Colleen cried out, "Why are you doing this to me?"
As the forceful blows continued raining down on her.
Laying in the mud and sobbing,
Colleen mustered the strength to stand and attempt
to escape.
She tried to run away several times, but to no avail.
The first time resulted in Christa slicing a long cut
across her back.
Her attempts were also thwarted by Tadaryl,
who intercepted Colleen and pinned her to the ground.
It was here that Christa unsheathed the box cutter blade,
and sliced Colleen once again,
this time across her stomach.
Colleen begged Christa for her life,
telling her that if she would let her go,
that she would quote, "Walk back to Florida
"without stopping at Job Corps to pick up her stuff."
Christa told Colleen to shut up, saying, "It's harder
"to hurt someone when they're talking to you."
She later admitted that the more Colleen tried to talk,
the more she kicked her in the face.
The unrelenting and brutal torture paused momentarily,
when Christa thought she heard a noise in the nearby woods.
Colleen was left lying on the cold damp ground
while Christa briefly investigated the sound.
It was shortly thereafter that Krista returned,
and proceeded to lacerate the helpless girl's throat,
cutting it several times with the box cutter.
Amazingly, Colleen once again found the strength
to sit up and plead for her life,
and even attempt another escape.
But as soon as she started to flee,
Christa threw a rock, striking her squarely
in the back of the head.
Tadaryl then joined in and hit her with rocks as well.
Christa explained how after regaining control,
she remembered the specific sounds
of Colleen's labored breathing.
A medical examiner later described how Colleen was drowning
in her own blood.
After about 30 minutes, Tadaryl took the box cutter
and carved a pentagram into Colleen's chest
as their final mark.
The medical examiner later testified saying,
"The area around each wound was red in appearance,
"indicating that the heart had still been beating
"when the wound was inflicted."
He added, "None of the aforementioned wounds
"would have rendered the victim unconscious."
With every slash across her skin,
Colleen surely felt the agony
of all the horrors that were being done to her.
She suffered through nearly an hour
before Christa picked up a large chunk of broken asphalt,
and repeatedly struck Colleen in the head.
As Coleen's blood collected on the cold forest floor,
her pain and agony finally came to a chilling end.
While Shadolla kept watch, Tadaryl and Christa
dragged Colleen's body to a nearby area,
where there was a cluster of trees,
and she was placed on top of a pile of dirt and debris.
But before leaving the site, Christa took a piece
of Colleen's fragmented skull,
and placed in the pocket of her jacket as a trophy
of what she had just done.
Allegedly Satanists believed that the body must be whole
for the soul to be released.
And by taking part of Colleen,
her soul would be kept captive.
Then they removed two of her ID cards
and a pair of black gloves that Colleen had been wearing.
Tadaryl and Christa rubbed the mud
from the bottom of their shoes over the bloodstains
that covered their pants in an attempt to hide any evidence.
After leaving the isolated part
of the University of Tennessee Campus,
they walked to a nearby Texaco gas station
to dispose of the ID cards and gloves.
From there, they returned to their dorm rooms
around 10:00 PM, as if nothing happened.
Four people signed out that night,
but only three signed back in.
Once back at the dorms, Christa revisited her friend
Kim Iloilo.
This time, Christa wasn't feeling mean
as Kim had described before.
Instead, she was dancing around in circles,
smiling and singing.
Like an eager child wanting to show off,
Christa bragged to Kim of the atrocities
she had just committed earlier in the night.
She even showed Kim the piece of Colleen's skull
that she had taken with her.
Colleen's butchered remains were discovered the next morning
by a university employee.
Initially thinking he stumbled upon an animal carcass,
the man went in closer for further inspection.
In horror, he realized he was looking at a human body
when he noticed the naked torso.
At 8:00 AM on Friday, the 13th, Knoxville police arrived,
along with the university campus police.
One of the first responding officers
described Colleen's head saying,
"I thought I was looking into her face,
"but everything was so badly mangled I couldn't be sure."
Christa was careless in more ways than one
following the murder.
She returned to the scene of the crime the next day.
Only to be denied entry to the part of the woods
she intended to go.
Later on, she left behind her jacket,
the same one with a piece Colleen's skull,
in an administrator's office on campus.
The jacket was turned over to the police
where they discovered the piece of skull.
All three students, Christa Pike, Tadaryl Shipp,
and Shadolla Peterson, were promptly arrested
within the next 36 hours.
Christa was the first to be questioned.
The talkative teen waived her rights to remain silent,
and admitted she was at fault for Colleen's death.
Her entire confession once typed out,
was 42 pages in length.
As if that wasn't enough proof,
police found Colleen Slemmer's blood
soaked into the jeans Christa had worn that night.
A co-operative Christa took police
back to the Texaco station
where they found Colleen's ID cards,
and also accompanied them back to the woods
to describe the events in further detail.
In Tadaryl's dorm room, police ended up finding
a satanic bible.
The trial took place on March 22nd, 1996.
Christa was prosecuted by Bill Crabtree,
an assistant Knoxville County District Attorney.
In his opening statement to jurors, he began explaining
that the evidence within this case is of, "an act so vile,
"so heinous, so atrocious, so despicable,
"as bad or worse as anything you've ever seen in a movie,
"read in a novel or dreamed in your worst nightmare."
During the trial, Christa cried continuously
in front of the courtroom.
The tears didn't have an effect on the jurors,
as it only took a few short hours for them to deliberate
and convict her on both charges.
The jurors described the young girl as
"Having an angel's face, but a devil's heart."
Christa Pike was found guilty of first degree murder
and given the death penalty on March 22nd, 1996.
Tadaryl Shipp was sentenced to life in prison,
with the possibility of parole.
And Shadolla Peterson received probation,
Since she agreed to become an informant
against the other two.
She pled guilty to being an accessory after the fact.
At only 20 years old,
Christa became the youngest woman to be sentenced to death
in the United States.
Only a few days after finding out
that she would be executed,
she sent an unsettling note Tadaryl Shipp, writing,
"Please write me!
"I miss you so much!
"You see what I get for trying to be nice to the (beep)?
"I went ahead and bashed her brains out so she'd die quickly
"instead of letting her bleed to death and suffer more.
"And they (beep) fry me.
"Ain't that some (beep)?
"Please write me and tell me what you're feeling!
"Also, tell your lawyer if he wants me to testify for you,
"I will!
"Love you for the rest of my life."
Christa signed off on the letter as, Lil' devil.
As the frenzied spectacle surrounding the satanic killing
died down, Christa Pike would capture the media's attention
once more.
On August 24th, 2001, after five years into her sentence,
Christa attempted to kill again.
She was almost successful in strangling Patricia Jones,
a fellow inmate, to death.
She claimed she didn't intend to kill Jones,
but in a phone call that she made to her mother,
she can be heard saying, "I betcha if she gets near me,
"I'm gonna do it again,
"I'm gonna succeed this damn time!
"See, now I know the difference between premeditated murder
"and what happened with Colleen.
"'Cause see, I premeditated the hell out of this.
"Sure did.
"If I'd have had 30 more seconds, I'd, we'd
"have a little chalk line out there in our rec pen,
"and that (beep) would be gone somewhere."
Again, a trial took place and another guilty conviction
for attempted first degree murder,
was tacked onto Christa's already
inescapable death sentence.
Now at this point, her defense team extended an appeal
to the Federal Court System.
They requested that her fate be life in prison
and not execution.
They argued that she had mental illness,
and that capital punishment as administered in Tennessee
is unconstitutional.
But it was the last ditch effort Christa had
to beg for her life to be spared.
The legal team representing Christa's fight,
centered their defense on testimony attesting to the trauma
she suffered at an early age.
Dr. Jonathan Henry Pincus, an expert in neurology,
testified to the Appeals Court
that Pike's brain had underdeveloped frontal lobes.
It is in this part of the brain,
where a person's sense of right and wrong is managed.
Pincus said, this was the result of Pike's mother
abusing alcohol while she was still in the womb.
He argued that this, combined with a turbulent adolescence,
is what's to blame for Pike's actions.
The Appeals Court upheld the previous ruling,
and sent Christa pike back to death row.
And Christa Pike remains the only woman in Tennessee
awaiting execution.
Although she has exhausted all of her appeals,
she affirms that she should not be put to death.
Now, 25 years later,
Christa Pike remains locked away
in her small concrete cell,
contemplating all the events
that have transpired in her life.
Regret, remorse,
acceptance.
Christa Gail Pike will likely one day eat her last meal,
walk her last steps with shackled feet down the cell block,
and take her final seat in the electric chair.
Colleen Slemmer's family will then receive peace,
knowing justice for their daughter's heinous death
will be finally and fatally served.
Although the devil himself may not have been responsible
for Christa Pike's actions that January night so long ago,
it was the demons of her own torturous past
that may have led her to forego logic reason
and all sense of human decency.