Christa Pike and the Murder of 19-Year-Old Colleen Slemmer

You've seen it plastered all over the internet. The woman who survived an execution. Not one, but two rounds of lethal drugs, still alive, then reportedly in the hospital brain dead until she miraculously woke up from a coma asking [music] where she was. That's what Christa Pike's own lawyers say recently happened after Tennessee tried to execute her and failed. It is one of the most talked about stories right now, and I get why. How does something like this even happen? But scroll through the headlines and the articles, and the person missing from almost all of them is the 19-year-old victim at the center of this whole thing. The reason why Christa Pike is on death row to begin with, the name we should be talking about. So, crime junkies, I'm Brianna Whitney, and in the headlines this week, this is the story of Colleen Slmer. It was a wet January morning in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1995. And just after 8:00 a.m., a groundskeeper at the University of Tennessee was out on the agricultural campus near the green houses when he saw something lying on the ground. And at first, he thought it was [music] a dead animal. It looked beaten. But then as he got closer, he saw clothing and realized this was a human. Phil Keith was Knoxville's police

chief at the time, and he told me he will never forget when he got the call to respond to a murder on the A campus. When he got there, his lead detective on the case, who was this seasoned lieutenant and truly had seen it all, looked at him and said flat out, "This is going to be a really bad one." Keith told me that even though the victim was stripped from the waist up, the horrific injuries to their head made it hard to tell at first glance if it was a man or a woman. But based on the clothing and the hair, they believed this was a young [music] woman. Her throat had been cut in numerous places, and one gash was 6 or 7 in long. Then somebody pointed out there was something carved into the victim's chest. It looked like a pentagram. The immediate thought, was this some sort of satanic symbol? Like a possible satanic killing or a ritualistic killing? According to court docs, the crime scene itself was large because detectives tracked hand [music] and knee prints in the mud and drag marks across the ground. Keith said investigators matched the scuff [music] marks in the soil to the dirt on the victim's knees and hands. They were certain she had put up a fight and tried to escape. Keith said they assigned more than a dozen people to this case and immediately they started trying to identify the victim and who killed her.

And that's when Keith's [music] mind went to one place first, JobCore. Now, if you're not familiar, JobCore is a federal program that gives young people free job training. And in Knoxville at the time, it had been moved into an old hotel that was on the edge of the neighborhood right next to UT. And Keith told me police had been having problems there for years. Drinking, drugs, violence. It was [music] well documented. According to UT Knoxville archives, in 1993, two JobCore students had attacked a couple from UT who were just sitting in their car. The man was beaten badly. The woman was kidnapped and raped, and the two JobCore students were convicted in the case. So, when a body turned up within walking distance, well, that's exactly where Keith wanted to start. And what do you know? Keith's hunch was all but confirmed when the first big clue was uncovered fast. Investigators asked JobCore for their sign out records from the night before to see who was leaving and coming, especially later at night. Four students had signed out together that night, but only three signed back in. Keith said they were able to track down who the students were. Christa Pike and [music] her boyfriend to Daryl Ship and their friend Shadala Peterson. Those were the three who left and came back. The only one who didn't sign back in was 19-year-old Colleen Surmer and she was identified as [music] the victim. By the

next morning, police arrested Christa Pike to Daryl Ship and Shadala Peterson and brought them in for questioning. It was a Saturday. Typically, [music] police chiefs don't work the weekends. But this case was so heinous Keith knew he needed to be there. So, he got to headquarters around 7:30 a.m. to watch part of the initial interviews with the suspects. He said it was so weird. To Daryl Ship listened to a detective read him his rights and then just put his head down on the table and went to sleep. But Christa Pike was a completely different [music] story in her multiple police interviews. Keith said she wasn't scared. She wasn't crying. She was giddy. Not only did she admit to [music] everything, but it seemed like she wanted to brag to detectives [music] about what she had done. Keith [snorts] told me he was listening to someone who was pure evil. And he has never been able to shake what she was about to reveal with a big old vindictive smile on her face.

According to both former police chief Phil Keith and court records, Christa Pike told detectives she and Colleen Slmer had been having problems. Pike claimed Colleen had been trying to steal her boyfriend to Daryl's ship. Well, the day before the murder, Pike told a friend she was going to kill Colleen. Her reason, she just felt mean that day. The next night, according to her own account, Pike lured Colleen out of JobCore. She told her she had weed hidden at a park. Ship and Peterson came along and they walked toward an isolated spot near a steam plant on UT's a campus. Pike said what happened next lasted anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, according to the court record. She beat Colleen, slammed her head into the concrete, kicked her in the face. She said Colleen cried and tried to run, but her boyfriend to Daryl Ship caught her and shoved her back down. They caught her with a [music] box cutter and a cleaver they brought with them. Her throat was cut again and again. And then Keith told me Pike hit Colleen in the head with a large piece of asphalt, which explains why she was so unrecognizable at first to responders.

Pike told detectives that it was mostly her boyfriend who carved the pentagram into Colleen's [music] chest. Now, Keith said once Teddarl Ship woke up from his little interrogation nap, he didn't really say a lot, but Keith described him as being really strange, also with no remorse, and being almost a satanic worshipper of sorts. The friend who'd been with Pike and Ship when all this happened, Shadala Peterson, wasn't talking either. From what they could gather, Peterson just joined the couple on their violent mission, but didn't actually participate in the killing. also hadn't done anything to help Colleen though either. She just stood by and watched, which in and of itself feels like its own form of torture when you understand what the medical examiner concluded about Colleen's injuries. Despite the torture Colleen went through, the ME said she actually was likely alive and conscious for most of the attack. Keith, remember the medical examiner said there were so many cuts on Colleen's body that at some point she just stopped counting. They label injuries as alphabet letters at the medical examiner's office. And apparently the Emmy said she'd have to start the alphabet all over just to label them all. Ultimately, Colleen died from the blows to her head that fractured her skull in multiple places.

The damage was so bad there were parts of her skull missing. At that point, most of those investigative details weren't out in the public yet, but people knew something bad had happened. Rumors about it were already running rampant on the JobCore campus. Rita Morris, Colleen's classmate and friend, [music] was incredibly upset, but not surprised. She told me everyone knew Christa Pike was a bully. Rita told me Pike and her friend Shadala Peterson often bullied people together and she believed Pike was actually intimidated by Colleen because [music] Colleen was someone who was kind to everybody, even to Pike. Rita remembered Colleen always smiling, even in the tough times and told me her last conversation with Colleen reflected just that. Colleen told Rita her mom was sick back at home in Florida, so she was just going to buckle down and finish her training in computer programming and tech skills, make some money, then go back to Florida to help her mom. May had told local Tennessee news stations WLVT and WBIR that Colleen was a super nurturing and passionate person. She spent a lot of time working with children with disabilities and was just a computer geek who wanted to make a career out of something she loved. And Rita told me all of that was unequivocally true. What wasn't true was that Colleen was ever trying to get with Pike's boyfriend.

Rita said that never happened and police never found any evidence of that either. There was more to all the rumors going around campus about the killing, though. One particularly gruesome rumor that stood out to Rita. Remember how parts of Colleen's skull were missing? Well, Rita told me before Christa Pike was arrested and interviewed by police, she had been doing a lot of talking when she got back to the campus the night of the murder, and Rita heard about it all in the locker room. Word on the street was Pike had brought a piece of Colleen's head back with her, kept it in her pocket, and told a friend she was going to eat it with her morning eggs. When Rita told me this, I actually could not believe what I was hearing. In all my years in true crime reporting, I don't think I have ever heard something that sinister before. Well, that rumor turned out not to be that far off base. The court record confirms Pike said she ate breakfast with the skull in her pocket.

And Keith told me, sure enough, they found a piece of bone in Christ Pike's jacket. And when a forensic anthropologist took that piece and held it up to Colleen's reconstructed skull, it fit perfectly. Pike, Ship, and Peterson were all charged with murder, but what ended up happening to the three of them totally varied. 19-year-old Shadala Peterson turned on the other two and agreed to testify for the state in exchange for a plea deal. So, she pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact and got probation. to Daryl Ship was only 17 at the time of the crime, so he couldn't face the death penalty, but he was tried as an adult and convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy, sentenced to life with a chance of parole plus 25 years. He actually went before the parole board in 2025, but was denied release. 19-year-old Christa Pike was facing capital murder, though. Her confession, the physical evidence, and what she bragged about to friends who testified at trial, that was all overwhelming. According to court records, Pike's friend took the stand and recalled Pike telling her that Colleen begged for her life and even tried offering to walk all the way back to Florida and never come back to job court, not even to pick up all her stuff. According to the testimony, Pike told Colleen to shut up because it was harder to hurt somebody when they're talking to you. I mean, all of the details in this trial were just so beyond heinous. So, not surprising, a

jury found Christa Pike guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy, and she was sentenced to death. Phil Keith told me she was actually the youngest person on death row at the time. And I'll tell you this, from years of experience covering them, death penalty cases are never really over. There are so many appeals and legal challenges that happen behind the scenes for literally decades. That's why it took almost 30 years before Tennessee set an execution date for Christa Pike. That was supposed to be September 30th, 2026. She would be the first woman executed in the state in more than 200 years. That made headlines in and of itself. And on the morning Christa Pike was supposed to be executed, a federal appeals court stated it only for the US Supreme Court to overturn that hours later. So the day itself leading up to the execution was already dramatic from the start, but by the evening, everything was a go to move forward. No one could have predicted what happened next [music] in one of the strangest 911 calls I have ever heard.

So, we have a medical call for service at the Riverben Prison saying that they carried out the execution, the subject didn't pass away, and they need an ambulance cuz she's not breathing normally. Well, we don't have any gender and we just know it's a 50-year-old person. We are trying to find out if that is an actual thing that is happening and we need to send an ambulance and or if you need police assistance or if this is someone that is just basically prank calling or like swatting us. Per supervisors here at the VEC, we have been informed that it is a false call. There is no medical assistance needed at Riverbin Prison. >> We got a call about a failed execution at you guys facility and we just calling to verify. >> Um, who called you? >> Um, or is it like a sergeant that I can speak with or a supervisor? >> Who called you? Do you know? Um, no we don't exactly though. >> Um, I'm being told that nobody from our facility called you. So, uh, there's not really anything to speak of at the moment. What's going on is my client Christale Pike is undergoing a state execution. She has completed the stages of the protocol and last we knew from the attorney who is present. She is still alive and breathing and needs immediate life-saving care. She's received two doses, at least two doses of pentabarol through IVs.

>> Okay. >> The central control just called us and advised that it is actually real. So, we're going to have FDN >> in what must go down as one of the most bizarre 911 call exchanges obtained by the Associated Press. You can hear dispatchers clearly confused trying to figure out what was going on. Because if they had it right based on these calls, somebody at the prison who was supposed to be executed now needed medical help to live. That made no sense to anyone at the time. What the dispatchers had no idea about in that moment was what had just gone down at the prison. On the evening of September 30th, 2026 at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Christa Pike was being prepped for execution by lethal injection with Colleen's mom and stepdad in the gallery watching. They had traveled from Florida to be there to see the final step in justice for Colleen.

According to Pike's attorney, Randy Spivey, who was a witness, officials spent more than an hour just trying to get the IV lines in. He said he counted seven needles and said even Pike herself was telling them where to try. When the curtain finally opened to the media witnesses and the others, Pike gave a final statement. She said she was leaving the world with love and said it was a happy day. The first dose of pentobarbatital went in [music] and media witnesses recalled she complained her arm felt like it was about to burst and asked if she was supposed to feel that way but she was still alive and moving which they [music] didn't expect to see. Under Tennessee protocol a second dose of penttoarbital is given if the person is still alive. So, they gave her round two, and witnesses reported they could hear her snoring before the microphone was eventually cut off, but they were all pretty sure she was still alive. Now, I looked through Tennessee's execution protocol myself, and it doesn't say what to do if somebody survives two lethal rounds. Her attorney told media he tried to get someone, anyone, on the phone. Nobody picked up.

Eventually, officials did call 911. And you heard how that went. Pike was taken to Vanderbilt University Medical Center. And it took over a day to get any sort of public update on her condition. Like to the point where several of us at Crime Junkie were actually texting each other being like, "What is going on? How have we not gotten an update yet?" But eventually her attorneys released a statement that she was on a ventilator in critical condition. Her attorneys said by October 5th, they believed she was brain dead. They were getting ready to pull the plug on life support until a day later she miraculously woke up and was talking. Now, I think it's important to note that it's her attorneys who said she was brain dead. That did not come from medical personnel, but regardless, this was wild. According to her attorneys, her first words were, "Where am I and who are you?" By October 10th, she was actually transferred back to prison and she has a tablet in prison.

So, I messaged her to ask about what happened, but as of this recording, I haven't heard back. Let me just say this is a completely unprecedented situation. I have actually been a media witness to an execution in Arizona. It was also by lethal injection that by all accounts went relatively smoothly. When the witnesses were detailing how this went down with Christa Pike, it was pretty shocking and I can only imagine the confusion they all felt in the witness room. What makes this even more headline making is Tennessee had just botched another execution only 6 months prior. And if that sounds familiar to you guys, it's because I covered it here on Crime Junkie this summer. In May, they tried to execute inmate Tony Kurthers. And after more than an hour of failing to get the IV lines in, they called it off and said, "We'll try this again in one year." Kthers has maintained his innocence. And his attorneys told me there's DNA evidence that was never tested that could potentially prove his innocence. It's highly likely now that a second execution attempt for Kurthers will not go forward within a year given the fallout from all of this, which has been immense. The state's corrections commissioner resigned. The governor halted the one remaining execution scheduled this year and ordered an independent review. And in a recent court hearing in Pike's case, the judge ordered the state to preserve all the evidence from the execution attempt.

Obviously, all of this has been front page news as it's unfolded. And like, yeah, it should be because what are we even doing, Tennessee? But it's completely split the nation. You have one camp of people online who are like, "This is cruel and unusual punishment to a human being. Christa Pike's life should now be spared." On the other side of things, you have people online being like, "Why are we at all trying to save someone who was sentenced to death?" And guys, I didn't even tell you about this yet, but Colleen wasn't Christa Pike's only victim. Pike was also convicted of attempted first-degree murder while in prison. Phil Keith told me that years after she was sentenced to death, another inmate in Tennessee named Patricia Jones was serving a life sentence for killing an 84year-old woman. She was sent to the same prison as Pike. And in 2001, Keith told me Pike tried to strangle Jones with a shoestring. According to the Tennessee Corrections Department, Pike was found guilty of attempted first-degree murder.

So, look, I completely agree there's a lot to talk about when it comes to this case. Things obviously need to change. But to characterize Christa Pike as some almost heroic survivor would be flatout wrong. Former police chief Phil Keith called her pure evil multiple times in our interview. And that's why this has all been so frustrating for him. He said, "For every mention of Colleen Slumber in the local news, there are at least 10 or 15 mentions of Christa [music] Pike." And no one has felt that more than Colleen's mom, May Martinez. Although she declined to do an interview with us at this point so she can try and move forward, she told reporters right after the botched execution that the execution was a mess and said she believes the state owes her a big apology. According to ABC News, she told local news station WBIR that Pike never showed any remorse for what she [music] did. And she's now considering legal options herself given what's happened. I know you guys are probably like, "So now [music] what?" And honestly, I am right there with you. As of right now, we don't know what's going to happen next.

This is all completely uncharted territory. Here is what we do know. Christa Pike is back in prison. The state said there is no pending execution order. If Tennessee wants to try again, the attorney general would have to ask the state supreme court to set a new execution date. Pike's lawyers called that unconscionable, and they're pushing Governor Bill Lee to commute her sentence to life without parole before he leaves office in [music] January. Another aspect here is possible double jeopardy. Legal experts told CNN a second attempt would raise double jeopardy and cruel and unusual punishment questions. So, after looking into all of this, I think two [music] things can be true here. Tennessee needs to get its act together. You cannot botch executions like this, especially two in a row. That is point blank unacceptable. But also, Christa Pike was sentenced to death for a reason. because of the sick and twisted torture she put Colleen's slumber through before she killed her. I am asking you all for [music] one thing. Don't forget about Colleen. She was only 19 years old, but in her short life, she made such an impact on others. [music] She loved so many people. She was kind. She was caring. She wanted to help young children. She volunteered with the Special Olympics. I mean, this was a young woman who wanted to do good. So, as we wait for updates on what happens next, please keep Colleen Slumber's

story front and center. My promise to you guys is we certainly [music] will. Crime junkies, we will absolutely keep you updated as this unprecedented case moves forward. Make sure to subscribe and hit the bell icon for additional updates on this case and other cases our team covers. Crime Junkie is an audiochuck production. I think Chuck would approve.