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The Execution Of Christa Pike | Tales Of The Shadow People · DEADBUG SAYS

0:09
[SPEAKER_01]: January and Knoxville, Tennessee, but don't look like the postcards.
0:17
[SPEAKER_01]: The color of the river looks like someone just took a shit in it, and the hills around the university, wow, they're just as brown, and they stay that way until spring.
0:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And on the agricultural campus, behind the building where the greenhouse are, the pathways are all muddied.
0:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And the old abandoned steam plant up on the hill behind the trees has been ordered off limits to the students by the campus.
0:46
[SPEAKER_01]: But on the morning of January 13th,
0:49
[SPEAKER_01]: 1995, a man who worked the grounds for the University of Tennessee came along one of those paths, and saw something he first took to be an animal, but it was not an animal.
1:05
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a girl, 19, naked, below the waist, and been so badly, that a face looked like a large bowl, a salsa,
1:17
[SPEAKER_01]: a rag was nodded around the neck.
1:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'd throw the bunkot.
1:23
[SPEAKER_01]: When they got it to the mook and watched the blood offer, they found a pentagram that had been carved into our forehead and into our chest while they believed she was still alive.
1:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Her name was Colleen Anne Slemmer.
1:41
[SPEAKER_01]: She was Florida.
1:43
[SPEAKER_01]: She'd come to Knoxville because a grandfather thought the job corpse might give her a trade and away at a life that she had not started well.
1:53
[SPEAKER_01]: The night before, she tried to call her mother.
1:58
[SPEAKER_01]: The line was bad.
2:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Her mother called her back around 10, or a little after.
2:06
[SPEAKER_01]: A Colleen, she was already gone.
2:11
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the story of how she got there, and of the girl who took her.
2:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And of the 30 years that followed down to September 30th in Nashville in the state of Tennessee, where for the first time in 200 years, they planned to put a female to death.
2:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Unless it's a town of the shadow shelter people.
2:50
[SPEAKER_01]: They tell that those of the young and those of the old children, they also experiment, and they also feel those of the mark and those of show.
3:07
[SPEAKER_01]: For many which of those participants may never know.
3:13
[SPEAKER_01]: But perhaps, there are those who still should never be told.
3:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And those are the tales of this era, people.
3:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Christa Gale Pike was born March 10, 1976 in backly West Virginia.
3:56
[SPEAKER_01]: By the time she was 18, she'd already been moved, removed, locked up, and let back out.
4:05
[SPEAKER_01]: At 11, she was raped by a neighbor.
4:09
[SPEAKER_01]: but I want the first time.
4:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Later, social services in North Carolina took a rat of a mother's house because her mother's boyfriend had been doing the same to her and the boyfriend before that.
4:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And her husband before that and so forth and so on.
4:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And I could go on about that, but I'm guessing you got the idea.
4:31
[SPEAKER_01]: At 15, she was sent to a juvenile evaluation center,
4:35
[SPEAKER_01]: After she broke into a rob-to-convenient store, while locked up in Juvee, she worked as a teacher's assistant, and she was released on March of 1993.
4:48
[SPEAKER_01]: People who knew her as a child said that she'd been bright, funny, and always had a smile on a face, but there was something in her eyes that maybe held something darker,
5:07
[SPEAKER_01]: But the school's kept changing, the house has kept changing, and by all accounts her mother's boyfriends and husbands kept changing.
5:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Her mother, I guess, did the best she could, but I wasn't good enough.
5:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Whatever had been bright in that girl's eyes, it got buried a long time before.
5:33
[SPEAKER_01]: In the fall of 1944, she arrived at Knoxville Job Corps Center, a federally run-vocational program for young people, O'er poor, or in trouble, or both.
5:48
[SPEAKER_01]: The Senate, let's go on now.
5:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Then it's at near the university, with its domes and its classrooms where you had the log in and log out as you left and arrived at the facility.
6:02
[SPEAKER_01]: She wanted to train as a nursing assistant.
6:05
[SPEAKER_01]: While she was at the job Corps of Santa, she met a boy.
6:10
[SPEAKER_01]: One Toddel ship, 17 years old.
6:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, I know what you're thinking, and he looks exactly like you're thinking.
6:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And they started going together.
6:24
[SPEAKER_01]: They were pentagram necklaces, and people around them said that they had taken an interest in the occult.
6:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And devil worship, I guess some would say for teens who feel like God no power, the only way they can get it, is to summon it from below.
6:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And I guess both of them slightly enjoyed the fact that their relationship were frowned upon in some quarters.
6:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And even though we'd come a long way in the 90s, well, they weren't far enough where some people thought they're pairing were right.
6:58
[SPEAKER_01]: According to Christ's friends, she'd only had one previous boyfriend.
7:03
[SPEAKER_01]: They were overweight, a hillbilly, prefer rolling around with his pet rabbits and bunny shit than paying her any attention.
7:12
[SPEAKER_01]: But to their all, well, he would different.
7:16
[SPEAKER_01]: He wouldn't end the bunnies.
7:19
[SPEAKER_01]: He wouldn't deposit.
7:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And she'd got him several times looking at the other girls.
7:25
[SPEAKER_01]: but there was one in particular that he'd shown an interest in, one Colleen Slemmer, 19 years old, petite, blonde, and the same program, and the same class.
7:38
[SPEAKER_01]: She walked the same halls, made in the same cafeteria.
7:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And Christopher decided that Colleen wanted to take to their own away from her.
7:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Colleen's friends said that that wasn't the case.
7:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe it wasn't, but to Darrell seemed to enjoy the jealousy that came to his girlfriend.
8:00
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember jealousy doesn't require the other person to have done a thing.
8:04
[SPEAKER_01]: It only requires a picture in the head of the person who is afraid.
8:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And Krista had that picture.
8:12
[SPEAKER_01]: She told everyone who would listen to the car lane.
8:16
[SPEAKER_01]: We're trying to steal home, man.
8:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And that calling with this respect and no flood in with a man.
8:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Whether any of it happened the way she said, well, the racket doesn't support it, but what the racket does support, that what Christ did next, she certainly did with conviction.
8:44
[SPEAKER_01]: It was only a few days before the killing that Tadaral told another student he and Krista were going to kill Colleen.
8:55
[SPEAKER_01]: On January 11, Krista told a friend named Kim that she intended to kill Colleen Slema because she just felt mean that day.
9:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And I guess to some, that's reason enough.
9:15
[SPEAKER_01]: and was repeated over and over again, that there had been no big plan, no long discussion, just a mood, and that mood was the Krista felt mean that day.
9:32
[SPEAKER_01]: The idea, as it settled between them, was simple, get calling out of the dome, tell her they wanted to make peace.
9:42
[SPEAKER_01]: offer a joint, and go out in the woods and smoke it.
9:46
[SPEAKER_01]: They figured they'd bring it down to the abandoned steam plant, the back of the woods, on the agricultural campus on 17th Street, where the greenhouse is were, and the paths died out.
10:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And they'd bring along a friend, Shaddola, Peterson, 18 years old.
10:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And as you might imagine, she's of the same ilk, as to their own.
10:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Coming along to be a lookout, and I guess for the thrill of it, how much she knew of what was going to happen, hope and say.
10:20
[SPEAKER_01]: But I guess curiosity killed the cat.
10:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's all she was going for, to watch.
10:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Krista, into their own, would do the rest.
10:35
[SPEAKER_01]: The jury didn't believe that.
10:38
[SPEAKER_01]: The jury believed that the girl known on campus as a wigger had a dark, violent side.
10:46
[SPEAKER_01]: That she would finally let him come out, bringing along a meat cleaver to his sister.
10:54
[SPEAKER_01]: On January 12th, 1995 and the evening it was called enough for your breath to show and the four of them signed the log and left.
11:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Christopher Pike, Tadaro Ship, Shadola Peterson, and Colleen Slema.
11:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Colleen's friend Kim told him Vesta Gators she saw the group leave the center around APM and walked towards 17th Street.
11:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Figuring they were going to go patch things up and she also figured that they were going to be weed involved because if Krista and Todell weren't high, they were looking to get high and I guess it was as simple as that.
11:40
[SPEAKER_01]: But either way she figured maybe Krista
11:47
[SPEAKER_01]: She also told investigators that she was unsure that her friend Carlene wanted to get with Tadel and take on the title as a school wigger.
11:56
[SPEAKER_01]: But she had known that there were long lingering glances between the two of them.
12:00
[SPEAKER_01]: What that meant, she was unsure.
12:04
[SPEAKER_01]: She never remembered discussing it with a friend.
12:07
[SPEAKER_01]: What happened next?
12:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Lasted about 30 minutes.
12:11
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the number of the testimony settled on.
12:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Half an hour was a long time when someone's begging you to stop.
12:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Peterson.
12:20
[SPEAKER_01]: State is a lookout, claiming the three of them had been walking ahead of her and appeared to be laughing.
12:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Then, without warning, to Darrell suck a punch calling in the side of the face.
12:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Then, he and Krista started beating her.
12:33
[SPEAKER_01]: They had her with rocks.
12:35
[SPEAKER_01]: They kicked her.
12:36
[SPEAKER_01]: They punched her.
12:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And she begged them to stop.
12:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Then as she lay on the ground stunned and weeping, Krista started slashing her with a meat cleaver, and as her romantic competition bled out, Krista apparently laughed.
12:52
[SPEAKER_01]: They only witnessed one taking part with Shidola, and she told police both of them were laughing.
12:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And at this point, she was scared.
13:00
[SPEAKER_01]: She never thought they'd go through with it, but she knew there were no turning back, and she certainly won't go to say anything, in case she were next.
13:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Christopher believes that she cut the petite blonde's throat with a meat cleaver because she wouldn't shut up.
13:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was when she started carving a pentagram and the forehead as she cried to Darrell.
13:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, pain lost his nerve and started walking away down a hill, but then he returned.
13:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess it couldn't help himself.
13:33
[SPEAKER_01]: That's my words, not hers.
13:36
[SPEAKER_01]: When he came back, I had
13:39
[SPEAKER_01]: was open on one side, as she were gurgling.
13:42
[SPEAKER_01]: The Darrell and Krista then dragged the girl who was still gurgling blood up a hill to some fresh mud in the brush.
13:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And Krista took a large piece of ice fault and smashed it down on the girl's head.
13:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Then reached into a skull and broke off a piece of it and put it in a pocket.
14:04
[SPEAKER_01]: That was then that Coline stopped the breathing.
14:07
[SPEAKER_01]: and they let up a joint with their bloody fingers, then they walked away.
14:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Around 10, 15, Kim saw the three of them return and the school logbook backs this up.
14:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Four names out, three names were signed in.
14:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Calling did not come back.
14:26
[SPEAKER_01]: That night, Krista went to Kim's room.
14:29
[SPEAKER_01]: She said she'd killed calling.
14:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And she said she'd brought back a piece of her skull as a souvenir.
14:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Then pulled it out in the smiled, showing it to their mutual friend.
14:39
[SPEAKER_01]: She also told her that she'd carved a pentagram on her forehead and on a chest.
14:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And while she said this, she started dancing in a circle and smiled.
14:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And she sang, la, la, la, la, la.
14:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And the days after, she showed the bone to other students.
14:57
[SPEAKER_01]: She was proud, won't try to hide it.
15:00
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess some kinds of islands want to witness, even after the witness is dead.
15:05
[SPEAKER_01]: The next morning, the groundskeeper found the body and thought it was an animal.
15:11
[SPEAKER_01]: By the afternoon the job corpse knew a student was missing, and the university police had a dead girl in the woods behind the greenhouses.
15:21
[SPEAKER_01]: The detective started with the log book, because the log book is a stupid, perfect witness.
15:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And they saw Ford left, but only three had come back.
15:35
[SPEAKER_01]: and it didn't take much for the Hillbilly Carbs to put two and two together.
15:41
[SPEAKER_01]: At first they approached Krista, and Yasha, she'd been hiding, played a cool.
15:48
[SPEAKER_01]: But after a day of being interviewed and interrogated, she folded and waved the rights.
15:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And when they picked up the Daryl, I guess it's no surprise that he was his eye as a re-tod, shot out of a giant slingshot, and him saying, it wasn't me for 36 hours.
16:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, he eventually gave up, I guess, when the weed wore off, and he admitted the whole damn thing.
16:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Saying it was all Christ had done it, and it was all her right there.
16:18
[SPEAKER_01]: But when they dragged Shaddola in, she was able to clarify things, as she said both of them had been equals in the crime, where the brutal murder of their classmate.
16:30
[SPEAKER_01]: When the papers got hold of it, they used words like cult, satanic ritual, and I guess the necklaces didn't help.
16:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's certainly made for Good Raiden, maybe even a maid for TV movie.
16:50
[SPEAKER_01]: But in the end, what they had were 14 ages.
16:54
[SPEAKER_01]: A dope, a boyfriend, a jealous girlfriend, a lookout, and a girl who tried to call her mother and had gotten a bad signal.
17:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Colleen's mother, May Mondez, came up from Florida for the aftermath and them for the trial.
17:12
[SPEAKER_01]: When she sat in the Knoxville courtroom for weeks, with almost no one beside her.
17:18
[SPEAKER_01]: She has said more than once, and in the years since, the coverage for Gats, who was on the ground, who the victim was, has never about the victim she said.
17:34
[SPEAKER_01]: She asked for her daughter's remains, and the state mailed pieces back over the years, one by one, with each bit evidence cleared for the public, eventually getting back the piece of skull that Chris did take in as a souvenir, receiving its 16 years later.
17:52
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess one could literally wax some other, shouldn't have to negotiate, getting back the bones of her child.
18:03
[SPEAKER_01]: The trial began in 1996 in Knox County.
18:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Christopher's charge with first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.
18:12
[SPEAKER_01]: The state asked for death.
18:14
[SPEAKER_01]: She was 21, the jury got the case.
18:16
[SPEAKER_01]: She'd been 18 on the night in the woods just barely.
18:20
[SPEAKER_01]: The prosecutor's used Kim, the mutual friend, and should all of the look out as her witnesses.
18:26
[SPEAKER_01]: As well as all three confessions, the medical examiners report, the crime scene photos, the autopsy, and the basis goal that had been found in Christ's jewelry box.
18:38
[SPEAKER_01]: that the fence put up a story that it was a drug-doubt-skate tactic that went wrong.
18:45
[SPEAKER_01]: But no one were buying it, because they owned their crystal had been dazed and around the room, with a piece of the murder victim's skull and a pocket.
18:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Ambicide's nearly the cabin takin' someone with a meat cleaver, there's more than just a scared tactic, and the red-headed wigger, as she'd been known as by her critics at school, were hardly believable with a theatrical cryin' as they showed the pitches of the petite girl as she'd murdered and cut up.
19:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Should all a Peterson, the lookout, was 1899.
19:19
[SPEAKER_01]: As she been charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy, like the other two.
19:25
[SPEAKER_01]: But then she flipped, and she spilled her guts, like a retard who'd eaten bad me, and turned out to be the star witness.
19:34
[SPEAKER_01]: On March 30, 1996, Christopher Gallo-Porta was sentenced to death, plus 25 years on the conspiracy count.
19:42
[SPEAKER_01]: She was one of the youngest women's scented death row in modern era of American capital punishment.
19:48
[SPEAKER_01]: The years after the Supreme Court allowed the penalty back in.
19:53
[SPEAKER_01]: The Darrell's ship was 17 on the night of the killing, meaning he'd escaped the death penalty, but he was still sentenced as an adult.
20:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And in January 1997, a jury convicted him of first-degree murder and conspiracy.
20:10
[SPEAKER_01]: He got life with the possibility of parole, and then sent to a Tennessee prison where he still resides today.
20:18
[SPEAKER_01]: He was denied parole in October of 2025.
20:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Shethola Peterson pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact and testified for the state.
20:30
[SPEAKER_01]: and walked out on probation.
20:33
[SPEAKER_01]: For people went into that woods, one got a test sentence, one alive sentence, one probation, and one was sent to the abyss.
20:45
[SPEAKER_01]: The larger the lines were age and cooperation led it.
20:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Christa went to a woman's prison in the hospital, the place now called Deborah K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center.
20:58
[SPEAKER_01]: A band she was the only woman on Tennessee's death row.
21:01
[SPEAKER_01]: My guess is that won't gonna be a lot of rehabilitation going on.
21:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And while cool in her heels inside for 30 years, well, they didn't go without incident.
21:12
[SPEAKER_01]: In August of 2001, while serving her sentence, she and another inmate, Natasha Cornette, one after woman named Patricia Jones, with the shoes drink, and tried to strangle her.
21:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Jones lived.
21:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Jones was herself seven-alive sentence for a 1994 murder in Knoxville.
21:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Chris, that was convicted of attempted first-degree murder on top of a original charge, and given another 25 years.
21:39
[SPEAKER_01]: At a later hearing, Jones would say Krista had once stopped other inmates from hurting her.
21:45
[SPEAKER_01]: She also said she threatened Krista, but I guess it didn't matter.
21:48
[SPEAKER_01]: At the end of the day, she still tried the killer.
21:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Hannah would just one more reason.
21:53
[SPEAKER_01]: This state figured she deserved to die.
22:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Their bills ran on for years, the way it peels run.
22:04
[SPEAKER_01]: When the sentence is death, and the client is poor.
22:09
[SPEAKER_01]: direct the pill, post-confiction, ineffective counsel, mental illness.
22:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Although it's hard for anyone to overlook the science of an adolescent's brain, an 18-year-old who'd been raped at 11 multiple times, pulled out of a violent house, sent that UV abuse there, returned home, and raped again by another man.
22:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Her trial lawyers later petitioned the federal court and said that she hadn't been given a fair shake, but the federal court disagreed in the night in 2016.
22:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And her lawyers tried, and they tried, even taken it as far as an inter-American commission of human rights, but in the end, the sentence stuck.
22:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Even with the commission asking for a stay of execution,
22:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And a last ditch effort to save Krista, her counsel, presented medical records that showed she had a bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress.
23:08
[SPEAKER_01]: With a clemency petition that runs over 200 pages, document and rapes, neglect, a mother's boyfriends, a husband, undignosed illnesses, showing a kid who'd been dealt a bum hand from the bottom of the deck.
23:24
[SPEAKER_01]: But in the end, I guess none of that mattered.
23:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Because in the summer of 2025, the Tennessee Supreme Court set the date.
23:36
[SPEAKER_01]: September 30th, 2026, a 10 in the morning, central time.
23:42
[SPEAKER_01]: with the location being riverband, maximum security facility, and Nashville.
23:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Death by lethal injection, unless she chose the chair.
23:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Because Tennessee still offers electrocution for those who are sentenced before 1999, but she did not get the method of death that she asked for.
24:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Her lawyers argued this year that a blood condition would make an intravenous death even more cruel,
24:12
[SPEAKER_01]: or Rack were little nerves she had left, which seems ironic to me being afraid of a strap down when she probably seen more than a fair share of strap-ons inside.
24:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Nevertheless, her request for an all-female execution squad was denied.
24:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And on September 23rd, the State Supreme Court said no.
24:33
[SPEAKER_01]: On September 28th, Governor Bill Lee, the night clemency, he said it viewed the case, and he would uphold the sentence of the state of Tennessee.
24:43
[SPEAKER_01]: On September 29th, the United States Supreme Court denied the stay and denied the petition.
24:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And there is nowhere left to file.
24:52
[SPEAKER_01]: But I guess even the shadow people have an angel looking over their shoulder, because on September 30th, with less than an hour to go, 50-year-old Krista Gail Pike, who was about to be strapped down and receive a lethal injection.
25:09
[SPEAKER_01]: It was stopped by the Federal Appeals Court, saying they needed to review whether her allegations of childhood sexual abuse and rape were fully considered at her sentence.
25:21
[SPEAKER_01]: But they must have been light on the paperwork because it didn't take them too long to reconsider.
25:27
[SPEAKER_01]: With the state announced in the execution was back on.
25:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And at 7.30pm, local time, the first lead lunch action was administered.
25:38
[SPEAKER_01]: With Pike describing herself at peace as they stuck the needle in, I'm gonna leave this world the way I spend most of my life and that is in love.
25:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Which I don't know what the fuck that means, but I'm going to give her a hall pass because she was clearly stressed out when she made this statement.
25:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I would have probably said something more evocative like A, C. All in the next world or something like that, you know, but whatever.
26:01
[SPEAKER_01]: But apparently, she remained awake and by 826 p.m. She was still alive, kicking off the sheathed coveta, complaining of the pain, so I guess for good luck to give her another shot.
26:14
[SPEAKER_01]: execution when this is described hearing a snoring behind the closed curtain, which is embarrassing if you're a woman, until the microphone was turned off at 8.53 and they were asked to leave.
26:28
[SPEAKER_01]: But I guess that all pentagram shit that she sent to must work because apparently she was still alive and her lawyers ordered the execution to be halted and she was transferred to an outside
26:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, we currently don't know what conditions she's in.
26:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Officials added that every step of the state's lawful established execution protocol has been followed.
26:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Reporters who witnessed the botch execution described it as a real shit show.
26:58
[SPEAKER_01]: So what's gonna happen next?
27:00
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess we'll have to wait and see.
27:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And in the end, we got all sit tight in stay tuned.
27:08
[SPEAKER_00]: for the next thrill and episode of Tales From The Show People.
27:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I never saw you would die
28:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Grace, circumstances, who came to this, I don't understand Baby goodbye, baby goodbye This is our last cry
29:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Please don't be upset I promise I won't forget God, tell one Lord that I'm going to hell But it turns me crazy
31:16
[SPEAKER_00]: This is all the strength