Latest / 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories / The Occult Killing of Colleen
Transcript
- 0:15Eighteen year old Christa Pike's relationship with her classmate Colleen Slimmer had quickly become full
- 0:21of one sided distrust and jealousy. Krista was convinced that Colleen was infatuated with
- 0:28her boyfriend to Darrell Ship and was trying to steal him away from her.
- 0:33Christa adored to Darryl, and even though he was a year younger than her,
- 0:37the two of them had a very intense relationship. Krista's life up until
- 0:42that point had been full of adversity. She had never completed high school,
- 0:46dropping out before graduation to join a government program called the Job Corps, which
- 0:51helped disadvantage young people to gain skills that would allow them to get jobs.
- 0:56Despite everything she'd been through to Darrell still loved her. He made her into
- 1:00a better person, and she liked to think that she did the same for
- 1:04him. She wasn't about to let Colleen come between them, and she decided
- 1:08that she'd do whatever she had to to make sure that Colleen wouldn't get what
- 1:14she wanted, or what she thought Colleen wanted. Despite Christa's accusations, Colleen's
- 1:19friends were adamant that she was not interested in too Darrell at all. It
- 1:25seemed as if Christa had misinterpreted Colleen's friendly nature and innocent conversations with to Darrell
- 1:32as romantic interest. As time went on, Krista became angrier and angrier at
- 1:37Colleen. She started to obsess over Colleen's behavior, worried that she would lose
- 1:42to Darrell for good, and angry because she thought Colleen wanted someone who belonged
- 1:47to her. Finally, she reached a breaking point. She talked to one
- 1:52of her friends, Chadola Peterson, and began to make a plan to teach
- 1:56Colleen a lesson. It was the twelfth of January nineteen ninety five when the
- 2:01plan was set into motion. Christa to Daryl, Colleen, and their friend,
- 2:07eighteen year old Shedola Peterson, all signed out of their dorms and made
- 2:10their way to an abandoned steam plant in the woods near campus. Colleen knew
- 2:16that Christa didn't like her, but she believed that the trip was sort of
- 2:20a peace offering where the group was going to smoke some weed together and overcome
- 2:24their differences. However, when the four teenagers arrived at their destination, it
- 2:30was clear to Colleen that she had been lied to. Krista and her boyfriend
- 2:35immediately turned on Colleen and began beating her. Chidolah didn't participate in the attack
- 2:42and instead stood nearby to warn the couple if any witnesses approached the area.
- 2:47This role as a guard or lookout had been decided by Christa during her planning
- 2:53of the attack. For around half an hour to forty five minutes, Colleen
- 2:58was ferociously toward shirt. She was severely beaten and cut, and the couple
- 3:02used a blade to carve the shape of a pentagram into her skin. Finally,
- 3:08the attack ended when Christa grabbed a large piece of asphalt and hit Colleen
- 3:13in the head with it. The force of the blow shattered Colleen's skull.
- 3:17It killed her instantly. Christa didn't regret the murder. In fact, she
- 3:23pride one of the broken pieces of skull free and took it back with her
- 3:27to her dorm to keep as a trophy. She didn't just feel a lack
- 3:31of remorse, she felt pride. Over the next day and a half,
- 3:36Christa carried this piece of calling skull around campus with her while Colleen's family and
- 3:40friends were gradually realizing that she was missing. It didn't take long for authorities
- 3:46to view Christa, to Darryl, and Chidola as suspects. The evidence was
- 3:51clear four students had signed out of the dorm together and then the group had
- 3:55returned without Colleen, resulting in Christa and her accomplices being arrested thirty six hours
- 4:01after the murder. It's almost like they didn't even try to hide their crime,
- 4:06which, don't get me wrong, I'm glad they got caught so quickly,
- 4:10but with all due disrespect, what a stupid plan. When Christa was
- 4:15arrested and her clothes were searched for evidence, police found her disgusting trophy,
- 4:20the fragment of Colleen's skull, tucked in the pocket of her coat. Christa
- 4:26quickly confessed to her involvement in Colling's death, but she insisted that it had
- 4:30not been a murder. She and Tadarrel had just been trying to send Colleen
- 4:34a message and scare her a little bit, but then got carried away and
- 4:40accidentally killed her. A search of the three accomplices dorms uncovered more pieces of
- 4:46the puzzle, especially when a religious occult book, the Satanic Bible, was
- 4:50found into Darrell's room. Christa and Tadarrel had not been into Satanism before they
- 4:57got together, but during their relationship a mutual interest had spiraled into a full
- 5:01blown devil worship. It had become a cornerstone of their relationship. For Christa,
- 5:08it gave her security and a sense of purpose. Suddenly, the pentagram
- 5:13carved into Colleen's body made sense to the investigators. At the nineteen ninety six
- 5:18trial, the jury found it easy to reach a verdict. Even though Christa
- 5:23had insisted Colleen's death was an accident, she had already confessed to being the
- 5:27one to kill her. The rest of the evidence brought forth by the prosecution
- 5:30made it clear that no part of the killing had been an accident. It
- 5:35had been premeditated torture ending with cold blooded murder. On the twenty second of
- 5:43March nineteen ninety six, Christa Pike was found guilty of both conspiracy to commit
- 5:47murder and murder in the first degree. Four days later, she received her
- 5:53sentence twenty five years of jail time and death by electrocution. The other murderer
- 6:00to Darrell received a much lighter sentence of life in prison with the possibility of
- 6:03parole. Shadola, who had stood guard during the attack and had been involved
- 6:09in the planning of Colleen's death, had already pleaded guilty to being an accessory
- 6:14to murder and then acted as an informant for investigators. In exchange for a
- 6:18reduced sentence, she received credit for four hundred and sixty days in prison and
- 6:24probation for six years. Krista's violent, vengeful behavior didn't stop when she was
- 6:30imprisoned. The twenty fourth of August two thousand and one, she and another
- 6:34inmates, Natasha Cornett, attacked a prisoner named Patricia Jones. The two women
- 6:40attempted to murder Patricia by strangling her to death with a shoelace. While the
- 6:45attack caused serious injury, Krista and Natasha did not succeed in killing Patricia.
- 6:50Although there wasn't enough evidence to charge Natasha for her role in the assault,
- 6:55Christa was not so lucky. She received additional charges for the attack, tempted
- 7:00first degree murder. While incarceration, Christa made a friend. His name was
- 7:04Donald Cohut, and he was a personal trainer who had for some reason started
- 7:09writing letters to Krista. In two eleven, the two of them regularly wrote
- 7:14back and forth, and eventually Donald started driving to Tennessee, which was an
- 7:18eighteen hundred mile long road trip from his home in Flemington, New Jersey,
- 7:24so that he could see Christa in person. He made this journey multiple times
- 7:28every month. Donald wanted to help Christa, so he devised a plan to
- 7:32help her escape from prison. He got in touch with a guy named Jason
- 7:35Hefflin, who was a corrupt corrections officer, who agreed that he would help
- 7:41and aid Christa's escape for a fee. But the plan did not get very
- 7:46far before it was discovered and two twelve prison staff were tipped off about an
- 7:50escape plan involving Christa Pike. The investigation was launched in both Tennessee and Donald's
- 7:56home state of New Jersey, and the details of the plot were covered.
- 8:00Donald had planned to use Justin's role in the facility to obtain the tracing of
- 8:05a key, which could then be used to create a copy. The finer
- 8:09details of the plan have never been released to the public due to concerns that
- 8:13prison security could be impacted, but the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations simply stated that
- 8:18the plan had been in the early stages when it was discovered saying quote Christa's
- 8:22jailbreak was not imminent. Donald Cohut was charged with conspiracy to commit escape as
- 8:28well as bribery. He received seven years of jail time. Justin, the
- 8:33corrections officer was charged with conspiracy to commit escape, bribery, and official misconduct.
- 8:39Because of Justin's willingness to cooperate with the police, the only consequence he
- 8:43faced was losing his job at the prison. Investigators were unsure whether Christa had
- 8:48actually taken part in any of the plan, or if she was just aware
- 8:52that Donald wanted to break her out of jail. Because of this uncertainty,
- 8:56Christa was not charged to this. Christa's fate is still hanging in the balance.
- 9:03In two twenty her attorneys were given extensions due to the COVID nineteen pandemic,
- 9:07giving them more time to compile a convincing argument to save christoph from death
- 9:13by electrocution. In June of two twenty one, Christa's attorney filed a motion
- 9:18that requested a certificate of commutation, which would allow Christa's punishment to be reduced.
- 9:24Ultimately, the decision about the execution is now down to the courts.
- 9:28If Christa Pike's execution does go ahead, she will make history as being the
- 9:33only female criminal to be executed in the state of Tennessee in the past two
- 9:37centuries. Colleen Slimmer's mother just wants closure and for this case to be finally
- 9:43over, because the fragment of Colleen's skull that was once a trophy for Krista
- 9:48is still considered evidence and in custody of the police. When this story finally
- 9:54ends, the last piece of Colleen can be laid to rest. That's ten
- 10:09minute murder for today Brief and binge able True Crime. I'm Joe the host,
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