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Murder, Madness, and Death Row: The Christa Pike Story · Dead Serious

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Dead Serious, a true crime podcast.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, James Murray.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: This podcast contains mature themes.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Your discretion is advised.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: September 30th, 2026.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: River Bend Maximum Security Institution, Nashville, Tennessee.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: At 7.26 in the evening, the blinds open.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: A 50-year-old woman is strapped to a gurney with an IV already in her arm.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: She tells the room she is at peace and ready to go.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: She sings a song with her spiritual advisor.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: The state of Tennessee then injects her with enough pentobarbital to end her life.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: She does not die.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: So the state tries again.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Second syringe, still alive.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Forty minutes later, she is snoring.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: She has a heartbeat.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: And according to her lawyer, she never lost consciousness.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: She leaves the prison the way nobody on death row is supposed to leave it in an ambulance.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: The state of Tennessee waited 30 years to carry out this sentence.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: 30 years.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: And when the moment finally came, it could not finish the job.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now I ask you, if your plumber took 30 years to show up and then flooded the kitchen, you would at least ask a few questions.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Hey guys, welcome back to Dead Serious.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Ames Marie.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: And as promised, I am going to be talking about Krista Pike today.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: I thought this case just, I can't believe what happened on September 30th.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: I thought that was pretty wild.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I figured, let me go ahead and do an episode.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: So let's get that going.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: So Krista Gail Pike in 1995 at 18, she killed a 19-year-old classmate named Colleen Slemmer.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: A year later, she became one of the youngest women sentenced to death in modern American history.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: And on September 30th, she became something nobody planned for.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: A woman in the state of Tennessee tried to execute twice in one night and failed.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: So grab your coffee, your wine, a blanket, I don't judge, whatever it is, and let's get into it.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Krista Gailpike was born on March 10th, 1976 in Beckley, West Virginia.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: According to the reporting by Liliana Segora at the Intercept, Krista was raped by a neighbor when she was 11.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: At 12, she attempted suicide.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Then in 1991, she was put on probation for breaking into a community center to steal candy.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now, on paper, this center was designed to reform troubled youth.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Kids earned or lost points for following rules, and their progress depended on those points.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was sold as the gentler alternative to locking kids up.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: By the 1990s, though, it had drifted into a one-size-fits-all points and punishment machine.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Lest there be more spreadsheet.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Shockingly, a spreadsheet really didn't fix Krista.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: She kept breaking rules, mostly minor ones, and stayed more than a year, far longer than most kids.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, in the months before she went in, North Carolina social services had removed her from her home because her mother's live-in boyfriend was physically and sexually abusing her.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: So the system knew about the abuse, the trauma, and instead of, you know, like therapy and whatnot, it decides a points chart was going to work.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: At the Swanoa Center, Krista became a teacher's assistant and earned her GED.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: She was released in March 1993 and enrolled in a Job Corps program in Knoxville, Tennessee.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Job Core is a federal program for low-income young people, job training, a dorm, a fresh start.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: But we kind of already know how that fresh start went.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now, before we talk about how Colleen died, let's talk about who she was.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: And she was born on September 20th, 1975 in Orange Park, Florida.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: She was at Job Course studying computer technology because her grandfather noticed she was genuinely good with computers and nudged her in that direction.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: In 1995, that was a forward-thinking kid.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: She was 19.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: At the Knoxville campus, Krista had a boyfriend, 17-year-old Todarl Shipp.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: And Krista became convinced that Colleen was trying to steal him.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Here is a wrinkle from the original 1995 coverage.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Knoxville police chief Phil Keith told the Knoxville News Sentinel that Colleen and Krista had both been romantically involved with Todorl.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: So this was not a one-sided crush.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: The paper's headline called it a job core romantic triangle.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Still, a love triangle is a reason for a dramatic breakup and some unfortunate poetry, but it's not a reason for what came next.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Krista's own version, according to the detective who took her confession, was simpler.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Colin was hitting on her boyfriend, and Krista wanted to stop her.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Notice that stopping her apparently didn't involve like a conversation or strongly worded note or even a dramatic hallway confrontation like a normal teenager.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: So Krista, along with her friend Shadala Peterson, who was 18, came up with a plan.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: They would lure Colleen to an abandoned steam plant near the University of Tennessee campus.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Isolated, quiet, the kind of place where nobody hears anything.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Quick roll call, courtesy of the new sentinel, Krista Gail Pike, 18 of Durham, North Carolina, Shadala Renee Peterson, 18 of Cleveland, Tennessee, Tadarrell Duane, Ship, 17 of Memphis, three teenagers from three different places brought together by a program designed to give them a future.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: On January 12th, 1995, Krista, to Daryl, Shadala, and Colleen all signed out of the dorm together.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: The pitch to Colleen was that they wanted to make peace and they would smoke some wheat together, a peace offering.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly, that's one of the darkest parts.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Colleen went because she literally thought they were extending an olive branch to her.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: According to the police chief, the three walked Colleen down 17th Street and then onto a service road behind the old steam plant on the University of Tennessee's agricultural campus.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: The bait, in his telling, was the promise of weed or some other drunk.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: When they go out to the woods, Krista and Todarl attacked her while Shadala stood lookout.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: According to court testimony, it went on for about 30 minutes.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Colleen was taunted, beaten, and cut.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: She begged for her life.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Todarl used a box cutter to carve a pentagram into her chest while she was still alive.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Krista used a meat cleaver.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, Krista picked up a large chunk of asphalt and smashed Colleen's skull, and that is what killed her.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: The earliest police account is slightly different on the weapons.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: In January 1995, Chief Keith described a miniature meat cleaver and a second short cutting tool that police had not yet identified.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: The piece of asphalt was found right there at the scene.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Keith's summary to reporters, it was an extensively brutal type murder.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: He added that the killing showed something close to a tendency toward torture.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thing.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Two weeks later, an associate press report from a court hearing listed the tools as a box cutter and a cheese cutter and said Colleen was also gagged and slashed on her face, chest, and back.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: So depending on which week you read the paper, it was a cleaver, a mystery utensil, or a cheese cutter.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Early reporting is messy, folks.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: The detective also testified that Colleen tried more than once to get up and run, but was pushed back down, and that blood spots at the scene backed that up.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Colleen's body was found around 8 a.m.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: on Friday, January 13th, by two University of Tennessee employees in a remote part of the agricultural campus.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: She was only partially clothed, though police said there was no apparent sexual assault.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Authorities described the case as a calculated crime of passion, which is a phrase that argues with itself.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: Pick one, guys.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: About 15 Knoxville officers worked the case and it moved fast.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Their break came when they received information pointing them to the suspects.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Krista and Todaro were arrested shortly after 2 a.m.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: on Saturday, January 14th, roughly 18 hours after Colleen was found.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Shadala was charged that afternoon based on what came out of police interviews.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Not exactly criminal masterminds.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: And the arrests had a second job, calming down a nervous campus.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Rumors had been flying that this was a kidnapping, that a UT student was involved, or that it was connected to the city's bike path, which runs near where Colleen was found.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: The chief said the arrest should put all of that to rest and promised extra patrols on the bike path anyway.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing reassures a called town like more police on bicycles, or at least near bicycles.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the part that made investigators' jaws drop.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Krista kept a piece of Colleen's skull and she showed it off.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: She bragged about how she got it.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: Girl, if your criminal strategy includes a show and tell portion, you do not have a strategy.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: Do you really think people would think that's cool?
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like, ooh, look at me.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: I have a piece of skull.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, all right, you psycho.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: No thanks.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: Her story then and since has been that they only meant to scare Colleen and things got out of hand.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: 30 minutes, a box cutter, a cleaver, and a chunk of pavement is a very elaborate way to scare someone.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Her confession, though, told a different story.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: At her preliminary hearing in late January 1995, Knoxville detective Randy York testified that Crystal let police videotape her as she walked them around the crime scene and described the killing in detail.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: And she gave them an explanation, a voice in her head.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: According to York, the voice told her, you've done it now.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: You better finish it off.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my God, here we go.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Another person with, oh, the voice has told me to do it.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: So the official position was we only meant to scare her, but also a voice told me to finish it.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Those two words just don't really sit together well on the couch.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: York also testified that Krista told police the pentagram was carved into Colleen's chest while she was apparently still alive.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Naturally, people started whispering about devil worship, her attorney at the same time.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Bill Brown shut that down hard, telling reporters she had never been a devil worshiper and calling the talk pure speculation.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: One more thing before we move on, because it matters.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: That school fragment became evidence, and Kali's mother, May Martinez, spent years asking Tennessee to give it back so she could bury her daughter properly.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: The state said not while the case was open.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: In a documentary released this September, Dead Woman Walking, Pike versus Tennessee, May said that after 16 years of letters, she did get the skull back, but she says she has still not received the last piece of it.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: So while the court spent three decades arguing about Krista, a mother was writing letters asking for her child's bones.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: So keep that in your back pocket.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: All three were charged with first degree murder and conspiracy to commit first degree murder.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Things moved quickly.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: On Thursday, January 26th, 1995, right after Krista's preliminary hearing, prosecutors announced they would seek the death penalty.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: Her bond was set at$100,000, and prosecutors said they planned to ask for more because they considered her a flight risk.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is a woman who got caught within a day because she was showing people a piece of the victim's skull.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure flight was her strong suit.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: And only$100,000?
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Shadow Peterson was headed for a preliminary hearing on a murder charge in February, and Todarl faced a March hearing on whether he would be tried as an adult.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, the Job Court Center itself landed under a full review.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: For context, the AP noted that Knoxville was one of 111 job course centers across the country, all meant to give disadvantaged young people vocational training and academic help.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: One of them was now front page news for all the wrong reasons.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Shadala Peterson, the Lookout, took the deal that lookouts traditionally take.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: She agreed to testify for the prosecution, pleaded guilt of being an accessory after the fact, and got probation.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: For standing watch at a murder, some people get points on a chart for stealing candy, and some people get probation for this.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, life is rich for sure.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Tadarrell Ship had turned 17 just two months before the murder.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: The day after the arrests, police were already telling the paper they would ask a judge to try him as an adult.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: After that March hearing, they got their wish.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Prosecutors asked for life without parole for him and the death penalty for Krista.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: On March 30th, 1996, at 20 years old, Krista was sentenced to death by electrocution plus 25 years for conspiracy.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: In January of 1997, Todarl was convicted on both counts, too, but the jury could not agree on life without parole.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: So the judge gave him life with the possibility of parole, then stacked a consecutive 25 years for the conspiracy, calling him dangerous.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: The effect?
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: No parole eligibility until roughly his late 40s or early 50s.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: He was denied parole in October 2025 and is still in prison at Northwest Correctional Complex under minimum supervision.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, same crime, same night, same victim.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: One got probation, one got a shot of parole, and one got the electric chair.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: So file that away as well.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now buckle up because the appeals are where this case turns into a soap opera.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: After her conviction, Crystal launched an appeal, canceled it, and then relaunched it.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: In June 2001 and again in June 2002, against her own lawyer's advice, she asked the courts to drop her appeals and let her be executed by electrocution.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: A judge said fine and set an execution date, August 19th, 2002.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then Krista changed her mind again.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: On July 8th, 2002, her lawyers asked to restart the appeals.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: Denied.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: Then on August 2nd, a three-judge state appeals panel said the proceedings should continue after all, and the execution was off.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: I have seen people commit harder to a lunch order.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just saying.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: In December 2008, her latest request for a new trial was rejected.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: And with that, she had used up all of her appeals in the Tennessee state system.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: So in May 2014, her lawyers went federal.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: They argued three things.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: Her original lawyers were ineffective.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: She was mentally ill, and the death penalty as Tennessee runs is unconstitutional.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: In March 2016, a federal judge rejected all of it in a 61-page ruling.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: In August 2019, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously agreed with him.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: The argument that keeps coming back, though, and that experts still raise today, is the first one.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: Critics say her trial defense never really showed the jury the mitigating evidence, her age and the abuse and trauma we talked about in the beginning.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: Her lawyers argue a jury should have heard all of that before deciding whether she lived or died.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: It is a fair question.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: It is also a question Colleen Slimmer never got to ask about her own sentence.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: And personally, I don't think any of that excuses what she did.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: After her trial, Tennessee adopted a policy that death row prisoners be held in maximum security.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: As the only woman on Tennessee's death row, that meant Krista was effectively in solitary confinement starting in 1996.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: The men on death row could socialize and work together.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: Krista could not because there was nobody to group her with.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: In 2022, she sued, arguing her conditions were unequal to those of the men.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: In September 2024, the state settled and agreed to treat her the same.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: It took 28 years for Tennessee to notice it had one woman and was just treating her differently.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: Good catch.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like she could have just continued staring at a wall, though, and that would be fine.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think she, I don't think they needed to let her come out of solitary anyway.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: But Krista's time inside was not exactly quiet.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: On August 24th, 2001, Krista was accused of trying to strangle another prisoner, Patricia Jones, with a shoestring.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: Jones was serving life for the 1994 murder of an 84-year-old woman, Alberta Coker.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: Krista's defense?
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: She said she was protecting another inmate, Natasha Cornett.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the twist.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: Jones herself later testified that Krista had stepped into a fight between Jones and another woman and likely saved that woman's life.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: A judge still noted there was plenty of evidence, including Krista's own words, that contradicted the noble protector story.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: She was convicted of attempted first-degree murder in August 2004.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: So somehow she may have been both the hero and the villain of the same fight, only on death row.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, my favorite subplot is in early 2011, a New Jersey personal trainer in his 30s named Donald Cohut started writing letters to Krista.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: And at first I'm like, you know, these freaking weirder weirdos who start relationships with inmates.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I just, I can't.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you're obviously something's wrong with you as well.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, by that July, he was driving nearly 1,700 miles round trip from Flemington, New Jersey to Nashville once or twice a month to visit her.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: 1,700 miles, once or twice a month.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: Some of us cannot even get our partners to drive to Target.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, oof, the commitment.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: Cohut cooked up an escape plan and recruited a corrections officer, Justin Heflin, who agreed to help in exchange for cash and gifts.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because of security concerns, the state has kept the details vague, but the indictment described tracing a prison key and making a copy.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: Very high-tech, very Ocean's 11, if Ocean's 11 were filmed at a hardware store.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: Prison staff got wind of it in early 2012 and a joint investigation by Tennessee Corrections, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations, and New Jersey State Police shut it down.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: The TBI said the jailbreak was not imminent, which is a very polite way of saying it was not going well.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: Cohort was charged with bribery and conspiracy to commit escape and got seven years.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Heflin cooperated, served no time, and lost his job.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: Krista was never charged because investigators could not say whether she was in on it or just aware of it, which honestly is the most Krista outcome possible.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: In August of 2020, Tennessee's attorney general asked the state Supreme Court to set an execution date.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: Then COVID happened, Krista's lawyers got extensions, and the state did not object.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: In 2021, her lawyers asked for a commutation on mental illness grounds, denied.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: Then in November 2022, a lifeline appeared.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: Tennessee Supreme Court ruled in the Booker case that automatically sentencing juveniles to life without parole was unconstitutional.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: Krista's lawyers tried to use that to reopen her case, pointing to her youth and mental health.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: In October 2023, a Knox County judge said no.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: Booker was about juveniles, and Krista at 18 was legally an adult.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: One birthday, that is the line.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: On September 30th, 2025, the Tennessee Supreme Court set her execution for September 30th, 2026.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: She could choose electrocution or lethal injection, which is, you know, hey, what would you like?
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like neither, but obviously you deserve something.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: In June 2026, after the state's attempted execution of another man, Tony Carruthers, went wrong, Krista challenged the execution protocol.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: She argued that her thrombocytosis, a blood clotting disorder, would make placing an ID difficult and painful, and that an all male Execution team would force her to relive past sexual trauma.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: A special master for the state Supreme Court was not persuaded.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: She then asked to be hanged instead on the theory that a botched hanging would hurt less than a botched lethal injection.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: Let that sink in.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: She was not asking whether it would go wrong.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: She was asking which way it should go wrong.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: The state said no because hanging is not an approved method and the chamber is not set up for.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: Then came the final dominoes and they fell fast.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: September 23rd, the Tennessee Supreme Court rejected her Eighth Amendment challenge to lethal injection.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: September 28th, Governor Bill Lee denied her 226-page clemency petition.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: September 29th, the U.S.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Supreme Court declined to hear her, leaving her out of appeals.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: That same day, she declined to choose a last meal.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: The state did make some accommodations.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: Female officers would transport her.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: The state would try to have only female officers watch her on death watch, and she would get privacy screens, and her spiritual advisor could stay with her into the chamber.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, on execution day, about an hour before the scheduled time, the Sixth Circuit stayed the execution, citing serious concerns.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: Later that same day, the U.S.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: Supreme Court lifted the stay.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: The warrant expired at midnight.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: The clock was very much ticking.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: At 6:41 p.m., witnesses were let in.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: At 7.26, the blinds opened.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: Krista gave her statement.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: She said she was going to leave this world the way she spent most of her life with love and that she loved both her supporters and the people who hated her.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: She said she was at peace and ready.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: Then she sang with her spiritual advisor.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: At 7.34, she said the vein in her arm felt like it was about to burst.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: Witnesses said she blinked, smiled, even laughed, and lifted her head to look at her arm.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: At around 7.39, she kicked off her sheet.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: At 7.41, a small white rock appeared in a window in the wall, which reporters believed was the signal that the drugs had been pushed.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: At 7.46, the blinds closed.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: Under Tennessee's protocol, if the person is still alive five minutes after the phenobarbital, a second dose is given.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: The blinds reopened, the rock was back, Krista was still moving.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: The curtains closed again just after 8 p.m.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then the protocol simply ends.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: It does not say what happens if the second dose does not work after.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: 30 years of planning and the instruction manual's final page is blank.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: Her attorney, Amy Harwell, filed emergency motions in three courts at once.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: Another one of her lawyers, Kelly Gleason, said Krista was alive, snoring, and needed medical care immediately.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: Media witnesses were escorted out at 8.53, and they said she had been snoring for about 40 minutes after the second dose.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: Her lawyer said she never lost consciousness and kept a heartbeat throughout.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: The execution was declared botched and she was taken out in an ambulance.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: And here is the detail that should make everyone on every side of this debate put down their coffee.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: This was Tennessee's second failed execution this year.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: The same doctor who could not secure a central line for Tony Carruthers was the one administering this injection.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: Carruthers was given a one-year reprieve.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think he should just maybe, you know, find another profession.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: Tennessee had a warning and it chose not to take it.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: As of October 1st, Christmas lawyers say she is alive and in critical condition, getting life-saving care in a local hospital.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, you heard that right.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: The state is now paying to save the life it spent 30 years trying to end.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: If irony were a controlled substance, Tennessee would be facing charges.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: Governor Lee has paused every execution in Tennessee for the rest of 2026 and ordered a comprehensive, independent review of what went wrong.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: He also said the public expects a lawful sentence to be carried out in a way that is legal, constitutional, and his word effective, which is one way of saying, you know, we would like it to work next time.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: The reactions have gone global.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Vocal Turk, called for her execution to be canceled outright, saying the death penalty has no place in any society.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: Maya Foa, who runs the anti-death penalty group Reprieve, pointed out that nobody really knows what went wrong because lethal injection happens behind a curtain, literally and figuratively.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: And before any of this, plenty of people were already against executing her.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: Amnesty International called for a halt.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: Several UN special reporters and members of a UN working group on discrimination against women urged the U.S.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: and Tennessee to stop it.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide said sparing her would simply be consistent with how Tennessee treated Tadarl shit.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: Krista herself drew comparisons to the Lindsey Clancy trial, saying both of them were women who got into trouble over what she called uniquely female issues at a time when the world understood so far less about those issues.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: On the other side is the person whose opinion I think carries the most weight here.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: Colleen's mother, May Martinez.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: In September, she said Krista did the crime and should pay for it.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: She said she would feel better if Krista felt the same pain Colleen did.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: And she said she just wants it over so her daughter can finally rest.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think she may have felt some pain.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: So here's where I land, and you know, you can land wherever you would like, and everybody has their, you know, right to think what they want about the death penalty.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: And almost everyone involved in this case has been failed by the system at some point.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: Krista, you know, was a young girl.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: She was abused while the state, you know, they didn't do anything.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: A 19-year-old who walked into the woods expecting a peace offering, a mother who had to beg for her daughter's bones, and a process that took three decades to reach a moment it then could not even complete.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: The only thing Tennessee has managed to do efficiently in this entire story is make everyone wait.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that's Chris's Pike story so far.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I do mean so far because this is not over.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, she is, as of this date, still in the hospital on a ventilator.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know what's going to happen there.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: I believe I read that, you know, she has somebody that's in charge of her care.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: So someone's probably gonna have to make a decision on that.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: The next thing I wanted to talk about briefly was the ripple effect, right?
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: The media that this case left in its wake, because we always have, we always have something coming after it.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: The, you know, a book or a movie.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I first heard about this episode um two years ago.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: I watched it on Mean Girl Murders, which is on HBO Max.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna link a few things, a couple of different shows that they've done on her Deadly Women, Killer Kids, Snapped, a bunch of stuff.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll link all of those for you to check out.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, if you liked this episode, please rate and review.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: That will really help me grow this show.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I really love sharing these stories with you guys.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a lot of fun.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, share, spread the good word, and you can find me on socials at dead underscore serious pod.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, stay curious, stay safe, and stay serious.