Christa Pike WHO?! What Colleen Slemmer REALLY Suffered at the Hands of the "Lil Devil"

It was Thursday, January 12th, 1995 in Knoxville, Tennessee. A 19-year-old girl was just getting back from holiday break. She's living in her dorm room and she's just a few months away from finishing the program that she came there for. It's a normal evening. She eats dinner and then she heads back to her room to study like she does most nights. And then a classmate asks if she wants to go take a walk and she says yes. On her way out, she stops in the hallway to say hi to one of her teachers. She's smiling, she looks happy, and she's on her way. A little after 8 p.m., she walks out the door with three classmates. Earlier that evening, she had tried to call her mother back home but the signal kept cutting out and the call dropped. Around 10 o'clock, her mom calls back but she isn't in her room. And she doesn't answer. The next day is Friday the 13th. Her mother still hasn't heard back, so she called her again. No answer. A little after 8 o'clock that same morning, two groundskeepers were working near an old steam plant where there's a stretch of land that no one really has any reason to be. There's a bike trail, a line of trees, piles of dirt, and broken asphalt. The ground is. still wet. The mud looks disturbed. And one of them notices something lying in a pile of debris. And at first, he actually thinks it's an animal. But it isn't. It's the body of a young woman. Hi everyone, welcome back to my channel, and if you have never been here before, I am Kimberlea. It is nice to finally meet you. Now, I do not typically do this, but I'm going to have chapter markers below, because there is a lot happening in this case currently. And I wanted to do a deep dive to talk about the past. But I also wanted to dig into exactly what happened in the present as well. So if you want to jump around, that's fine, but I would highly recommend that you don't. But I know that you might be coming here for something very specific, maybe particular information about this case. Also, please, do not put any spoilers in the comments if you already know everything that happened. Many people don't know this whole story. And that's why they count on people like me to bring them back in time. So let's go. I want to bring you back to Friday, January 13th of 1995. Yes, it was Friday the 13th. Which is already just a little bit eerie. A couple is walking on a bike trail. It's around daybreak. And the woman notices a wet spot on the pavement. And she looks over at her husband and she says, it looks like blood. He calms her worries and says, no, it's just transmission fluid from a car. Well, just so you know, it was blood. Then a little after 8am, out at the far edge of the University of Tennessee's property, a couple maintenance workers are out behind an old steam plant. This is one of the most remote parts of campus. It includes, like I said, that bike trail, a thick line of trees, and there's piles of dirt and broken asphalt just lying around. About 50 or 60 feet off that trail, one of them sees something lying in a pile of debris. If you can even imagine the sight of a body of some kind that is in such bad condition that it looks like an animal that has been attacked by a predator. But upon closer inspection, he realizes it's not an animal at all. It's a human being. And more specifically, it's a young woman. Knoxville police and the University of Tennessee police flood this area. And the first officer on that scene looks down at this woman. And he can genuinely not tell what he's looking at. He doesn't even know if he's looking at her face or something else. And this is clearly no accident. And the longer they're out there, the bigger this scene gets. There's blood in one spot and then another. There are drag marks. There are handprints and knee marks that are pressed into the mud. And there's a huge pool of blood about 30 feet from where she's lying. By the time they're done, this crime scene is three times the size it was when they had started. The Knoxville police chief will later call it a "extensively brutal murder," one with an element of torture to it. And they have no idea who this woman is. There's no purse and no ID, so they have to categorize her as a Jane Doe. To identify her, police put out a description on the news: "A young white woman with light brown hair wearing jeans, white Nike tennis shoes, a pink sweater, and a green wool coat." That's all they've got. Meanwhile, that afternoon, while officers are still guarding the scene, the police have no idea who this woman is. And they have no clue what's going on. Something strange happens. A small group of young women walks up to that tape, and one of them steps forward and starts asking the officer questions. What happened out here? Who is she? Do they have any suspects? The officer notices that she almost seems amused. I mean, she even giggles. She starts moving around like she can't stand still, and she's wearing a very unusual necklace. Hold onto that image, because it definitely stuck with the officials. But there were things going on elsewhere that were going to connect. Across town, a teacher at a career college called the Knoxville Job Corps Center hears that description on the news, and something about it catches him. He starts thinking about a student that said hello to him in the hallway the very night before, and she was smiling, and she was wearing a brand new pink sweater that she got for Christmas. Now, at the Job Corps Center, a detective is also pulling out a sign-out log for Thursday night, and he sees that there were four students that signed out together. But the only thing is, one of them didn't sign back in, but three others did. And in Florida, a mom's phone is ringing, and it's a homicide detective from Knoxville, Tennessee. It's about her daughter, Colleen Slemmer. They're asking for dental records. And there could only be one devastating reason for that, and it's a parent's worst nightmare. So before we talk about exactly what happened behind that isolated steam plant, I want you to meet the real victim in this story, Colleen. Because I'm sure you know by now, she doesn't make it out alive. And I want you to really meet Colleen. I want you to meet Colleen, because she deserves a whole lot more than being the girl they found dead on Friday the 13th. Colleen Ann Slemmer was born on Saturday, September 20th of 1975, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania to her mother, May, and her dad, Michael, but was later raised by her mother and stepfather, Raul Martinez. And from the very beginning, the little family was close. And eventually, this family made its home in Orange Park, Florida, a quiet suburb just south of Jacksonville, right along the St. Johns River in Clay County, a place I know very well, not just because I have an entire playlist of Florida cases, but because I was born in Florida and lived in Jacksonville for almost over a decade. That's the place Colleen would always call home. And as a little girl, she was described as giving and active. She was adorable. She loved playing outside, and she was the kind of kid who would stay out until somebody made her come back inside. Her mom remembers her as playful and compassionate. And those two words together kind of sum her up and sum up her whole life. Colleen was fun, but she was also paying attention to how everyone around her was doing. And a lot of that, I think, came from her mom's house, because that house was never quiet. May actually ran a daycare, not for just a couple years, she didn't do that. She ran a daycare for a couple years, and she ran a daycare for a couple years, for 40 years. So picture Colleen's childhood. There were always little kids running around. If somebody needed a snack, if one of them fell down, if any one of those children needed a shoulder to cry on or a lap for comforting, it would be Colleen. And instead of being annoyed by all of it, which let's be honest, a lot of young kids would be, Colleen wasn't. She soaked it up. By the time she was about eight years old, Colleen was a little bit older than Colleen. She was already babysitting and helping kids with disabilities. Her mother put it this way, Colleen loved to do anything with children. And she thought that she would be able to thought that came from her because of the daycare, and it didn't stay at home either. At school, when everyone else was at lunch catching up with their friends, Colleen was spending her lunch period with kids that didn't have as much, who were dealing with disabilities, and she sat there and she would help them eat, and she made sure they could get where they needed to go. Her mom says she was always looking for ways to help other students. She even volunteered at the Special Olympics, and not just once. And in the summer when most teenagers are sleeping until noon, Colleen was helping paint schools so they would be ready for the kids coming in the next year. She was a good kid, but I don't mean that in a boring way because sometimes that's what it kind of means. It just meant she wasn't a troublemaker. Trouble wasn't something she went looking for. The people who knew her described her as easygoing, friendly, quiet, and always smiling. However, Colleen was a bit of a people pleaser. She was shy, but once you became her friend, you were always her friend. The people lucky enough to call her once said she was the type who would do anything for you. Now, school itself wasn't always easy for Colleen. Reading was a real struggle, and it always had been. But her mom is very clear that Colleen was smart. Her kind of smart just lived in her hands. That's the way she put it, because Colleen loved computers. And I need you to try to remember, if you can, what that meant back then. Most families didn't even have a computer inside their home, but Colleen did. And she wasn't just playing on it, she was taking it apart. Now, if you grew up in the late 80s or even the early 90s, you will remember that Colleen was a smart girl. She was a smart girl. Those big, boxy, beige towers and these heavy monitors, you would type in commands into a black screen, and you saved things on floppy disks. And those were the big, bendy ones. Hard drives were measured in megabytes, and getting online meant dial-up. You would hear the screeching modem, and you would even tie up the house phone while you were doing it. We had services like Prodigy, CompuServe, and AOL. That was her and her stepdad role's thing. A stepdad and a daughter were bonding over a pile of parts out on a table. The two of them would build these computers and then tear them down over and over, fixing them, rebuilding them, figuring out how every little piece fit together. Now, there were games on them, and they played those too. Her mother remembers Colleen loving old games. She loved bowling with her friends and family, and she loved being outdoors. She liked going shrimping with her dad. But most importantly, she was a techie. Her parents used to joke that she was a nerd. And May would say lovingly, she was a nerd, but a good nerd. And I didn't know what that meant, but I kind of remember back when being a nerd wasn't really cool. She didn't argue with that nickname one bit. She had a favorite t-shirt that said Computer Geek right across the front, and she wore it proudly. This was before being someone into computers was even cool. And by the way, she didn't care. She was proud of it, and Colleen was proud of who she was. She was active too. She roller skated every single weekend, and she ran marathons. Marathons. When she wasn't skating or running, she loved going to the mall and shopping just like any other teenager in the early 90s. She had the big wavy hair, the bangs, and it was usually golden brown color, sometimes with a little blonde highlights from the summer. And she had big light blue eyes like her mom. She was petite, about 104 pounds, and only 5 foot 4, just to give you an image in your head. But I'm also putting all these photos on the screen if you're watching, and I've been showing you exactly what Colleen looked like. She worked too. She had a job at That was not really her focus. She wasn't one of those girls who the whole world revolved around who liked who. Colleen cared about her schoolwork, and she spent a lot of her free time in the computer lab. And when you read what people said about her, it's pretty much the same every time. Her teachers described her as sweet, quiet, and mild-mannered. The people who loved her talked about how independent she was, and how she just had this instinct to help anyone. Who needed her. She wasn't the loudest person in the room. She was the one who noticed who might be having a hard time. After high school, Colleen knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life. Work on computers, obviously. So she wanted to go to college. And unfortunately, college cost a lot of money, and a four-year university just wasn't in the cards for her family. But they didn't want her to give up on her dreams. So her grandfather suggested something else. Job Corps. Now, if you have never heard of Job Corps, because I was not fully aware of all the details, it's a federal program that was started back in 1964 under the president Lyndon B. Johnson. It's for young people between 16 and 24 years old who want to learn a trade. And what you do is you live on site, you get your own room, your own meals, your medical care, and your training. And the best part is that it's all for free. For a lot of kids, this is their only opportunity to have a real career someday. And for Colleen, it was a way to get the computer training she wanted even though her family couldn't afford it. There was just one hurdle. The program in Florida didn't offer what she was looking for. However, the center in Knoxville, Tennessee did. It was only a six-month computer course, more than 400 miles away from home, though. But it didn't matter. Colleen was so excited about it that she went to college and was so excited. This was a fresh start in a brand new state and a chance to build a future for herself. But her family, on the other hand, didn't want her to go. Especially her mother, Mae. It's another state. It's far away from everything and everyone that Colleen had ever known. Her home was in Florida. Her mom, her stepdad, her sister, her friends, everything was there. It was really difficult to let her go. Like it would be for everyone. But Colleen, many mothers and fathers. But Colleen was 19. She was an adult and she was independent. She was a go-getter. She wanted a life of her own and she had already made up her mind. She even joked with her mom that she had finally done it. She had made it out of Florida all on her own. So on Monday, October 31st, 1994, yes, it was Halloween. Colleen said goodbye to her mom and her stepdad and her little sister. And she got on a bus and she headed north to Knoxville. And sadly, that would be the last time her family ever saw her alive. So I want to paint you a picture of where Colleen just landed. Knoxville, Tennessee. Now I'm sure that most of you are at least a little familiar. It sits at the heart of East Tennessee in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. And it's the heart of the Great Smoky Mountains. And it's the heart of the Tennessee River cutting right along the edge of downtown. In the 1990s, it was a growing community. But honestly, it feels more like a college town than a city. And that college is the University of Tennessee. Its nickname is Big Orange in reference to their athletics teams. So it's Big Orange everything. It got its name back in 1889 when orange and white daisies were found growing on the hill. Now there's another fun fact. The fall that Colleen arrived was also Peyton Manning's freshman season as a quarterback. Football Saturdays in Knoxville were basically a religion for the people who lived there. Right next to campus is a neighborhood called Fort Sanders, full of old wood frame homes, college kids, and front porches. Running along the edge of campus is Cumberland Avenue, which everyone called The Strip. There are restaurants, cafes, bars, shops, and students walking around everywhere. And it's all within walking distance. And then there's Tyson Park, a big stretch of green space that sits between all of it. If you're 19, this looks like the ultimate college experience. But Colleen isn't at University of Tennessee. She's not a student there. And that matters a lot. She wasn't on that campus. Remember, she's headed to Knoxville Job Corps Center at 621 Dale Avenue. And I want you to picture it exactly how it was. Because this was not a typical college campus. It was actually an old Holiday Inn motel near Interstate 40. The Job Corps took over in the late 1980s. It sat in an inner city pocket surrounded by industrial sites, a couple factories, some clubs and restaurants, a lumber yard, and a bunch of small houses. And around the whole thing is a six-foot chain link fence. So definitely night and day compared to the University of Tennessee. Tennessee. So on one side of Tyson Park you have the University of Tennessee and the other side you have a converted motel full of job corps kids behind a fence. The two worlds can practically see each other. About 350 young people who only qualified for this program because they had very low income live and train inside that motel. These were economically disadvantaged kids who met this poverty standard. They're usually high school dropouts and come from single parent homes. Three floors for the boys, one floor for the girls. There's an RA on each floor and the bathrooms are shared. Now it is not glamorous but for a lot of these kids it's the first real place of their own that they've ever had. The government was spending about $23,000 a year per student to make that happen for them. For the job corps students it was a lot of money. They had to pay for the school. They had to go to school. It was also the closest thing they were going to get to the college experience. They get to live in a dorm style room, walk to their classes, eat on a meal plan and at night they could sign out, walk around the neighborhood, grab food, go down to the strip, meet people and have a good time. For a lot of them this was the very first taste of freedom that they'd ever had and some of those kids really did something with it. A number of Knoxville job corps students went on to do classes at Pellissippi. The center said 70% of its students went on to a job or another school. There were a lot of ambitious kids at that motel. Kids who came for a trade and left for the job or the preparation to get one. But I'm also not going to pretend it was all these success stories because it wasn't. On paper students weren't supposed to have a felony or a record of violent behavior and if they did their file got reviewed before they could even get in. A job corps also attracted students with a past. Kids who had already been in trouble. Kids who had been bounced around their entire lives. The program's own national leadership would later put it pretty plainly. They don't expect kids to come in that door just wonderful. A lot of them were called rough around the edges. So it was a real mixture. Some kids actually wanted to do well. They were there to learn a trade and find a way out. And then there were the kids whose parents gave them a choice. They'd had enough of them and sent them there to change. And those kids brought trouble with them and to the neighborhood. The people there felt it. When job corps moved into that holiday inn, people in Fort Sanders and even the merchants on that strip said that crime in their backyard went up. The local merchants association talked about how they had car and business break-ins, muggings, and confrontations that they never dealt with before. By the time Colleen arrived, police had been counting a string of attacks, sexual assaults, and other violent crimes at the center or involving its students. Going back to 1991. In 1993, two job corps residents attacked two University of Tennessee graduate students that were sitting in a parked car. At the edge of the campus, they badly beat the man and then they drove the woman somewhere else and raped her. Both were convicted. So plenty of people in Knoxville wanted this program gone. They thought it was a waste of money. They thought it drove up the crime. And the center's deputy director, Joe Brown, pushed back. He asked the community not to blame every student for just what a handful had done. The students felt that judgment. The student body president would say, that the community looked at them like outcasts. But they were people. They were human beings. He said that if it weren't for job corps, he'd probably be out on the street somewhere. And that it was the best thing that ever happened to him. But for others, not so much. And this was before what happened to Colleen. So that's the atmosphere in 1994. A college town split down the middle with a fence running through it. One of the teachers inside that fence was a man named Joe Mode. And he has described what that building was really like. And by his account, some students were funneled in as an alternative to prison. And the good students would get harassed until they left. Box cutters and razor blades were common. That's one teacher's viewpoint. But he was in those hallways every day. So I think that counts. And if you're wondering whether job corps still exists today, it does. Barely. It spent the last couple years fighting for its life. But the Knoxville Center on Dale Avenue has been gone for a very long time. And one more thing I want you to remember. This was 1994. There were no cell phones in anybody's pocket. If you wanted to call home, you had to use the phone inside your dorm. And if someone called you while you were out and you missed them, then you would have to wait to get their call again or call them back later. And to leave for the night, you actually signed out on a form at the front desk. And when you came back, you signed back in. That was the system. So on Halloween of 1994, into all of this walks Colleen, the shy, quiet girl from more than 400 miles away. And she was there for one reason, a computer certificate. And she was exactly the student you would hope for. Colleen, took her classes seriously. She was very studious and she was determined to make good grades. Every evening after dinner, she would excuse herself. She would head back to her room and she would study. That was who Colleen was. Now, given the choice between going out on the town or staying in and finishing an assignment, Colleen was staying inside. She was the student you never had to worry about. And something really nice started to happen to her there. Job corps started to pull her out of her shell. The shy little girl from Orange Park, Florida, started to blossom. She started to say hello to people in the hallway. She would wave. She was friendly and at least started to be more outgoing. But not everybody at Dale Avenue was kind to her. Now, it shouldn't be surprising, but it still surprises me that bullies exist, right? Somewhere in those first weeks, some other students started giving her a hard time. And it didn't stop. She was picked on. And remember what that teacher said? The good kids were harassed until they left. But Colleen was determined to stay. And that upset people. Colleen didn't really want to talk about it much. She didn't want to worry anyone. But at one point, she did call her mom. She told May she was getting bullied, particularly by another girl, and that she wanted to drop out and just come home. May didn't know how bad things really were. So she did what a lot of loving moms would do. She encouraged her daughter to stick it out. Colleen had worked so hard to get there. This was her plan. She just had to power through and not let the mean girls get to her. So she stayed. Then in December, the holidays came around. And for Colleen, that meant Christmas was 400 miles away from home. So her family sent her presents. And one of them was a brand new pink sweater. On the phone with her mom, she opened up a little bit more. First, it was the dorms. She was pretty underwhelmed with her living situation. She said it was dirty. It was run down. It was not in a very good area of town. And on top of that, she didn't name names. But she did tell her mom. There were actually a couple of kids at Job Corps who had been bothering her. They'd gone into her room, taken her things, her jewelry, money, even articles of her clothing. But she only had a few months. And she would have her certificate. So she kept going. By January, it was the new year. And things were different. The bully who had spent the fall making her life miserable was suddenly nice to her. She smiled at Colleen in the hallway. She waved at her. And the name calling stopped. And so did the rumors. She was telling people that it was a new year. She wanted to be a new person. And she wanted to make things right with Colleen. She wanted to be her friend. And she wanted to be her best friend. And I want you to put yourself in Colleen's shoes for a second. Maybe forever. You're 19. You're hundreds of miles away from home. And you've spent weeks dreading walking down your own hallway. And now it's just over. That would be such a relief. The whole dorm felt calmer. Everybody seemed to be getting along. Colleen didn't need to be best friends with this girl. She just wanted peace. And she wanted peace. And she The signal keeps breaking up and they could barely hear one another. And during that call, Colleen says something contrary to what everyone thought the situation was like now. She was telling her there were these three students that kept bothering her. And then the call cut out before she could really explain anything else. Now, remember what I said about this time frame? There was no texting her back. There was no calling a cell phone. If her mom wanted to reach her daughter, she had to call that dorm room and hope that Colleen was in there and would answer. But it was dinnertime, which meant that Colleen usually went into the cafeteria for a meal. And afterward, she would do what she always did, head back to her room to study. And that night, that's when one of her classmates comes by and asks Colleen if she wants to walk over to Blockbuster Music Store with her. Now, this is not Blockbuster Video, just to be clear. There used to be a Blockbuster Music where you could buy cassette tapes and CDs. Colleen agrees to go. She's in jeans and white Nike sneakers. She puts on her long forest green wool coat. And underneath it, she's wearing that brand new pink sweater that she got for Christmas. And she steps out into the hallway. And it was at that moment, her teacher Joe passes her. And she stops. And she says hello. Now, remember in the beginning, I told you that he said she was all smiles. And he was really glad to see her that way. And they only spoke for a minute. But he remembers that pretty new pink sweater. It's a sweater. It's a small, ordinary detail, an ordinary moment. The kind that you would probably forget five minutes later. But he never did, because that was the very last time he would ever see Colleen. Out at the front desk, she signs out in the logbook. It's around eight o'clock at night. It's cold. It's damp. The ground is wet from the rain. And this would be her last night on Earth. And she has no idea. The next morning is Friday, the 13th of January. And out of the far edge at the University of Tennessee's agricultural campus, it's very quiet. This is the backside of the university. No one's hustling to get to class out there. There are greenhouses, an old steam plant, and a bike trail running along the edge of the property with trees, a lot of dirt and brush, and piles of broken up asphalt. The ground is soaked from the rain the night before. And it's muddy and wet. And a little after 8 a.m., a couple of university maintenance workers are out there walking the grounds. When one of them walks near the greenhouses, about 50 to 60 feet off that bike trail, and he notices something in the pile of debris. He thinks it's an animal. Maybe it's a deer or even a dog. Something that got hit or attacked by a predator and dragged off into the brush. He can tell it's bloody and battered. And honestly, it doesn't look like anything he recognizes. But then he gets closer. That's when he notices material, clothing, and skin. That's when he realizes he's looking at a human. It's a young woman. He gets to a phone. He calls the police. And within minutes, officers from both the Knoxville Police Department and the University of Tennessee Police Department are pulling up to that scene. One of the first officers there is John Terry Johnson. And I want you to hear what he said he found. Because he would describe it. Later under oath. He saw a young woman lying face down on a pile of debris. Her body and the clothing that she still has on are covered in blood and dirt. Her head has been bludgeoned. There are cuts and slashes all over her torso. Officer Johnson looks at her and thinks he's looking at her face. But he says he genuinely could not be sure. That's how badly this poor young woman died. He gets everyone out of that area and starts securing the scene. And then the scene just keeps getting wider. As more officers arrive and start working outward, they keep finding more. There's blood in one spot. There's a lot more blood in another. There are pieces of her clothing. There's footprints and broken branches. And the mud tells its own story. Trampled bushes, handprints, knee prints, and even drag marks. Whatever happened out there. It happened. Over a lot of ground. About 30 feet from where she's lying, there's a large pool of blood. And that's where she was before she was moved to where she had been found. Her clothing is scattered all over the place. There's a bra, a pink sweater, and there are chunks of asphalt with blood all over them. And the blood is actually dripping from leaves. By the time these officers finish marking all the evidence, the crime is over. The crime scene has tripled in size. It's about 100 feet long and 60 feet wide. And for perspective, that's roughly the size of a basketball court. Please remember all these details. Every part of it has some kind of evidence in it. Think about that. It means this attack, this struggle, this killing happened all over that entire space. Like the killer had been chasing its prey as it tried to get away. When officers find out that the killer had been chasing its prey, they try to get away. She was a young Caucasian woman, maybe 18 to 22 years old, with light brown hair. She was wearing jeans, white Nike sneakers, a long forest green wool coat, and a pink sweater. That afternoon, somewhere between 4 and 5 o'clock, officers are still out there guarding that scene. One of them is a University of Tennessee police officer named Harold Underwood. His job is simple. Stand at that tape and keep people back. And this is what he does. A group of young women walk up. I told you a little bit about this. I'm going to go into more detail. There were about three to five of them. And of course, a scene like this would bring onlookers. That's not really uncommon at all. But one of them steps forward and starts asking him questions. She was like, why is this area taped off? Who's the victim? Do they have any suspects yet? The other girls don't say a word. Not one. And for the entire 15 minutes they're standing there, it was only one young female talking. Now, is that weird? Maybe. Is it suspicious? It could be. But then Officer Underwood noticed something about this woman that does raise a red flag. She seems amused. She's giggling. She's moving around like she just really can't stand still. She's acting really strange. I mean, that's a weird way to act at the edge of a murder scene. It's not uncommon for, let's say, neighbors or people from the community to ask questions because they're concerned. But this was different. And then he sees something else. Her necklace. It's unusual. And we will get to exactly why, but at this time, he doesn't think that much of it. He just makes a mental note. And there's a reason why, which will make sense in a moment. But eventually, the group of girls just walks away. Jane Doe is taken to the morgue. A different detective with the University of Tennessee Police, Donald Cook, goes there with her. And once her body. is cleaned up. He sees something. that was impossible to see out there in the mud and with all the blood. There is a symbol carved into her chest and also one in her forehead. A five-pointed star inside of a circle. It's a pentagram. And that giggling young woman, that giggling female, had the same necklace on. It was a pentagram. Now, these two detectives have not made that connection, but I'm telling you, and that changes everything. Because you have to understand where and when this was. Knoxville, Tennessee in 1995, this is the Bible Belt with a church on practically every corner. And it is in the tail end of what they called the satanic panic. The worst of it was in the 80s, but it hasn't gone away yet. Less than a year earlier, three teenagers were convicted in Arkansas in the West Memphis Three case, which was where all the fear of satanic ritual killings were. And they're still on edge about cults and sacrifices and devil worshiping. So a pentagram carved into a young woman's chest is not a detail that anyone is going to take lightly. Detective York makes a call. Keep it out of the news. Because if anyone out there knows about that pentagram, he wants it to be because they were there. This would spread so quickly and it could compromise the entire investigation with so much speculation. Now recall the officer at that scene who saw the giggling girl with the necklace. That was Harold Underwood. And he doesn't hear about the pentagram until roll call the next day. But when he does, he thinks about that girl back at the scene asking about suspects. And he thought there's got to be a connection. No one would be wearing a necklace like that and coming up to the scene for nothing and asking all those questions, especially the way that she did. So now Knoxville police have a young woman in the morgue with a pentagram carved into her chest. And they're still no name. But they don't stay stuck for very long. A tip sends investigators to Knoxville Job Corps Center on Dale Avenue. According to Detective Randy York, a call came in from a worried woman from Jackson, Tennessee. It was a mom. Her daughter was a student at Job Corps. And she was scared of some of her classmates. Specifically, the ones who she said were into Satanism and the occult. A pentagram on a body and a phone call about devil worshipping at Job Corps. That's enough for York to go in that direction. At the same time, one of the teachers at the center has been watching the news. Remember Joe Mode? Well, he hears the description of this young woman that was found on University of Tennessee campus. Light brown hair, jeans, white Nikes, the long green coat, and that pink sweater. And he tells his wife, that sounds like a student I just talked to in the hallway on Thursday night. She was smiling. She was wearing a pink sweater. She was smiling. She was wearing a pink sweater that she got for Christmas. It sounds like it may be Colleen Slemmer. So he made that connection. But it wasn't official yet. And at the same time, York goes to Dale Avenue. And he's asking to see the sign-out log. He finds Thursday, January 12th. And he starts reading the names of the students who left that building that evening. And there were four that signed out at the same time. A guy named Tadaryl Shipp and three young women. Shadola Peterson, Krissa Pike, and Colleen Slemmer. But only three of them signed back in. Colleen never did. She's unaccounted for at this time. And back in Orange Park, Colleen's mother, May, has been trying to reach her daughter since Thursday night. That's the night of the bad phone connection. And the call she returned around 10 o'clock when Colleen was already out. She keeps calling. And she keeps getting nothing. May has to take her younger daughter to the doctor. And when she gets home, there's a message waiting for her on her answering machine. It's from a detective in Knoxville in the homicide department. By now, they had made the connection. And they believe the young woman they found is Colleen. When May finally hears the words that they believe her daughter has been murdered, it was at 1115 a.m. on Saturday. And this detective said, we think your daughter might have been killed. Can you identify some marks that she has in her body? Birth marks, moles, scars, tattoos, anything distinctive that you would know? This was standard in a case like this. And May doesn't believe it. She keeps saying, it's not my daughter. It isn't Colleen. It has to be a mix-up. She wants to see her. They won't let her because her daughter's body is too badly damaged. So it comes down to dental records. That's what was requested to make a formal identification. And eventually, those records confirm what May can't even bring herself to believe. It is Colleen. The police know she signed out with those three other students. And they have their names. So they begin asking questions around Job Corps. And it turns out other students have been sitting on pertinent information related to this case. The first student is Kim Malululu. She's best friends with one of the other girls that was on that list, Krista Pike. And the story Kim starts to tell investigators is one I don't think you'll ever forget because they didn't. Now we have to go back in time to Wednesday, January 11th. So this was the day before the four students signed out on Thursday night. Krista came to Kim and told her specifically that she was going to kill Colleen. And Kim was like, why? Krista's answer was that she just felt mean that day. Yeah, those were Krista's words. Kim said later on on Thursday night around eight o'clock, she saw the four other students, including Krista and Colleen, walking away from the center together on 17th Street. And around 1015 p.m., she saw three of them walk back in, but Colleen wasn't with them. Listen to this next part. Later that night, Krista came into Kim's room. Now Kim is telling investigators that Krista told her exactly what she said. She said, She explicitly told her she just killed Colleen. But it gets way worse. Krista reaches into her pocket and she pulled something out of it to show Kim. It was a piece of Colleen's actual skull. Krista told Kim she brought it back as a souvenir. And that is so inhumane. It's sickening. It's like this monster doesn't even realize she's talking about a human being, someone's daughter, someone's sister. Someone's loved one. Colleen was alive through this. Krista said Colleen had begged them to stop cutting her and beating her. But Krista didn't stop because Colleen kept talking. That's what Krista said. And she said a pentagram had been carved into Colleen's forehead and on her chest while she was still breathing. And the whole time she's telling Kim all of this. Krista is dancing in a circle, smiling and singing la la la. Kim said she was sickened. According to Kim, before Krista left, she warned her that if she told anyone, she would kill her too. And then she smiled and winked and told Kim, I love you, and walked out of her room. Imagine being that friend. What would you do? Well, by the next morning on Friday, while those groundskeepers were out in the brush finding Colleen, Kim was sitting across from Krista at breakfast in the dining hall. Kim said she couldn't stop thinking about it. So she asked Krista what she had done with a piece of the skull. And Krista told her, it's still with me. It was in her pocket. And then she said, and yes, I'm eating breakfast with it. There is no remorse there at all. The second student investigators spoke to was Stephanie Wilson. Later that same Friday morning, Stephanie was in the same class with Krista. And Krista had pointed down at some brown spots on her shoes. And she told her, that ain't mud on my shoes. That's blood. And then she reached into her pocket, pulled out a napkin, unwrapped it to show Stephanie a piece of bone. And Krista told her it was a piece of Colleen's skull. She told Stephanie she'd slashed Colleen's throat six times and beaten her in the head with a rock. She said Colleen's blood and brains had been pouring out, and she picked up that piece of skull when she left. You were wondering. Neither Kim nor Stephanie went to the police right away. Just remember that. We're going to come back to it. I'm sure you have a lot of questions. I'm sure I will answer a lot of them. So let's talk this through. Krista. This Krista person. It's time to talk about her. You've heard what she told people that she did to poor Colleen. But if you're wondering why, I think it may start with who she is. Since this is an Evil Minds episode. I want to go into a little bit more about this module than I usually would in my deep dives, mostly because I want to understand, I think our minds want to understand, the type of person capable of such horror. Now, I'm not sure you're going to be satisfied in understanding much of this, because at least you'll get the facts as they're known to us, but I don't think it's going to matter. But here we go. Krista Gill Pike was born on Wednesday, March 10th of 1976 in Beckley, West Virginia. She was actually born prematurely, and according to her own aunt, she and her mother never really bonded. For the first part of her life, the person who actually raised Krista was her paternal grandmother, so her dad's mother. And when that grandmother died in 1988, supposedly everything fell apart in her life. Krista was about 12 years old at the time, and from then on, she was shuffled back and forth between her mom and her dad, between West Virginia and North Carolina, and new homes, new schools, over and over again. Now, I'm going to tell you about her childhood. The way that her own family told it under oath when they were questioned about it. But there will be more that comes out later, and quite frankly, I can't confirm those other parts and how much of it is true, but I'm going to explain that later. So let's start with her aunt, Carrie Ross. She said the family had a history of substance abuse, and that Krista's other grandmother, her mom's mother, was an alcoholic who was verbally abusive to her. She said Krista's mom, was unorganized, the house was very dirty, she didn't set any rules. And that same aunt admitted that she once called Krista a pathological liar. She said she'd been afraid to let Krista around her own children, and that Krista had been out of control since she was 12. Now, her father, Glenn Pike, said that he kicked Krista out of his own house twice. The last time was in 1989, and he admitted he signed adoption papers for her before she turned 18. He was just like, get rid of her. And he said the reason he forced her out in 1989 was that there had been an allegation that Krista had sexually abused his two-year-old daughter from his second marriage. I don't know what that entails, and I wouldn't want to know because it sounds horrible, but he described Krista as disobedient, dishonest, and manipulative. Her mom, Carissa Hansen, a licensed practical nurse, said that Krista had lived with her about 95% of the time after her grandmother died. She admitted she even smoked marijuana with her daughter because, in her words, it was to establish a friendship. She yearned for a connection with Krista. She said Krista had tried to take her own life by pills shortly after her grandmother's death, and Krista's mother also admitted that one of her own boyfriends had whipped her with a belt and that she had him arrested for it. So there was some physical altercations, if you will, against Krista. But there's more. Apparently, according to her own mother, Krista had been growing marijuana in pots at home by the time she was nine. After she threatened to run away and live on the street, she was allowed to have a boyfriend live with her at 14 years old. And Krista, at one point, had come after that boyfriend with a butcher knife. She lied to her mother, she stole from her over and over again, and she even quit going to high school. Now, this is her own mother saying that Krista had been out of control since she was about eight years old. Now, eventually, at 15, she was sent to a juvenile facility in North Carolina, and along the way, she heard about Job Corps. In the fall of 1994, she showed up in Knoxville to study nursing. I guess to follow in her mother's footsteps, but can you even imagine this person trying to care about others? Because it doesn't seem like she has the capacity, even the passion, for other people at all. And I think that will become more and more clear as you listen to all of this. But here's the thing. She was smart. A psychologist who will analyze her later will report that she had an IQ of 111, which is above average. And he called that remarkable, given that she only finished the ninth grade. He described her as extremely bright and said she was excellent at problem solving, reasoning, and paying attention. He found nothing wrong with her brain. And she wasn't insane, by the way. But of course, that word isn't really one we use to describe much of what people can be experiencing mentally. But what he did diagnose, this was later on, was severe borderline personality disorders, along with signs of marijuana dependence and inhalant abuse. But all of that was much later when this case moved forward. For now, I just want you to know, this is who walked through that chain link fence in the fall of 1994. She was smart. She was beautiful. She was charming. And she had been out of control for most of her life. At Job Corps, Krista fit in right away. Her best friend, Kim, described her as a fireball. She was outgoing. She was funny. She was a life of freedom. And during free time, the two of them would hop on a trolley and they would ride all around Knoxville. They would hang out on the strip, meet new people. And Krista was small. She was only around five foot two and under a hundred pounds. But she would carry herself like she was much bigger. So no one would really confront her unless she did first. And if she didn't like you, you definitely knew about it. And then Kim introduced her to a boy. His name is Daryl Shipp. And he was 17 at the time. And he was a culinary arts student who had come to Job Corps from Memphis. And like Krista, he dropped out of high school. He was funny. He was outgoing. But the boys on his floor knew to stay away from him when he got angry because he was known to get in physical fights with other students. And some students said he was known to carry a razor blade in his mouth. Yes, in his mouth. Can you just imagine these two people getting together? He was into the occult. And he said he had been practicing since he was 11 years old. And he had a satanic Bible in his room and a little altar. He called Satan the underlord. And he had a tattoo that said baby Satan. That's what he called himself. Wow. Kim said Krista and Daryl met on a Wednesday and were practically married by Friday. She was kidding, but Krista fell hard. He made her feel special. Like she mattered. She started spending her time in his dorm room, and they were doing Ouija boards and seances and praying at that altar together. She even got a tattoo of her own. A nickname that he gave her. Little Devil. They seemed perfect for each other in the worst way. The absolute worst way. The other students had a nickname for the two of them. Doom and Gloom. Yep, that's about right. But quite the understatement if you ask me. More like murder and misery. And then there's Shadala Peterson. She was 18. She was also a culinary arts student like to Daryl. She was quiet. She was a follower. The kind of girl who wanted to be close to the girl who everyone else liked and was watching. And the girl everyone was watching and everybody liked and was super popular was Krista. Now those three names were in that logbook next to Colleen's name. So now police know who walked Colleen out of that building. What they still need to understand is why. And to understand that, investigators have to go back to the fall of 1994. Piece by piece, through the students who lived in that motel, they put together what had really been going on in those hallways. And what they found was a story Colleen had mostly kept to herself. When Colleen first got to Job Corps, she and Krista were actually fine. I mean they didn't even know each other. They were cordial. They were friendly. There were two girls in the same building and that was it. But it was pretty clear early on that they were there for two completely different reasons. Colleen was there to study. As I told you, every night, dinner, back to her dorm, studying. Krista was there for something else. Now she said she wanted to be in the top of her nursing classes, but she also wanted to be on the top socially and that was very apparent. She loved attention and the more people around her the better. And Shadola was always close by. And Colleen, the quiet newbie, the new girl who went to her room every night, was on the outside of that social circle. And then Tadaryl came along and then everything centered around him. Now here's where the story splits depending on who you ask. One television show, World's Most Evil Prisoners that I watch, claimed that Tadaryl had a crush on Colleen before he even started dating Krista. And that it was a love triangle. Now I am not a fan of that characterization because a love triangle involves multiple people interested in one another. And if only Tadaryl was interested in Colleen, it's not really a love triangle unless Colleen cared to be involved with him. And it's clear from the actual research and evidence that she wasn't interested in Tadaryl. Those who actually knew Colleen said she had no interest in him whatsoever. None. She wasn't even chasing boys, let alone anybody's boyfriend. She was chasing a computer certificate. So now, it's not a love triangle, and it never was. This was a young, reckless couple who were unstable to begin with, and an extremely jealous girl who wanted all the attention on her. We'll get to the part where Colleen and Tadaryl supposedly interacted in just a moment. But remember what was happening to Colleen at Job Corps. She was finally coming out of her shell. She would start saying hello to people in the hallway. She would wave to them cordially like most of us would do. So are you ready? Here's the big moment. The interaction according to students. afternoon, Colleen was walking down the hall and she saw to Daryl and she waved and he smiled and he waved back. That was it. But Krista saw it. And to Krista, that wave wasn't a wave, it was a threat. And from that moment on, Colleen wasn't just a quiet little blonde girl from down the hallway. She was the enemy, at least in the mind or the distorted mind of a teenager like Krista, whose world revolved around her new love interest and that meant war. Krista actually confronted Colleen. She stormed up to her one day and accused her of trying to steal her boyfriend and Colleen was like, I have no interest in him and I promise I'll stay away from him. But that wasn't enough. Krista started spreading all kinds of rumors that Colleen was promiscuous. She was basically calling her easy, that she was messing around with a bunch of guys on campus and that she was also after her boyfriend, to Daryl. When Colleen walked down those halls, Krista called her a bitch, she called her a hoe, she called her ugly, and it didn't stop there. It went on for weeks. Can you imagine being terrorized by this girl for nothing? For simply being a kind person? But eventually, students said that Colleen got fed up and she bravely actually confronted Krista herself. She told her, I have absolutely no interest in Daryl. I don't even like guys like him. So I'm not sure what that meant, but everyone that knew him said it was because he was into the satanic stuff, but it was made into something else. Krista took that line and twisted it because to Daryl was black. So Krista started telling people that Colleen was racist. He was that kind of guy. There just wasn't a way to win with Krista. And by the way, there was no truth to that, but Krista got Shadala to believe it, because she was black too. And it started to affect her and plenty of others on campus. By that point, everyone now thought Colleen was easy. She was a boyfriend stealer and she was a racist, but none of it was true. It just had to spread. And remember, these are teenagers. So when you think about all this and you kind of think, why don't she just like shrug it off? This was their world. And then sometime in November, Colleen came back to her room after dinner, the way she always did, and she found it destroyed. Her room had been trashed. All of her things were dumped in a pile in the middle of the floor. Her furniture frames were smashed. Records were broken. Her jewelry, money, and even articles of her own clothing were gone. And that's sad. And it's only going to get worse. Remember that phone call home? That's what Colleen was trying to tell her mom about. The kids at Job Corps had gone into her room and taken her belongings, but she just didn't say who. Even to her own mother, she didn't gossip or accuse or even say directly, since I'm sure she knew exactly who was responsible. Because on campus, people knew who did it. When Kim confronted Krista about it, Krista denied doing it herself, but she told Kim she knew who did. She never said who. And to this day, Kim doesn't know who, but Krista got someone to do it. But according to Kim, that was the pattern. Krista didn't need to do the dirty work herself. She just needed a follower. And Job Corps had given her plenty of those. A lot of students went along with Krista because they didn't want to end up on her bad side. They'd seen the name calling. They had seen Colleen's room. And I don't think I can blame them. I'm sure many of them were very scared. But Colleen did something about it. She actually went to the disciplinary board, which is honestly the right thing to do. A student should not have to fend for themselves in a place set up for them where the goal is actually education and where some students are ruining it for the others. Job Corps ran on a points system. If you break enough rules, you rack up enough points against you, and you'll be kicked out of the program. And Krista had a lot of points. She was fighting people. She had skipped classes. She got caught into Daryl's room after hours. There was one incident in particular when an RA walked into Daryl's room, and everyone was supposed to be in their own room that night. And him and Krista were sitting in the dark with candles and a pentagram. Now, the RA started yelling and a fight broke out, and security had to be called to break it up. They both got in trouble. But it was basically a slap on the wrist. Krista seemed to get away with a lot. But this time, the stakes were higher, because in December, Krista found out she was pregnant. And she wasn't quiet about it either. She told everyone she told her friends, and she was so proud to be carrying to Daryl's baby. But not everyone was happy for her. Some of her friends thought the relationship was one-sided, that she was way more into Daryl than he was into her, and that she just changed her whole identity into Satanism and all of it just to keep him. And reportedly, Daryl wasn't even ready to be a father. Some of Krista's friends started pulling away, and her perfect little world was starting to come apart. Colleen had gone to the board. Her friends were drifting. She could lose her spot in the program, which was the only roof and future she had. And now, she had a baby on the way. And one lazy Saturday afternoon, Krista was hanging out with a group of her friends when Colleen's name somehow came up. And after hearing it, she was like, oh my god, I'm gonna kill her. Now, Kim was there. She rolled her eyes, and she asked if she was ever gonna leave that poor girl alone. Krista didn't answer, but she looked over at Kim, and she smiled, and she winked. And then in December, it's all different, because Krista disappeared for about a week. She wasn't in classes. She wasn't seen in the hallways. And when she came back, she told people she had been at a hospital, and that she had had a miscarriage. And after that, Kim said that Krista went into a very dark place. And I was thinking, like she wasn't in a dark place already? But the fights with Daryl got worse. Students could hear them through the walls and through the door. And Krista would later say that they even got physical. And that's according to her. Some of her friends said she wanted somebody to blame for losing the baby. Right before Christmas break, the board made its decision. It found Krista guilty of bullying and harassment, and put even more points on her record. But she wasn't kicked out yet. They were giving her one more chance. If she got in trouble one more time, she was done. So, she was on very thin ice. And here's Krista's side from her own statement to police, in her own version. She said that she and Colleen had been having problems for a while. She said Colleen had been trying to get with her boyfriend, and she was running her mouth everywhere. She claimed she once woke up in the middle of the night to find Colleen standing over her with a box cutter. And she said Colleen was deliberately provoking her, because Colleen knew that one more fight meant that Krista would get kicked out of Job Corps. Now, nobody ever backed up the box cutter story, and Colleen doing any of that, not one person. But that last part about being one fight away from getting kicked out, that was the one thing in her version that actually does line up with everything else. Krista knew exactly how close she was to losing everything that in her mind was so important. And she thought the girl that had put her in that situation was Colleen. But in reality, she did this to herself. Krista is to blame for her own behavior. After the holidays, everyone came back in January, and then Krista was acting different. It's like she seemed to be happier and nicer. She was telling everyone, it's a new year. It's a new Krista. She stopped harassing Colleen. She started smiling at her and waving at her in the hallway. She told her friends she wanted to make it right with her, and that she even wanted to be Colleen's friend. Do you believe that? Well, the people around her did. Colleen did. And frankly, so did pretty much everyone else. She put on a good act, but it was an act. Krista didn't want to be Colleen's friend. She wanted Colleen to trust her enough to walk off campus with her. And on Wednesday, January 11th, she went to Kim, and she told her exactly what she was going to do because she just felt mean that day. So that classmate who came by Colleen's room on Thursday night, the one who had been friendly with her since the new year and asked her, do you want to go to Blockbuster Music? The one Colleen thought was offering her peace. That was Krista Pike. But I need to stop here because I want to tell you something. And you may have heard of this before, but if you haven't, I'm glad I'm going to be the first one to explain it. It's called The Missing Stare. Stay with me. The idea comes from a 2012 essay by a blogger who writes under the name Cliff Herocracy. And it's stuck in the true crime and survivor communities because it explains a pattern. That is seen over and over. I want you to imagine that you're at a friend's house and there's a staircase with one step completely missing. It's rotted away. It's gone. Anyone who walks up those stairs for the first time could fall right through and they could get hurt badly. But your friend has lived there for years and everyone that comes over on a regular basis has learned to just step over it. They don't fix it. They don't warn new people about it. They don't even talk about it anymore. It's just part of the house. It's part of the routine. They work around it. Now, a missing stare person is the same thing, but it's in human form. It's the person that everyone knows to be careful around and nobody ever deals with them. It could be the weird uncle who hugs kids a little too long or the frat brother whose group chat we would all call appalling if it was exposed. But people kind of brush it off. Boys will be boys or Uncle Tom has always been that way and you just pull away. But there's a problem with a missing stare. It's that eventually someone comes to that house. Someone who doesn't know to step over it and they fall through. So let's count the people who were stepping over Krista Pike. The students who heard her say, I'm gonna kill her on Saturday afternoon and rolled their eyes. Kim, who asked if she was ever gonna leave that girl alone and got a wink back. The students who knew who trashed Colleen's room and didn't say who it was. The ones who went along with Krista because they didn't want to be next. The RA who walked into a dark room with candles and a pentagram and a system that gave her a slap on the wrist. A disciplinary board that heard the case, found her guilty of bullying and harassing Colleen and decided that she deserved one more chance. A program that the Tennessean says had a reputation with years of violence on its record. Kim, who heard on Wednesday that Krista was going to kill Colleen. And then watched her walk out the door with her on Thursday night. And Stephanie and Kim who after the murder both saw that piece of skull and didn't go to the police right away. I want to be clear about something though. I'm not putting blame for Colleen's death on any of these people. That belongs to Krista. And the two people who walked out that gate with her. Kim was 19. Krista had threatened her. These were kids. But the stare had been missing for her entire life. And I think that's for months. And everyone around it knew on some level. Joe Mode, Colleen's teacher, said it best when he said he believed that if Krista had been kicked out for harassing Colleen that fall, none of this would have happened. Colleen was that someone new coming to the house with the missing stare. She was quiet. She was kind. She was away from home. And she didn't know where to not step. She believed people could change. And she waved in a hall. And she said, I hope you understand that analogy. It's Saturday, January 14th of 1995 now. Two days after Colleen walked out that gate. Inside the Knoxville Police Department, Detective Randy York sits down across from Krista Pike. He reads her her rights and she waves them. She wants to talk. And she six pages long, which is how many pages I wrote this story to be. Exactly 46. Later at trial, every juror will be handed a copy and a pair of headphones to listen to it themselves. York would later say she was giddy, she wasn't scared, and she definitely wasn't sorry. He described her as happy, almost silly, like what she had done was something great an accomplishment. She didn't just tell him what happened, she acted it out. She played herself and she even played Colleen and at one point she got down to show him how Colleen begged for her life. She starts with her side of things, of course she does. She and Colleen had been having problems for a while, she said, and Colleen was trying to get to her boyfriend and running her mouth. We've heard this before, the box cutter story. Then she tells him, I never planned to kill Colleen, I only planned to fight her and to let her know in her words, to leave me the hell alone. But she also admitted she walked out that building with two weapons, her own box cutter and a mini meat cleaver that she borrowed from someone else at Job Corps that she wouldn't say who. She wouldn't name the people who were out there with her either. When she talks about them in this confession, she talks about the one who did it, the one who helped her, and she only calls him he. But I'm going to take you back to that Thursday night now and walk you through it the way Krista told it, in order. But I'm not going to let her tell it alone. Every step of the way, I'm going to show you what Dr. Sandra Elkins, the Knox County medical examiner, found on Colleen's actual body. Because Colleen can't tell us her side of the story. Only her body can. So let's go back to Thursday, January 12th of 1995, a little after 8 p.m., the four of them, Krista, Colleen, Tadaryl, and Shadola walk away from Dale Avenue toward 17th Street. The plan, as far as Colleen knows, is blockbuster music. And as they walk, Krista mentions she's got a bag of weed hidden out in Tyson Park. So instead of the music store, they head towards the University of Tennessee campus, away from the strip, away from the streetlights, and away from people. Toward the back edge of the agricultural campus, a dark spot, where the old steam plant is. When they get to that steam plant, Krista starts to confront Colleen, and they exchange words. And then Krista starts hitting her. She grabs Colleen and bangs Colleen's head against her knee. She throws her to the ground and kicks her again and again. She slams Colleen's head against the concrete. And Colleen keeps asking her one question over and over, why are you doing this to me? At some point, Colleen says that she's going to report Krista, so Krista will get kicked out of Job Corps. And when she says that, Krista said she kicked her in the face and in the side again and again. Colleen was lying on the ground crying. And then she saw a chance to get up and run. She did. But she doesn't get far. The other person, the one that Krista keeps calling he, she said at this point, but we know it's to Darryl. She tells investigators that he, caught her and pushed her back to the ground. And the two of them hold her there until she stops struggling. And then they drag her to another spot farther out of the way. That is where Krista said she took out the box cutter and used it across Colleen's stomach as she was screaming. Krista said she screamed and screamed. And Krista tells the investigator, and that is when she started hearing voices. Voices telling her she had to do something because if Colleen told on her, then she would go to prison for attempted murder at this point. Krista said she was just looking at Colleen and watching her bleed. I need to stop right here because this matters for everything that comes afterward. When Dr. Elkins examined Colleen, she found that every single wound was red around the edges. And that redness meant that Colleen's heart was still beating when each of those wounds were made. She said not one of the cuts would have knocked Colleen unconscious. So whatever Krista did to her out there from this moment on, Colleen was awake for it and she felt it. Colleen rolled over. She stands up. She tries to run again. And Krista said she cut her across the back. In Krista's own words, she called it the big, long cut on her back. Kim would later say that Krista told her it was the meat cleaver that she used on Colleen's back Colleen kept trying to escape. She kept trying to get up and run. Dr. Elkins would find fresh purple bruises on both of Colleen's knees. It's the kind you get from crawling. They were raw. So at some point out there, Colleen was on her hands and knees in the mud trying to get away. The doctor found defensive wounds on Colleen's right arm from throwing it up again and again to try to block the blade. Then Colleen started bargaining for her life. Krista explained how she begged and begged Krista to just talk to her. She told her if you just let me go, I will walk home. All the way home to Florida. I won't even go back to Job Corps. I won't even go back for my things. I'll just leave. Please let me go. Krista just tells her to shut up because she said it was harder to hurt someone when they're talking to you. The more Colleen talks, the more Krista says she kicks her in the face. When Colleen begs, Krista tells her she's not going to be rotting in some jail cell because of her. That's when they make Colleen take off her pink sweater and then her bra. That way she can't run because now she's exposed. Then Krista takes a rag out of her own hair and she ties it around Colleen's mouth to keep her from talking. When I say rag, I picture her in a rag. I picture her in a rag. I picture her in a bandana, perhaps. I'm not really sure, but it doesn't matter what it was. It was used to control Colleen and stop her from making noise. She could still talk and she asked them, what are you going to do to me? And right then, Krista said she thought she heard a noise out in the distance, so she stopped. She walked away from Colleen and she went out in the dark to check the area to make sure that nobody was around and nobody had been watching. And then she said she came back. So remember that because I think it's going to be very important in just a few minutes. When Krista came back, she said she started cutting Colleen across the throat. And somehow, Colleen is still talking. With her throat cut, she's still begging for her life. So what does Krista do? She cuts her again and again. Remember, Krista told Kim and Stephanie it was six times. Dr. Elkins found more. But included in those wounds was a six-inch gaping wound across the middle of Colleen's neck. It was so deep. It went through the fat and the muscle. And there were 10 more wounds, slashes on her throat. So that's 11 wounds to her throat alone. And even then, Colleen kept trying to sit up somehow. And every time she did, Krista and the other people who were there that we know as to Daryl pushed her back. And this is where Dr. Elkins' report becomes almost impossible to hear. When she cleaned Colleen's body and started to document the wounds, she did what medical examiners do. She gave each of the major wounds its own letter of the alphabet. A, B, C, and so on. You get the point. She said she ran out of letters. She said that to catalog every single wound, alphabet, a second time, and stay in the morgue for three days. So she stopped. She documented only the most serious wounds on Colleen's body on her back, her arms, her abdomen, her chest. Plus, there were wounds on her face. For everything else, she said she threw up her hands and basically wrote innumerable, more superficial slash marks on the back, arms, and chest. On Colleen's chest, the doctor did find that five-pointed star inside a circle, the pentagram, carved into her skin. After all this, Colleen was somehow still alive, and she tried to run one more time. And that's when Krista said she picked up a rock, a chunk of asphalt, and she threw it. And it hit Colleen in the back of the head. Krista said to Daryl, who she was still just calling he, hit Colleen in the back of the head, and she threw it in the back of the head. And she threw it in the back of the head, and she threw it in the back of the head. and she threw it in the back of the head. are stunned. At least they said that. I mean, I was thinking, why would you be stunned? But they said they can't believe that they had been friends with someone that was capable of this. And when they hear that Colleen begged for her life, it was horrifying. And there's one more piece of evidence still sitting at Job Corps, and no one even knows it's there yet. On Friday, January 13th, the same day Colleen was found, Krista stops by at an office at Job Corps. It was at the orientation specialist named Robert Pollack's office. She's there about a misplaced ID card. And when she leaves, guess what? She leaves something behind. She forgot her black leather jacket on one of the chairs. Pollack locks up his office. It was around four o'clock that afternoon, and the jacket was still hanging there. And over the weekend, he hears about Krista Pike, that she's a suspect in a murder. And when he gets back into his office at 7.30 on Tuesday morning, January 17th, the jacket is still on that chair. So he turns it over to Job Corps security. And security, of course, gives it to the police. A Knoxville police officer, Arthur Bohannon, picks up the jacket, and inside the pocket, he finds a small piece of what looks like bone. He takes it straight to Dr. Murray Marks. This is a forensic anthropologist at the University of Tennessee. Dr. Marks has been reconstructing Colleen's skull from the pieces from Dr. Elkins that she had recovered from inside her brain. The reconstruction is almost complete, but there's one spot on the left side that's still empty. And that piece of bone from Krista's jacket fits in that spot perfectly. It's the souvenir. It's the piece that she showed Kim, and she unwrapped for Stephanie in class. And it's the piece that she showed Kim, and she unwrapped for Stephanie in class. And it was in that jacket on Friday afternoon when she walked up to that crime scene tape and giggling and asking the officer if they had any suspects. So I want to do something. Let's take her story apart, one claim at a time. And let the evidence answer. Because Krista told a lot of stories to police, to her friends, to her boyfriend, to her own psychologist later. And almost every single one of them falls apart when you ask her to tell you the story. And she does. And she does. So claim number one. I only meant to fight her. Krista told police she never planned to kill Colleen. Remember that? She only wanted to fight her, tell her to leave her alone. So let's look at what she did before a single punch was ever thrown. The day before, she told Kim that she was going to kill Colleen because she just felt mean that day. She then walked out of a building with two weapons, a box cutter and a meat cleaver. A weapon that she had never used before. And she went out of her way to borrow from someone else. And she lured Colleen away from the music store plan with a story about weed hidden in the park to the darkest, most isolated part of campus. Even her own defense psychologist will later admit on the stand that she deliberately lured Colleen out there. And she was carrying those weapons. That shows deliberation. You don't bother. And Krista, there was no evidence of that. It was the other way around. Then we have claim number two. I blacked out. I lost control. This was the heart of Krista's story of her later defense against what she did that night. Her psychologist will eventually testify about Krista's severe borderline personality disorder. And that once the attack started, she just lost control. But remember that moment I told you to hold on to about the noise in the middle of the fight in the middle of the fight. I don't know if you remember, but Krista stops. She walks away from Colleen. And she goes to check the area to make sure no one's out there. And then she comes back to her. And when she does, she starts to immediately cut Colleen's throat. Her own psychologist had to concede. That gave her time to calm down and think about exactly what she was doing. Someone who was blacked out doesn't stop to scout for witnesses. Someone who's blacked out doesn't remember enough to fill the void. And so she goes to check the area to make sure no one's out there. And then she goes to check the area to make sure no one's out there. Every kick, every cut, in order. Down to what Colleen said. And what she said back. Krista described thinking it over again and again and deciding to kill Colleen so she wouldn't be able to tell on her. Remember that? I'm not going to go to jail. The claim number three was that she heard voices. Krista told police while she was cutting Colleen, she started hearing voices. But listen to what she says the voices told her. That she had to do something so Colleen wouldn't tell on her and that she wouldn't have to spend life in prison for attempted murder. That's not a hallucination. That's a motive. She was killing a witness. When Colleen begged for her life, Krista told her. She wasn't going to be rotting in a jail because of her. Claim number four. I didn't carve the pentagram. In her confession, Krista denied carving it and said he, who we know as Tadaryl, was the one who cut Colleen's chest. Tadaryl said he carved half. I'm going to let you in on something else. According to coverage of this later testimony, Tadaryl said he carved it. But the night it happened, when no one was recording, Krista told Kim that a pentagram had been carved into Colleen's forehead and into her chest. And her own psychologist will admit, Krista said she was the one that carved it into Colleen's chest. So the honest answer is that they both must have had a hand in it, right? They both wore the pentagram around their necks on the day they were photographed by police. So what do you think? Claim number five. Colleen came at me with a box cutter. Krista told police that she once woke up in the middle of the night. She said, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. And she found Colleen standing over her bed with a box cutter. Not one person has ever been able to back that up. Not Kim, not Shadola, not any student, teacher, or RA. The only box cutter that anyone can prove existed in the story was actually carried by Krista. And it was carried out of that building on January 12th. And it was used on Colleen. I'm almost done, but claim number six. I killed her quickly so she wouldn't suffer. Now, this one, I think, makes me the most angry because this was prolonged suffering. It wasn't quick. A bullet is quick. What she did was not quick. That's so clear. Krista told police that she could hear Colleen breathing blood in and out. She watched her jerking around, and she kept hitting her over and over again. The week after Colleen was killed, the whole country starts paying attention to that fenced-in former motel on Dale Avenue called Job Corps. In Washington, a U.S. Senate committee is already holding hearings about it. Former students and counselors are testifying about what went on inside the center. In other states, there were things like open substance use, dealing, gang intimidation, students being covered with blankets and beaten. The committee's chair out of Kansas brings up what just happened in Knoxville, and she names Colleen Slemmer. Job Corps' national deputy director, Mary Silva, comes out to Knoxville to scrutinize the center herself. And she says something that's honest. And it's pretty hard to hear right now, but that they don't expect kids to come in that door just wonderful. I told you this. The center's deputy director, Joseph Brown, keeps saying the same thing to reporters. It's not a detention facility. We're not in the detention business. But people are looking at that six-foot chain link fence, and they're asking, what's it protecting? And who is it protecting? Inside the fence, students and staff are actually mourning Colleen. And they're also feeling the whole city pretty much turn on them. The student body president is 19 himself, the same age as Colleen. His name is Kippen O'Hara. And he says the community is looking at them like outcasts. But he said we're people. We're human beings. And that Job Corps was his second chance. And that's what makes this so complicated. For some people in that building, Job Corps really was the way out and for something better. For Colleen, it was supposed to be her way to a career. A computer certificate. A life of her own. She was doing everything right. And it was the people inside that fence who killed her. And out on Cumberland Avenue, the patience is over. By the end of January, merchants along that strip met with the Knoxville police chief, Phil Keith. And they want Job Corps out. The U.S. Secretary of Labor comes to Knoxville himself, and he shuts down the Dale Avenue Center. And by the end, with the chain-link fence, goes quiet. And years later, Knoxville's mayor at the time, Victor Ashe, would say that the murder crystallized everything, turning a problem the city had been living with into something that finally was dealt with. And once the center was closed, Knoxville's crime rate went back to what it was before. I want to take you to Florida, to May Martinez, Colleen's mother. She's learning to live inside of a nightmare. Her daughter left on Halloween night with a bag packed and a plan. And after Christmas, she was dead. Her name was in the papers, in Senate hearings, and in arguments about a federal budget. But to May? Her daughter isn't a Job Corps victim. She's Colleen. who cared about others. Colleen, who was just 19, who loved things like roller skating, playing games, working on computers, miniature golf, and being outdoors. Colleen's a person, her person, her child, and she's gone forever. For no reason other than existing in the same place as a monster. Colleen is laid to rest back where her life began, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Her memorial stands at Our Lady of Grace Cemetery in Langhorne, but she is not laid to rest whole. And I want you to understand, her body is evidence, her skull in particular. It's in the hands of the medical examiner and the forensic anthropologist at the University of Tennessee being reconstructed piece by piece. Along with that fragment, I told you about, that matched perfectly. That came out of Krista Pike's jacket. And Mae Martinez has to bury her daughter, knowing that a part of her is still not with her. It's back in Knoxville. But at the time that she's putting her in the ground, that she's burying her daughter, she has no idea. The parts of Colleen are still being kept as evidence, pending a trial. And there's something really important to note here. Days after the murder, the Knoxville News Sentinel quoted police sources about why Krista actually kept a piece of Colleen's skull to begin with. They said the fragment was likely kept because Satanist believes that the body has to be whole for the soul to escape. Keeping it held Colleen's soul captive. And Detective York also recalled that some students described the pentagram as a trap door to release the soul to Satan. What do you believe? I don't know. But this is what was written about. But let's flash forward to March of 1996. It's been 14 months after Colleen was killed. In Knox County Criminal Court, Judge Mary Beth Leibowitz is presiding over the state of California versus Krista Gail Pike. The charges are first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. And the state is seeking the death penalty. Krista has just turned 20. And this courtroom has. has cameras in it. Tennessee started allowing cameras in courtrooms only a few months earlier as a one-year experiment that began on January 1st of 1996. And I'm glad they did. This case was everywhere. Picking a jury takes a long time because so many people in Knoxville had already heard about it. Krista's defense asked to move the trial somewhere else. And they also asked to keep the cameras out. The judge said no to both. And the state lays it out. Peace by peace. Her former best friend Kim takes the stand against her. She tells the jury about Wednesday, January 11th, when Krista said she was going to kill Colleen because she just felt mean that day. About watching the four of them leave on Thursday night and only three of them coming back. About Krista coming to her room and showing her a piece of Colleen's skull and singing and dancing in a circle. And her saying, "Yes, and I'm eating breakfast with it." Stephanie Wilson tells the jury about class that Friday. The brown spots on her shoes. That she said it's not mud, it's blood. And the napkin with a piece of bone inside. Officer John Terry Johnson describes what he found that morning. The body on the debris. And not being able to tell if he was looking at her face or not. Detective Donald Cook describes the morgue and the pentagram that he saw once Colleen's body was cleaned. Officer Mark Wagoner describes pulling Colleen's IDs and gloves out of the Texaco trash can. Another officer, Larry Jamway, walks the jury through a chart of every place they found blood or evidence. And the jury sees photographs of the bloody chunks of asphalt. The blood dripping off leaves. The pools of blood everywhere. And the asphalt itself is brought into that courtroom along with Colleen's bloody clothing. The TBI explains the DNA. The blood on Krista's clothes and on Tadaryl's both matched to Colleen. And Detective Randy York, he plays that confession tape. And every juror, like I said, got a copy of the 46-page transcript and a pair of headphones to listen to Krista Pike describe in brutal detail, in her own words, everything she did to this poor girl. And then Dr. Sandra Elkins, the medical examiner, takes the stand. And she explained how she tried to catalog Colleen's wounds by giving them letters. But there were just so many. She had no choice. She basically gave up. Now, I want to tell you that I've heard some accounts say that there were 300 wounds, but I did not find that in the autopsy documentation, just that there were too many to count. So I wanted to point that out because there are a lot of videos and a lot of information, and I like to be as factual as possible. I did not find that. The medical examiner walked the jury through it all. I don't think I have to repeat it for you. Everything that was done to her, her neck, her throat, her face, and her chest, the bruises on her knees from crawling, the defensive wounds on her arm, and every red around the edges, meaning Colleen's heart was still beating for every wound. None of them would have killed her until the end. And she talked about that injury that she labeled W, the skull pieces driven into her brain. And then she does something that nobody in that courtroom could ever forget. She uses Colleen's actual skull. To figure out exactly how Colleen died, Dr. Elkins had to remove Colleen's head and send the skull to Dr. Murray Marks, that forensic anthropologist I told you about, and he rebuilt it, including the piece that Karista hung onto, as well as all the ones that were inside her brain that they had to pick out. And Dr. Elkins holds it up in front of the jury, just so that she can imagine what that would have been like in person. She shows them every fracture, the force, the weapon. And then she takes the piece of bone from Karista's jacket pocket, and she fits it into the one empty spot on the left side of Colleen's skull. It's chilling. So when you're hearing about this case, and I mean when you're hearing about what's currently going on, don't forget any of this. Dr. Marks testifies too. He shows the jury the same thing. The fragment from the jacket, and the piece of bone that was in Colleen's pocket, and the piece of bone that was in Karista's jacket fitting perfectly into the reconstruction. Now, Karista's lawyers had fought to keep that skull out of the courtroom because they argued it was too prejudicial, and that photos of it were enough. Well, the judge let it in. And I mean, that's a huge part of this case. And sometimes I think these killers can dish it out, but they can't take it, can they? However, I realize defense attorneys are merely doing their job by fighting their hardest to keep damning evidence out. But there was enough here to show how cold, calculated, and evil this young woman was. Colleen's mother, May, was sitting in that courtroom. She watched her daughter's skull be passed in front of a jury. And it takes everything in her not to break down. It actually gave her nightmares. And after hearing in detail what was done to her daughter, she needs to get medication just to sleep at night. The state rests. Karista's defense calls only two experts. The first one is Dr. Eric Engum. He's a clinical psychologist who tested her. And honestly, a lot of what he says doesn't help her the way that I think the defense hoped. He tells the jury she's extremely bright. Her IQ is 111. Remarkable. Remember all that? Excellent at problem solving. No brain damage, because that was another thing they talked about. I already told you this, but I'm repeating it because it matters right now. What she does have is borderline personality disorder. A severe case of it. Plus dependency on marijuana. And she had been using inhalants. In his opinion, Karista didn't plan to kill Colleen. She just lost control. And then he offers explanations for the most disturbing parts. Why she danced around the room. Well, because of an emotional release, he said. She was happy. She felt like she knew now she could make sure that she could keep to Daryl. I'm like, okay, really? I'm going to say that to a jury. And then taking the piece of the skull and showing it off was her way of getting what he called the recognition. Any recognition, no matter how distorted it might be. Because in his words, she has no identity, really. Because I think she identifies with the devil. She even has it tattooed on her little devil. And then the prosecution cross-examines this doctor. And he agrees there's no question that Karista killed Colleen. And then one by one, he concedes to things that won't help the defense. That Karista lured Colleen to the park. She carved the pentagram into her chest. She bashed Colleen's head against the concrete, beat her over and over again with asphalt. And that she had been carrying those weapons, which shows deliberation. And when she walked away mid-attack to check out that noise, she had to calm down. She knew what she was doing. So remember claim number two, I lost control? Her own expert just proved the opposite. She was in control of Colleen. Now, the second defense witness was Dr. William Burnett. He's a medical director of a psychiatric hospital at Vanderbilt University. He said there were satanic elements of this crime, but the pattern was adolescent dabbling in Satanism, not a true believer. He describes something called collective aggression, and this is when a group gets together, and they work themselves up emotionally, and then they end up committing violence. But on cross-examination, he then admits he never even spoke to Krista. He never spoke to any of the witnesses, and he doesn't even have enough information to say whether she acted with intent or premeditation. So, um, kind of a useless witness, and then the defense just rests. On Friday, March 29th of 1996, the jury comes back with a verdict. Krista Pike is guilty of first-degree murder and guilty of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. And when the verdict is read, Krista turns, and she looks at her mother. And she says, She may have been able to get away with a lot before this, but now she knows it's over. But there's still the sentencing phase. The jury has to decide. Life or death? The state doesn't call anyone new this time. This is a sentencing phase. It stands on everything the jury has already heard. But Krista's defense calls three people. Her aunt I told you about, her father, and her mother. They were trying to get the jury to spare her life, even though she violently stole Colleen's. Her aunt, Carrie Ross, I told you a little bit about her before, she tells the jury everything I already told you. Being born prematurely, never bonded with her mother, raised by her parental grandma until she died, and that she was back and forth between her parents. Things like her mother's house was dirty and there were no rules. She said when Krista visited, she acted like a little girl, playing with Barbies and playing dress-up with her little 11-year-old cousin. So I'm like thinking, about all this, none of it really sounds like it's mitigating anything. And then the prosecution cross-examines her, and that's when she admits that she called Krista a pathological liar and she was afraid to have her around her own children. Her father then testifies. He talks all about how he kicked her out those couple times, and that there were actually allegations, not that Krista had been sexually assaulted, but that she had actually committed a sexual assault against his other daughter. Then we heard all the same things I already told you from her mother, Krista Hansen. She was the licensed practical nurse who said Krista was living with her 95% of the time. I think the worst thing that I heard from her testimony is they smoked weed together to bond, and that she could never really get through to her own daughter. Is it just me, or was this not helping her at all? I don't know. It sounds like she just always been a problem. I told you about her growing pot at nine years old, about at 14, threatening to run away, and then they let a guy live there at the house with her. And she tried to stab him with a butcher knife. She would lie. She would steal. She dropped out of high school. All of this was happening when she was eight years old. She was out of control way back then. After all the jury heard, the state was allowed to have a rebuttal witness, and it was none other than Officer Harold Underwood. Now, you might not remember him. He was the University of Tennessee officer who was guarding that crime scene, that Friday afternoon. And he told the jury about that group of young women who walked up and Krista Pike talking, asking all the questions about who the victim was, whether they had any suspects, and that she seemed happy and amused, and she was giggling. She was wearing the necklace in the shape of a pentagram. The jury had to decide whether the state proved what's called aggravating circumstances that's required for the death penalty to apply. The first is that the murder was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel. And because it involved prolonged pain, which I can't say the T word, or serious physical abuse beyond what was needed to cause death, that includes, in Tennessee, inflicting severe physical or mental pain on someone while they're still alive and conscious. And the second aggravating factor that they had to prove is that the murder was committed to avoid arrest or prosecution. And the second is that the murder was committed to avoid arrest or prosecution. And the third is that the murder was committed to avoid arrest or prosecution. And the fourth is that the murder was committed to avoid arrest or prosecution. And the fifth is that the murder was committed to avoid arrest or prosecution. Colleen was killed because she was going to be a witness to what Krista did. And the jury finds both of those things to be true in this case. It finds that they outweigh anything offered in Krista's favor by her defense. I really don't think there was anything in her favor at all. On Saturday, March 30th of 1996, the jury sentences Krista Gail Pike to death by electrocution. Now this, this was quite the moment, I have to say. It's iconic now, especially recently because Krista looks so young. She's got that baby face. And dare I say, she looks innocent. I say looks innocent. She's not innocent. She's far from it. But that look is how she got Colleen to trust her to begin with. But as I stated, these monsters can dish it out, but they can't take it, can they? She's got her curly hair half up and half down and a white scrunchie, with a denim flowered blouse. And there she stands, sobbing, as the judge tells her that she will be put to death by electrocution, that she will die in the electric chair, that her body will be subjected to shock. She's looking back over her shoulder at her mother like, help me. I think it's a little too late for that. And she begged the judge, Mary Beth Lebowitz, please, can I just hug my mom before I go? The judge doesn't allow it. And Krista, she continues sobbing, saying, please just let me hug my mom. And she's let out of that courtroom. She turns around, and she tells her mom, I love you. And her mom says, I love you too. It is therefore ordered that you shall be put to death by electrocution in the mode prescribed by law, and that you shall be transferred to custody for at the Tennessee Prison Police. And further, on the 12th day of January, 1997, your body shall be subjected to shock, by sufficient current of electricity, and by God have mercy upon you. Can I please hug my mom before I go? Mr. Bates, please hold and tie the docks for me. Please, can I just hug my mom? Please hold and tie the docks for me. I love you. I love you too. Well, Colleen didn't get to hug her mother, did she? No. And May can't even see Colleen, or talk to her, or hear her daughter tell her she loves her ever again. So I say, good riddance. You know what you were doing, little devil? The name that she gave herself. She's scared to be put to death, but she wasn't afraid to take a life. At just 20 years old, Krista Pike becomes the youngest woman on Tennessee's death row, and only the second woman to ever be sentenced to death in this state in the last 200 years. The last one was Martin Eve back in 1820. She was hanged for accessory to murder. Now, there were two women before that that were also hanged, but Krista was indeed the youngest, and I would say the one that committed the most brutal crime compared to the others. After that outburst in court, when she's back in her prison cell, she's calm enough to write a letter. And on the very same day that she got her sentence, Saturday, March 30th, Krista hands that letter to a corrections officer, Debbie Wade. She had asked her to please pass it to Darryl, but Officer Wade doesn't. She gives it to her lieutenant, and it ends up in front of a judge. And this is what it said to Darryl: "Hey, love. I just wanted you to know how much I love you." "I have ten months to live, imagine that. I would spend every moment with you if I could, baby. I want to tell you to tell them you lied in your statement, and go along with mine. Do you have a copy of mine? If not, I'll give you one. Okay? I love you big bunches, baby. No matter what they do to me, they can't change what's in my heart. Please write me. I miss you so much." You see what I get? For trying to be nice to that hoe? I went ahead and bashed her brains out so she would die quickly instead of letting her bleed to death and suffer more. And they fucking fry me. Ain't that some shit? Please write me and tell me what you're feeling. Also, tell your lawyer if he wants me to testify, I'll testify. I'll testify for you. I will. I love you for the rest of my life. And she signed it. Little Devil. I never claimed six. She said I killed her quickly so she wouldn't suffer. Well, this was her trying to reinforce that, but I think it's a little too late, because the evidence says otherwise. But this doesn't sound like a woman who has remorse at all. She's still manipulating. She's still calling herself Little Devil. And she's still only caring about herself. Dare I say, until today. For the conspiracy conviction, the judge who now has this letter sentences Krista the maximum, 25 years. Now it runs consistently consecutively to her death sentence. The judge says that she's the leader and that the crime was committed to gratify her desire for pleasure and for excitement. The next year, in 1997, Krista is supposed to be put to death in the electric chair. And while she's waiting for that, Tadero's ship goes on trial in the same courthouse. And he's convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy. But Tadero was 17 the night that Colleen was killed. And under Tennessee law, someone who was under 18 at the time the crime was committed cannot be sentenced to death. So no matter what he did out there, death was never going to be on the table for him. So he's sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole plus 25 years. Because of the slight age gap between her being 18 and him being 17, one of them goes to death row. And the other one will someday be able to be in front of a parole board. Shardola Peterson, the girl who said she was only the lookout, she pled guilty to being an accessory after the fact. And she actually becomes an informant and testifies for this state. Her sentence? Six years of probation. She never spends a day in prison for being involved in what happened to Colleen. And Mae Martinez put it this way, I think karma is going to come back for her. Krista Pike walked into, Tennessee prison for women in Nashville as the only woman on Tennessee's death row. And I want you to understand that that means something very specific about how she lives until she's put to death. Death row prisoners aren't housed in the general population. And there's no other women on death row. So that means there's no one to house her with. So she has to be alone. Now there is another woman named Gail Owens, who's held in the same unit for about three years before her death sentence is commuted. And the two of them never even had contact. So Krista spent her days in a cell that her lawyers would later describe as a size of a parking space. But then her appeals begin. She also did an interview that year where she was asked what she thinks about the electric chair. And she said, I don't think about that because she didn't think it was going to happen because she has a lot of hope. She doesn't deserve to be where she is. Well, spoiler alert, but she's not put to death that year. And next year in 1998, the Tennessee Supreme Court reviews her case and they do uphold her conviction and her death sentence. The court looks, hard at whether death is proportionate to what she did. And it concluded that it is. The court noted she was the leader of the attack and says Colleen's death came only after an extended period of torture. Can't say the word on this platform. Starts with a T, ends with orchard. The next year, the U.S. Supreme Court declines to take her case. So she moves on to the next stage, which is post-conviction petitioning, arguing that, her trial lawyers failed her. Some people may wonder why they haven't just put her to death already. And this is something that I really want to understand myself because most of you know that Krista Pike is still alive as of today. Today is October 7th of 2026. And we're going to get there. We're going to get to what just happened a few days ago when it comes to the state of Tennessee attempting to put her to death. But the death penalty has a pretty interesting history, and this isn't a history channel. But I am going to go into a little detail because I do think it's important to know about. In America, we have two rule books, so to speak. The first one is federal law, and that's the rule book for the entire country. It's made by Congress in Washington, D.C. Federal crimes are things like robbing a bank, attacking a federal building, or committing a crime on federal land. Those are cases that will go to federal court. The second, is state law. Every individual state gets to write its own rule book, too. And most crimes, including most murders, are state crimes. When Krista killed Colleen in Knoxville, she broke Tennessee law. That's why Tennessee prosecuted her, why Tennessee has a jury there that sentenced her, and why it's Tennessee's job to carry out that sentence, not the federal government. So, think of it like this. The federal government is like the principal of the whole school. In each state, it's like its own classroom within the school that has its own teacher. The principal makes rules for the whole school, but each teacher can also run their classroom the way they see fit, as long as they don't break the school's biggest rules. That's why the death penalty looks so different depending on where you live or where you commit a crime, right? Right now, in 27 states, they do have the death penalty. In four of those, the governor has the death penalty. So, they don't have it at all. So, the exact same crime could get you the death penalty in Tennessee, a life sentence a few hours away in another state. And here's a perfect example of how separate those rule books are. In 2021, the U.S. Attorney General paused all federal executions, but that pause only applies to federal government's death row. It doesn't touch Tennessee. States kept executing people. And then in February of 2025, so not too long ago, a new attorney general lifted the federal pause. But again, that doesn't change anything specifically within the state of Tennessee because they have their own rule book. But there's a catch. There's one rule book that sits on top of both the federal and the state ones, and that's the U.S. Constitution. You didn't know you were going to get a law class and a history class, but every state has to follow it. And the Constitution has a rule. It says no cruel and unusual punishments. When it comes to putting criminals to death, that's in the Eighth Amendment. That's why there are limits, even in states that do have the death penalty. The U.S. Supreme Court has said, "You can't execute someone for a crime they committed when they were under 18." Remember? That's why Todaro was never facing death. And the court has also said, "You can't execute someone with an intellectual disability." And you can't execute someone for a crime against a person where nobody was killed. And then there's the question of how it's done. And this is what I was getting to. I'm not some cold person who wants anyone to die. It's quite the opposite. I'm a victim's advocate. And if you're ever wondering how I stand on a particular case, I stand with the person who lost their life, the one that doesn't have a voice. So although I understand that we don't want to necessarily make someone suffer when we put them to death, I'm also more of the mindset, and this might offend you, but we can agree to disagree, that if someone takes another life and their crime qualifies for the death penalty where they committed the killing, then they have to live up to the consequences. And death is terrible, but it's what was coming. And people like Krista should have thought about that before they did what they did. So what's the best way to carry out a killing in a humane way? Isn't that a weird question to ask? Because killing in and of itself is not humane. But this is a caveat. Because if you look at history, every time the method changed, it was sold as more humane. Tennessee went from hanging to the electric chair because electrocution at the time was considered more humane than hanging. Then states moved to lethal injection, which is designed to look like it's a medical procedure. So if you look at the history of the American people, they were more of the people who were in the hospital bed. They get an IV. I sadly had to put my dog to sleep this year. It's one of the hardest things I ever had to do in my entire life. And quite frankly, I told people this. It was the first time I ever felt like a murderer. And that's going to sound kind of terrible. But if you think about the fact that most killers know that their victim is going to die, but the victim doesn't know, the victim is just going about their day. The killer holds on. The killer holds that power to end their life. And although my pet was very ill and it was time, I held the power to know it was going to be his last day, and I could hardly get through it. But that process, why I'm mentioning it, is very similar. He was injected with a medication that sedated him, and then another medication that stopped his heart. And of course, it looked peaceful. But knowing that he was going to die, that it was going to be forever, is hard. And if any of you have experienced that, I'm only mentioning it because some people have never seen it. And lethal injection, although similar, is not exactly the same, especially now. There are a lot of people out there that want the death penalty to exist, but they don't want it to look violent. They want it to look clinical, like nothing bad's happening. The Supreme Court has said the Constitution doesn't promise I'll miss anyone. painless death. What it does say is that the state can't add extra pain and terror and disgrace on top of the punishment itself. And here's the part most people never think about. Who actually does it? Because who wants that job? If it's supposed to look like a medical procedure, you would think it would be a doctor that's involved. The whole foundation of medicine, though, is to first do no harm. The American Medical Association's ethics code says that doctors should not participate in executions. And then there's anesthesiologists, the doctors whose whole job is to put people under anesthesia safely. Their certifying board has said that participating in execution can cost them their certification and their license. And the drug companies, they don't want any part of it either. That might be surprising. Many have refused to let their drugs be the ones used for executions, which is why so many states struggle to get these substances at all, including Tennessee. They keep the details of their execution process a secret. Imagine that. No one wants to be blamed. No one wants to take responsibility for taking someone else's life. So I'm saying all this because you end up in a very strange situation. The state wants an execution that looks medical and peaceful. And people with the most medical training refuse to do it. That leaves us with people with far less training trying to do things like find veins, place IVs, and handle medications. And when something goes wrong, there may not be anyone in that room who knows how to fix it. But I want to talk about those medications. The old method was three. And for decades, most states, including Tennessee, used this three-substance medication combination, which looks a lot like what I told you about my pet. I don't know if you've heard of it. A sedative to make the person unconscious. Then a paralytic, which would stop the person from moving, including the muscles used to breathe. And finally, potassium chloride, which will stop the heart. But I told you that was the old method. The controversy is this. Let's say the sedative doesn't fully work and the person could be awake. And they're paralyzed and they're inside this body where they can feel everything, but they're unable to breathe. And they're feeling pain. The potassium chloride has an intense burning that would be felt throughout their veins. And while they looked completely calm from the outside, critics say that it's only made to look like it's peaceful. But it's not. So a new method came along that was just one medication. In December of 2024, Tennessee switched to a single drug, pentobarbital. It's a barbiturate. It's a powerful sedative. In a massive dose, it shuts down the brain. It stops your breathing and then eventually your heart. And interestingly, I did learn that the same drug is used to euthanize animals, but there is no paralytic. So whatever happens to a person is actually visible and it's not without flaws. Any medical treatment has risks. We know that. And I know it sounds almost hypocritical. I think that's a good word to describe it here. Here's a person who committed a brutal killing. Now they have to die for it. And the state is trying to figure out how they can make it peaceful. Yeah, it's controversial. I told you it was going to be. But remember Ted Bundy? Because I remember when he was being executed, I mean, I wasn't, I was young, but I mean, when I look at it online and I research it, there were tons of banners that said things like, burn Bundy, burn. People wanted to see him suffer for what he had done. And I can understand that. I can understand that. I can understand why. I'm sure there are a lot of parents out there who have lost their children, who wouldn't even hesitate to put their child's killer to death. They would do it themselves. But anyway, Krista and her lawyers fought to stop her execution. And this fight went on for a very long time. Dare I say, I keep saying, dare I say, but dare I say it's still happening today. Then on August 24th, 2001, something happens inside of me. And I'm like, oh my God, inside the prison. Krista gets into an exercise cage with another inmate. This is a woman named Patricia Jones. And Krista gets behind her, wraps a shoestring around her neck. And guess what she does? She strangles her. So has she changed? No, she hasn't. A guard gets there in time and Patricia survives. Now Krista claims she was just trying to protect another inmate. And then in 2002, Krista seems to quit altogether. She asked the court to let her drop her appeals and actually set a date for execution. And it's not like she wants to die. After an hour's long hearing, same judge, Mary Beth Lebowitz, grants it. Set to be executed on August 19th of 2002. She's been in custody more than seven years. And she didn't expect it to happen so fast. She writes this to a pen pal, my nerves are shocked. To hell. But then she changes her mind. She wants to take it back. Now she doesn't want to die. Her lawyers would later argue that she had made that initial decision to hurry things up because she was in solitary confinement. She was suffering from mental illness. But either way, she has more appeals and they continue. And on August 12th of 2004, she's convicted of the attempted first degree murder for the attack on inmate Patricia Jones. And she gets another 25 years on top of the death sentence and on top of the sentence she had for conspiracy. Meanwhile, in Florida, May Martinez, Colleen's mother, is learning something that no one had told her yet. When she buried Colleen in a Catholic cemetery, she believed she was burying her whole daughter. She didn't know that pieces of Colleen had been kept back as evidence. She found out in a courtroom in 1996. When she looked up and saw her daughter's skull. And after the trial, the state didn't give it back. Can you imagine finding that out? You're finding it out right there. You're thinking, wait a minute, wait, she's picked, and then your skull, and what? Think about that. So ever since the trial, May had been writing letters and more letters. She calls, she pushes, and year after year, she's fighting, she says, for Colleen. She says, I am her voice. She wants her daughter back. It's going to take her 16 years. Finally, around 2010, May is able to pick up her daughter's skull. She carries it home to Florida on an airplane. You never know who you're sitting next to. You never know their story. Then the University of Tennessee and the medical examiner's office start sending her the rest. I couldn't believe this. But pieces of Colleen arrive at May's house in plain cardboard boxes, and there's no warning. There's no explanation. There's nothing on the box to tell her what's inside. And in May's words, over the years, Tennessee has mailed me body parts in a box. Not saying what it is or anything like that. I just get body parts. The first box she said contained her daughter's genitals. Yeah, I don't even know what to say. What kind of system is this? How is it set up to do something like that? Talk about inhumane treatment. And every time a box shows up, Colleen has to be taken out of the ground. Her casket has to be opened because she wants to bury her whole. By 2014, some of the cremated remains of most of Colleen and her body are in a pewter box in May's living room in Florida. That's where they've been for two decades. And May won't bury her again because she's been doing that. Because pieces are still missing. And there's one piece in particular. The piece of skull that Krista Pike carried in her jacket. She said the state of Tennessee has never given it back. And she won't have closure. She says her friends can't see her, and her friends can't talk to her, and she can't put flowers on a grave because there's nothing there. She's just in a box. I can't even imagine what it'd be like to have to visit my child at a gravestone. And Krista's not done. In 2012, the Tennessee Bureau investigation actually uncovered a plot that Krista had been cooking up to break out of prison. She never gives up, does she? Two men are actually arrested. One is Donald Kohut. He's 34. He's from New Jersey. And he is a guy named Justin Heflin. He's 23. He's a former correctional officer that was there working at Tennessee Prison for Women. He's charged with bribery, conspiracy to commit escape, and facilitation of escape. A TBI spokesperson says, "There was no imminent danger of an escape. There was a plan in the works and money being exchanged." So what was actually going on here? That man in New Jersey? Well, he had been visiting Krista very often. And he was called one of her many boyfriends that she'd been manipulating to try to get her out of prison. She was writing a bunch of men letters, kind of saying, "I'm sorry, but I don't think you're going to be able to get me out of prison." Kind of saying the same thing, weird things like, "I want to lick your soul." And making them believe that she was in love with them. And this man, Donald, fell for it, among others. And he was apparently giving guards money to try to set this plan in motion. But there were plenty of other men being manipulated. Let's listen. She's had sweethearts all across the country. We met one of them overnight. Eric Gein from Jacksonville, Florida, first started exchanging these letters with her in 1997. And he says they were actually engaged in 2002. She told me things I wanted to hear. You know, she would write me and tell me, Eric, I love you. I'm going to be with you. You know, come up here and marry me. He says she never asked him to help her escape, but says she wrote about it all the time. She would always make hints and say things about wanting to leave, leave the prison and go to Jamaica, go to the islands. I'm sure this guy up in New Jersey, I'm sure she flattered him and got him to the point to where he's going to go to prison now for for her. And here's how part of the escape was explained by the media. Police have also arrested 23-year-old Justin Heflin, one of Pike's guards on death row. They say he accepted bribes from her boyfriend. We know that he gave him things like a canoe and a Gibson guitar and some cash. Their alleged plan was to copy keys to prison doors by making paper tracings. Other guards found those tracings in January before Pike could make her daring escape. Desperate people try desperate things. When you have nothing else to lose, sometimes you'll just try anything. Without question, the woman they're accused of trying to set loose is a vicious killer. She was allegedly having sex with guards as well in exchange for favors, including trying to get her out of there. She would tell them that she was going to be with them after she got out, and she clearly still likes the attention. Around 2015, a demolition crew rolls up to Dale Avenue, the old Holiday Inn that became the Knoxville Job Corps Center. It had been converted into an apartment complex called Volunteer Studios, but it came to the ground. What's left is a pile of rubble where Colleen's dorm used to be. And Mae is happy. She said it's about time. It should have been taken down 20 years ago. And she says there are only two things left that will help her. Tennessee releasing the rest of her daughter's skull and Krista Pike being put to death. But her appeals keep grinding on. Chris's state post-conviction case is denied, and in 2012, she moves to federal court. In 2018, the federal appeals court denies her. And the judge on that panel, Jane Stranch, she raised the question of whether a death sentence would be a good idea. And she said, no, it wouldn't. For a crime committed at 18, can rule out the immature mind of youth. At that time is the law. And Krista loses again. But she keeps going. In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court declines to even hear her case. And that's it. After 25 years, Krista Pike has been through every standard level of review there is. Direct appeal, state post-conviction, and federal habeas. She's lost at every one. The state of Tennessee asked the Tennessee Supreme Court to finally set a new execution date. And May writes, too. She said, execute her or give her life and give me the rest of Colleen back so I can live. And apparently in 2020, they were supposed to set a new date. But then the pandemic happened. So another delay. In 2023, Krista's lawyers try again with a new motion, arguing that the death sentence would be a good idea. And they don't. And they don't. And they penalty for someone who was only 18 at the time should be reconsidered, but it's denied. And the appeal court refuses to take it up in 2024. I'm thinking regardless, she committed what I would consider an adult crime. This isn't just any crime, it's a brutal murder. One of the worst ones, including suffering, pain, and brutality. But that same year, her lawyers win something else. They've sued the state over her conditions, arguing that being the only woman on death row amounts to decades of solitary confinement. In September of just 2024, after 28 years of what her lawyers call functional solitary confinement, Tennessee settles and Krista is allowed to work and to socialize with other women in prison. And then on September 30th of 2025, the Supreme Court of California, the Supreme Court of California, and the Supreme Court of Tennessee issues an order. Krista Gill Pike will be executed on September 30th of 2026. It's final. She's going to die. And once carried out, she would be the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. And she would be one of only 19 women executed anywhere in the United States since 1976. And she would be the only person executed in Tennessee in the modern era for a crime committed at 18, 19, or even 20 years old. Two weeks later, in October of 2025, Tadaryl Shipp sits in front of a Tennessee board of parole at the Northwest Correctional Complex in Tiptonville, Tennessee. He's 47 years old, and it's his first chance at parole, and the board turns him down. You know what they say? The seriousness of the offense. Now, he will be eligible in October of 2031, if I'm doing the math correctly. So even he can't win, and he did less than Krista. Colleen's mom starts counting down the days. She can't wait for Krista to finally pay for what she did to her daughter. Personally, I believe, and you can disagree, I think that if there is going to be an execution, it should happen right away. But I get it. Criminals have rights, and thus, they appeal until they run out of options. But their victims didn't have any options. Remember that. 31 years after Colleen walked out that gate. The date is finally on the calendar. Wednesday, September 30th of 2026. I knew I would be in London at the time. I had committed to CrimeCon UK, and thanks to any of you who came out there and met me and saw us. But that is what prompted me to talk about Colleen. Because everything I kept seeing was about Krista. What she was going through. Really? Krista? A killer? A cold? sadistic, unremorseful killer who has never apologized for what she did, never reached out and apologized to May. Someone who tried to kill again in prison. I frankly don't care how she feels, but some will argue that so much time has gone by that now it's inappropriate to put her to death. And on some level, I can agree with that, but not in this case, not with her. And why is because she's not sorry. She's only mad it's her turn to die. And if you disagree with me, leave it in the comments respectfully and we can talk about it if I get to the comment section. I try. But Krista's lawyers make one last push for mercy. They file a 226-page clemency petition asking Governor Bill Lee to change her sentence from death to life in prison without parole. And this is where we finally hear the version of Krista's childhood that her legal team is telling today. Not the one I told you about, but it has new information, which is questionable. Is it true? I don't think it matters. And you can be the judge. 30 years later, her legal team is telling a different story about Krista's childhood. One that her own family didn't tell the jury. They're describing years of sexual abuse, starting when she was a toddler. They describe neglect and state agencies that didn't protect her even though they knew what was going on. Now, I have to be fair here. Some of it is documented, so it's not a dispute. When Krista was 11, a man in her neighborhood raped her. Her mother didn't believe her at first, but after a teacher stepped in, the man was prosecuted. So that is what is documented. Then in January of 1994, a year before Colleen was murdered, a hospital in North Carolina documented injuries on Krista. And they collected swabs after she was assaulted by a stranger, and that man was never caught, so that is documented. But much of the rest of it is Krista's own account. Issues that are raised years after her trial. Her lawyers also say that she has bipolar disorder, PTSD, and that these things weren't diagnosed until after she was sentenced. That her mother drank heavily while she was pregnant, which damaged Krista's brain. However, remember, her own psychologist testified that he found no brain damage. I'll get into some arguments against all of this in a moment, but her lawyers also point out that she was just 18. She was just a little younger than Tadaryl. He was 17, and he didn't have to face the death penalty at all. And they say that before her trial, prosecutors were willing to accept life without parole in exchange for a guilty plea, but her lawyers never got her to take it. And I'm thinking, well, she had the choice. She didn't want to plead guilty. So again, these are her consequences. Even Tadaryl's old trial lawyer writes a letter for the clemency petition. He says that when he defended Tadaryl in 1997, his whole strategy was to shift as much blame as possible onto Krista. Now, she spoke out at this time, but first I want to tell you what Krista was saying back when she was interviewed in 2006. Two years after she tried to kill another inmate, and over a decade after she killed Colleen, here's what she said back then. I knew exactly what I was doing. Everything that I did that night, I knew what I was doing. doing. And I think I was taking things out on her that had happened to me years ago. I was the first one they arrested, the first one they interviewed, and I thought that if I went in there and told him that I did every single thing that happened up there, that Tadaryl and Shadala would just get to walk out of there and they wouldn't worry about them anymore because they had the real killer. I think I deserve to be in here for the rest of my life. I do, I know I do. I know I don't deserve to be out walking around with everybody else in normal society. I did something horrible that is unacceptable, and I realize that. But I don't deserve to die for the actions of three individuals when I'm only one person. I live in one room 23 hours a day, and for going on almost 12 years, that's a long time. I'm only out of my room one hour a day, and that's just in another cage, just like a dog cage and kennel. So I'm either in a box or in a kennel. Patricia Jones had tortured me for about four years. She used to call me fried chicken, make noises to me, and tell me that's how I was going to fry on the electric chair. Patricia was about 220 pounds at the time. I weighed about 100 pounds. And she jumped on my friend and was hurting her. And I jumped on Patricia and choked her with a shoestring. Get her off my friend. Get her off me. I don't even remember what it feels like to be free. I've lived in here longer than I've ever lived in any one place in my life. I don't remember what it feels like to not have somebody chain me up when I walk out a door or tell me when I can use the bathroom or eat a meal. It took somebody's life. It took somebody's child away. You know, somebody's friend, somebody's sister. It hurts so many people with this. And even though it's not me, and I can't take full responsibility for this anymore, and I won't, because if I'm going to die in here, I'm going to die for my truth, not for my lie. You know, accept me for who I am, good, bad, and ugly, but I'm not going to die for a lie anymore. I'll die for my truth. I was just ready, willing, and able to do anything I had to do to not have to live like this anymore. So she's complaining about her living arrangements, about how the woman she tried to kill was bullying and harassing her for four years, calling her names, and how she was only defending her friend when she attacked her. But she says she knew exactly what she was doing when she killed Colleen. She went so far as to say she was taking things out on Colleen that happened to her years before, and that she was the first one arrested. So in her interview, she figured, "I'll just tell them I did everything, and I'll spare my friends to Daryl and Chidola." Hmm, I have to think about that. She also added that what she did was horrible, but she doesn't deserve to die for the actions that she says were caused by three individuals. Well, I ask you, did Colleen deserve to die? What did she do? Her mother says that she's sorry, but has Krista ever said it herself? Not that I ever heard. Now, she did do an interview with a professor, a psych professor, in 2021, because she said she was staying quiet because the media kept spinning a narrative about her. And I'm like, what narrative? She confessed in her own words, I mean, that was a narrative. Now she's saying her attorney back then had advised her to do tabloid-style interviews to get her story out there, and then she claimed he has the rights to her story so that he could profit from her demise. Whether that's true or not, I don't even want to focus on that. What I want to specifically focus on is that she doesn't say she's sorry. And she's reading from a script, so it doesn't even sound meaningful. She even mentions at one point she doesn't want her past to be an excuse for committing a violent crime. Okay, so everything I just told you about that happened to her, she says it's not an excuse. She knows that other people have been through the same trauma like she has, and they didn't do what she did. There's no excuse, she admitted, but there are reasons. And most of it, she explained, was about being young, and how back then, things seemed way more important. She never denied involvement in Colleen's murder. She says she takes responsibility, and if she could take it back, she would. But it's not just to get herself out of prison. No, of course not. She's already spent a lifetime behind bars. She said 25 years at the time. But she's not the same person. It was unmedicated bipolar. An 18-year-old whose clothes and belongings, including photos of her own family that were destroyed, and she was on the brink of being kicked out of school. That in her warped mindset, she put it, she never meant to kill Colleen, and that she didn't deserve to die. But she's making it seem like she took the blame for all three of them doing the killing. For misplaced loyalty and low self-esteem. Those were her words. A debit call from Krista, an inmate at the Tennessee Department of Corrections. This call is subject to monitoring and recording. I wrote this statement down so I wouldn't stumble over my words, and I wouldn't leave anything out that I really wanted to get out because this is important to me. I was reluctant to speak at all at this time for so many reasons, but the image of me in the public eye isn't an image of complete truth, nor does it show any reasoning behind the actions that have led to my current placement. Yes, like every other death row inmate ever, I suffered childhood abuse. I had more than my fair share of trauma growing up, and I realized that so many others had that didn't commit violent crimes. I don't use that or anything else as an excuse for what I did. There is no excuse for what I did. There are reasons for the way I acted, but nothing excuses the crime and the damage it's caused to so many lives. I've never denied my involvement in the murder of Colleen Slimmer. I take full responsibility for my actions and regret everything that happened that night. If I could take it all back, I would, and not only to get myself out of prison. I know that's what a lot of people assume. I've already spent a lifetime in here, and I have no expectations of ever leaving these fences. That's not what this is about. I did multiple tabloid-type interviews when I was first given a sentence. My attorney at the time was telling me that I needed to get my story out to the public, and this is the same attorney who had me sign my rights to my story over to him so that he could profit from my demise in the future. I was still very young at the time, and had never known what it was like to have any attention at all, much less everyone's attention focused directly on me. So no matter the reason behind it, I was the center of it, and any attention was good attention at that point in my life. My immaturity and obduracy could only cause further pain, and that's not my intent when speaking at this time, nor is it to Daryl's. I'm not even close to being the same person I was over 25 years ago. The issues we were all dealing with back then as teenagers seemed so serious at the time, as is everything in a teenager's life. I was an unmedicated, bipolar, 18-year-old girl back when people didn't even really know what that was about. I had just had someone destroy all my clothes, my photos of friends and family, and because of daily verbal altercations, I was seen as a threat to me staying in school, to continue my education, and to continue the relationship with the one and only person I had a close bond with. This isn't blame the victim. This was my warped mindset at the time. All of this, the whole situation, could have and should have been avoided. I never planned to kill Colleen Slimmer, and she didn't deserve to die. I only want my situation to be looked at now through the eyes of logic instead of anger, and answer the question of if I deserve to die for a crime committed by three people: to Daryl Shipp, Shadala Peterson, and myself when I was an 18-year-old girl. I took the blame for the three of us upon myself out of a misplaced sense of loyalty and low self-esteem. These are my honest thoughts and feelings. This is my story. And then she goes on to tell the story about her childhood, about dolls and her grandmother. I just kind of wanted to roll my eyes. Like, again, what does that have to do with you being a murderer? So the thing she has been quoted saying so far is, "It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I had done." She calls the ramifications of her crime huge, unforgettable, and says they ruined countless lives, and that she takes full responsibility for her actions and regrets everything that happened that night. But is she sorry? It's like the same question. I just want to know, is she sorry? Currently, in 2026, her lawyers put it this way: "The 18-year-old girl was suffering from severe mental illness and near-debilitating trauma. That 18-year-old no longer exists. Krista is a 50-year-old remorseful woman. I have yet to see it." And even if every word of their petition to keep her from death is true, it doesn't explain why she carried a box cutter and a meat cleaver into the dark, or why afterwards she danced around with a piece of this poor girl's skull. Her mother doesn't believe a word of it. May Martinez said, "Krista has never once apologized to her in 31 years." And she pointed out that when Krista's lawyers argue that if she's executed, Krista will never see her family again, never share a meal with them, May has an answer: "Colleen never did either." She said, I just want Krista down so I can end it. Relieve my daughter so I can finally be resting. And on Monday, September 28th of this year, Governor Lee made the decision. He would not intervene. Krista would be put to death. Before she hears his answer, Krista had already written a letter shared by her spiritual advisor, a Buddhist minister named Reverend Mickey Rochelle. And this is what it said. Quote, whether my clemency is granted or not, I am at peace. I'm not afraid to die. I'm only nervous about the process. End quote. She asked for no last meal. And the state agrees to use an all-female staff to transport her. And I wondered why and what that was about when the spring of this year, Krista did a prison interview. And she talked about the moment they would take her life. And she described it as a group of big men walking her down a hallway to a room with a table. She would be strapped to the table while they attempt to find her veins. Okay, but this is the part I've been waiting for. Dr. Joel Zivett. He's an anesthesiologist and intensive care doctor at Emory University. Now, he was hired by Krista's legal team as a medical expert. And he reviewed her medical records before the execution. And he warned everyone beforehand. In court, finally. What could happen? He wrote that she had a blood disorder. And then that disorder would very likely produce bloody froth in her lungs. Now, I don't know why I haven't seen many people specifically talking about this, except for TMZ, who actually interviewed this actual doctor who made these filings. There are so many videos about the speculation of what happened or what could have happened during the execution. But I haven't seen many talking about what this doctor actually said. I'm going to try to say, I don't know what's going on right now. But he said that Krista had what's called thrombocytosis, a high platelet count. And platelets rush to an injury to form clots. So when the IV goes to puncture her vein, clots may form inside and block it off. And then when they try to push the medication in, the vein may stretch and then burst. Now, he was clear that Krista doesn't have some kind of special resistance to pentobarbital. But what he said was that if something went wrong, her health may never be restored and she may never face execution again. It's kind of interesting how that kind of came true. But he was a paid expert for Krista's defense, hired by her legal team. So there was another doctor, Dr. Paul Allen. He's a professor of anesthesiology at University of Tennessee in the Health Science Center. Now, he wasn't part of either legal team. He just has an opinion. And I want you to hear it. But a little later, but as most of you know, the execution was carried out, sort of. But they're calling it botched, which is why I really wanted to talk about all of this. But let's start with May and Raul Martinez, who have been waiting 31 years to make that trip to Tennessee for Krista's big day. They don't have that kind of money. Raul is disabled. He's a veteran. He lives on a fixed income. So May had asked for help. Jacksonville's Justice Coalition, a victims' rights group, has kept Colleen's photo on its wall for years and it helped spread the word. And the community raised more than $2,500 to get them both to Nashville. May knew exactly what she was bringing. She said, I will bring Colleen's picture and I will hold it up to remind Krista what she did. So it's Wednesday morning, September 30th, 2026, at River Bend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tennessee. And the execution is scheduled. It's scheduled for 10:00 a.m. In less than two hours before it's supposed to happen, a federal appeals court stops it. And I was shocked. But a divided panel of the Sixth Circuit Court grants the short stay. This is just a period of time where it can consider a new challenge from Krista's lawyers about her trial lawyer's failure to present that evidence I told you about her childhood. May walks out of the prison that morning. And she has to wait, all day long, because the state is fighting about it. And that evening, the U.S. Supreme Court lifts that stay. Three justices dissent. But the execution can and will go forward. And at 7:26 p.m., the curtain to the execution chamber opens up. And Krista is strapped to a gurney. And May is on the other side of that glass, holding up Colleen's photo. Now, I don't even know if Krista can see it, unfortunately, but. Because they're mirrored windows, apparently. But when she's asked for her last words, Krista says that she's going to leave this world the way she's spent most of her life. In love. Kind of shocking to hear her say that. And then she says that she knows she has people out there who love her, but she also knows there's people out there who hate her. She says, "I'm ready to be free." And she ends with, "This is a happy day." But what she doesn't mention is Colleen's name. She doesn't say, "Anything to her mother." I wasn't surprised. It sounded to me like, "F my haters." But I want to be clear about what this all looks like, because I told you there's a curtain right there, right? And it hides some of what's happening. I'm going to show you generally what a room like this looks like. There are several windows, and those are for spectators, which are usually some of the media, the family of the victim, and the family of the defendant, who is being put to death. There also seems to be, like I said, a two-way mirror on them, so that, you know, people can look in, maybe authority figures overseeing everything that's going on. But you can see that the curtain can be put over different windows. And I've heard that this is for many reasons. The person who gives the medication stays anonymous. The curtain is part of how that all works, but it's not the whole picture. Before the curtain opens, members of the execution team are actually in the chamber with Krista. They're strapping her down, they're putting in the IV line, and the curtain is closed partially. So witnesses can't see everything, and that protects who is doing everything. And when the curtain opens, the team steps out, and the witnesses see the prisoner on the gurney, and that's essentially it. The person who puts the medication in is in a separate room. They're behind a wall. The IV line runs through that wall. So even with the curtain open, no one can see who's, you know, pushing the injectant inside, or opening it up for the medication to go in. Identities of execution teams remain. They remain confidential. Their names are not released, but this doctor's name has apparently been released now. The curtain stays closed for most of this process because in less than 10 minutes at 7:34, after it opens and the medication was administered, Krista starts saying, "My arm feels like it's about to burst open." She's moaning. She's talking about this one spot that's really throbbing, and she's kicking so much, she kicks off the sheet that's been put on top of her. At 7:46 p.m., the curtain closes, and then it reopens three minutes later, and her lawyer said it went down twice. Media witnesses that were there said they sat there for 50 minutes listening to her breathing, but it sounded more like a snore, with no idea what was happening behind that curtain. So let's actually hear from one of them now. Nothing about the day was really normal. The execution was scheduled for 10 a.m. local time. We get word maybe an hour beforehand that the court has issued a statement that the witness stayed, paused her execution, and then the AG was asking the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. So we weren't brought into the witness chamber until almost 7 p.m. local time, so just hours of waiting to see what would happen. And then once we get into the chamber, the curtains are closed, the lights are on, and typically it takes 10 to 15 minutes. We assume that's when they're inserting the IV, but the media doesn't see that part. But we were waiting there for almost an hour, and during that time, it was kind of moaning, whimpering, crying, some clanking of metal on metal, some tape getting unfurled. And then the curtains finally open. We can see Krista Pike lying there on the gurney with her spiritual advisor by her side. She has some last words. She keeps them kind of about herself, saying that she is gonna go out with love, how she's lived her life. Her supporters can celebrate this day. It's a happy day. She's free. And so then things get underway, and she is talking, communicating with the advisor the entire time. But eventually she starts to go into this kind of snore phase. It's like snoring and silence. And during that time, the curtains close, and we as media witnesses all kind of look at each other confused because in our minds, she was very much still alive. Three minutes later, the curtains reopen, which is not usual. And another round of pentobarbital is administered. She's still snoring. And then the curtains close again at 8:05, we're hearing her consistently make that snore noise. And then it goes from a snore squeak, kind of hard to describe, but that's the best way to put it. And then we're escorted out at 8:53, and we still hear her making those noises. And no word from T-Doc. The people in the room that work for T-Doc didn't really know what was happening either. They were in the same boat as we were, but it was a long process and difficult to listen to. - So you heard that correctly. Her spiritual advisor, her spiritual advisor is brought back into the room, and then a second backup dose of pentobarbital, is given. And she's still breathing. The media witnesses her for 50 minutes while they're listening to her snore loudly, strained breathing, and they have no idea what's happening. More than an hour after it started and nearly 30 minutes after the backup dose, and she's still snoring like that. It's like it was putting her into a deep sleep. Now, Krista's lawyers file an emergency motion at this point because she has a heartbeat. They tell the court she hasn't lost consciousness. The curtains have gone down twice already, and then the entire thing is called off. Nearly two hours after the state began, Tennessee stops trying to execute Krista Pike. She's taken out of Riverbend to a hospital, and now they're trying to save her. And some may be a little confused here because they're like, wait a minute, if you're trying to effectuate death, why are you now trying to save her? A lot of people are like, why not just let her die? Or her death warrant expired at midnight, meaning the state had its chance. And afterward, Krista's lawyers reveal what happened behind the curtain. The execution team goes in there, and they tried at least seven needles to try to get into her vein. And one of them looked like it was bent at a 90 degree angle when it was pulled out. Medical experts say the blistering and the burning around the IV sites suggest that the drug, may have gone into the tissue of her arm instead of her bloodstream. It sedated her, but it obviously didn't kill her. Krista's lawyers blame difficult veins, blown veins, possibly degraded medication, and no emergency medical care on standby. And this entire protocol was kept a secret from the public. Now, the state has not come out and explained exactly what they say went wrong yet. Remember I told you about that doctor who was interviewed, the one that wasn't affiliated with her legal team? Dr. Paul Allen, the professor of anesthesiology at University of Tennessee. Well, he said that most likely, the needle never even properly made it into her vein. And he stresses that this is based on witness accounts that he has confirmed. This is not a confirmation of a finding. And I just listened to an interview today. Brian Enten, who I find very reputable, interviewed a veterinarian named Dr. John Murray, who performs euthanasia on pets. He was talking about how they don't even use just this one alone. As I explained, they use a combination. He stressed how inhumane it would be to use pentobarbital by itself. It does the job of all three, shutting down the brain first. Just from a medical standpoint, you know, just using the two doses of pentobarbital was kind of shocking to me that that is, you know, their current protocol and that they needed to be able to use it. A second dose, let alone, you know, the first one to be able to accomplish their goal was pretty shocking to me. I guess in pets, and I do, you know, in-home euthanasia and in-home hospice every single day, we most certainly just never use a single drug or the pentobarbital as the only agent to accomplish humane euthanasia. We typically use either a two-step or a three-step protocol. If you're doing more of a three-step, it's usually a two-step or a three-step protocol. The first medication is very strong anti-anxiety medication, calming medication, just to help get them relaxed and not stressed. And then the second medication will actually put them under a complete plane of anesthesia. So it's given pretty slowly, and then they'll slowly just drift off into a deep sleep. Like if you or I would go under for surgery, it's the same exact medications being used. So, you know, you don't remember anything once they start giving the medication. Then until you wake up for after surgery, it's a very similar medication. And then once they're under a. Complete plane of anesthesia or unconsciousness, then pentobarbital is then given. So what do you think happened with Chris DePike in terms of, I mean, do you think they didn't get a vein or what's your, like, what's your feeling? Obviously we don't know, but just based on the information we have. Sure. Yeah. I was going to say, you know, we don't know a hundred percent, you know, what's, what exactly is going on at this time. And I never want to put, you know, false information out there, but I would say just a thought or something that, you know, could be a possibility that has gone wrong would be that the medication went outside of the vein. You know, we don't know if both medications were given through the same IV ports or if they were attempting different IVs, but that would be my, my main inclination that the medication went outside of her vein and it wasn't totally absorbed in her bloodstream right away. And what happens if it doesn't go in the vein and you inject the pentobarbital? I mean, because with, with Chris DePike there, she was complaining of like burning. I mean, do you suspect that's what happened? Is it just like pool in the arm or? It does. It's a very potent material or, or something like that. It's a very potent substance that it can have a lot of, a lot of burning sensation or kind of a pain sensation with it. You know, there has been instances reported that in animals, if it goes outside the vein, you know, they can be reacting, they can be pulling back their limb. It can be, you know, quite painful for them. If pentobarbital does go outside of their vein. So with animals, would they, they would never use, you would never just use pentobarbital, like would that ever happen? Honestly, no, that is, you know, basically, I mean, it's, you know, on the medication, it is labeled. I mean, it's, you know, it's, you know, it's very common for people who are able to use it, but in practice and in every other veterinarian, I know it's basically considered inhumane to do that. When it's done correctly, like the way you do it every day, how long does it typically take once, once you inject the pentobarbital? Yeah. So through direct IV access, it usually takes about one to two minutes. Is there anything else that stands out to you? I mean, what, like what made you passionate enough to make a video about it? I don't know. I guess there was a lot of, I don't want to say misinformation, but you know, different thought processes. I heard, you know, maybe she was agonal breathing and, and things like that during the process, but you know, the way pentobarbital works, it actually, you know, works on your central nervous system and your brain first, and then it'll stop your breathing and stop your lungs and then we'll stop your heart afterwards. So you know, that, that is kind of the typical flow and of the process. And then also just the protocol at the state of Tennessee has seemed a little, a little barbaric to me. So just like Dr. Allen. He thinks that the medication was never inside of her veins. It was going into her muscle and the surrounding areas. It would have most likely been very painful. This is a process that usually only takes one to two minutes, but of course that's in an animal, but it shouldn't have taken this long and it should have been effective. It goes to the brain. It makes you unconscious. Sometimes it slows the brain functioning and then your breathing stops and then your heart. So essentially when he was talking about this, I kind of thought. Like, well, if they left her alone, wouldn't she have just died? It would have worked eventually, right? But she was resuscitated. She was given medical care. And why? Well, when the state locks someone up, it takes on a legal duty to provide them with medical care. They can't get it themselves. So the state has to. Ignoring a prisoner's serious medical needs violates the eighth amendment's ban on what I told you about before, cruel and unusual punishment, but it does sound strange when the state is trying to kill her, but the state can only end her life one way through a lawful execution carried out under the court's order on the authorized date following their procedures. Once the execution was called off that night, it stopped being an execution at that point. She was simply a prisoner in need of medical care and an emergency that's in the state's custody. So they had the obligation. If they were to stand there and let her die after calling it off, that would not have been a lawful execution. It would have been the state letting a prisoner die without care, which is what our constitution forbids. That could expose the people in that room to very serious legal consequences. So once that execution stopped, the only lawful option was to treat her. So if you're wondering why, that's the whole story. In the case of why they had to give her medical care, that is. And apparently her own expert I told you about, Dr. Zivit or Zivot, don't know if I'm pronouncing that right, especially with braces. He argues that help actually came through. It came too late, not too early. The ambulance wasn't called until more than an hour after it began. The third-party review is supposed to answer what exactly happened and whether she would have died or if it was just prolonged suffering, which on one hand, I think some people are in the camp that who cares, who cares if she suffered because look what she did to Colleen. And I think that's completely understandable. And Colleen's mother was watching this whole thing. She watched Krista lying there in front of her, still talking. Laughing, even. May said she broke down in tears and that it was a mess and that Krista never said anything about Colleen. Not anything. Not about what happened. She didn't mention Colleen at all. Imagine what that was like for her mom. And when she was asked what her message would be to the governor and the attorney general, May kept it pretty short. She said, "They fucked up. I didn't get justice for my daughter. And I think the state owes me a big apology." And no one cares. No one from the state has given her one. And then she said something that really broke my heart more than anything else in this case. She said that as a mother, I failed her. But that's not true. She went there for one reason. So the last thing Krista would be able to see on this earth would be her daughter's face. And right now, somehow, Krista survived. But remember how many times Colleen Remember how many times she got up and she tried to run? Maybe it is, like May said, karma. May and Raul drive home to Florida on Thursday, October 1st. Outside Riverbend, the state had put up two memorial photos of Colleen. And officials say they're going to give both of them to May. The next morning on October 2nd, Governor Lee calls the failed execution deeply disturbing, and he orders that third-party review of what happened. And then he pauses every other execution in Tennessee for the rest of 2026. That included one that was set for December 3rd. On Friday, October 3rd, Krista's lawyers say she's in critical condition in the hospital. She's unconscious and she's on a ventilator. On Saturday, October 4th, the head of the Tennessee Department of Corrections steps it down. And no one can tell May what happened next. Not the state, not the courts, not the lawyers. When a reporter asks her, she says, I don't know. No one knows what's going to happen. And for days, Krista just lies in this hospital bed, unconscious, on this ventilator. Both of her arms are swollen, bruised, and blistered. And then on Tuesday, October 6th, the day that I was about to film this yesterday, her lawyers announce that against all odds, Krista Pike is not only conscious, she's speaking. And she is continuing to receive critical medical care. And that her prognosis is still unclear. Her lawyers say she has a long road of recovery ahead of her, and that she's still handcuffed and shackled to her hospital bed. All I could say yesterday was, wow. Can they try again? I think that's the big question right now. And the answer is going to be fought out in court. But this isn't the first time a state has tried to execute someone and failed. It's happened. And twice, courts have said they can try again. The first was actually way back in 1946 in Louisiana. It was a 17-year-old named Willie Francis. He was strapped to the state's electric chair, which they actually had a nickname for, Gruesome Gertie. And they flipped the switch, and it didn't kill him. Witnesses that were there said he cried out from under that head hood. He said he couldn't breathe. And he was bedridden. They were begging them to take it off. And they unstrapped him, and they actually just sent him back to his cell. His lawyers took that case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that putting him back in that chair would be cruel and unusual punishment. But in 1947, the court actually disagreed, five to four, and said a failed attempt was an accident, not cruelty. And a few months later, Louisiana put Willie Francis back in the electric chair, and the second time, it worked. But then I said, well, I don't know. I told you there was another one. In 2009, Ohio tried to execute a man named Romel Broom by lethal injection. And for about two hours, the execution team, they stuck him with needles 18 times, trying to find a vein, and it never worked. They never found one. And the governor called it off. His lawyers fought for years, arguing that trying again would be cruel and unusual. But in 2016, the Supreme Court in that state disagreed. Four to three. And they said they could try again. But that never happened because he died from COVID in 2020 when he was still on death row. So history is on the state side. In both of those cases I just mentioned, courts have said a failed execution doesn't take the death penalty off the table. Remember, it's an accident, not cruelty. No one meant to do this, but I don't know. Part of me wanted to say, like, did Krista bribe even the doctor somehow? Like, she does have a history of it. Joking, but this is a serious matter. Krista's lawyers are going to argue her case differently, and here's why. Willie Francis was electrocuted, but the chair didn't deliver enough current to kill him. Broom never actually got the medication because they couldn't find his vein. But Krista got them. She got two full doses of pentobarbital that went into her body, and she was injured. She ended up in the hospital fighting for her life. Her lawyers will say, that putting her through that a second time would be exactly the kind of cruel and unusual punishment that our Constitution forbids. Oh, and if you think I forgot about what happened in Tennessee in May of this year, only a few months before all of this, with Tony Carruthers, I haven't forgotten. Tennessee tried to execute him, too. And after about 90 minutes, they gave up because they couldn't get the IV in. And the doctor involved, and that execution was Dr. Mark Fowler, and he has since been accused of malpractice. And according to the reports I've read, he was part of Krista's execution team as well. And Krista's lawyers, like I told you, warned the court about this. They even asked her to be hanged instead, and she even mentioned wanting a firing squad as an option. Now Tennessee has two failed executions this year, out of the three that were scheduled. So, as of right now, nobody knows what's going to happen next with Krista. Not the state, not her lawyers, and not even Colleen's own mother. But I don't want to end this on Krista. Because for 31 years, the person at the center of this entire story has been Krista. Her childhood, her pain, her appeals, her trauma, her execution, her lawyers, and now her hospital bed. I mean, there's literal fake AI images of her strapped to a bed, strapped to a gurney with like this bruised up arm and people going on Tik Tok and talking about the so-called leaked pictures but then not showing them. I'm debating whether or not to put her face in the thumbnail. Because I've seen her face so many times. And Mae has been saying it the whole time, the same thing. Before she walked into that prison last week, she told a reporter she felt like Colleen had been lost in all the attention on Krista. And Krista loves attention. So let's not lose Colleen. Not now. Colleen Ann Slemmer was only 19. Look at her baby pictures. That is who Krista killed. She will never get the chance that Krista got to even live, to even tell her mom she loves her. She will always be only 19 years old. She grew up in a house full of kids because her mom ran a daycare for 40 years. And she loved it. She was a people person. She was the girl caring about the children who couldn't feed themselves. They needed help. She volunteered at the Special Olympics. She spent her summers painting her school. She and her stepfather bonded over computers. She rebuilt them over and over again. And that was her passion. She wore a T-shirt that said Computer Geek before it was even cool. Mae said she was so friendly. She'll never forget her laugh. And she never will forget that she couldn't finish her computer course. She was only a few months away. She would have had her certificate that spring. She never got the career that she got on a bus for and traveled 400 miles away to start. There will be no wedding. No kids. No kids of her own. Even though her mom said she would have been the best mom. There was no, Mom, guess what? I got the job. There was no chance to grow up and no chance to grow old. And for what? A wave in a hallway? A smile at the wrong girl's boyfriend? A complaint to a disciplinary board about a bully who was trashing her room and stealing from her? Colleen Slemmer didn't do anything. She went to her room every night and she studied. She tried to keep the peace. And when the girl who made her life miserable that fall said she wanted to be her friend, Colleen gave her a chance. Mae summed it up in one sentence. She trusted everybody. And that was her downfall. But I don't think trusting people is a flaw. That's who Colleen was. The failure wasn't Colleen's. It belonged to the people. It belonged to the people who heard those threats and they rolled their eyes or they looked a different way to the program that kept a known bully on campus and kept giving her one chance after another. And to Krista Pike herself. And the two people who walked out of that gate with her and helped her. And then there's Colleen's mother. For all of these years, she has been Colleen's voice. She has written letters. She has fought for her daughter's remains, piece by piece, box by box. She has driven to Tennessee holding Colleen's, picture up so the last face Krista Pike would have ever seen on this earth would be her daughter's. And when it didn't happen, she said that she failed Colleen. You didn't fail, Mae. Not for a second. All of those 31 years. Before all this, Mae said that what she pictured is Colleen being there and saying, "Thank you, Mom." In Jacksonville, I told you that the Justice Coalition had Colleen's photos on their wall and they said that her case was solved. To her mom, it has never felt solved. But the family still has Colleen's computer geek shirt. They had it made into a teddy bear so they could keep it with them at all time. This is not closure. I don't think it ever will be, no matter whether Krista Pike dies or not. But I want to say I'm so sorry to Colleen's family. I truly am. And this has been a very long, deep dive. So I want to thank you, like I always do, for taking your time and being here for Colleen's story. Remember her. Remember everything she went through. And I will see you in my next video. Bye.