September 17, 2025 • 21 mins
As details of the murder leak, the Knoxville community is shocked by what 18-year-old Christa allegedly did to Colleen.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Test one two that works, test one two three, test
one two three.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
One two three four or five five four three two
one Okay perfect.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
I probably won't be too too close to Melissa SA Okay,
let's hope this works.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
HI, go ahead and ship that all the way.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
When Beth, Kris and I went down to Knoxville in
August twenty twenty four, we met with Melissa Lee, a
former journalist. She and Beth met years ago when Beth
was working for Court TV. So your your family's Knoxville
from way back.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
I have been able at this point to trace back
four generations. I don't know. We may go back further.
I don't know. In the South, you kind of don't
necessarily want to start digging around in your history too
awfully lunch, because you're going to find some relatives you
didn't know you had.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Melissa has what I would affectionately describe as a high
quirk factor. Today, instead of covering crime for a local newspaper,
she spends her days writing and designing what she calls
true crime coloring books. She recently self published her first.
It's called Scene of the Crime, and it depicts famous
(01:15):
crime scenes, including the assassination of fashion designer Johnny Versace
in Miami and the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles, known
for a series of mysterious deaths.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
That's how I vacation. If I go to a CDI
automatically look and see were there any interesting crimes that happened.
I always talk about the victims. I never talk about
the first and who parpetuati the crime.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
We're here to talk about what it was like in
Knoxville when news broke back in nineteen ninety five that
Christa Pike had killed Colleen Slemmer. Melissa was in her
early twenties when Colleen was murdered.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
There are a couple of crimes in Knoxville that really
define an area or leave an indelible mark. This is
one of those crimes.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
The brutal details of the murder, the involvement of teenagers
in the torture of a nineteen year old girl, seemed
like a specific affront to the decency of the Knoxville community.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
The only thing poor Colleen Slimmer wanted to do was
make her life better and just I mean, it's not
like there was a money motive. It was a jealousy
thing basis.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Awful Knoxville was shocked by Christa's killing of Colleen, but
they were even more scandalized by what Christa did in
the minutes and hours following the crime. Details leaked out
to the community as soon as Krista was in handcuffs,
and those details just got worse and worse.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
They carved a pentagram into her chest. This was the
early nineties, and if anybody remembers, that was during the
time of Satanic panic, particularly in the South. Oh my god,
Oh my god, there's dabbles in here. So it got
a lot of coverage because of the heinous of the
crime and oh there's you know, lock your children up,
Satan's out to get them. Some people believe she was
(03:06):
a serial killer who just and I don't even really
want to call her a serial killer because I don't
know that she fits the exact criteria, and she's not
a spree killer, and she's not a well plus, she.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Only killed once.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Well she got called. Had she not gotten caught, she
might have gone on and killed some other people. I
don't know. That is a prevailing thought, and I don't know.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
So the idea is that she was a budding serial
killer who was caught after her first.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Victim, yes, possibly.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Thirty years later, Melissa, like most of the Knoxville community,
finds it impossible to forgive Christna, to even entertain the
idea that she might deserve mercy.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
I am a firm believer in rehabilitation. I do not
believe that there's any rehabilitating Christa Pick. There are no
redeeming qualities to Christa Pick.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
The portrait that was constructed of Christa, a teenage girl
who is portrayed by the media as a monster, is
seemingly impenetrable decades later. So I asked you if you
thought Christa should be executed.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
I don't know what purpose that serves at this point.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
For almost thirty years, Krista Pike has been the only
woman on death row in Tennessee, waiting for the day
the state will end her life, but so far no
date has been said. Do you think it would have
served a purpose if they'd executed her immediately after her conviction?
Speaker 2 (04:31):
To people in Tennessee, it would have I don't know
what you do with somebody like Chris Pike. She needs
a punishment to fit the crime, but I don't know
what that punishment is.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
I'm Sarah Trelevin and this is unrestorable Season two. Proof
of Life an original podcast from Anonymous content and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Oh see you look down, there's another church, and Rod,
here's a church.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
The afternoon, we meet up with Melissa. It's a steamy
ninety three degrees. After stopping for some sweet tea, she
offers to take us out to the scene of the crime.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Or in the south where there is a church literally
on every corner. Now that church down there is New Harvest.
That's an ame Zion church. That's a historically black church.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
The drive from Melissa's house to the west end of Knoxville,
where Colleen was killed takes around fifteen minutes.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
And I keep mentioning religion because I mean, you're in
the South. It's a huge thing and it plays into
this case where you had satanic panic and oh my
God and whatever.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Before we get to where the murder took place, Melissa
takes us to where the Job Corp dormitory used to stand.
This was the organization that both Christa and Colleen signed
up for, where struggling students were meant to get help
finding an occupation, but job Corps became better known for
being chaotic and violent. The building was torn down shortly
(06:00):
after the murder, and a handful of concrete barriers and
some overgrown grass now marked the location.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Well, if we will pull out here, Beth, and you're
gonna because you can only go lift. What we're gonna
do is we're gonna go right down here to the light,
and I'm going to take you on the route that
they took to get there. They walked, Yes, they didn't
have a car. And I got to tell you, the
thing that really hit home for me on this is
this is going to be quite a walk. And to
(06:29):
think that you had this malice in your heart this
entire way.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
On January twelfth, nineteen ninety five, four teenagers from Job
Corps set out on foot. Colleen thought they were going
into the woods to smoke some weed. The others had
a different plan.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
They would have walked up this way, walked over this bridge.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
We drive for a while through the Fort Sanders neighborhood,
passed a mix of new condos and well kept houses,
lots more churches.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
All right, now we're approaching Cumberland Avanue, which is the strip.
You're going to make a rye.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
And when you say the strip, It's like the strip
of commercial for the University areas is. We pull into
Tyson Park and stop in a small grassy log close
to the spot Melissa says Colling was murdered. Even thirty
years later, it does feel secluded. On a Saturday afternoon,
There's no one around. There's no plaque or memorial bench
(07:27):
to mark the spot where Colleen was tortured and killed,
and so we stand around, uncertain of how to absorb
the gravity of the act. After Colleen was found lying
face down in a pile of debris, the Knoxville police
corned off the scene with yellow tape. The scene was
wet and muddy, and there were pools of blood, footprints
(07:49):
and handprints, drag marks, and other evidence to be analyzed.
The activity created an enormous stir in Knoxville, everyone wanting
to know what was going on.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Let's be clear how unusual this was on so many
different levels.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
This is John North, a reporter in Knoxville who covered
Christa's case. As you can probably tell from his accent,
he's not originally from Tennessee. He grew up in California
and moved to Knoxville just a couple of years before
Colleen's murder.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
After the killing, when the body was discovered, who shows
up at the crime scene and the yellow tape Krista
Pike does, asking a cop who's on the line, what's
going on? What's happened.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
According to police testimony, Christa arrived at the scene the
next afternoon with several girls from Job Corps. Apparently, she
asked one police officer if any suspects had been identified.
That officer later testified that Christa was giggling, enjoying the moment.
Witnesses say she seemed unaffected by her violent.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
As she was quite fascinated and almost excited by what
had happened. Who does that?
Speaker 1 (09:07):
That idea spread fast, the perception that Christa wasn't just unrepentant,
but brilliant, like the murder finally gave her something to
be proud of, and this would not be the last
time Christa would go back to the scene of the murder.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
I took her back to the scene, and she played
both parts.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
This is retired detective Randy Yorke telling Beth about his
investigation into Colleen's murder. When he says both parts, he
means that Christa acted.
Speaker 5 (09:34):
Out her role.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
And the role of her victim, Colleen.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
She would get down on her hands and knees and
act like she was the victim and tell us what happened.
And she'd stand up and she was very proud of
what she did. She was real cocky in her language
and stuff. You know that this is the greatest thing
that ever happened to her. She was a star.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
And when you were getting the confession from her, was
she emotional?
Speaker 4 (10:04):
No, she was giddy. She was happy. I've never seen
anybody like her. She was just as happy as a
lark that she was a star. She thought she was
a movie star. She was giddy the whole time I
interviewed her, and I never saw anything that indicated that
she had regretted what she did.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
We don't have tape of Christa at the scene walking
through the reenactment with Detective York, but we do have
Christa's confession, which occurred around the same time.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
There's some satanic overtures that come up in this case.
Are you involved in Satanism?
Speaker 1 (10:42):
No, I've listened to the full tape and it definitely
doesn't sound giddy. Well, Christa doesn't express explicit remorse. She's
clearly extremely upset.
Speaker 5 (10:54):
She's grabbing under my arm and grabbing under my hands,
trying to pull me in and there and here was Oh,
but I was looking at her scare out.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
At times through sobs, She's a matter of fact about
what she did, volunteering details readily. Other times she expresses
horror at what happened.
Speaker 4 (11:15):
I was like, Oh, my god, you know, what the
hell is wrong with me?
Speaker 6 (11:19):
Her?
Speaker 7 (11:20):
What's wrong with everybody?
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Word also spreadfast about the supposedly Satanic elements of the case,
in particular the pentagram carved into Colleen's chest.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
They admitted doing a Satanic chant around the body. The
pentagram was the trapdoor that were released to soul to satan.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Christa's boyfriend to Darryl, later admitted to carving the pentagram.
Speaker 7 (11:47):
It received massive coverage, very lurid coverage. There was a
focus on the Satanic aspects supposedly of it, which was
an the motive.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Kelly Gleeson, one of Chris's attorneys, disputes the idea that
Christa had any real connection to Satanism.
Speaker 7 (12:05):
To Daryl was into Satanism, but Christa was into To.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Darryl, christ had told a therapist that to Daryl had
gotten her into the occult that he had given her
a necklace with a pentagram on it. She was wearing
it when she was arrested. To Daryl told Christa that
he worshiped the devil that he used to sacrifice rabbits
back home in Memphis. He would show Christa how he
could move the clouds, conjuring monsters in the sky when
(12:31):
he was angry. When Christa was interviewed by Randy Yorke,
she seemed more concerned about protecting to Daryl than herself.
Speaker 5 (12:41):
He's been going for all the whut Riley, I mean,
he's eve a crown to me like well here.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
While in custody at the Knoxville Courthouse, Christa desperately tried
to stay in touch with to Daryl. Word soon got
out that she wrote it to Darryl three four times
a week, and that she signed the letters little Devil.
Krista told a psychologist that she loved to Darryl, even
though she knew it was the wrong kind of love.
He liked to watch her fight other men to dictate
(13:15):
what she wore. She liked having sex with him, but
the relationship made her cry an awful lot. Christoph felt
like he was powerful, like he was protective of her,
so she clung to him.
Speaker 7 (13:28):
When she's talking about to Darryl, I just love him,
I just love him to death. And it's just it's
like classic childish love infatuation. And he has a chance,
he can be somebody. He's been crying real tears to me.
And you know, she thinks she's nothing. She thinks she's
(13:48):
not worth saving.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
The story of the murder was everywhere. Whispers about satanic rituals,
questions about wayward teens bullying each other, rumors of a
love triangle. But when the results of Colleen's autopsy leaked out,
things got even uglier. The medical examiner counted the blows
to Colleen's head, two to the left side, one over
(14:16):
the right eye, and one in the nose area. There
were divots in Colleen's skull containing particles of the asphalt
chunk christ to hit her with. But there was one
detail that for many in Knoxville, sealed Christa's fate, something
she'd never be able to come back from. When the
medical examiner tried to piece Colleen's fractured skull back together,
(14:43):
she couldn't. She was missing a piece. Ye let me
ask you this.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
I told you about a little piece of her skill
that I knew that you hated.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
I don't have that.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
You don't have it.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
What would I want a piece of per school? According
to court records, after Christa smashed Colleen's head in, she
bent over and collected a piece of colleens fractured skull,
and she kept it. Krista put it in the pocket
of her black leather jacket. When she got back to
(15:21):
the job Cordorm, she showed it to at least two
other students. She even brought it down to breakfast the
next morning. Later, when police searched her clothes, they found it.
Detective Randy Yorke believes it was part of Christa's pact
with the devil.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
You have a piece of skull, all the skulls you
have that person's power. That's the only thing I could figure.
I could never get it out of them why they
took the piece? But so, how would you characterize you know,
Krysto Pike. Well, I don't like saying this, but I
wasn't sure about demonic possession until I met that girl,
(15:58):
and now I'm over most norm behavior.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
The skull became the most powerful detail in this case.
A story in the Knoxville News Sentinel a week after
the murder alleged that Christa took the fragment to trap
Colleen's soul in her body. For many, the skull was
as symboled that Krista wasn't wholly human, wasn't like the
rest of us. That as much as a piece of
(16:26):
Colleen had been taken, there was a piece of Christa
that was never there.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
When the piece of skull got out, that's kind of
the death neal for Krista. You know, people can be like, Okay,
she was young. Okay, maybe we just give her a
laugh about parole and she can live her best life
behind bars doing whatever. The piece of skull. You're not
(16:52):
coming back from that In.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
The South, Why what is the connection.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
When you die in the South, The desecration of the
body in any way, shape or form is just not
It just ain't right. There are some times you're just
not going to come back from carrying around a piece
of somebody's skull. And I don't care that it was
only two days. I don't care that it was only
a day. I care that she took it, because what's
going on.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
In that mind, Christa's lawyers see it differently.
Speaker 6 (17:24):
So I would say, yeah, that the skull is there,
and if you isolate it, you've got a really bad fact.
But you've got to look at a little bit more
than that.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
For Steve Ferrell, this wild act of violence, the taking
of the skull fragment, is evidence of just how unwell
Krista was, how broken she was a kid with severe
mental illness, a lengthy history of sexual abuse and deprivation.
It's not that she was irredeemable or unfixable, but that
she had been failed over and over by people and systems.
Speaker 6 (18:01):
I think it's a symbol of I've taken a life
and I am proud of it, or I don't care,
or it's funny, or I don't know what exactly was
going on then, But I think it's that, and I
think that there's a reaction to someone that callous, is
irredeemable or unrestorable, as you all might say. And if
(18:25):
you look at it as such a simple story, which
is what the criminal justice system wants us to do, guilty,
not guilty, life, death, that's easy, and it's very easy
to get a limited snippet of something, draw conclusion and
(18:47):
stand firmly on it. If you look at that skull
as the desperate attempt of a sexually abused, stunted, mentally
ill little girl, you have pity. If that's all you
can do to get attention, if that's how you win
over your boyfriend, if that's how you impressed the kids
(19:09):
at school.
Speaker 5 (19:10):
It's hard to say what was going on in Christa's
head at the time, but I do think that there's
a lot of evidence and testimony that she was going
through a manic period and was very agitated with the
bipolar disorder at the time, So I hesitate to say
that she even really thought about or was consciously knowing
(19:32):
what was going on.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
This is Molly Kincaid, another one of Christa's attorneys.
Speaker 5 (19:37):
Christa's life was just this locomotive of violence, instability, lack
of connection, lack of people she could trust, rely on,
feel loved, and then the train went off the tracks.
But that's like to be expected because she she had
(20:00):
nothing and she had no one.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
The idea that Christa wasn't just someone guilty, but someone
irredeemable had quickly taken hold in Knoxville, and so when
prosecutors announced that they would be seeking the death penalty.
It felt to many like an opportunity for justice, like
killing Christa wouldn't just avenge Colleen's death, it would stop
Christa from doing more harm. And at Christa's trial, which
(20:28):
introduced a whole new layer of dysfunction to the case,
the debate was never over guilt or innocence, but whether
Christa should live or die. We know now that Christa
was sentenced to death, but her lawyers today say that
she never had a chance.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
I should be to one in Percy, not for I
should be one they punished for.
Speaker 4 (20:51):
This crab, not for.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Ye time on Proof of Life. Unrestorable is executive produced
and hosted by Me, Sarah Chulevin and Beth Carris. Our
producer is Kathleen Goldhart, Mixing and sound design by Reza Daya.
For anonymous content, Jessica Grimshaw is our executive producer, Jennifer
(21:18):
Sears is our executive in charge of production, and nick
Yannas is our legal council. For iHeart, executive producer Christina
Everett and supervising producer Abu Zafar
Test one two that works, test one two three, test
one two three.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
One two three four or five five four three two
one Okay perfect.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
I probably won't be too too close to Melissa SA Okay,
let's hope this works.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
HI, go ahead and ship that all the way.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
When Beth, Kris and I went down to Knoxville in
August twenty twenty four, we met with Melissa Lee, a
former journalist. She and Beth met years ago when Beth
was working for Court TV. So your your family's Knoxville
from way back.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
I have been able at this point to trace back
four generations. I don't know. We may go back further.
I don't know. In the South, you kind of don't
necessarily want to start digging around in your history too
awfully lunch, because you're going to find some relatives you
didn't know you had.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Melissa has what I would affectionately describe as a high
quirk factor. Today, instead of covering crime for a local newspaper,
she spends her days writing and designing what she calls
true crime coloring books. She recently self published her first.
It's called Scene of the Crime, and it depicts famous
(01:15):
crime scenes, including the assassination of fashion designer Johnny Versace
in Miami and the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles, known
for a series of mysterious deaths.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
That's how I vacation. If I go to a CDI
automatically look and see were there any interesting crimes that happened.
I always talk about the victims. I never talk about
the first and who parpetuati the crime.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
We're here to talk about what it was like in
Knoxville when news broke back in nineteen ninety five that
Christa Pike had killed Colleen Slemmer. Melissa was in her
early twenties when Colleen was murdered.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
There are a couple of crimes in Knoxville that really
define an area or leave an indelible mark. This is
one of those crimes.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
The brutal details of the murder, the involvement of teenagers
in the torture of a nineteen year old girl, seemed
like a specific affront to the decency of the Knoxville community.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
The only thing poor Colleen Slimmer wanted to do was
make her life better and just I mean, it's not
like there was a money motive. It was a jealousy
thing basis.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Awful Knoxville was shocked by Christa's killing of Colleen, but
they were even more scandalized by what Christa did in
the minutes and hours following the crime. Details leaked out
to the community as soon as Krista was in handcuffs,
and those details just got worse and worse.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
They carved a pentagram into her chest. This was the
early nineties, and if anybody remembers, that was during the
time of Satanic panic, particularly in the South. Oh my god,
Oh my god, there's dabbles in here. So it got
a lot of coverage because of the heinous of the
crime and oh there's you know, lock your children up,
Satan's out to get them. Some people believe she was
(03:06):
a serial killer who just and I don't even really
want to call her a serial killer because I don't
know that she fits the exact criteria, and she's not
a spree killer, and she's not a well plus, she.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Only killed once.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Well she got called. Had she not gotten caught, she
might have gone on and killed some other people. I
don't know. That is a prevailing thought, and I don't know.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
So the idea is that she was a budding serial
killer who was caught after her first.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Victim, yes, possibly.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Thirty years later, Melissa, like most of the Knoxville community,
finds it impossible to forgive Christna, to even entertain the
idea that she might deserve mercy.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
I am a firm believer in rehabilitation. I do not
believe that there's any rehabilitating Christa Pick. There are no
redeeming qualities to Christa Pick.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
The portrait that was constructed of Christa, a teenage girl
who is portrayed by the media as a monster, is
seemingly impenetrable decades later. So I asked you if you
thought Christa should be executed.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
I don't know what purpose that serves at this point.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
For almost thirty years, Krista Pike has been the only
woman on death row in Tennessee, waiting for the day
the state will end her life, but so far no
date has been said. Do you think it would have
served a purpose if they'd executed her immediately after her conviction?
Speaker 2 (04:31):
To people in Tennessee, it would have I don't know
what you do with somebody like Chris Pike. She needs
a punishment to fit the crime, but I don't know
what that punishment is.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
I'm Sarah Trelevin and this is unrestorable Season two. Proof
of Life an original podcast from Anonymous content and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Oh see you look down, there's another church, and Rod,
here's a church.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
The afternoon, we meet up with Melissa. It's a steamy
ninety three degrees. After stopping for some sweet tea, she
offers to take us out to the scene of the crime.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Or in the south where there is a church literally
on every corner. Now that church down there is New Harvest.
That's an ame Zion church. That's a historically black church.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
The drive from Melissa's house to the west end of Knoxville,
where Colleen was killed takes around fifteen minutes.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
And I keep mentioning religion because I mean, you're in
the South. It's a huge thing and it plays into
this case where you had satanic panic and oh my
God and whatever.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Before we get to where the murder took place, Melissa
takes us to where the Job Corp dormitory used to stand.
This was the organization that both Christa and Colleen signed
up for, where struggling students were meant to get help
finding an occupation, but job Corps became better known for
being chaotic and violent. The building was torn down shortly
(06:00):
after the murder, and a handful of concrete barriers and
some overgrown grass now marked the location.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Well, if we will pull out here, Beth, and you're
gonna because you can only go lift. What we're gonna
do is we're gonna go right down here to the light,
and I'm going to take you on the route that
they took to get there. They walked, Yes, they didn't
have a car. And I got to tell you, the
thing that really hit home for me on this is
this is going to be quite a walk. And to
(06:29):
think that you had this malice in your heart this
entire way.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
On January twelfth, nineteen ninety five, four teenagers from Job
Corps set out on foot. Colleen thought they were going
into the woods to smoke some weed. The others had
a different plan.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
They would have walked up this way, walked over this bridge.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
We drive for a while through the Fort Sanders neighborhood,
passed a mix of new condos and well kept houses,
lots more churches.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
All right, now we're approaching Cumberland Avanue, which is the strip.
You're going to make a rye.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
And when you say the strip, It's like the strip
of commercial for the University areas is. We pull into
Tyson Park and stop in a small grassy log close
to the spot Melissa says Colling was murdered. Even thirty
years later, it does feel secluded. On a Saturday afternoon,
There's no one around. There's no plaque or memorial bench
(07:27):
to mark the spot where Colleen was tortured and killed,
and so we stand around, uncertain of how to absorb
the gravity of the act. After Colleen was found lying
face down in a pile of debris, the Knoxville police
corned off the scene with yellow tape. The scene was
wet and muddy, and there were pools of blood, footprints
(07:49):
and handprints, drag marks, and other evidence to be analyzed.
The activity created an enormous stir in Knoxville, everyone wanting
to know what was going on.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Let's be clear how unusual this was on so many
different levels.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
This is John North, a reporter in Knoxville who covered
Christa's case. As you can probably tell from his accent,
he's not originally from Tennessee. He grew up in California
and moved to Knoxville just a couple of years before
Colleen's murder.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
After the killing, when the body was discovered, who shows
up at the crime scene and the yellow tape Krista
Pike does, asking a cop who's on the line, what's
going on? What's happened.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
According to police testimony, Christa arrived at the scene the
next afternoon with several girls from Job Corps. Apparently, she
asked one police officer if any suspects had been identified.
That officer later testified that Christa was giggling, enjoying the moment.
Witnesses say she seemed unaffected by her violent.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
As she was quite fascinated and almost excited by what
had happened. Who does that?
Speaker 1 (09:07):
That idea spread fast, the perception that Christa wasn't just unrepentant,
but brilliant, like the murder finally gave her something to
be proud of, and this would not be the last
time Christa would go back to the scene of the murder.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
I took her back to the scene, and she played
both parts.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
This is retired detective Randy Yorke telling Beth about his
investigation into Colleen's murder. When he says both parts, he
means that Christa acted.
Speaker 5 (09:34):
Out her role.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
And the role of her victim, Colleen.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
She would get down on her hands and knees and
act like she was the victim and tell us what happened.
And she'd stand up and she was very proud of
what she did. She was real cocky in her language
and stuff. You know that this is the greatest thing
that ever happened to her. She was a star.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
And when you were getting the confession from her, was
she emotional?
Speaker 4 (10:04):
No, she was giddy. She was happy. I've never seen
anybody like her. She was just as happy as a
lark that she was a star. She thought she was
a movie star. She was giddy the whole time I
interviewed her, and I never saw anything that indicated that
she had regretted what she did.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
We don't have tape of Christa at the scene walking
through the reenactment with Detective York, but we do have
Christa's confession, which occurred around the same time.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
There's some satanic overtures that come up in this case.
Are you involved in Satanism?
Speaker 1 (10:42):
No, I've listened to the full tape and it definitely
doesn't sound giddy. Well, Christa doesn't express explicit remorse. She's
clearly extremely upset.
Speaker 5 (10:54):
She's grabbing under my arm and grabbing under my hands,
trying to pull me in and there and here was Oh,
but I was looking at her scare out.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
At times through sobs, She's a matter of fact about
what she did, volunteering details readily. Other times she expresses
horror at what happened.
Speaker 4 (11:15):
I was like, Oh, my god, you know, what the
hell is wrong with me?
Speaker 6 (11:19):
Her?
Speaker 7 (11:20):
What's wrong with everybody?
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Word also spreadfast about the supposedly Satanic elements of the case,
in particular the pentagram carved into Colleen's chest.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
They admitted doing a Satanic chant around the body. The
pentagram was the trapdoor that were released to soul to satan.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Christa's boyfriend to Darryl, later admitted to carving the pentagram.
Speaker 7 (11:47):
It received massive coverage, very lurid coverage. There was a
focus on the Satanic aspects supposedly of it, which was
an the motive.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Kelly Gleeson, one of Chris's attorneys, disputes the idea that
Christa had any real connection to Satanism.
Speaker 7 (12:05):
To Daryl was into Satanism, but Christa was into To.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Darryl, christ had told a therapist that to Daryl had
gotten her into the occult that he had given her
a necklace with a pentagram on it. She was wearing
it when she was arrested. To Daryl told Christa that
he worshiped the devil that he used to sacrifice rabbits
back home in Memphis. He would show Christa how he
could move the clouds, conjuring monsters in the sky when
(12:31):
he was angry. When Christa was interviewed by Randy Yorke,
she seemed more concerned about protecting to Daryl than herself.
Speaker 5 (12:41):
He's been going for all the whut Riley, I mean,
he's eve a crown to me like well here.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
While in custody at the Knoxville Courthouse, Christa desperately tried
to stay in touch with to Daryl. Word soon got
out that she wrote it to Darryl three four times
a week, and that she signed the letters little Devil.
Krista told a psychologist that she loved to Darryl, even
though she knew it was the wrong kind of love.
He liked to watch her fight other men to dictate
(13:15):
what she wore. She liked having sex with him, but
the relationship made her cry an awful lot. Christoph felt
like he was powerful, like he was protective of her,
so she clung to him.
Speaker 7 (13:28):
When she's talking about to Darryl, I just love him,
I just love him to death. And it's just it's
like classic childish love infatuation. And he has a chance,
he can be somebody. He's been crying real tears to me.
And you know, she thinks she's nothing. She thinks she's
(13:48):
not worth saving.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
The story of the murder was everywhere. Whispers about satanic rituals,
questions about wayward teens bullying each other, rumors of a
love triangle. But when the results of Colleen's autopsy leaked out,
things got even uglier. The medical examiner counted the blows
to Colleen's head, two to the left side, one over
(14:16):
the right eye, and one in the nose area. There
were divots in Colleen's skull containing particles of the asphalt
chunk christ to hit her with. But there was one
detail that for many in Knoxville, sealed Christa's fate, something
she'd never be able to come back from. When the
medical examiner tried to piece Colleen's fractured skull back together,
(14:43):
she couldn't. She was missing a piece. Ye let me
ask you this.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
I told you about a little piece of her skill
that I knew that you hated.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
I don't have that.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
You don't have it.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
What would I want a piece of per school? According
to court records, after Christa smashed Colleen's head in, she
bent over and collected a piece of colleens fractured skull,
and she kept it. Krista put it in the pocket
of her black leather jacket. When she got back to
(15:21):
the job Cordorm, she showed it to at least two
other students. She even brought it down to breakfast the
next morning. Later, when police searched her clothes, they found it.
Detective Randy Yorke believes it was part of Christa's pact
with the devil.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
You have a piece of skull, all the skulls you
have that person's power. That's the only thing I could figure.
I could never get it out of them why they
took the piece? But so, how would you characterize you know,
Krysto Pike. Well, I don't like saying this, but I
wasn't sure about demonic possession until I met that girl,
(15:58):
and now I'm over most norm behavior.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
The skull became the most powerful detail in this case.
A story in the Knoxville News Sentinel a week after
the murder alleged that Christa took the fragment to trap
Colleen's soul in her body. For many, the skull was
as symboled that Krista wasn't wholly human, wasn't like the
rest of us. That as much as a piece of
(16:26):
Colleen had been taken, there was a piece of Christa
that was never there.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
When the piece of skull got out, that's kind of
the death neal for Krista. You know, people can be like, Okay,
she was young. Okay, maybe we just give her a
laugh about parole and she can live her best life
behind bars doing whatever. The piece of skull. You're not
(16:52):
coming back from that In.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
The South, Why what is the connection.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
When you die in the South, The desecration of the
body in any way, shape or form is just not
It just ain't right. There are some times you're just
not going to come back from carrying around a piece
of somebody's skull. And I don't care that it was
only two days. I don't care that it was only
a day. I care that she took it, because what's
going on.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
In that mind, Christa's lawyers see it differently.
Speaker 6 (17:24):
So I would say, yeah, that the skull is there,
and if you isolate it, you've got a really bad fact.
But you've got to look at a little bit more
than that.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
For Steve Ferrell, this wild act of violence, the taking
of the skull fragment, is evidence of just how unwell
Krista was, how broken she was a kid with severe
mental illness, a lengthy history of sexual abuse and deprivation.
It's not that she was irredeemable or unfixable, but that
she had been failed over and over by people and systems.
Speaker 6 (18:01):
I think it's a symbol of I've taken a life
and I am proud of it, or I don't care,
or it's funny, or I don't know what exactly was
going on then, But I think it's that, and I
think that there's a reaction to someone that callous, is
irredeemable or unrestorable, as you all might say. And if
(18:25):
you look at it as such a simple story, which
is what the criminal justice system wants us to do, guilty,
not guilty, life, death, that's easy, and it's very easy
to get a limited snippet of something, draw conclusion and
(18:47):
stand firmly on it. If you look at that skull
as the desperate attempt of a sexually abused, stunted, mentally
ill little girl, you have pity. If that's all you
can do to get attention, if that's how you win
over your boyfriend, if that's how you impressed the kids
(19:09):
at school.
Speaker 5 (19:10):
It's hard to say what was going on in Christa's
head at the time, but I do think that there's
a lot of evidence and testimony that she was going
through a manic period and was very agitated with the
bipolar disorder at the time, So I hesitate to say
that she even really thought about or was consciously knowing
(19:32):
what was going on.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
This is Molly Kincaid, another one of Christa's attorneys.
Speaker 5 (19:37):
Christa's life was just this locomotive of violence, instability, lack
of connection, lack of people she could trust, rely on,
feel loved, and then the train went off the tracks.
But that's like to be expected because she she had
(20:00):
nothing and she had no one.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
The idea that Christa wasn't just someone guilty, but someone
irredeemable had quickly taken hold in Knoxville, and so when
prosecutors announced that they would be seeking the death penalty.
It felt to many like an opportunity for justice, like
killing Christa wouldn't just avenge Colleen's death, it would stop
Christa from doing more harm. And at Christa's trial, which
(20:28):
introduced a whole new layer of dysfunction to the case,
the debate was never over guilt or innocence, but whether
Christa should live or die. We know now that Christa
was sentenced to death, but her lawyers today say that
she never had a chance.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
I should be to one in Percy, not for I
should be one they punished for.
Speaker 4 (20:51):
This crab, not for.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Ye time on Proof of Life. Unrestorable is executive produced
and hosted by Me, Sarah Chulevin and Beth Carris. Our
producer is Kathleen Goldhart, Mixing and sound design by Reza Daya.
For anonymous content, Jessica Grimshaw is our executive producer, Jennifer
(21:18):
Sears is our executive in charge of production, and nick
Yannas is our legal council. For iHeart, executive producer Christina
Everett and supervising producer Abu Zafar
Hosts And Creators
Beth Karas
Sarah Treleaven
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