It is therefore ordered that you shall be put to death after you know.

The prescribe by law that you shall be transferred to custody for the warning.

At the Tennessee Christmas.

It took less than two hours for a jury to sentence twenty year old Krista Pike to death and further, the twelfth.

Day of January nineteen ninety seven, your body shall be subjected to shop by.

A sufficient curme to electricity.

My God, January twelfth, nineteen ninety seven, it wasn't just the day Kristal was marked to die.

It was also the two year anniversary of Colleen Slemmer's death.

Mister tied to the doctor.

During Christa's trial, there was little doubt that she killed Colleen.

Conviction wasn't the question.

The real question was whether Christa was going to pay for the crime with her life.

In the end, the jury would agree with prosecutors that imposing the death penalty would deliver some sense.

Of justice, not just.

For Colleen's family, but for the community of Knoxville and for everyone watching, shaking their heads that we live in a world where things like this happen.

But thirty years later, Christa is still waiting to die, And for those three decades, Christa's advocates had been arguing that it didn't have to turn out this way, that her original defense team had a chance to explain to the jury who Christa was and how, at eighteen years old, she had ended up in a wooded area of Knoxville.

A chunk of concrete raised above Colleen's head to explain that murdering a teenage girl in a vicious rage wasn't a reflection of unresolvable depravity, but something that emerged from a place of extreme brokenness and desperation.

I'm Sarah J.

Levin, and this is Unrestorable, Season two, Proof of Life, an original podcast from anonymous content and iHeartRadio.

Can you just tell me where we are?

Just where we're saying, yeah, sure.

We're sitting right now out on the outdoor plaza of the City County Building.

That's the main government building for Knoxville and Knox County.

This has been the center of government since the late nineteen seventies.

It's kind of ironic that you have a building sitting on such a beautiful setting because we've got the Tennessee River below us, You've got Riverbank it's a beautiful day.

When Beth Carris and I went down to Knoxville in August twenty twenty four, we met up with John North, a reporter who covered Krista Pike's trial for the murder of Colleen Slimmer, it was a steamy, sunny day.

This is also a building that houses many inmates, because in the belly of this building is a jail that has I don't know, one hundred and fifty to two hundred cells.

And this is where, once upon a time, the worst of the worst were held while they were awaiting trial.

Is this where Krista and to Daryl would have been while they were waiting trial?

All three of the defendants would have been held in the belly of this building at some point.

Yes, Christa was charged alongside her boyfriend to Darryl's ship and another young woman named Shidola Peterson.

We're focusing on Krista because she was the only one who faced death.

In nineteen ninety five, Tennessee law forbade executing anyone who is under eighteen at the time they committed their crime.

So even though Christa and to Darryl were both accused of killing Colleen, the law would hold them to different standards.

At the time of Christa's trial, there seemed to be a little talk about whether it was reasonable that she and to Daryl might face dramatically different consequences because of their minor age difference.

But in the decades since, questions about where that line should be drawn, just how young is too young to be sentenced to death, have only grown.

I think it's fair to say that this was for Knoxville, a very heavy, heavy thing that was about to go down, because, first of all, we don't look at young people as getting involved in savage crimes like this.

Certainly it's still thankfully considered an aberration, and this was a slaughter, and the idea that young people would do this was shocking and troubling to I think everybody be included.

You also had this torture aspect, hints of Satanism, which was like, what the hell is that.

The case was presided over by Judge Mary Beth Leebowitz, who was appointed the first female criminal court judge in Knox County in nineteen eighty nine.

Judge Leebowitz's courtroom was very small, had a limited number of people it could accommodate.

You sat very close to both the defendant, the prosecution, and the jury.

Many saw the case as a slam dunk for the prosecution.

There was so much evidence against Christa, her own confession, the clothes they found soaked in Colleen's blood, and that piece of Collen skull which had already created a media frenzy and played a starring role at trial.

Well, as you would imagine, all eyes were always on Christa, always still are thirty years later.

People pay attention to Christa, so we were always looking at how she was handling things.

Jury's selection, especially in a high profile case where capital punishment is on the table, it can be a tricky thing.

The defense wants jurors who might have empathy for the accused, might be able to see a person beyond their worst acts.

The prosecution wants durs who might be inclined to punish someone for their transgressions, in this case, someone who'd be inclined to punish someone by death if the evidence warranted it.

One juror was excused after she started crying as she tried to explain that she had always believed in capital punishment but now couldn't stomach the idea of being responsible for someone's death.

All the while Krista watched.

At times, John says the gravity of what was happening didn't seem to register with her.

She was pretty chipper, she was sunny, she would smile, she would talk to people.

She'd gotten friendly with another TV reporter and waived at him one morning as she was walking into a court.

In the pictures I've seen of Krista at her trial, she's wearing a series of frilly, floral dresses.

Her mass of auburn curls are pulled up in a scrunchy sometimes in her French braid, and she has these frizzy bangs.

She has a spray of acne over her chin and pudgy cheeks.

She really looks like a kid, maybe even younger than she was.

A jury of seven men and five women was finally chosen.

They heard testimony about how Colleen had fought for her life, about the pentagram that was carved into her chest, about how she was cut dozens of times with a box cutter and hit over and over.

They heard the confession Krista made to Detective Randy Yorke.

She has kind of ramack face, as Christ's confession was played for the court.

She appeared to be crying, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue.

There were moments when obviously I don't know if it was guilt or what hit her, but she would see some of the clothing.

I think I remember when the clothing came out of Colleen's Krista put her head down and I think was affected by that.

The evidence was hard to hear and see.

This is the skull from the victim.

Doctor Sandra Elkins was a medical examiner who did Colleen's autopsy.

She brought Colleen's skull into court to show the jury Colleen's cause of death.

Colleen had injuries all over her body, but the fatal blows were to her head.

At least a minimum of two separate blows causing this massive fracture on the last side of the skull.

Taking into account soft tissue and skull, I can say that there were a minimum of five blows to the head.

Doctor Elkins showed the or the fragment Krista had taken and how it fit back into Colleen's skull.

John says that may Martinez, Colleen's mother, sat through every day of the trial and made a point of speaking to the press.

Colleen's mother wanted to be there for every bit of it, including some bits that were just got awful.

I mean when they brought Colleen's clothing out and May got to look at her pink sweater which was blood stained, and her jeans where Christa had stabbed her in the crotch.

You know, that stuff was wrenching.

I was very angry.

In May twenty twenty five, Beth and I spoke with May Martinez, Colleen's mother.

She told us what she recalls about being in court that week in nineteen ninety six, and what it was like to sit so close to the woman who killed her daughter.

She was sitting across from me and she kept looking at me.

But we're told that we can't look at them or say anything to them.

We can't say anything for when you're there at a trial, the dog tells you to keep quiet, no emotions, do nothing.

And she kept looking over and her family lives an over but it was rough.

The hardest thing was is seeing Colleen's coat, her shoes, her remains being passed around in the trial.

I mean, they passed her skull around.

It was not good.

John remembers Colleen's mother being stoic throughout the trial.

Well, there must have been some point where you got emotional.

Would you wait until you got back to the hotel or wherever you were staying.

Them outside in the courtroom, Outside of the courtroom, I got emotion.

You know.

It was not easy.

I seem to recall reading that she had a sweater on that you recognized.

Yeah, she had jacket her father water a green jacket for Christmas, and she had that arm, and then she had her new sweater that I had gotten her and her jeans.

Beyond the graphic evidence, prosecutors also worked hard to show Crista as a cold blooded killer with little remorse.

Writing at the time in the Knoxville News Sentinel, John North noted that quote the defense has done little to refute Pike's acts.

Rather, they claimed that she murdered Slammer in a fit of rage she couldn't control.

End quote.

This was backed up by a defense witness named doctor Eric Engham.

The clinical psychologist testified that Christa, despite being extremely bright, especially for someone who only completed ninth grade, suffered from borderline personality disorder.

And was addicted to Pott.

Doctor Engham said he believed Krista hadn't intended to kill Colleen, but things had escalated and she had lost control.

He added that Christa acted elated about the murder because she believed killing Colleen would help her preserve her relationship with to Darryl.

What the jury heard over the course of the trial was devastating for everyone and undoubtedly damning for Christa.

What they didn't hear and what was going on in the background of the trial was much more complicated.

I'm going to hand things off to Beth here so she can take you through the mess on the legal side of things.

So do you think Bill Talman was ineffective?

Yes, that's Kelly Gleeson, one of Christa's post conviction attorneys, and Bill Talman, one of Christa's trial lawyers, was an experienced Knoxville defense attorney.

At the time, he had never done a capital case.

Death penalty cases are complicated and with so much at stake, lawyers with experience are important, but Christa's parents didn't have the money to hire their own expensive lawyer, so the court appointed Talman.

Steve Ferrell, another one of Christa's attorneys.

Today, says Christa seemed to trust Talman and seemed to find some comfort in his warm, folksy nature.

A big part of his strategy was they'll never give the death penalty to a pretty little like you.

I think he believed that.

Talman later denied that.

He said that.

Why he gets this capital high profile case is a mystery.

But a lawyer without capital case experience was not their only issue.

There should have been a chagent venue.

Kelly Gleeson says that emotions in Knoxville were supercharged, especially with the ongoing suggestion that Colleen's murder was part of a satanic ritual.

She should not have been tried in that saturated media environment.

The norms in Tennessee at the time were to move a case like that.

Christa's attorneys did file emotion for a change of venue, but it was denied.

There were a lot of questions about Talman's judgment, but one of the most consequential happened just before he even stepped foot in Judge Leebwoitz's courtroom for trial.

There was a plea offer that came in days before trial.

The offer was life without parole, a lot for a young woman to consider, but certainly better than death.

I don't think there were any extensive discussions with Christa about this might be your best hope.

That is what Christa's asking for now.

It could have all been done and been over in nineteen ninety six, and we wouldn't have to have gone through all this, and the victims wouldn't have had to gone through all this.

According to Kelly Gleeson, Talman did not spend much time talking to Christa about the offer, about the opportunity to spare her life.

She says that later Talman said that was his biggest regret, not spending more time with Christa to explain the plea offer.

But Christa didn't get that opportunity.

Instead, she put her fate in the hands of the jury, and in a final blow, in the middle of the defense case, and shortly before all the testimony wrapped up, a juror told some of his fellow jurors that he didn't feel comfortable with the idea of sentencing Christa to death.

She was so young, he said.

The other jurors reported him to the judge.

After questioning the juror out of the presence of the others, the judge removed him, finding his answers about the death penalty were inconsistent and confused.

For a jury to render their verdict, all twelve jurors must agree.

Randy Spivey, one of Christa's attorneys today, says that with that one juror gone, the likelihood of a hung jury or a life sentence was greatly diminished.

That's the one you need, and he's gone.

On March twenty ninth, nineteen ninety six, after just ninety minutes of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict.

Christo was found guilty of first degree murder and first degree conspiracy to commit murder.

Once Christa was convicted, the sentencing phase was set to begin the next morning.

It was a chance for Christa's lawyers to convince the jury that though Christa was guilty, she didn't deserve to die.

The jury had the option of sentencing Christa to life in prison.

At this point, Christa's team's job was to present mitigating evidence, details of Christa's life from her earliest years that might help the jury understand how and why Christa acted out with so much rage.

To see Christa as someone who wasn't beyond repair, but desperately in need of help.

Reporter John North remembers this phase.

Well, I remember thinking, the defense has not got a great hand to play with because of the nature of the crime, because she talked to the cops, because of her behavior, because of the souvenir's skull, because the attack went on for thirty minutes to an hour.

I think they did the best that they could.

Could they have done better?

Oh?

Yeah, absolutely, and I'm sure they would tell you that today.

Much of the mitigation evidence depended on the testimony of a psychologist named Diana McCoy, who had spent months preparing a report by interviewing Christa and her family members.

What McCoy found was a life characterized by chronic abuse, neglect, and instability.

She was shuffled between.

Her mom and dad.

Her father beat her so badly with a belt and ritualistic fashion the scars on her back were visible.

She was emotionally abused.

Her mom cared more about alcohol and the man in her life than Christa, so she had such adversity to overcome.

There was seldom food in the house.

Christa's bed didn't even have sheets.

But that wasn't the worst of it.

She was sexually molested by her grandmother's boyfriend.

Christo was only two years old, and.

Because of that molestation, she was going to school drawing pictures of mailed Gena Talia with a devil ae them.

And you know she wasn't yetting counseling, when if that had happened today, that child would be sitting with a therapist immediately.

Christo was sexually assaulted again when she was eleven.

She told her mom, but her mom didn't believe her.

A year later, when she was twelve, Christa attempted suicide for the first time.

She was raped again at seventeen.

There's a story that I don't know why this one sticks with me the worst, because sexual assault, all those things are so much worse than this.

This is Steve Ferrell again, another of Krista's attorneys.

There's an episode where her father has her and he's tired of her.

Christo was around ten or twelve when this happened.

She had been staying with her father in West Virginia and her mother was in North Carolina.

So he drives her from West Virginia down to North Carolina and dumps her on the front porch with her.

Suitcase and no one's home.

I mean to me that that's almost like a metaphor of her whole childhood.

She's alone.

She's just alone.

Yeah, she's completely alone, navigating this world with mental health issues that no one's looking into.

Teachers, her parents, others who knew Christa as a child remember a girl plagued by mental health problems.

Christa later reported that at the time she killed Colleen, she was in the middle of a manic episode, staying up all night, chronically agitated, unable to stop her mind from spinning.

She didn't know what was wrong with her, but even as a child and as an adolescent, she was showing signs a post traumatic stress disorder and bipolar disorder, but that doesn't get diagnosed.

When Christa arrived at Job Corps in the summer of nineteen ninety four, she filled out in all about Me intake form where she was asked to describe herself.

She said her.

Favorite food was pizza, and that she she wanted to be a neonatal physical therapist and work with the most vulnerable newborn babies.

She also said that she hoped to get her life straight and that she wished she had a quote normal life end quote.

She wanted to be a nurse.

She wanted to make something of herself.

Job Carr was a nightmare.

It was extremely violent, It was extremely chaotic.

You know, this is a conveyor belt into this disaster.

The portrait psychologist Diana McCoy crafted of Christa was of a young woman in agony, a victim of serial abuse, and a hostage to untreated mental illness.

If allowed, McCoy would have made the case that Christa killed Colleen not because she was inherently rotten and irredeemable, but because of a lifetime of trauma, family dysfunction, mental illness, and stress, all making her incapable of controlling her behavior.

McCoy's planned testimony would have suggested to the jury that Christa could get better with help, that she could claim a life of recognizable value.

But that never happened.

She was going to be the sole witness.

That was the plan, But.

The night before the trial that all changed.

McCoy was told not to testify by Christa's own lawyers.

There are discrepant stories about why that decision was made, but at the end of the day, those councils switched to plan the night before capital sentencing.

Trial instead Chris's lawyer decided to call three witnesses, Christa's mother, father, and aunt.

I should be the one in hersy not for her.

I should be the one to be punished for this crab, not for her.

Yeah, I was a too.

This is Christ's mother, Carissa Hansen testifying, trying a bit too late to befend her daughter and take some of the blame.

In that penalty phase.

Was not a single positive thing about Krista.

It was all what a problem she was.

They didn't see kind of the root of the problems.

We didn't have anyone to connect the dots.

You need someone telling that jury that this girl who has been involved in a horrific crime, has had horrific.

Things happen to her.

And that's not an excuse.

It never is an excuse, But it's a reason to have some sympathy.

That's the role of mitigation.

Reporter John North confirms that their testimony did little to dispel the idea that Christa was unrestorable.

What was the appropriate punishment for a crime of this nature?

The utter taking, slaughter, torture of an innocent human being who'd been lured out on a rainy night in January what's a probate.

You reach a point where you have to say, Okay, you had a bad experience in life, but do you know what you're doing?

Are you aware of free will?

Are you aware of how people conduct themselves?

And what's your responsibility for your own personal actions?

All good questions, but it was the job of Chris's lawyer to argue that she wasn't fully aware of how to conduct herself or unable.

Instead, the person who should have been fighting for the jury to hear that seemed, at least in the view of Chris's lawyers today, inappropriately focused on other interests.

He had her sign a release giving him the media rights to her story if ever.

It was sold.

After Chris's conviction, Her lawyer, Bill Palman, had christ to sign a contract allowing him to profit off the selling of her story.

And the problem with I mean, it's a clear conflict of interest.

You don't represent someone and sell their story.

You represent them, or you're a journalist and you tell the story.

You can't do both.

Ultimately, the jury was not persuaded to spare Christa's life.

She was sentenced to.

The electric chair for killing Colleen and sent to the Tennessee Prison for Women.

Barely an adult still struggling with untreated mental illness, Christa began a tumultuous new chapter waiting on her own death.

I can't explain my thinking at the time, because I was insane, I was miserable, and I just didn't want to be here anymore and was too weak.

I think to take my own life, and I'm not sure, but it was a really really bad mental state.

Be really bad.

That's next time on Proof of Life.

Unrestorable is executive produced and hosted by Me, Sarah Tulevin 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 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