The worst thing that these people, the state, the justice system, and the prison could have done to me is by flay me.

And that's what happened.

This is Krista Pike in a statement recorded by one of her attorneys on Our Behalf.

And you know, as ironic as that may sound, I'm a people person and I love to be around people.

I'm very affectionate.

My love language is touch and affection.

And to be completely isolated from everyone, aside from you know, accidental touch while I'm being handcuffed or being padded down during the search, was excruciating for me, and it left me very miserable, very lonely.

For almost three decades, Krista has been in solitary confinement on death Row in Nashville for her role in the of nineteen year old Colleen Slimmer.

But in September twenty twenty four, while we were making this podcast, Christa's legal team told us that they had big news they wanted to share.

Thanks to a recent lawsuit, Christa was out of solitary.

So the summer of twenty twenty just to see how differently she was being treated than the men on Tennessee seth Row because they could move around.

This is Randy Spidey, one of Christa's lawyers.

Like they had free run of their pod because there were only other folks that were also under a death sentence in their pod.

So there's this strange law on Tennessee.

I think it's strange that folks who've been sentenced to death have to be kept separate from general population.

And that works out fine for the men.

They can still have like group therapy and group religious classes, or group academic classes and group arts and crafts and on all that kind of stuff and still have a community out there.

But if you're the only woman, and obviously doesn't work that way.

That stark difference in treatment between Tennessee's only woman on death row and the dozens of men in the same situation prompted Christa's lawyers to start thinking about filing a civil rights lawsuit on her behalf, drawing attention to her almost thirty years in solitary confinement.

And so we started pushing as best we could and document and stuff as best we could with the prison to get contact legal visits, and it just really wasn't going anywhere.

So I contacted a friend of mine who I had gone to college with who had gone on to law school and was working at Bess Barry, which is one of the larger firms in Nashville.

They've got several lawyers over there who've done a lot of work with folks who are incarcerated and with folks who are on death row in Tennessee.

So we contacted them and said, we'd like you to take a look at Chris's case and to see if there's anything you can do with like a civil rights claim a nineteen eighty three claim.

A nineteen eighty three claim is a civil action filed under a federal statute that allows individuals to sue government officials on the basis that their constitutional or statutory rights have been violated.

Eventually, we're able to reach a settlement where Christa kind of has a step down process, which was very important for Christa and very important for us for this to be successful.

But Christa didn't want to just throw open the doors and let her into the pod because she was afraid of that being overwhelming to her having I mean, she's been locked down for twenty five years something like that, almost for three years.

The prison agreed to a three step implementation where Christa would gradually be reintroduced to being around other people.

She started just having people in the cage next to her at wreck, because originally when she would go out to wrect, like no one could be even out there with her, so like there were cages like little dog runs, but there couldn't be anybody next to her in a cage, so.

Like not even that close.

And then they moved from that to where they let folks in the lobby with her, so she got to have a meal with people with three to five other people in the lobby, got to have some just kind of downtime.

We took her out instructions on how to play chess the other day because she actually can play a game with someone.

I'm trying to figure out how to get her rook cards because she and I both grew up playing roku as opposed to spades.

But they've been playing spades a good bit, and so then that eventually increased to I think just in the last week or so, she's been able to wreck in the same cage with three to these three to five other people that she's been with, and so it's a every couple of months, it graduates up a little more to she's going to be able to just live within the pod like the other women in that pod do.

And she's not quite there yet, but she's getting close.

To come out of that and be allowed to be around the ladies in here and to be able to hug someone or have my hair braided, or just to have a meal with people and interact socially.

It's amazing to me to just feel kind of normal again.

One of the things Kristal was most excited about was a job washing down the prison shower stalls, something that touches the spectrum of normalcy in a deeply abnormal situation.

But it's all a major adjustment for someone who's had such limited contact with other people for her entire adult life.

It's strange because it's so new, and it's still kind of raw to me.

It's weird to have people, you know, walk up to me really fast, or walk behind me, for people to touch me when I don't know they're going to.

It's still strange.

Sometimes the sounds the smells are new and different.

But it's all just exciting and I'm happy about all of it.

I waited a long time for this.

She was so nervous but so excited just about like being able to talk to people without barriers in between them, and.

She has just loved it.

And it's not like she's she's giddy, but there's a composure about her right now that is different.

It's a lack of a desperation that is different than I've seen her in the last couple of years.

For Christa's advocates, this ruling and her release from solituar is a form of justice.

They've spent decades fighting for her, attempting to overturn her death sentence.

They argue that she has suffered first as a kid with no sense of safety, placed in hugely traumatizing situations, and now as an adult who has been serving the equivalent of a life sentence but still faces execution.

But for some people, assertions about what Christa deserves are in natural tension with the idea of justice for Colleen, who was murdered on the cusp of adulthood, that Christa's participation in that act is fundamentally unforgivable, and that her suffering is an appropriate remedy part of a reasonable set of consequences for committing such a reprehensible crime.

One of the people who believes that Christa deserves to be punished for the rest of her life.

Is Colleen's mother actually?

To be honest, I wanted to just go ahead and kill her like she did my daughter.

Many victims or their surviving loved ones cling to retribution, including the fulfillment of a death sentence, partly because the justice system rarely offers them a more satisfying option.

Thirty years later, is retribution the only way to get justice for Calleen?

I'm Beth Carris and this is Unrestorable Season two Proof of Life, an original podcast from Anonymous content and iHeartRadio.

So we want to start first of all with having you tell us about Calleen, like, who was what.

Was she like?

She was a child that was so giving.

Sarah Trelevan and I connected over zoom with Mae Martinez, the mother of Colleen Slemmer.

Shed work with a lot of handicapped children.

She worked for his close system painting schools in summertime, you know, for the getting ready for the following year.

She was just well not you know, very friendly.

You know, she loved to doing different things.

And you had other children besides Colleen, right, I did?

And was she close to her sibling.

They were they were very close.

They were two years apart.

Why did Colleen go to job Corps?

What did she want to get out of Job Corps?

Computers?

She did computer training with her stepdad and they were known as computer geeks and too they will play a lot of lemon games and a lot of stuff like that and fix it and he even have a T shirt that says computer Geeks on it.

So I made it into a teddy bear for her when she was killed.

Well, Krista's team is focused on the present, on who Christa is now and how far she's come.

May is understandably fixed on the past.

On the cold January evening in nineteen ninety five when her daughter was murdered, When was the last time you tooked?

The night she was killed, we talked.

She called me up and she said, Mom, she said, I'm going to talk to you.

Said I'm very upset, and I didn't have a good signal.

I said, well, i'll call you back, and I called her back at ten o'clock and it was very too late.

She didn't say what was upsetting her mom.

The street kids that won't be me alone.

They were picking at her in class.

That Friday, about ten o'clock in the morning, I was at the base with my youngest one and I got called from to Tech New York saying, this is homicide.

I need you to call me back, and I needed to identify calling's body.

You know, I didn't know anything right away.

When I went into Tennessee.

I went to the office of you know, Brand New York, and he showed me pictures.

The whole thing was like, you don't understand it when they show you this, this is what happened to your daughter.

But the horror didn't end there.

I thought I buried a whole child, and ten months later I find out they had her spelt.

Part of the indignity of being a victim of violent crime is that the victim's body becomes temporary property of the state and they do what they need to do to examine it to prove their case.

May says The state released Colleen's body to her piece by piece, and it took years before she got all of her daughter back.

The fragment of Colleen's skull that Christa took after the murder, the one that played an outsized role at trial and in media reports, was kept by the State of Tennessee for fourteen years until it was finally returned to May in a box.

And then I had to reopen the grave and I finally brought her home.

For the last thirty years, May has been thrust into an unwelcome spotlight.

During Christa's Knoxville trial, May became the face of a community's grief, and she has spoken out about the case in the years since, even asking the court in twenty twenty one to set an execution date for Christa, saying that she wanted to see Christa executed before she died.

She's also expressed her anger with a criminal justice system that she believes marginalizes victims.

I just didn't think the whole thing was going to be sitting here and waiting thirty years later.

Is there anything that could have been done that to you would have made this feel more like.

Justice releasing her skull and her body parts back to me all at one time.

You must have a sort of this must be such a stark before and after for you in your life, that there was your life before this happened, and then your life after.

Yeah, yeah, And I just wonder it changed me totally.

When calling is killed.

I lost probably twenty percent of myself.

Is there anything that you think at this point that can somehow bring you some sense of peace related to Colleen's terrible.

I don't think there's anything in peace because you've always got that wondering, you know, worse Colleen, why is she here?

And what would she be doing at that age?

There's nothing really you can bring peace that you just have to deal with it.

You know, no matter what they do, Chris, if she was put to deck today, it's still going to aggravate me the fact that Colleen can't do this and do that.

So, you know, but I thank God that I knew what happened to Colleen and that they were able to catch them quick enough.

Instead of going for the rest of my life where is she?

So that I do have that I know she was there and it happened, and it's done, and ever with I would never have to wonder where is she or what happened.

May has a memorial for Colleen in her backyard.

There are rose bushes and a plaque with Colleen's name and angels own them.

Now fast forward to today, now, thirty years later, can you accept that today Krista she's forty nine.

She's not the same person she was when she was eighteen, when she murdered Colleen.

Can you accept that she's not the same person.

No, she's the same person.

I don't think she's changed at all.

I really doubt the fact that she tried to kill another inmate.

I think she's the same person as always and she'll never change.

She'll always had that evil she should kill again.

I have no doubt about that.

She's had over the last three decades, a lot of lawyers post conviction fighting for her, appealing and habeasts and post conviction petitions and all kinds of things, trying to find error at trial, and she hasn't prevailed.

She's sort of on the last of it.

But what are your thoughts about these teams of lawyers who have been working for Krista to spare her life, not to get her free, but to spare her life.

I think they're stupid, We'll be honest, because I think, why are they wasting the money knowing in the outcome if they do get her with life, she's going to go out and do it again.

I think they're wasting their money, and this stag's money.

I think what they should have did was help a victim.

Why didn't they help other victims?

Why did they didn't help me?

And they never did it?

You know, they was like, here take your child and barrier.

Really, but that's how they are.

Have you had any interaction with over the years?

Has she ever written to you?

No?

Then?

Whatsoever?

If you could talk to her or send her a message, I mean, what would you say.

I wouldn't talk to her.

I wouldn't give it a satisfaction.

I have nothing to say to her.

She did me wrong, she did coming wrong.

Chris is on the sort of the last legs of all her appeals and efforts in court, right, I mean she should make a play for clemency to the governor, but she may get an execution date.

Will you attend her execution?

Yes, if I'm alive, I will be there holding Collin's.

Picture up and may can I just ask you were shaking your head when Beth was mentioning the execution date?

Are you?

Can you tell me a bit about that reaction?

This is never going to happen.

She is the youngest and always being a female there, They'll never execute her.

Never.

That's why I shook my head.

May is convinced that Christa's lawyers don't just want to overturn her death sentence, but to free her from prison.

It's a prospect that feels unbearable that Krista would somehow be able to return to some semblance of a normal life, as May continues to grieve her daughter.

As you've said, you know, nothing will bring Colleen back.

Is there something in this case that might feel like justice to you, that might that might feel like justice had been served for Colleen?

Not really.

I think about Colleen a lot, what she could have been and what she would have been.

For Christa's lawyers, there's no ambivalence about advocating for Christa and honoring the memory of Colleen.

It's devastating to think of that that life cut short and what that meant to siblings, to family, to friends, to all of those folks.

Part of that broad lens is the acceptance that while they advocate for the incarcerated, they often see that a strictly adversarial approach and the punishment of their clients brings little sense of resolution for victims and their families.

I think there's a sense with the work that we do that we don't care or empathize with the victims, and I have just not found that to be the case.

It's devastatingly sad that we are all in this position right now.

I think we're also better off if we figure out a way to get out of it together rather than just kind of pick sides and heral insults back and forth.

And I think that to the extent there's healing possible in this case, it's got to involve everybody.

I do not see conflict in representing Christa and seeing Colleen as a really beautiful person who should have had a full life.

This is Anna sent an investigator who works with Christa's attorneys.

Colleen was young too.

There's no excuse for the loss of her life.

I think it's a tragedy.

I don't think that any of my work discounts that that's a tragedy.

And I don't view what we're doing is trying to present an excuse or trying to rationalize or trying to make light of the loss of Colleen's life.

In all of my cases, I find it important to learn what I can about the victim's family.

I look at the crime scene footage, I watch media coverage about what the victim's family are saying, because I don't ever want to reduce them to just part of my client's story.

It is so important to recognize that we're doing this because somebody's life was lost.

But if we're thinking about justice, Chris is receiving punishment for the loss of Colleen's life.

So much of our system for those who commit violent crimes is based on the idea of retributive punishment, that doing harm means you deserve harm, an eye for an eye.

But the purpose of punishment in the criminal justice system is not just retribution.

It also includes deterring future crimes, protection of the public, and crucially, rehabilitation.

Rehabilitation services are not typically available to death row inmates who have been cast off as unrestorable, but the question is not whether most of the people who end up on death row are capable of change, but whether, having been deemed unworthy of life, the rehabilitation of those inmates can play a role in creating a sense of justice for victims and those who grieve them.

I think we think a lot about we think vengeance or exacting some sort of prices is justice.

I took some theology classes for a while when I didn't think I wanted to be a lawyer anymore.

And one of the things that I always thought was fascinating was we were reading some of the profits from back in the Old Testament, and the way they thought about justice.

I've always loved this is like they thought about sin as the breaking of a relationship, and that makes perfect sense.

Like anytime a crime has committed, a relationship has been broken.

Even if those two people had never known each other, that's a relationship now, Like those two are going to think about each other for the rest of their lives, and that relationship is broken, and what justice is is the process of putting that back together.

And I've always liked that, Like that makes a lot of sense to me.

That justice is healing the wound, and that's going to look like a lot of different things for a lot of different people.

And I think one of the reasons that you see so much litigation and so much talk around death penalty issues is I think a lot of people in this society understand that a death sentence being carried out does not serve in that healing process in any way.

And you can talk, I mean, victims' families feel like that victims' families are not not exclusively, but are widely just as frustrated with the system and the state as anything else in the process.

And so, why do you think we keep doing it?

I think it's I think there are a lot of reasons we keep doing it.

I think it's an easy thing to politicize.

It's I think a lot of people think they know how they feel about it.

It's one of those issues that you don't have to think about in a personal way until you have to think about it in a personal way.

And it doesn't touch most people's lives, but when it does, like you'll start thinking differently about it.

When I went to court on the day that they determined I was going to take a plea, no one had ever talked to me about victim services.

No one had talked to me about victim rights or who was hurt or what that meant, or surviving people or any of that stuff.

Ashley Sellers served time at the Kay Johnson Rehabilitation Center with Christa.

She too was convicted of murder while still a teenager.

In her case, she was present when her boyfriend shot a twenty three year old woman named Cynthia Page.

There was a man and a woman who stood up and talked about what a horrible human being I was and how I deserve to spend the rest of my life in prison.

Those two people were Cynthia's parents.

The two things that they said specifically was that I had never shown any remorse and I had never taken any accountability.

This is almost three y it's over two years all right, going into this, And that was the two things that they continued to highlight.

They didn't say I hadn't been in solitary enough.

They didn't say, you know, she hasn't been punished enough, she didn't experience enough trauma.

It wasn't any of that.

It was I did not take accountability and I had not shown remorse.

And so I raised my hand and I asked if I could speak with them, and so the judge allowed just the three of us to go behind a closed door.

And I didn't go into the things about my life or what had happened.

I just told them that their daughter's.

Death saved my life.

And they grabbed me and they hugged me, and they cried with me, and they prayed with me, and they loved on me.

Ultimately, they gave me the cross that their daughter Cynthia used to wear, and I didn't have any language for that moment.

I didn't know what that meant.

I didn't know what that could be called.

I didn't know anything.

I just knew that somebody said some stuff about me that wasn't really who I was, and that I had been troubled by the situation about Cynthia's death for a very long time, but had no way of knowing even how to process or do anything with that.

The language Ashley was looking for was restorative justice, a process of bringing together victims and those who have caused them harm in an effort to find mutually beneficial ways to heal and move forward.

I was able to see the amount of healing that the page families seemed to have in thirty seconds with me was so much greater than anything that the system had offered them in over two years.

Right.

They wanted answers, they wanted conversation, they wanted accountability, they wanted remorse, they wanted that, you know, they didn't necessarily say they wanted punishment.

When Ashley was released from prison in twenty seventeen, she became an advocate for youth Justice reform as well as restorative justice.

I know that what I have seen in the work that I'm in and what I have read in the experience of the people across the nation who have had intensive harms happened to them and their family, that the system in its current state does not create healing and therefore doesn't necessarily give an option for people to define what justice really means for them.

And I would argue that for our Colleen's family, a system that failed them over and over and over.

Also the States said this is what justice will look like for you.

You know, it seems like, on one hand, we're so committed to this idea of good versus evil, but it's that's not what makes us feel better.

That's not what brings us closure, that's not what brings us a sense of resolution.

It's it's I think, arguably it makes us feel worse.

But we're so committed to that narrative.

Yeah, I think, I mean, I think we're conditioned to that.

I think we're conditioned to our response.

We have to punish them, you know, we lean into the space of someone has to be incarcerated, they have to have surveillance, they have to do restitution probation, community service.

That's it.

But we never talk about healing journey.

We never talk about accountability, We never talk about remorse, We never talk about these things.

But over the years, I've continued to hear repetitively from people who have been harmed.

That's almost what every person says.

I don't want it to happen to me again, and I don't want it to happen to somebody else.

Krista being released from solitary wasn't the only breaking news we got while working on this podcast.

Not long after that happened, there was another development, and this one had the potential to change everything.

So she called and she clearly had not heard.

So she was in a great mood, like she was very chipper, And I told her that, like I needed to tell her something, and it was devastating.

That's next time on Proof of Life.

Unrestorable is executive produced and hosted by Me, Sarah Chilevin, and Beth Carras Mixing and sound design by Reza Daiah for anonymous content.

Jessica Grimshaw is our executive producer, Jennifer Sears is our executive in charge of production, and Nicole Pronk is our legal counsel for iHeart, executive producer Christina Everett and supervising producer Abu Zafar.