The failed attempt to execute Christa Pike has created an unprecedented legal and procedural mess in Tennessee.
But the man who helped investigate the crime that put her on death row says the public should not forget what happened to 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer — or how Pike acted when she described it.
Former Knoxville Police Chief Phil Keith recalled Pike as ruthless, remorseless and “almost giddy” while recounting the murder to investigators.
Keith recently revisited the case in the documentary No Mercy: Christa Pike Unraveled. He later confirmed the substance of those remarks to Fox News and described Pike in two blunt words: “pure evil.”
The former chief said Pike did not sound frightened or grief-stricken during the interviews. His recollection was that she spoke as though she wanted investigators to know what she had done, and he said her demeanor left the impression that she was bragging.
That account sits at the center of the renewed debate because Pike’s lawyers are asking for mercy after the state failed to carry out her sentence.
The legal questions are new. The crime, conviction and evidence that produced the death sentence are not.
Now Tennessee must decide how to proceed after its September 30 execution attempt failed.
Gov. Bill Lee said Wednesday that he expects Pike’s death sentence to remain in place unless a court decides otherwise:
Pike’s attorneys are pressing Lee to commute the sentence to life without parole, arguing that Tennessee should not be allowed to put her through a second execution attempt.
Their appeal comes more than three decades after Slemmer was murdered on the University of Tennessee’s Knoxville campus.
Pike was 18 at the time. She, her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp and Shadolla Peterson were accused of luring Slemmer away from the federal Job Corps center where all four were enrolled.
Slemmer was beaten, cut and struck in the head with a large piece of asphalt. A pentagram was carved into her chest.
Keith said even experienced homicide investigators were shaken by the brutality of the scene.
Pike later confessed to her role in the killing. According to Keith, she spoke about it without fear or tears and seemed to be bragging about what she had done.
He also recalled that Pike talked about the killing after returning to Job Corps and showed other students shoes stained with blood.
A jury convicted Pike of first-degree murder and sentenced her to death in 1996. The Tennessee Supreme Court later upheld both the conviction and the sentence.
After decades of appeals, Tennessee moved to carry out that sentence on September 30. The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way after vacating a last-minute stay from the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The state administered two doses of pentobarbital. Pike remained alive.
She was transported to a hospital, remained unconscious for days and eventually regained consciousness. Her attorneys say she can now walk and speak in full sentences, and she has been returned to prison.
New court filings have intensified scrutiny of the process, including questions about the state’s ability to establish working IV lines:
The Associated Press reported from a court filing by Pike attorney Randy Spivey that the IV team used roughly 10 needles while trying several sites on both arms. One IV was established within minutes, but the team reportedly spent close to an hour working on the other arm.
According to the filing, staff questioned whether multiple veins had ruptured and later struggled to push saline through the final site. Pike complained that her arm burned before she became unresponsive.
After two rounds of pentobarbital failed to kill her, attorneys sought emergency intervention and Pike was eventually transported for life-saving treatment.
Tennessee’s protocol authorizes a second dose after the first fails. It says nothing about a third round when a prisoner survives both.
Pike remained on a ventilator for days before recovering enough to return to prison.
The Tennessee Department of Correction says the state revised its lethal-injection procedure after an earlier review and adopted a single-drug pentobarbital protocol in December 2024. Executions resumed in May 2025 under that system.
After Pike survived, the department maintained that its team had followed every authorized step and said the written protocol allowed no further procedure beyond what had already been attempted. That position explains why the execution stopped, but it does not answer how two drug administrations failed or whether the IV problems prevented the pentobarbital from circulating as intended.
The state now faces two separate questions: whether its method can be carried out reliably and whether a court will permit another attempt against Pike. Lee’s independent review is aimed at the first. Pike’s lawyers are preparing to fight the second.
Lee halted Tennessee’s remaining execution for the year and ordered an independent review to determine what went wrong.
Fresh coverage of the case underscores just how unusual the situation has become: Pike entered the execution chamber, received the state’s lethal-injection drugs and survived.
There is currently no new execution date. Any future attempt would require another death warrant and would face an immediate court fight over whether Tennessee can constitutionally try again.
That legal battle will be complicated, and the state’s execution process plainly demands answers.
But Lee’s message was also clear: a failed execution did not erase Pike’s conviction, change the sentence imposed by the jury or undo what happened to Colleen Slemmer.
This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.
The post ‘Almost Giddy’: Former Police Chief Revisits Christa Pike’s Murder Confession As Governor Weighs Next Move After Failed Execution appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.
Continue reading...
[H/T 100PercentFedUp]
