Christa Pike survived two lethal injection doses for the 1995 torture murder of Colleen Slemmer, a crime former Knoxville Police Chief Phil Keith says still haunts him daily.
Phil Keith led the Knoxville Police Department when investigators confronted the remains of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. More than three decades later, he told Fox News the case never left him.
"I'll remember this case to the day I die," Keith said. He added that the crime-scene images remain "as vivid today as the day I saw them."
The same week Keith spoke, Tennessee tried to carry out Pike's death sentence. Two doses of lethal injection drugs failed to kill her. She was rushed to a hospital in critical condition, still alive after an execution attempt that her lawyers called a failure and that state officials said followed approved protocol.
Pike was 18. Slemmer was 19. Both were tied to the Knoxville Job Corps Center, a vocational program for troubled youths.
Prosecutors later showed that Pike and two classmates lured Slemmer with a story about going to a music store and picking up stashed marijuana at a park. The attack that followed lasted nearly an hour, Keith said.
They beat her. They cut her. They gagged her. Court records described blades used in the assault and pentagrams carved into her chest and face by Pike's then-boyfriend, who was 17. The group crushed her skull with broken asphalt.
Pike kept a fragment of Slemmer's skull as a trophy and showed it to classmates before her arrest. A University of Tennessee groundskeeper found the remains on campus grounds. He first thought he had come across an animal carcass, then saw the victim's clothes through the blood, court records show.
Forensic anthropologist Dr. Murray Marks testified on March 25, 1996, about the wounds to Slemmer's skull. An expert told the Knox County Criminal Court jury the attack carried "satanic elements" and involved "collective aggression," in which a group becomes emotionally aroused and turns to extreme violence.
"She represents pure evil," Keith said.
He also said investigators had no therapy or counseling services at the time. "These images will never be erased," he said. "All I have to do is shut my eyes, and I can see everything."
Pike was convicted and sentenced to death. Her boyfriend was also convicted but avoided a death sentence because of his age. Pike is now 50.
Pike's execution was scheduled for Wednesday at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. The U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a brief stay on a last-minute appeal. The Supreme Court lifted that stay and cleared the way for lethal injection before midnight.
Just the News reported that her attorneys later told a court both lethal-injection syringes were administered at 8:26 p.m., yet witnesses said Pike remained alive, snoring, conscious, and with a heartbeat. They argued the process inflicted unnecessary agony and violated her right to be free of cruel and unusual punishment.
Breitbart reported the two syringes of pentobarbital left her unconscious but still breathing, with a heartbeat and audible snoring, before emergency crews moved her to a hospital for life-saving care. Tennessee Department of Correction spokesperson Dorinda Carter said the department "followed every step of the State's lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General's Office." Gov. Bill Lee halted the state's remaining execution for the year and ordered a third-party review. It was the second failed Tennessee execution this year.
On Thursday, attorneys said Pike was in an undisclosed hospital receiving lifesaving care. On Friday, attorneys Stephen Ferrell and Luke Ihnen said she remained "critically ill, unconscious, intubated and receiving breathing assistance through a ventilator," and was being treated for the effects of the pentobarbital, including significant injuries to both arms.
Attorney Randy Spivey spoke at a Thursday briefing about the toll on everyone connected to the case.
"I cannot imagine what this was like for the family of Ms. Slemmer, or anyone who loves that family or is close to that family, or anyone who loves Christa or is close to Christa," Spivey said. "This is awful, and this kind of thing should never happen again."
Weeks before the attempt, Pike recorded her own worries about the method. The New York Post reported she said she did not have good veins and feared staff could not start a central line. She pointed to another inmate's botched attempt and called it "my worst nightmare," saying she did not want to go through the same thing.
In that same reporting, Pike said she is "very remorseful now" for the 1995 killing, though she admitted she was not remorseful when first charged. The attack on Slemmer still stands as the record jurors heard in 1996: a prolonged beating and cutting that ended with a crushed skull and a trophy bone kept by the ringleader.
Keith's point was simpler. The people who worked the scene did not get counseling. They got the pictures burned into memory. Thirty-one years on, the former chief said he can still see them with his eyes closed.
Justice delayed for a murdered 19-year-old is not mercy. It is another bill the victim's family keeps paying while the system fumbles the sentence a jury already handed down.
