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A Case That Resists Easy Answers | Christa Pike

A Case That Resists Easy Answers | Christa Pike

Season 3 Episode 34 Published 1 month, 1 week ago
Description

Christa Pike was 18 years old when she told a friend at the Knoxville Job Corps Center that she planned to kill another student.

When asked why, she simply said she felt mean that day.

Less than two days later, 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer was found dead near an abandoned steam plant. Christa had lured her away under the pretense of making peace, but she arrived carrying a box cutter and a miniature meat cleaver.

Before leaving, Christa removed a fragment of Colleen’s skull and carried it back to the Job Corps Center. She showed it to other students, spoke openly about the killing, and later appeared at the crime scene while investigators were still working.

Christa was convicted of premeditated first-degree murder and became the youngest woman sentenced to death in the United States during the modern death penalty era. After 30 years on Tennessee’s death row, she is scheduled to be executed on September 30, 2026.

But Christa entered the world with fetal alcohol-related brain damage. She endured severe abuse beginning in early childhood and lived with untreated bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.

None of that makes her innocent.

It also does not erase what happened to Colleen.

In this episode of GBRLIFE Of Crimes, we examine the murder of Colleen Slemmer, the evidence that sent Christa to death row, the violence and escape plot that followed, and the psychological and neurological conditions now at the center of her clemency request.

Does understanding what shaped Christa Pike change what justice should look like, or are some crimes too deliberate and cruel for those circumstances to matter?

Read the companion blog post, “Christa Pike and the Murder of Colleen Slemmer”:

https://gbrlife.com/blog/christa-pike-and-the-murder-of-colleen-slemmer

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