Christa Pike survived two doses of lethal injection this week, but the former Knoxville police chief who saw her victim’s remains says the killer still represents pure evil.
More than three decades after a 19-year-old Tennessee woman was tortured to death, the officer who remembers every detail of the crime scene says the images have never faded.
Former Knoxville Police Chief Phil Keith told interviewers that Christa Pike’s killing of Colleen Slemmer remains seared into his mind, even as Pike, now 50, lay in critical condition after a lethal-injection attempt that did not kill her.
Reporting on the case described how Slemmer was lured by three classmates from the Knoxville Job Corps Center, a vocational school for troubled youths, then beaten, cut, gagged, and left with her skull crushed by broken asphalt.
Keith put the lasting impact in plain terms.
"I’ll remember this case to the day I die."
He added a blunt judgment of the woman who led the attack.
"She represents pure evil."
Pike was 18 at the time. Her then-boyfriend was 17. A third classmate joined them.
According to Keith, the attackers tortured Slemmer for nearly an hour. She tried to escape. She begged for her life. She cried.
The boyfriend carved pentagrams into her chest and face. Pike kept a fragment of Slemmer’s skull as a trophy and later showed it to classmates before her arrest.
A University of Tennessee groundskeeper found the remains on campus grounds. Court records show he first thought he had come across an animal carcass, then saw the victim’s clothes through the blood.
Trial testimony included an expert who said the attack had “satanic elements” and also involved “collective aggression,” in which a group becomes emotionally aroused and turns to extreme violence.
The boyfriend was convicted but did not face the death penalty because he was only 17. Pike was convicted and eventually scheduled to die by lethal injection.
Keith led the Knoxville Police Department from 1988 to 2004. He said the pictures from Slemmer’s murder are as clear now as the day he saw them.
"All I have to do is shut my eyes, and I can see everything."
He also pointed to what officers lacked at the time.
"We didn’t have therapy services or counseling or anything at that time, and we, I wish we had, because these images will never be erased."
That is the human cost on the law-enforcement side of a case built on torture, a trophy bone, and a young woman who never made it home.
Pike’s execution was set for Wednesday. The U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a brief stay during a last-minute appeal. The Supreme Court lifted that stay and cleared the way for lethal injection.
Two doses were administered. She remained alive.
On Thursday, attorneys said she was in an undisclosed hospital receiving what they called lifesaving care. One of her lawyers, Randy Spivey, spoke at a news briefing and said Slemmer’s mother had been on Pike’s mind in the hours before the scheduled execution.
Spivey also addressed the wider damage.
"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."
"This is awful, and this kind of thing should never happen again."
By Friday, attorneys Stephen Ferrell and Luke Ihnen said Pike remained critically ill.
"Christa remains critically ill and is receiving medical care for the devastating effects of Wednesday night’s events."
They said she was unconscious, intubated, and on a ventilator, and was being treated for the effects of the pentobarbital used in the attempt, including significant injuries to both arms.
Ferrell and Ihnen tied the hospital stay to a court filing that same day, describing a failed execution attempt followed by ongoing emergency care.
The legal fight over Pike’s sentence stretched to the federal appeals court and the Supreme Court. The crime itself never required complicated theory to understand.
Three classmates lured a 19-year-old with a story about a music store and a park. They held her long enough to carve symbols into her body, crush her skull, and leave her on university grounds. One killer took a piece of bone as a keepsake.
Keith’s account leaves little room for soft language about what officers found and what they still carry. Pike’s survival of two injection doses has now forced another public reckoning, for her medical team, for her lawyers, and again for the family that lost Colleen Slemmer.
When a murder this deliberate still reads as fresh to the chief who saw it, the demand for final accountability is not abstract. It is the least the system owes a victim who was hunted, cut, and crushed while she begged to live.
