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#114
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08-07-2011, 11:38 PM
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Re: Christa Gail Pike - The Youngest Woman On Death Row!
The thing to do to people that try and cut in on your action is to open their guts, wrap their intestine around their throat, and then hang them somewhere high for everyone to see. You don't keep body parts as soveniers to show people, that's just nuts!! |
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#117
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01-24-2014, 10:16 PM
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Re: Christa Gail Pike - The Youngest Woman On Death Row!
The same day a jury found her guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced her to death, Pike wrote a letter to her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp. The letter, reprinted in Death Row magazine reads, "I miss you so much! Ya see what I get for tryin' to be nice to the hoe? I went ahead and bashed her brains out so she'd die quickly instead of letting her bleed to death and suffer more, and they f------ fry me!" The note was signed, "Lil Devil." Excerpts from Christa Pike's confession, January 14, 1995 In a disturbing 70-minute interview, Pike describes the torture of Colleen Slemmer to police investigator Randy York * * * CP: She just was screaming and screaming. I kept hitting her and she just kept pulling on me and like just pulling on me, holding my, trying to hold my arms and stuff. And I was like, "Don't touch me. I don't want you to touch me (unintelligible). I can't stand it." I mean, I really thought I was going crazy 'cause I'd never seen myself act like that before in my life. I've never been so mad before in my life. * * * CP: And I guess I didn't know when to stop, but I just kept hitting her and hitting her and hitting her. [I] threw her on the ground and I started kicking her and kicking her and kicking her. And I picked her head up and hit her head into the concrete but it never hurt her RY: How do you know it didn't hurt her? CP: I mean (unintelligible) she was, it probably hurt but I mean it didn't, it didn't do anything to her head * * * CP: I just kept hearing somebody talking about, I mean there wasn't anybody really there but I just kept hearing somebody say, "She's going to go tell on you. You're going to go to prison. You're going to go to jail. You're going to do this. You know, if you let her go, she's going to go back and you're going to be in deep s--- Christa. You gotta, you gotta do something. You've got to do something so that she can't tell on you. Don't let her get up and go tell on you." Then I just started thinking and I was like... That's true. If she gets up from right here, I, I'm as good as gone, you know? She's already cut. That'd be attempted murder, you know? * * * CP: She said, "Just let me get up. I'll walk to Florida." She said, "I'll walk home. I'll walk to Florida," you know? "I won't go back and say anything about you at all, I promise." And, and I said, "Quit," you know? "Shut up. I don't want to hear you talking to me," you know? It's harder to hurt somebody when they're talking to you. * * * CP: She just kept talking and kept talking and kept talking and kept... and I just kicked her in her face and I would say, "Shut up." And she would start talking again. I would kick her again and say, "Shut up. Just shut up." I didn't want to hear her talking. * * * CP: It's like I was standing there, and I could see her but I couldn't hear her anymore. I couldn't hear nothing but somebody telling me, "Christa, you've gotta find a way to get yourself out of this. You've done real good this time. You got yourself in a world of s---. Now, how the hell are you going to get out of it?" And then it's like I just like...I don't know what happened. It's like I just floated out of my body and I, I wasn't me anymore. I was just watching everything that happened. It sounds stupid but it's not. I was just watching. * * * CP: She just started looking at me going, "Why the hell are you doing this to me?"... And she was laying in this pool of blood and I was just looking at her and I was just scared. I was like, "Oh my God," you know... "what the hell is wrong with me? What's wrong with her? What's wrong with everybody?" And I still had the box cutter in my hand and I cut her across the throat with it. * * * CP: Finally she was just laying there. She kept trying to run and kept trying to run and kept trying to run. And she got up one time and took off running and I picked up a rock and just threw it at her 'cause I knew I couldn't catch her. I threw it at her and it hit her in the back of the head and she fell. And then I (unintelligible) there and I was like "Oh my God," you know? And her head was bleeding. * * * CP: I just kept hitting her and hitting her and hitting her ... and she was still breathing, you know? She was still breathing... RY: But she wasn't talking anymore CP: No. Then I said, I said, "Colleen, do you know who's doing this to you?" And she was just going (MAKING MOANING/GROANING NOISES). She was talking like that and I don't know what she was saying. And ... I was just like, "Oh God," I was like, "I gotta go." ///////////////////////////// //////////////////// //////////// Christa Gail Pike broke down in tears today as she listened to herself confess to killing Colleen Slemmer in 1995. Prosecutors played the tape of her confession to Knoxville Police Department Investigator Randy York. The defense claims she was going through mood swings and a distraught emotional state at the time. York, now retired, said that's not the way he remembers it. Pike was emotional at times, he said, but acting "very jovial and very cooperative" at times as well. "She was not at all combative," York testified. Pike also sobs on the tape. "Where in this statement was the jovial part," her lawyer, post-conviction defender Donald Dawson asked. "We have a woman who seems to be struggling with her composure." York disagreed. "I don't detect any of that in here, and I don't think you do either," York said. "She never lost her composure. She was always able to keep talking." On Jan. 12, 1995, Pike and fellow Job Corps students Tadaryl Shipp and Shadolla Peterson beat and slashed classmate Colleen Slemmer and carved a pentagram on her chest with a box-cutter before killing her at a remote corner of the University of Tennessee's agricultural campus. Pike and Slemmer had competed for Shipp's affection. Pike was sentenced to death after a 1996 trial, a sentence she's appealing. A police video shot a few hours after her initial confession shows a calm, dry-eyed, occasionally smiling Pike leading police through the crime scene, pointing out the spot where Slemmer died and miming the motion of killing her. Testimony is expected to continue until at least 7 this evening. Prominent Knoxville defense attorney Herbert S. Moncier is expected to testify that he advised Diana McCoy, a defense psychologist who interviewed Pike but never testified at the 1996 trial, that a previous relationship she had with lead prosecutor Bill Crabtree wasn't a conflict of interest. McCoy testified today that she believes she could have helped convince jurors to spare Pike the death penalty had the defense allowed her to speak to her conclusions regarding Pike. McCoy put together a three-volume report on Pike's background, including a history of childhood rejection and physical, sexual and drug abuse. She discussed those findings at length today. She said her interviews with Pike and those who knew her painted a portrait of a troubled, scared girl of above-average intelligence who would do anything to hang on to a relationship. Pike reported sometimes she would suffer blackouts just before an angry or violent outburst, McCoy said. "Once Christa gets mad, it's all over," a friend of Pike's told her. Pike's current lawyers say that evidence might have saved her life, but Assistant District Attorney General Leland Price says none of McCoy's testimony - or anyone else's - could have overcome Pike's detailed confessions to Knoxville police. "I read that transcript (of the 1996 sentencing hearing)," McCoy testified Wednesday. "It was so puny I could hardly describe it. After the hearing, I was in shock. Here's this woman sentenced to death, and I had done all this work for her." Her former lawyers, Bill Talman and Julie Ann Martin Rice, testified earlier this week they didn't call McCoy to testify because her findings might shock the jury and didn't match another expert's diagnosis. Slemmer's mother, May Martinez, appeared in court Wednesday seeking to take her daughter's skull and the piece of it that Pike kept as a souvenir home to Florida for burial. Criminal Court Judge Mary Beth Leibowitz says she can't allow that because the skull and its shards remain evidence in the case while it's on appeal. "It really hurts," Martinez said afterward. "I know my daughter's not going home with me. The only thing I really wanted was to get my daughter's body back." The scene brought on an outburst of tears and apology from Pike, who's making a last bid to overturn her death sentence for the torture killing of Slemmer, 19. "She kept saying, 'May, I'm sorry,' " Martinez said. "The skull was right there on the table in front of her, so she couldn't get away from it. I guess she couldn't take that. I feel sorry for her." Regarding the psychologist's testimony, Pike's attorneys also said Wednesday they found out in the middle of the trial that she'd dated lead prosecutor Bill Crabtree. McCoy said none of that's true. She said she dated Crabtree briefly about two years before the trial and told the defense team early in the case. She said Talman told her not to worry and that Rice joked at the thought of the couple's sex life. "The day the guilty verdict came back, Bill Talman called me," McCoy testified. "He was in a total meltdown. He said Bill Crabtree was very upset because (the report) was all hearsay. He said, 'I can't have you testify.' " The jury sentenced Pike to death the next day. She asked at one point to be executed but later revived her appeals. ///////////////////////// In a cell decorated with butterflies and angels, a woman who once called herself the "Lil’ Devil" is waiting to see if the state of Tennessee will stand by its sentence. If all appeals fail, Christa Pike will become the youngest woman ever executed in the United States. She is 22 and she is scared. "I’m scared of having my head shaved bald and being strapped in this huge chair and being shocked to death," she told Fox files. "I just cannot imagine all that electricity." But if Pike’s age distinguishes her from other inmates at Tennessee Maximum Prison for women, so does the brutality of her crime. Like the case of Carla Faye Tucker, who was executed last February in Texas for the pickax murder of two people, reports of Pike’s crime in January 1995 are horrifying. At the age of 19, Pike and two friends led a co-worker to the woods near a local jogging trail in Knoxville and began beating the woman and accusing her of trying to steal Pike's boyfriend. When the victim, Colleen Slemmer, tried to fight back, Pike slashed her stomach with a box cutter while a friend cut her across the chest. Slemmer pleaded for her life, but Pike slashed her throat until her victim’s cries became gurgled by blood. When Slemmer tried to run away, Pike hoisted a large rock and threw it at her head. She then finished the job by crushing Slemmer’s skull with a chunk of asphalt. Later Pike would brag to a friend about how she and the others had carved a pentagram on Slemmer’s chest and how she had reached into the bleeding head of her victim to pluck a piece of her skull as a souvenir. The piece of bone was later found in the pocket of Pike’s leather jacket. The crime seems unfathomable, especially as the pretty, youthful Pike talks to Fox files about her pets and family and about the mundane routine of her days at the Tennessee prison. After her conviction, Pike wrote a letter to her boyfriend describing her anger at the jury who sentenced her and signed the note the Lil Devil. But as Pike talks to Fox files from her cell, she shows a less callous face. It’s this softer side — the Pike who adores her dog "Ed," who as a young girl loved to dress as a ballerina and who "cried and cried" upon hearing that Carla Faye Tucker had been put to death — that Pike’s mother wants the world to see. "She’s my baby, it’s not real the way I see it," Pike’s mother told Fox files. "If anyone really knew her, if they really knew her the way her friends and family do, they couldn’t do that to her." On January 12, 1995, 18-year-old Christa Gail Pike and two of her friends invited Colleen Slemmer, 19, to go to a local video store. On the way, they enticed her to a remote part of the University of Tennessee's Agricultural campus with an offer of drugs. The foursome, which also included Shadolla Renee Peterson, 18, and Tadaryl Dewayne Shipp, 17, were all enrolled in job training programs at the now closed Job Corps Center located near the campus. When they reached an unlit jogging trail, Pike confronted Slemmer and accused her of trying to steal her boyfriend, Shipp. Slemmer denied the accusation, and Pike began to hit her. Evidence shows that Slemmer's jacket, sweater and bra were removed and tossed into nearby trees to keep her from running away. Pike, Shipp and Peterson attacked Slemmer with a miniature meat cleaver and a box cutter for half an hour. In her confession, Pike said that Slemmer pleaded for her life, offering to walk away and never say a word about the incident, while the three repeatedly slashed her arms, stomach, neck, chest and forehead. "And I said, 'Shut up. I don't want to hear you talking to me.' You know, it's harder to hurt someone when they're talking to you," Pike explained to the officer who took her statement. Pike then removed the hairband from her own head and gagged Slemmer's mouth with it. Ignoring her cries, Shipp stated that he carved a pentagram about three inches in diameter in Slemmer's chest with the cleaver while she was "half dead and half alive." Pike then gouged a circle around it. Pike stated later that she heard a voice in her head saying she had gone too far to turn back. Along with at least one of her accomplices, Pike bludgeoned Slemmer with chunks of asphalt, smashing her skull. Pike removed a piece of broken skull from Slemmer's head before leaving the scene of the crime, a token she kept in her coat pocket. Slemmer's body was unclothed to the waist when it was found around 8 a.m. the next morning. The body was so battered that the first officer to arrive at the scene had trouble identifying some of her features ////////////// At 5 feet 2 inches tall and weighing about 95 pounds, Christa Gail Pike doesn't fit the stereotype of a violent killer. Pike, in her cell on death row, was described as impulsive and lacking a sense of identityPike's lawyers attempted to mitigate her crime at the trial by painting a portrait of a neglected child from a dysfunctional family. Her parents divorced each other twice, shuttling her back and forth as it suited their needs. "I should be the one in her seat," Pike's mother, Carissa Hansen, testified. "I should be punished for her crime." Hansen said that she allowed her daughter to have a live-in boyfriend when she was only 14. Hansen also testified that she smoked marijuana with Christa in an attempt to get closer to her. Characterized as highly intelligent with academic skills far beyond her ninth-grade education, Pike was described by clinical psychologist Eric Engum as impulsive and lacking a sense of identity and self-restraint. Engum testified that Christa Pike suffered from a borderline personality disorder. After reviewing Pike's statements, Engum said he believed the defendant intended to beat up Slemmer as punishment for attempting to steal her boyfriend, but had no intention of killing her. Fear and lack of control, Engum said, compelled her to murder. "I see it as a frenzy, as a complete loss of control," Engum testified. In contrast to this testimony, a friend at the Job Corps Center stated that Pike returned to the center after the slaying and discussed the killing. According to the witness, Pike seemed pleased with herself and unremorseful, dancing around and bragging about the piece of skull she kept as a souvenir. Another witness testified that Pike had mentioned the day before the killing that she wanted to murder Slemmer. A University of Tennessee police officer, Harold J. Underwood Jr., said Pike appeared at the crime scene several hours after Slemmer's body was found and was bouncy and energetic, asking the officer if the authorities had identified the victim or had any suspects. "She seemed amused," Underwood testified. The same day a jury found her guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced her to death, Pike wrote a letter to her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp. The letter, reprinted in Death Row magazine reads, "I miss you so much! Ya see what I get for tryin' to be nice to the hoe? I went ahead and bashed her brains out so she'd die quickly instead of letting her bleed to death and suffer more, and they f------ fry me!" The note was signed, "Lil Devil." xcerpts from Christa Pike's confession, January 14, 1995 In a disturbing 70-minute interview, Pike describes the torture of Colleen Slemmer to police investigator Randy York * * * CP: She just was screaming and screaming. I kept hitting her and she just kept pulling on me and like just pulling on me, holding my, trying to hold my arms and stuff. And I was like, "Don't touch me. I don't want you to touch me (unintelligible). I can't stand it." I mean, I really thought I was going crazy 'cause I'd never seen myself act like that before in my life. I've never been so mad before in my life. * * * CP: And I guess I didn't know when to stop, but I just kept hitting her and hitting her and hitting her. [I] threw her on the ground and I started kicking her and kicking her and kicking her. And I picked her head up and hit her head into the concrete but it never hurt her RY: How do you know it didn't hurt her? CP: I mean (unintelligible) she was, it probably hurt but I mean it didn't, it didn't do anything to her head * * * CP: I just kept hearing somebody talking about, I mean there wasn't anybody really there but I just kept hearing somebody say, "She's going to go tell on you. You're going to go to prison. You're going to go to jail. You're going to do this. You know, if you let her go, she's going to go back and you're going to be in deep s--- Christa. You gotta, you gotta do something. You've got to do something so that she can't tell on you. Don't let her get up and go tell on you." Then I just started thinking and I was like... That's true. If she gets up from right here, I, I'm as good as gone, you know? She's already cut. That'd be attempted murder, you know? * * * CP: She said, "Just let me get up. I'll walk to Florida." She said, "I'll walk home. I'll walk to Florida," you know? "I won't go back and say anything about you at all, I promise." And, and I said, "Quit," you know? "Shut up. I don't want to hear you talking to me," you know? It's harder to hurt somebody when they're talking to you. * * * CP: She just kept talking and kept talking and kept talking and kept... and I just kicked her in her face and I would say, "Shut up." And she would start talking again. I would kick her again and say, "Shut up. Just shut up." I didn't want to hear her talking. * * * CP: It's like I was standing there, and I could see her but I couldn't hear her anymore. I couldn't hear nothing but somebody telling me, "Christa, you've gotta find a way to get yourself out of this. You've done real good this time. You got yourself in a world of s---. Now, how the hell are you going to get out of it?" And then it's like I just like...I don't know what happened. It's like I just floated out of my body and I, I wasn't me anymore. I was just watching everything that happened. It sounds stupid but it's not. I was just watching. * * * CP: She just started looking at me going, "Why the hell are you doing this to me?"... And she was laying in this pool of blood and I was just looking at her and I was just scared. I was like, "Oh my God," you know... "what the hell is wrong with me? What's wrong with her? What's wrong with everybody?" And I still had the box cutter in my hand and I cut her across the throat with it. * * * CP: Finally she was just laying there. She kept trying to run and kept trying to run and kept trying to run. And she got up one time and took off running and I picked up a rock and just threw it at her 'cause I knew I couldn't catch her. I threw it at her and it hit her in the back of the head and she fell. And then I (unintelligible) there and I was like "Oh my God," you know? And her head was bleeding. * * * CP: I just kept hitting her and hitting her and hitting her ... and she was still breathing, you know? She was still breathing... RY: But she wasn't talking anymore CP: No. Then I said, I said, "Colleen, do you know who's doing this to you?" And she was just going (MAKING MOANING/GROANING NOISES). She was talking like that and I don't know what she was saying. And ... I was just like, "Oh God," I was like, "I gotta go." |