449: “The B*tCh Wouldn’t Die”: Stabbed 300x with Pentagram Carving | Christa Pike’s Botched Execution | Colleen Slemmer

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

It is probably one of the most disturbing crime scenes that I've ever dealt with. The morning of Friday the 13th, police recovered Slemmer's tortured body behind the abandoned steam plant at the University of Tennessee.

SPEAKER_2 (0:10)

Knoxville police recovered evidence of possible occult activity.

SPEAKER_1 (0:16)

You just kind of lost control.

SPEAKER_2 (0:17)

If Christa Pike is executed, she will be the first woman our state has executed in 200 years. I love you.

Annie Elise (0:29)

Hey, true crime besties. Welcome back to an all new episode of Serialously.

Hello, and welcome back to an all new episode of Serialously with me, your host, Annie Elise, also your true crime bestie, here to clock in for duty.

You know what I say. I hope you're having a good day, because I'm about to ruin it. I'm about to ruin it with all this shit we're going to be talking about today. And look, this case, it first came on my radar when I was out of town. Gosh, when was it?

Not last week, the week before. I was away in Korea, and I started getting flooded on my social media feed about this failed execution. And I was like, what the heck? First of all, how does that even happen? But also like, what resulted in this woman being sentenced to death and being the first woman in Tennessee on death row? And I knew I needed to dig a little deeper because while the failed execution was, yes, absolutely upsetting, I wanted to know what the crime was and like what warranted the death penalty.

What was the backstory because I knew there was going to be, you know, obviously there's more to the story. And when I tell you the stuff that I have learned over the last week, it is so deeply unsettling and just so disturbing. And I think everybody's talking about this case right now because of the failed execution and how stunning that is. But no one is talking about the details of the crime that got her to that point. And I think that really does need to be revisited because I think if you look, at least in my opinion, if you look across at the entire thing, the crime, the conviction, the sentence, and then this failed execution, it feels, I don't know, is the word serendipitous maybe?

Kind of like, oh, maybe this is a form of justice almost, especially when you hear some of the exact same words that were said at the time of the murder, and also said and happening while this execution failed. So, like I said, I really started looking into the Christa Pike case immediately, and guys, I do want to warn you, the details are unbelievably gruesome, barbaric and downright frightening. So let's rewind a little bit and really lay all of that out to see how we even got here. Back in 1996, at just 20 years old, Christa was sentenced to death, making her the youngest woman to receive the death penalty in the United States. Now, if her execution had been successful, she would have become only the 19th woman executed nationwide since 1976, and the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. But as we know, the execution failed. And if you haven't been following this, because you're not on social media or you just haven't dug into it, don't worry. I also am going to talk all about the execution and what happened and how it failed, why it failed and all of that. But more than that, I want to give the back story again of what brought us to this. But really quick, the high level is that during her scheduled execution on September 30th, something happened that had never been documented before. Christa was administered not one, but two full doses of the lethal injection medication, Fentobarbital. And somehow, even after both of those doses were administered, she remained alive and she was ultimately rushed to the hospital, which again, more details to come on that. According to reports from the Death Penalty Information Center, that makes Christa the only person in modern US history known to have survived an execution attempt after receiving a full dose of lethal injection drugs. Which, that's crazy enough that she survived one dose, but then to be administered a second dose and survive that as well, nobody was expecting this. But before we get into those details about what happened to Christa, her current condition, and what happens next, I want to make one thing very, very crystal clear if I haven't already. Christa is not the victim of the crime that brought us here today. The real victim is Colleen Slemmer. Her life was taken at just 19 years old, and her story should never get lost in all of the attention that is surrounding Christa and this failed execution. That's why I'm here today to talk about Colleen, the crime that got Christa where she was, and the fact that Colleen's parents are still fighting not only for justice for their daughter, but to finally have all of her remains returned to them. Now, as you guys know, when I do these real time deep dives for cases that are unfolding as we speak, I like to walk you through the entire timeline of everything we know, which in this case, there are 31 years to unpack. So I want to jump right in and take you through everything. Colleen Slemmer was born on September 20th, 1975 in Orange Park, Florida. She grew up in a very close-knit family with her mother May, her stepfather and her younger sister. Those who knew her described her as compassionate, generous, kind, quiet, dependable, independent and driven.