[dramatic music] NARRATOR: In the heart of
the state of Tennessee, hidden from sight
off a busy highway, is a prison that's home
to one of the world's most notorious murderers,
Christa Pike. Christa Pike? I think she's not a human being. She's manipulative. She knows how to sort of
be charming and sympathetic and be somebody that you
sort of could be wooed by. She's kind of almost
like a chameleon. Very sneaky, very sly. This gal? I seen nothing good, as
a human being, about her. She's pure evil. NARRATOR: Christa Pike
committed a brutal killing. Her crime was
particularly violent. Her victims suffered
for a very long time. MAY MARTINEZ: Christa
kept a piece of her skull and put it in her
black leather jacket. That was her souvenir. NARRATOR: Pike was a
satanist and believed her victim to be a sacrifice. Her forehead was
cut several places. Her throat was cut, and she had
a massive circle with a star upside down, the star
called the pentagram. NARRATOR: Pike was one
of the youngest women ever to be sent to
death row in the US. She tried to kill
another girl in prison. She's gotten two guards fired. INTERVIEWER: What do
you think when you think about the electric chair? CHRISTA PIKE: I
don't really think about that because I don't
think I'm ever gonna see it. She is exactly
where she belongs. [doors slam] Don't wait another 20 years. Put this girl to
death right now. [dramatic music] [siren wailing] [dramatic music] NARRATOR: The Debra K.
Johnson Rehabilitation Center has held Christa Pike
on death row since 1996. [tense music] JOHN NORTH: Here was
this kind of cute, innocent-looking girl with
long, sort of reddish hair off and up. Little, petite. And you would look
at her and think, that's the person who did this? RANDY YORK: Now, when
talking to Christa, she sounded just like a 10,
11, 12-year-old little girl. And if you turned
your back on her, you would think she's
just a kid, a little kid. [camera shutter snaps] [tense music] JOHN NORTH: I would compare her
to Hannibal Lecter in the sense that, here is a charming,
intelligent person that you think, oh,
I like their company. They're thoughtful
and well-spoken. And that might be the
most dangerous kind. Because before you
realize it, it's too late. And you may be in great danger. KIM ILIOLO: I didn't realize
that that little whimsical, fun ball of fire that I was
calling my best friend could do that, something
so evil and so heinous that there's no
coming back from that. JOHN NORTH: This wasn't just
an attack with them slicing her back, cutting her
neck, which they did, or stabbing her so many times
that the medical examiner lost count. NARRATOR: Christa Pike was sent
to death row at the age of 18. But even with the toughest
sentence possible hanging over her, she refused to behave. RANDY YORK: There
were two guards that she was having
sex with in the prison, and they caught one. And the other one
was fixing to help her escape off of death row. She's very dangerous. I think Christa Pike would
do it again in a heartbeat. She likes blood. She likes crime. She likes cutting. [tense music] NARRATOR: Christa Pike grew
up in North Carolina, a state of rolling hills and huge
expanses of countryside, but her childhood
was far from idyllic. JOHN NORTH: I knew that
she had an extremely rough childhood, tough growing up. Being bounced from parent
to parent to grandparent, it was hard. KIM ILIOLO: Her mom was never
really there, never present. I mean, she was there
long enough to be angry and to yell at her. A lot of times, there
was alcohol in the house, but there was no food. NARRATOR: As she
grew up, sexual abuse became a prominent
feature in her life. RANDY YORK: She was molested
by her mother's boyfriends. Her and her mother
smoked pot together when she was very young, and she
just had a terrible childhood. JOHN NORTH: Her mother had
multiple husbands and multiple men, some of whom were abusive. It was extreme for her. LINA HAJI: It's not just
that the sexual abuse occurred to her. It's that the sexual
abuse occurred to her, and then there was no type
of support, no type of care, no type of treatment for
her to address that trauma. And so that probably had a very
long-standing, negative effect on Christa Pike's
psychological development and the way she viewed
herself, as well as the world. NARRATOR: At the age of 18,
Pike dropped out of school and moved to
Knoxville, Tennessee. The original capital of
Tennessee, Knoxville, lies in the east of the
state, at the foothills of the Smoky Mountains. Knoxville always has got
this kind of strange news vein, if you will. There's always something
kind of odd going on. It's a smaller town. It's not a big town like
Atlanta or Nashville. RANDY YORK: Knoxville
was growing in the 1990s. It was growing fast. And so things were changing. KIM ILIOLO: There was
colleges everywhere. There were little outside
cafes, and everybody was out walking and
talking and meeting people and eating dinner. And it was just fun. [tense music] NARRATOR: Christa Pike
joined a nursing course at the government-run
Job Corps program, which had a base in Knoxville. JOE MODE: The
actual Knoxville Job Corps Center at Dell
Avenue used to be an old hotel, a Holiday Inn. My mamaw actually
worked there as a maid, and there's about five floors. My name is Joe Mode. I worked at the
Knoxville Job Corps from 1992 up till April 1995. NARRATOR: Joe taught many
subjects at Job Corps, including cultural awareness,
reading, and parenting skills. JOE MODE: You know, it
was designed for kids that, you know, maybe had
a difficult home life, maybe had problems in
school and, you know, typically kids maybe from
15 up to 20, 22 years of age to get a second chance and to
learn a job skill like nursing, you know, business,
clerical, building trades. I think the Knoxville
Job Corps had maybe about 350 students at
the time, you know, that I was working there. NARRATOR: Although the
program started off well, it soon began to attract a
different type of student. Somewhere along the
line, the thoughts were to put troubled kids
in the Job Corps Center if they committed a criminal
act rather than go to prison and let them join the Job Corps. JOE MODE: A lot of
the very good students often were harassed or beat
up, you know, jumped, you know. And they left. And things like
that often happened. And we lost some, you know,
very bright students, you know, that really wanted to try. NARRATOR: Christa Pike
became part of this troubled environment, but
she quickly found a good friend in Kim Iliolo. KIM ILIOLO (VOICEOVER): We
had a lot of the same classes. And Christa's room was
probably five doors down. I was sitting outside,
and she walked over. And she said, can I sit here? I said, yep. And that was the end of it. We were kind of
inseparable at that point. Christa was very
much my best friend. NARRATOR: The two
friends hung out together, riding the free
trolley bus around Knoxville. KIM ILIOLO: From 4:00 until
10 o'clock, it was free time. So we would all
just sign ourselves out and head up to the strip. And that's where we
stayed for hours. You know, hardly
anybody had any money. We just hung out
with each other. It was a lot of fun. It was actually a lot of fun. NARRATOR: Kim and
Christa became so close, they came to depend
on one another. KIM ILIOLO: She was
always laughing. And she would go
out of her way to do things special just to make you
feel better or to make you-- when I was sick, she went
all the way up that huge hill and just-- she went
and got me candy. And she's like, just
so you feel better. Love you. She was a ball of life. NARRATOR: Little did
Kim know, that her fun loving best friend
would commit one of the most horrific murders
Knoxville had ever witnessed. [tense music] Another student at Job Corps
was 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. JOHN NORTH: My
impression of Colleen is, here is a woman who was trying
to do the best that she could, who had had some
rough times as a girl. Her parents were split. JOE MODE: Colleen
was very sweet. She'd often come to my
class, and, you know, we'd talk about life and things
going on, just in general. Colleen was just a very sweet,
quiet, mild-mannered, you know, young lady. You know, she was just sweet. NARRATOR: Colleen Slemmer was
born and raised in Florida and had come to
Knoxville Job Corps to do a six-month
course in computing. MAY MARTINEZ
(VOICEOVER): My name is May Martinez, the mother
of Colleen Anne Slemmer. Colleen was a kid that loved to
play outside, roller skating. She'd do a lot of Special
Olympics and stuff like that and helping
others all the time. Florida didn't
have any Job Corps government program for her. What she wanted was to get
closer to was Tennessee. She had a mom who
loved her dearly. She had sisters who loved her. Yeah, I think there was hope
that she was gonna come out of this having learned some
skills and get on the road to a profession. NARRATOR: For
Colleen, moving states was an exciting opportunity. MAY MARTINEZ: My husband
and her and me all taught, and we did
not want her to go because it's too far from home. I wanted her with me. Colleen has always been
an independent person. She always was a go-getter. So she said she felt
good being on her own. She said, look, Mom. I actually got out. I'm not living at home. [laughs] So it was nice. Colleen was 18 when she went. She left October 31, in '94. The day she left for Job
Corps, that's the last time we had even seen each other. [tense music] [camera shutter snaps] NARRATOR: In
Knoxville, Tennessee, Christa Pike was enrolled
on a nursing course at the Job Corps Center. 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer
was also studying there, but was not having
the greatest time. Colleen said there were a
couple of kids bothering her. And they were going in her
room, taking her jewelry, taking her clothes,
and stuff like that. She mentioned two
girls and a guy. She didn't mention their names. She said there were these
three kids just bothering her. NARRATOR: These three
kids were Christa Pike, her new boyfriend, Tadaryl
Shipp, and their friend, Shadolla Peterson. All of them were
studying at Job Corps. Pike's best friend, Kim, had
introduced Tadaryl to Christa. KIM ILIOLO: I had already
known Tadaryl for a while. So when he got there, he
was like, who is that? And I was like,
her name's Christa. And I left him
sitting out there, and that was the end of that. [laughs] Because they were
inseparable after that. [dramatic music] NARRATOR: Pike began a
relationship with Tadaryl, but she also
developed a vendetta against her boyfriend's
previous crush, Colleen. [tense music] KIM ILIOLO: I think at one
point, Tadaryl liked Colleen. But then, like, when
Christa got there, his attention went
straight to Christa. And he forgot everybody else. Like, anybody else,
he just didn't care. JOE MODE: I'd understood that
there was a love triangle, you know, that maybe Colleen
and Tadaryl had dated and then Pike and Tadaryl. And Christa Pike was jealous. [camera shutter snaps] Christa was extremely
possessive of Tadaryl. Extremely. I didn't realize
that that obsession was festering in Christa's head,
that Colleen was after Tadaryl. Christa saw her as a threat. And it was a threat that
was so big in her mind that ultimately, she decided,
I have to take her out. [tense music] NARRATOR: Kim noticed
Christa's hatred of Colleen had taken a violent turn. KIM ILIOLO: So it was
Saturday afternoon. There were probably
12 or 13 of us just kind of hanging out, just
chatting about people they like, people they didn't like. Colleen's name came up. And Christa said, oh, my god. I'm gonna kill her. And I said, would you
leave that girl alone? She didn't do anything to you. And she smiled at me. She winked, and
the next subject-- and that was all. NARRATOR: On January
12, 1995, Christa Pike turned her words into actions. Pike, Shipp, and their
friend, Shadolla Peterson, decided to lure Colleen away
from the Job Corps Center. KIM ILIOLO: I was in my room. Christa comes in. And she says,
well, we're getting ready to go to the park. And I was like, who's
going to the park? Me, Shadolla, and
Tadaryl, and Colleen. I'm like, why? We're gonna go
smoke in the park. She winked at me, she
smiled at me, then she left. And I watched them
all from my balcony. I watched them all sign
out and all four of them leave together. And I probably should have
known or should have said, hey, please don't go to somebody. Because it was just like
it was an impending doom kind of feeling in my stomach. [dramatic music] [tense music] NARRATOR: At 8:50 PM, with
the promise of smoking weed, Colleen was taken through
the streets of Knoxville to Tyson Park. And they would
have walked down Cumberland Avenue,
toward Tyson Park, which is where we are right now. And they would have
cut through right through here, under the bridge. [tense music] You'll notice, as we keep
walking, you begin to feel like you're in a
more remote location, that you're sort of
leaving the city behind. And it was perfect,
because they're getting further removed,
where nobody can hear them. NARRATOR: Christa
Pike had come armed. Christa Pike took with her a
meat cleaver and a box cutter. So it sounds like
there was already some premeditation into what was
going to happen in these woods. [tense music] JOHN NORTH: And it would
have been about at this point when Colleen is
like, I'm in trouble. Something's not right. [tense music] NARRATOR: They walked
to the edge of the park and on to the boundary of
the University of Tennessee. JOHN NORTH: They get to
this point, having walked. And now, Colleen,
Christa, and Tadaryl and-- we don't know--
perhaps Shadolla-- are now turning on Colleen. And Christa begins to
accuse Colleen of having aims on her boyfriend, Tadaryl. [tense music] NARRATOR: The argument
quickly turned violent. They stabbed her. They beat her. They chased her down. They tortured her, essentially. They tormented her. They talked to her after
she begged, let me go. They wouldn't let her go. [tense music] LINA HAJI: Christa stabbed
her over 300 times. This was slow torture of a girl
who was begging for her life and trying to leave,
and that did not seem to affect Christa Pike. MAY MARTINEZ: She fought
for 45 minutes of her life. Every time she would
run, they would punch her and cut her and grab her. And when they did that, they
knocked her back down again. They took her clothes off of
her, her top and her jacket so she couldn't run anymore. And then Christa held
her down while Tadaryl carved a pentagram in her
chest while she was alive. [tense music] They told me that it was
part of a satanic ritual. RANDY YORK: The
victim told her that-- she said, if you'll let me
go, I'll hitchhike out of here and go home tonight. And Christa said, you know
it's too late for that. You do know who's killing you. NARRATOR: The violence
was relentless. JOHN NORTH: Christa picked
up a piece of asphalt and started smashing
it against her skull. Because in Christa's
words, Christa's words, "The [bleep] wouldn't die." MAY MARTINEZ: Christa kept
banging the rock on her head and said, do you know
who's doing this to you? And Colleen would gurgle
blood and say yes. And she kept doing it until
Colleen couldn't talk anymore. [dramatic music] [thuds] JOHN NORTH: Christa reaches
down into this bloody mess and plucks out a piece of her
victim's skull as a souvenir. [dramatic music] NARRATOR: After the
murder, Pike, Shipp, and Peterson returned
to the Job Corps Center and signed back in. KIM ILIOLO: She busted my door. And that's when she unfolded
this horrendous story. And I just stood there,
just totally in shock. She's like, "The
[bleep] wouldn't die." And I was like, oh. Well, what do you mean? She's like, I cut her
throat nine times. She's like, I stabbed
her in the back. It's sickened me and shocked me. But at the same time, it
was just like this is not-- I don't even know what to say. NARRATOR: Pike
then proudly showed Kim her murder trophy, the
fragment of Colleen's skull. KIM ILIOLO: She
showed me the piece. And she said they had
stopped at some gas station to try to clean some
of the blood off. And then she looked at me. And she said, but if you tell
anybody, I'll kill you, too. Smiled and winked at me,
told me she loved me, then she'd see me
in the morning. [camera shutter snaps] [dramatic music] I tried to go to sleep, but
it was like a horror movie. It kept playing in my head. And so, like, every time I
closed my eyes, I seen that. I seen Colleen's face
just, like, coming at me. I was a naive 16-year-old kid. I had no idea what to
do or how to handle it. LINA HAJI: What's interesting
about Christa Pike is that she reportedly
bragged about having committed this crime to Piers. That points to this level
of huge ego and grandiosity that is seen often
in psychopaths. [dramatic music] [tense music] NARRATOR: Colleen's
body was discovered the next morning, January 13. JOHN NORTH: The body was found
sort of in a heap, partially displayed, partially covered. The testimony was, it's hardly
recognizable as a human being. [somber music] JOE MODE: When they announced
that the body had been found and what she was
wearing, I told my wife-- I said, oddly enough,
I think that might be a girl I know at Job Corps. And sure enough, it was. NARRATOR: Colleen's
mom, May Martinez, had spent the previous night
trying to contact her daughter. MAY MARTINEZ: I couldn't
get a hold of Colleen. I kept trying, and they kept
saying she wasn't in her room and she's still out. And she didn't
check back in again. And then I kept-- the next
morning, I kept calling. And I had to take my youngest
daughter to the doctor's. So when I got home,
there was a phone call on my recording saying,
please contact Detective York, homicide. Well, I was extremely
upset, because I kept saying it wasn't true. I said, no, that's not Colleen. KIM ILIOLO: I beat myself
up still, because I seen them all leaving. I could have said to somebody,
you know, hey, they're going to beat her up or something. But I didn't really think
it would go that far. I honestly didn't. [camera shutter snaps] [somber music] [tense music] NARRATOR: 18-year-old
Christa Pike, along with her 17-year-old
boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, and friend, Shadolla
Peterson, had just tortured and
brutally murdered teenager Colleen Slemmer. Once her body was found, it
was only a matter of time before the trail led
back to Christa Pike. RANDY YORK: I got the
first call about the body around 7:00, 7:30. My name is Randy York, and I
was the criminal investigator assigned to the
Job Corps murder. I went to the scene and viewed
the body and the evidence. She was clad only in blue jeans. She had nothing up top. And she had a massive
circle with a star, an upside-down star
called a pentagram. And her forehead was
cut several places. Her throat was cut. [camera shutter snaps] If you don't know
what a pentagram is, that's the upside-down
star in a circle. And it represents the
goat head of Satan. NARRATOR: It was an
open secret at Job Corps that there was a small
group of students who practiced satanism. Two of those were Christa Pike
and her boyfriend, Tadaryl. JOE MODE: I had her in class. And you know some students
better than others. But as far as her reputation
and Tadaryl's, you know, we knew that, you know, they
were into satanic worship. [tense music] Knoxville, in Tennessee,
is the Bible Belt. You'll find a church on every corner. So, you know, if there are
people that do that, you know, they're an oddity. You know, it wasn't
something common at all. [tense music] NARRATOR: Randy talked
to the security officer at the center to see
which student had left the building that night. RANDY YORK (VOICEOVER): I
looked at the sign-out sheet, and I saw four people
had signed out, Colleen Slemmer, Shadolla
Peterson, Christa Pike, and Tadaryl Shipp. [tense music] Tadaryl, Christa Pike,
and Shadolla Peterson signed back in. There was no signature
of Colleen Slemmer. [tense music] I put an officer on
each of the rooms, and I started from one
room to the next room, went in and interviewed them. And I found a satanic
altar and a Bible in Tadaryl's room, a lot
of satanic literature. I found some in
Christa Pike's room. The more we learned about
them, the more we realized they were deep into satanism. They had tattoos. She had a little devil
tattoo on her left chest. [dramatic music] NARRATOR: Randy now
had his suspects with Pike, the ringleader. [tense music] The police informed Colleen's
mother of their findings so far. MAY MARTINEZ: All
they could tell me was, they had the three kids
in custody who killed Colleen. And they were pretty
sure it was Colleen. Asked me to get
her dental records. Sent it to them so they could
make a positive identification. NARRATOR: While in
custody, Christa Pike confessed to Colleen's murder. RANDY YORK: She actually played
the part of the victim's role and her role, what she did
and how the victim reacted. And she would actually get
down and show me how the victim would beg for her life. I would describe
Christa as giddy. And what I mean by that
is, she was happy almost to the point she
was silly acting, that she was so happy
that what she had done was something great. And she didn't try to
hold anything back. LINA HAJI: The fact that she
bragged about this, didn't seem to display any remorse
or any empathy, tells me that she likely
enjoyed engaging in this torture of this poor young girl. [tense music] That's not something
you see often. NARRATOR: On January 15, 1995,
Randy charged Christa Pike, Tadaryl Shipp, and
Shadolla Peterson with the murder of
Colleen Slemmer. [tense music] JOHN NORTH: We're now in
the City County Building, which is the center
of government here in Knoxville
and Knox County. And this is the courtroom where
Christa was tried for murder. NARRATOR: When Christa
arrived at the court, her manner was unsettling. JOHN NORTH: She
would stick out to me as one of the few that, I think,
probably enjoyed the attention. She would look
around the courtroom to see who else was there. One time, I can
remember her as she was entering the courtroom,
waving at somebody she knew in the audience. [camera shutter snaps] MAY MARTINEZ: She was
laughing and giggling and writing notes to her mom
and laughing with the attorney. She wouldn't face me. She never faced me,
never looked at me. Her parents never said anything. JOHN NORTH: I think
what she did gave her sort of the
celebrity status, in a twisted way,
that she'd never had. It gave her some
kind of identity. NARRATOR: Christa's friend,
Kim, took the stand against her. And her testimony was an
important part of the case for the prosecution. JOHN NORTH: We needed
that witness there. Because Kim said Christa
came back from the murder and talked about it and
celebrated it and danced around and was all happy about it. And that was important
for the jury to hear. So I think what Kim
did was a service. [somber music] NARRATOR: Controversially, the
jury was shown Colleen's skull with its missing fragment. MAY MARTINEZ: You cannot
get emotional in the trials. You cannot say one
word, because you get thrown out of the court. There is no emotion
on either side. But as they were
passing her skull around to all the jurors and the
pieces just falling everywhere, it was very hard. JOHN NORTH: When Colleen's skull
was brought out for the jury to look at, to show the
piece where she had bashed her skull in, Christa
sat at the table and cried during those moments. [somber music] NARRATOR: Hearing the
horrifying details of her daughter's murder took
its toll on Colleen's mother. I had quite a
bit of nightmares. You don't sleep. I have to take
medication to sleep. It's all too real. Colleen's body, seeing it
and identifying it and seeing her head off and seeing the body
parts that I had to deal with was not easy. You know? [dramatic music] NARRATOR: March 29, 1996, the
jury found Christa Pike guilty of the murder of
Colleen Slemmer. [dramatic music] In my career, I've
seen some bad things, a lot of horrific murders. But if you'd have
told me that there was anybody like Christa Pike,
I'd have never believed it. [tense music] NARRATOR: The next day,
18-year-old Christa Pike was sent to death row. WOMAN: It is therefore
ordered that you shall be put to death by electrocution-- [sobs] WOMAN: --prescribed by law. And that you shall
be transferred to the custody of the warden. The jury took, I think,
around 90 minutes to convict her on the death penalty. And that's unheard of,
to come back that quick. But I think that included
an hour for lunch. [laughs] So they saw
no good in her, either. [tense music] WOMAN: And further, that on
the 12th day of January 1997, your body shall be subjected to
shock by a sufficient current of electricity. [sobbing] WOMAN: May god
have mercy on you. [sobbing] And having just
gotten a death sentence, how would most people react? I might be catatonic, right? Within a matter of hours, she's
taking a piece of paper and pen and writing a letter to
Tadaryl saying, hey, love. Can you believe
they did this to me? She writes that letter to
Tadaryl completely unrepentant, as a matter of fact, sort
of chuckling about it, saying, huh. I tried to be nice to her,
and look what they did to me. That sucks. [camera shutter snaps] MAY MARTINEZ: I think
she should have been put to death right there and then. If you're going to
do that to somebody and carve a pentagram
for 45 minutes and take everything like
that, why not do it to them? NARRATOR: Christa Pike was
sent straight to prison. But even on death row, she
was still a danger to others. LINA HAJI: Because she had
such highly violent tendencies, she went on to attempt to murder
another cellmate in her prison. She was going to death row. She really had
nothing to lose, which was just another
risk factor for her to engage in ongoing violence. [tense music] NARRATOR: After
being found guilty of the murder of
Colleen, Christa Pike was sent to the Debra K.
Johnson Rehabilitation Center in Nashville to
await her execution. [tense music] She's confined pretty
much 23 hours a day. And she has said
herself she gets an hour outside for, like, exercise. She's a very unique
prisoner in our state. She is the only woman who is
facing execution in the state. The only woman. So there's no one else like her. NARRATOR: When a fellow inmate,
Patricia Jones, also in prison for murder, dared to
cross her, Christa Pike's murderous tendencies
didn't lay dormant for long. JOHN NORTH: I'm gonna
tell you, Patricia Jones is not a woman I would
mess with, and here's why. She has a violent past. She is a very aggressive,
angry person at times. You do not want to toy
with Patricia Jones. In the mid-'90s, about 1994,
she was convicted of murdering an old lady in her house. I think she stabbed
her repeatedly. [tense music] NARRATOR: Christa
Pike was not impressed when Jones took a dislike to her
alleged lover, Natasha Cornett. JOHN NORTH: I think Christa
was in a relationship with Natasha Cornett. And Patricia Jones
was somebody who was a negative force
in that relationship, because Patricia
didn't like Natasha. And so Christa would
take up for Natasha, and that's where she and
Patricia would clash. [tense music] NARRATOR: On August
24, 2001, Pike saw an opportunity to
get close to her rival and went in for the kill. What happened is, there
was a fire in the prison, one of several that had happened. And the prison officials
made the decision to take these three violent
women, Patricia Jones, Natasha Cornett, Christa Gail Pike, and
put them all in the same space together. Bad move. [tense music] NARRATOR: Christa
and her friend, Natasha, turned on Patricia. Cornett takes a swing
at Jones and misses. And Christa has a shoe
lace of some kind. She gets behind Patricia, and
she wraps it around her neck. And she is determined
to choke her. They end up down on
the floor, and this is Christa's opportunity
to try and kill Patricia. And Patricia's eyes bug out. I think she's choking. [tense music] NARRATOR: Prison officers
managed to stop the attack and pulled the women apart. Essentially, she
wasn't breathing. And when they got to
her, they jumpstarted her and got her breathing again. JOHN NORTH: Christa talked
freely, freely about the attack and the attempted
murder and said, basically, yeah, I
was trying to do it. You should have
heard her gurgling. LINA HAJI: What's
interesting in people who are high on psychopathy
or who are psychopaths is, they tend to be
very manipulative. They tend to have a lot
of superficial charm. They tend to be very glib. They tend to be
very self-serving. NARRATOR: On August 12, 2004,
Christa Pike was put on trial and convicted of attempted
first-degree murder, receiving another 25 years
on top of her death sentence. LINA HAJI: She went on to serve
her prison time with this idea that she was going
to die, regardless. And so she seems
to have developed this idea that it doesn't
really matter what I do. I have nothing to
lose at this point. She was a sick puppy. And I wouldn't say
crazy, because she knew exactly what she was doing. She knew it. She knew what she was doing. NARRATOR: Over the years,
Christa Pike's behavior has shown no sign of improvement. I think Christa has
always had this ability to manipulate people. I think she's a
very smart person, so let's make that very clear. [dramatic music] [tense music] LINA HAJI: She wrote to a lot
of men while she was in prison. She even managed to convince
two men, one from another state and one correctional
officer, to potentially help her escape from prison. KIM ILIOLO: He had a key. He took the key to the cells
and had a copy made and brought it back and put it
back on the key ring and had this extra one. And he was gonna get
her out, and they were going to escape and live
happily ever after, on the run. LINA HAJI: To me,
that just points more to the high
level of psychopathy that she likely had. Because even though she's
engaged in this horrific crime, she still has not taken
any accountability. And her thought process is
still to think about her. How can I escape prison? How can I get people to
do what I want them to do? NARRATOR: Her attempted
jailbreak was unsuccessful. They were caught, and
the correctional officer was immediately fired. But the warning signs had
been there for all to see. JOHN NORTH: This man
had been visiting her frequently in prison,
and they knew who he was. It has to set off alarms
if you have somebody who's coming
frequently to prison to visit this notorious inmate. That has to be
somebody you begin to pay close
attention to, simply because of the why factor. Why are you here? You're not related to her. You're not family. Why are you here? So eventually, I would
imagine-- and there may have been
something that happened that tipped them off, where
they were like, wait a minute. We need to pay attention. For her, it's just
part of the celebrity. It's part of the
attention that she gets. And I'd be willing to bet,
in Christa Pike's mind, she thinks, well,
this is my status. I deserve this. I deserve this attention,
and it's part of who I am. And so men are going to
be drawn to me because I'm an interesting person. [tense music] NARRATOR: Christa
Pike's attorneys had tried at least
three times, both in federal and state court,
to get her off death row, but failed. [tense music] INTERVIEWER: What do
you think when you think about the electric chair? CHRISTA PIKE: I
don't really think about that because I don't
think I'm ever going to see it. I still have a lot of hope. And I know that I don't
deserve to be where I'm at. I've seen no remorse in
Christa at any time, ever. I saw TV interviews
and stuff with her, and she doesn't say I'm
sorry about anything. She's happy. NARRATOR: A date for Christa
Pike's death by electrocution was supposed to have
been set in 2020, but the COVID pandemic
delayed the date. [tense music] I will never
forgive Christa Pike. Never. I cannot wait to hold
Colleen's picture up when she's executed to see
her hurt like she did mine. If it was up to me, I
would have did to her what she did to Colleen, because
I think that she deserves that. [camera shutter snaps] LINA HAJI: When
we look at people who are psychopaths or
high on psychopathy, it's a combination
of, what we would say, nature versus nurture. So Ms. Pike may have
had a predisposition to engage in criminal acts,
but the abusive and neglectful childhood certainly added
to that and sped it up. All of that trauma, combined
with a probable predisposition to engage in violence, was
just a perfect storm for her to go on and commit
this heinous crime, where she took 45
minutes, if not more, to murder an innocent girl. MAY MARTINEZ: I am Colleen's
voice, and I always will be. And once I'm gone and it
still hasn't been settled, Colleen's baby sister
will be my voice. And it will continue
until we get satisfaction through the state. Now, Christa, when it gets
down to the nitty-gritty and she's days away
from being put to death, if that ever happens,
she might have a tendency to go out with a bang. I still think she thinks
it's the greatest thing she's ever done in her life. [tense music] It's something no mother or
father ever has to go through. And I think what I lived,
this story with Colleen, has been the worst
nightmare of my life. [dramatic music]
