January 1, Botched Execution Leaves Tennessee Killer Fighting For Life

Wyatt’s Take

• Colleen Slemmer’s murder was pure evil and the kind of crime that sticks with honest cops forever.
• Christa Pike carved up an innocent young woman and kept a piece of her skull as a trophy.
• Now the same justice system that failed to protect Slemmer is struggling to carry out the sentence the jury demanded.

More than thirty years after the brutal murder of nineteen-year-old Colleen Slemmer, the former Knoxville police chief still sees the crime scene every time he closes his eyes.

“I’ll remember this case to the day I die,” Phil Keith told reporters this week.

Keith served as Knoxville’s top cop from 1988 to 2004 and says the images have never faded.

“[The images] are as vivid today as the day I saw them,” he said. “All I have to do is shut my eyes, and I can see everything.”

Keith wishes police back then had access to trauma counseling that might have helped officers deal with what they witnessed.

“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,” he said.

Christa Pike led two classmates in luring Slemmer into the woods under the promise of picking up marijuana.

They tortured the young woman for nearly an hour, beating her, slashing her, and finally crushing her skull with broken asphalt.

Pike kept a piece of Slemmer’s skull as a sick trophy and showed it off to classmates before her arrest.

Her boyfriend carved pentagrams into the victim’s chest and face while she begged for her life.

“She represents pure evil,” Keith said of Pike.

Pike was scheduled to die by lethal injection on Wednesday but survived two doses of the drug and now lies unconscious in a hospital bed.

Her attorneys say she is critically ill, on a ventilator, and suffering serious injuries to both arms from the failed execution attempt.

Keith never wanted modern therapy for himself, but he still carries the weight of that night.

The case is a reminder that some crimes are so vile that decent people never forget them.

Wyatt Matters

Middle America still believes justice should be swift, certain, and final. Families like Colleen Slemmer’s deserve peace, not decades of legal games that keep killers alive while good officers live with the horror they witnessed.