Christa Pike showed no remorse when discussing Colleen Slemmer’s murder during questioning, a former police chief has claimed.
Former Knoxville police chief Phil Keith recalled the interrogation in a new documentary for the New York Post.
His account comes after Pike, 50, survived an execution attempt in Tennessee on September 30, the paper reports.
Phil Keith recalls Christa Pike’s interrogation
Keith, who handled the case, was asked about seeing Pike in the interrogation room.
“I heard somebody that was ruthless, without any remorse, almost giddy,” Keith recalled.
“You know, she was describing what took place, like, almost the sense that she was bragging about it,” he then said.
His recollections concern the original murder investigation, more than three decades before the failed execution attempt.
Why Christa Pike received a death sentence
Pike was sentenced to death for murdering Slemmer in Knoxville in January 1995.
Slemmer was her 19-year-old classmate at Job Corps. Pike lured Slemmer to her death in a fit of jealousy, believing she wanted to steal her boyfriend, 17-year-old Tadaryl Shipp.
She lured Slemmer to an isolated area of the University of Tennessee’s Knoxville campus. There, she tortured her with a meat cleaver and box cutters.
At the end of the half-hour ordeal, she killed Slemmer by taking a piece of asphalt to her head. She then kept her classmate’s skull as a souvenir.
Speaking in the documentary, Keith said that the scene was so shocking that even veteran detectives working on the case were left stunned by what they found.
“I was accustomed to seeing that kind of gore, if you will, but the brutality was different,” he said.
“You know, the visual scene of it, it was so shocking, and I could tell, when I first walked up – there’s two seasoned guys there, they got 50 or 60 years of homicide investigations under their belt, and I could tell, looking at their eyes and just their expressions, that they were disgusted with what they saw.”
Christa Pike’s recovery after hospital treatment
The execution attempt took place at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.
A court filing by her lawyer, Randy Spivey, alleges staff struggled to establish intravenous lines before administering two doses.
The filing claims the team used around 10 needles. Confusion over an emergency call also delayed help, after dispatchers initially dismissed it as a hoax. Pike remained unconscious in hospital for several days. Her legal team believed on October 5 that she was brain dead and would come off life support.
However, she regained consciousness and left the hospital 10 days after the attempt.
She returned to the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center, formerly known as the Tennessee Prison for Women. Her lawyers said last week that she was now speaking in full sentences.
What happens next for Christa Pike?
Her legal team has asked Tennessee Governor Bill Lee to commute her death sentence. They argue she has suffered more punishment than anyone else in the history of the American death penalty.
Bill paused all remaining executions in Tennessee for 2026 and ordered an independent review into what went wrong. Tennessee prison chief Frank Strada resigned following the attempt, saying his departure was in Tennesseans’ best interests.
Whether Pike will face another execution attempt remains uncertain.
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