Send us Fan Mail

A “let’s bury the hatchet” invite. A short walk off campus. A 19-year-old who never makes it back. We’re Tay and Binx, and we’re telling the story of Colleen Slemmer, a young woman from Jacksonville, Florida who goes to Knoxville, Tennessee for Job Corps because she wants her GED and real career training. What she gets instead is a campus that feels unsafe, reports that go nowhere, and a growing sense that someone has decided she doesn’t deserve to be there.

We break down how jealousy and obsession spiraled into violence, centered on Christa Gail Pike and her boyfriend, a teen who played into satanic panic imagery and helped feed the fantasy that Colleen was a “rival.” We walk through the timeline leading up to January 12, 1995, the moment Colleen agrees to go out with the very people who had made her life miserable, and the horrifying reality of what happened in the woods near the University of Tennessee agricultural area.

Then we follow what comes next: the discovery of Colleen’s body, the witness reports, the arrests, the trial, and the sentencing that made Krista Pike a singular figure on Tennessee death row. We also talk about the piece of this case that still hurts to say out loud, how evidence rules have kept Colleen’s mother fighting for decades to bring her daughter home whole.

If you listen, please share this with someone who cares about victim advocacy and long-term justice, and subscribe so you don’t miss our updates. After you finish, leave a review and tell us what question you’re still sitting with.