More than three decades after the torture, mutilation and murder of Tennessee 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, former Knoxville Police Chief Phil Keith says he's still haunted by the "satanic" crime scene."I'll remember this case to the day I die," he told Fox News Digital Thursday.Keith had been the city's chief of police from 1988 until 2004 and spent decades in law enforcement.Led by then-18-year-old Christa Pike, three classmates from a vocational school for troubled youths, the Knoxville Job Corps Center, lured Slemmer to her death by claiming they want to go to a music store and pick up marijuana they'd stashed in a park.CHRISTA PIKE'S ATTORNEYS SAY SHE'S IN CRITICAL CONDITION AFTER BOTCHED LETHAL INJECTIONSChrista Gail Pike is seen during her trial for the murder of Colleen A.
Slemmer March 18, 1996, in Knox County Criminal Court.(USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect)"She represents pure evil," Keith said of Pike.They tortured Slemmer for nearly an hour, Keith said, beating, cutting and gagging her before crushing her skull against the ground with a chunk of broken asphalt.When she tried to escape, they held her down.
When she begged for her life, they slashed her with blades.And when she cried, they gagged her with a hair tie.
Pike, 18 at the time and now 50, kept a fragment of her skull as a trophy and showed it off to classmates before her arrest.Her boyfriend at the time, who was also convicted but did not face the death penalty because he was only 17, carved pentagrams into her chest and face.TENNESSEE DEATH ROW INMATE SURVIVES 2 LETHAL INJECTION DOSES IN FAILED EXECUTION ATTEMPTAn undated portrait photograph of Colleen Slemmer provided by her mother.
(May Martinez/Special to the News Sentinel)At trial, an expert said the attack had "satanic elements" and also involved "the phenomenon of collective aggression, in which a group of people become emotionally aroused and 'the end result is that they engage in some kind of violent, extremely violent activit...