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Speaker 1: She goes back, I guess she's in her cell in

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Speaker 1: the City County Building, and she wants to write a

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Speaker 1: note to to Daryl.

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Speaker 2: This is John North, a journalist who covered Krista Pike's

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Speaker 2: murder trial in nineteen ninety six and watched as the

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Speaker 2: then twenty year old was sentenced to death. He's talking

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Speaker 2: about a moment right after the jury handed down their verdict,

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Speaker 2: the moment just after Christa found out that she would

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Speaker 2: be executed in the electric chair. After sobbing before the judge,

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Speaker 2: she was brought back to her jail cell, where it

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Speaker 2: seemed she had only one thought her boyfriend to Daryl.

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Speaker 2: To Daryl was sitting in his own jail cell, waiting

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Speaker 2: to be tried for his role in Colleen's murder. According

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Speaker 2: to court records, he was both physically and emotionally abusive

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Speaker 2: to Christa, but she didn't really have anyone else to

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Speaker 2: talk to.

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Speaker 1: And she writes this note, and it essentially says, can

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Speaker 1: you believe they did this to me when I actually

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Speaker 1: tried to be nice to her?

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Speaker 2: The most inflammatory part of that letter, the part that

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Speaker 2: would be repeated over and over again in newspapers and

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Speaker 2: in court hearings. The part that would be used to

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Speaker 2: demonstrate that Krista was incapable of remorse reads as follows,

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Speaker 2: You see what I get for trying to be nice

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Speaker 2: to the I went ahead and bashed her brains out

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Speaker 2: so she'd die quickly instead of letting her bleed to

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Speaker 2: death and suffer more.

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Speaker 3: And they fry me, Ain't that some shit?

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Speaker 1: And she says, I love you, and I'm your little devil,

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Speaker 1: And tell me what you're thinking, and I'll always be yours.

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Speaker 1: And if you need me to testify for you, I

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Speaker 1: will and tell the cops you lied and what you said.

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Speaker 1: And then she gives it to a jail matron and says,

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Speaker 1: please give this to to Darryl.

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Speaker 2: Christa's advocates argue that the note was a sign of

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Speaker 2: her unwavering devotion to and desperate need to please a

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Speaker 2: volatile teenage boy she had turned into her sole source

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Speaker 2: of support even as she faced death. She would lie

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Speaker 2: for him, take the blame for him. That he was

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Speaker 2: a lifeline for someone who grew up without anyone to

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Speaker 2: rely on and who feared being alone, someone who struggled

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Speaker 2: with mental illness and a brain that had been shaped

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Speaker 2: mostly by harm and in that way, Krista is a

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Speaker 2: lot like the dozens of other women who are death

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Speaker 2: sentenced in America.

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Speaker 4: When I think of Krista's case, I think of two things.

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Speaker 4: First and foremost.

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Speaker 2: This is Sandra Babcock, a law professor at Cornell University,

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Speaker 2: an expert in women and the death penalty.

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Speaker 4: One is that she, like many women on death row,

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Speaker 4: had experiences of sexual violence. She was raped twice before

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Speaker 4: she was eighteen, and was also someone who lived with

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Speaker 4: mental illness.

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Speaker 2: And there's something else that ties Christa to this group.

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Speaker 4: When they commit a violent crime, they frequently have a

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Speaker 4: co defendant, So a lot of times women are not

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Speaker 4: committing crimes alone. They are committing them in the presence

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Speaker 4: of codefendants and oftentimes with male code defendants with whom

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Speaker 4: they have a relationship.

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Speaker 2: Many of these women see the same man who terrorizes

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Speaker 2: them as their protector. They make a brutal calculation, weighing

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Speaker 2: their options and too often determining that it's better to

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Speaker 2: be abused than to risk being alone.

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Speaker 4: Courts are not taking their experiences of violence into account

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Speaker 4: when they sentence them.

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Speaker 2: To Darryl was only seventeen when he and Christa killed Colleen,

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Speaker 2: so he would be sentenced to life in prison. He'll

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Speaker 2: be eligible for parole later this year. Christa wrote to

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Speaker 2: Darryl for years as she sat on death row, moosely

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Speaker 2: alone and waiting to die. I'm Sarah Trelevin and this

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Speaker 2: is Unrestorable Season two Proof of Life, an original podcast

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Speaker 2: from Anonymous content and iHeartRadio. After the sentence was handed down,

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Speaker 2: Krista was transported from the city jail to the Tennessee

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Speaker 2: Prison for Women in Nashville. Her lawyers filed appeals in

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Speaker 2: the hope of overturning her death sentence.

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Speaker 5: I'm locked down twenty three hours a day.

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Speaker 2: This is an interview that Krista did from prison in

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Speaker 2: nineteen ninety eight. She's wearing an institutional blue button down

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Speaker 2: shirt with a white undershirt. Her hair is in a

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Speaker 2: high ponytail tied with a blue scrunchy.

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Speaker 5: I get to go outside in a cage for an

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Speaker 5: hour a day.

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Speaker 3: At twenty one.

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Speaker 2: She sounds resilient and confident, almost stoic.

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Speaker 3: What do you think about the electric jair.

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Speaker 6: I don't really think about that because I don't think

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Speaker 6: I'm ever going to see it.

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Speaker 7: I know that I don't deserve to be where I'm at,

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Speaker 7: and I know that somewhere along the line, somebody's going

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Speaker 7: to see that. That's all I have left is hope.

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Speaker 2: That hope real or just a brave face for the

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Speaker 2: cameras wouldn't last. Christa's mental health crisis was only getting worse,

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Speaker 2: and it was exacerbated by the conditions of solitary confinement.

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Speaker 5: Solitary confinement, especially that of prolonged solitary confinement, you know,

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Speaker 5: has a variety of different psychological and physical health related consequences.

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Speaker 2: This is Ali Winters. She's a social worker and professor

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Speaker 2: at the University of Tennessee Knoxville who has counseled Krista

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Speaker 2: in prison. Christa gave us permission to speak with her.

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Speaker 6: I would have patients who would enter solitary confinement and

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Speaker 6: they didn't have a mental health diagnosis, but over time

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Speaker 6: they would develop significant mental health issues like mood disorders,

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Speaker 6: in particular related to depression and hopelessness and despair. There

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Speaker 6: were a lot of people that would actually begin experiencing

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Speaker 6: more psychotic symptoms. It would start with paranoia, like what

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Speaker 6: are they talking about? They're talking about me, They're plotting

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Speaker 6: against me, you know, and that would then in turn,

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Speaker 6: I think kind of morph into.

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Speaker 5: This level of anxiety.

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Speaker 6: So you would see a lot of irritability, a lot

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Speaker 6: of anxiety, a lot of pacing, you know, those kinds

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Speaker 6: of things.

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Speaker 2: Christa is the only woman on death row in Tennessee,

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Speaker 2: not uncommon for women, and so Christa is in de

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Speaker 2: facto segregation. Because death row inmates are typically separated from

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Speaker 2: the general prison population, they.

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Speaker 4: Are often subjected to more extreme conditions of isolationation and

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Speaker 4: solitary than the men are because they are one of

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Speaker 4: a kind.

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Speaker 2: This again is Sandra Babcock from Cornell University.

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Speaker 4: So you saw this in Christa's case. The kinds of

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Speaker 4: segregation that she experienced were really uniquely tortuous. Women who

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Speaker 4: are incarcerated have a higher frequency of mental illness than men,

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Speaker 4: So when they come into the system of detention incarceration,

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Speaker 4: they are already experiencing many of them symptoms of trauma

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Speaker 4: and mental illness, and they experience those at higher rates

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Speaker 4: than men and the incarcerated population, so they are more

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Speaker 4: vulnerable to the effects of solitary confinement.

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Speaker 2: Christa was eating every meal alone. When her family visited,

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Speaker 2: they were behind plexiglass, and her primary means of communication

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Speaker 2: with other inmates was getting down on the floor and

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Speaker 2: yelling through the crack under her.

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Speaker 5: See.

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Speaker 4: On top of that, what we see in the cases

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Speaker 4: of women who are in prison is that they lack

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Speaker 4: many of the supports that men in prison receive from

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Speaker 4: people that they know in love on the outside. So

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Speaker 4: women tend to receive fewer visits from family members. They

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Speaker 4: don't have the same degree of social support from people

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Speaker 4: on the outside as many of the incarcerated men do.

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Speaker 2: That's very interesting. I mean, is that because men are

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Speaker 2: more likely to kill someone not in their immediate orbit,

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Speaker 2: or is that because when a woman kills it's considered

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Speaker 2: less forgivable.

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Speaker 4: I don't know that anybody's ever done research on that.

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Speaker 4: If I were to guess, I would say it's a

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Speaker 4: combination of the first thing, that many times women have

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Speaker 4: been convicted of crimes that have torn families apart. But

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Speaker 4: I think it goes beyond that. I think it's also

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Speaker 4: that women tend to be caretakers, and so if women

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Speaker 4: in prison are relying on their male relations to visit

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Speaker 4: them and you know, bring them news and sustain their

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Speaker 4: spirits and sustain that connection to the outside world, that

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Speaker 4: is less likely to happen.

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Speaker 2: For men on death row, conditions are not great, but

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Speaker 2: they are less isolated. There are forty two men on

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Speaker 2: death row in Tennessee, and they live together on a

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Speaker 2: segregated unit. Ali Winters says that life in solitary can

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Speaker 2: drive the women she treats to act out in ways

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Speaker 2: that demonstrate just how desperate they are for any form

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Speaker 2: of contact. I hope I'm pronouncing this right. Can you

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Speaker 2: tell me the story of Esa? He say, say tell

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Speaker 2: me the story of Isa.

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Speaker 5: Say yeah.

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Speaker 6: Christa was out in the wreck in a cage that

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Speaker 6: has a concrete floor and then they have wire around,

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Speaker 6: you know, this concrete slab like fencing, and then razor

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Speaker 6: wire above that. And so one day when she was

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Speaker 6: in wreck, she was sitting there. She ended up noticing

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Speaker 6: that a turtle was coming through the grass and came

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Speaker 6: up through the fence. She grabbed the turtle, you know,

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Speaker 6: and that turtle became her world. She fed that thing

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Speaker 6: all kinds of stuff, like little pieces of ham, little

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Speaker 6: pieces of tuna.

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Speaker 3: Krista named the turtle Isse.

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Speaker 6: And she had a little soap box because it was

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Speaker 6: a tiny little thing. And then every morning she would

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Speaker 6: plug her sink and fill it with water and let

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Speaker 6: you know, little essay swim around and be a turtle.

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Speaker 6: And this was not uncharacteristic of the women in solitary confinement,

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Speaker 6: even if they could find just a bug. I had

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Speaker 6: one lady. She adopted the exoskeleton of a cicada that

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Speaker 6: had just been left somewhere.

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Speaker 3: Like the discardage.

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Speaker 6: The discarded shell of a cicada, but those shells still

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Speaker 6: have like little eyes and stuff. But she cared for

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Speaker 6: that thing for months, acting like it was alive and

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Speaker 6: talking to I mean, it's like this was not at

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Speaker 6: all unusual, because I think that women and maybe this

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Speaker 6: is true for the guys, but it's never really been

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Speaker 6: something that has been especially observed, but for the women

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Speaker 6: that there's a need to nurture.

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Speaker 2: The effects of solitary of spending twenty three hours a

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Speaker 2: day alone in a cell aren't just psychological.

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Speaker 8: I remember Krista being pretty curvaceous when I first met her,

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Speaker 8: and then I remember a period of a time where I

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Speaker 8: saw her and she could almost literally fit through the

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Speaker 8: trap because her body had atrophied in such a way.

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Speaker 2: This is Ashley Sellers. She was incarcerated for twenty one years.

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Speaker 2: Most of them at the same facility where Krista is

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Speaker 2: still being held today.

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Speaker 8: She hasn't had access to nutrition, She hasn't had access

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Speaker 8: to sunlight to be able to have the capacity to

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Speaker 8: be bought to have good vitamin D absorption. Bone health

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Speaker 8: is a huge issue for women period, and if you

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Speaker 8: don't have access to the sun, if you don't have

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Speaker 8: access to calcium, your body is just not going to farewell.

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Speaker 8: And I would say, again, that's probably a huge testament

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Speaker 8: to why she has experienced the dental problems that she's experienced.

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Speaker 2: Do you know what those problems are?

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Speaker 3: It's that something to be comfortable sharing.

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Speaker 8: I don't know if she's completely with denters now. I

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Speaker 8: don't know that she has any of her natural teeth.

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Speaker 3: At this point.

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Speaker 2: And that's just fallen out over the years because of

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Speaker 2: the conditions in prison. Yeah, over time, with very few

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Speaker 2: points of contact, Christa was becoming increasingly agitated and desperate.

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Speaker 7: I mean she would go for days without sleeping. She

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Speaker 7: was manic and she didn't know why.

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Speaker 2: That's Kelly Gleeson, one of Krista's attorneys today.

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Speaker 7: There were symptoms of bipolar a post traumatic stress disorder.

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Speaker 2: But Christa didn't get a diagnosis of bipolar or PTSD

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Speaker 2: back then. She got a diagnosis of OCD or obsessive

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Speaker 2: compulsive disorder, so.

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Speaker 7: They treated her with prozac that can be contraindicated for

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Speaker 7: bipolar disorder because it can exacerbate mania.

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Speaker 2: Instead of the medication helping her, things suddenly took a

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Speaker 2: very bad turn for Christa.

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Speaker 7: She was convinc one point. Worms were crawling in the

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Speaker 7: walls of the prison and they were crumbling the walls,

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Speaker 7: and she was trying to tell everybody, danger, Danger, the

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Speaker 7: prison's about to collapse because of the worms in the wall.

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Speaker 7: She was not well.

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Speaker 2: This was the summer of two thousand and one. Christa

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Speaker 2: was miserable, and she decided it was no longer worth

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Speaker 2: the fight to overturn her death sentence and keep living.

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Speaker 7: Krista wrote Judge Leebowitz and said, I want to drop

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Speaker 7: my appeals, drop my post conviction case, and I want

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Speaker 7: you to set an execution date.

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Speaker 2: While waiting on that decision, a fire broke out in

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Speaker 2: a part of the prison. Christa, who usually spent time

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Speaker 2: alone when she was permitted outside, was briefly paired with

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Speaker 2: two other inmates in what was called the cage a

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Speaker 2: fenced in area where she got fresh air for one

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Speaker 2: hour a day. The other inmates were named Patricia and Natasha.

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Speaker 2: Patricia was severely mentally ill.

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Speaker 7: Patricia liked to aggravate Krista by making buzzing noises to

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Speaker 7: imitate an electric chair.

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Speaker 3: She also had a lengthy history of violence.

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Speaker 7: Patricia tried to kill at least three other women. In

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Speaker 7: one incident, she had taken a woman and rammed her

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Speaker 7: head between the cell door bars. Krista was able to intervene,

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Speaker 7: get the woman extracted and help her. In another incident, Patricia,

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Speaker 7: who is large and has impulse and anger control issues,

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Speaker 7: she was trying to drown a woman's head in a toilet,

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Speaker 7: and Christa intervened and was able to pull her away

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Speaker 7: and save that woman. In another incident, Patricia had taken

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Speaker 7: a telephone cord and was strangling a woman to death,

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Speaker 7: and Krista was able to intervene and save that woman's life.

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Speaker 2: Patricia had been threatening to kill Natasha, the third inmate

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Speaker 2: in the cage. Natasha had told Krista that she was

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Speaker 2: terrified of Patricia, and one day in August, things got

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Speaker 2: bad very fast.

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Speaker 7: Natasha and Patricia start yelling at each other and Natasha

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Speaker 7: takes a paunch at Patricia. Krista jumps on Patricia's back,

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Speaker 7: has a shoelace and pulls it around Patricia's neck untils

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Speaker 7: She's down on the ground and becomes unconscious, and then

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Speaker 7: officers intervene.

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Speaker 2: Krista was charged with attempted murder. She was encouraged to

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Speaker 2: take a plea deal for a lesser charge, but Christa,

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Speaker 2: now in solitary for five long years, was so desperate

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Speaker 2: to get out of her cell that she told her

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Speaker 2: lawyers she wanted to.

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Speaker 3: Fight the charges.

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Speaker 2: Christa wanted to sit in court, to sit shoulder to

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Speaker 2: shoulder with her lawyers. It was the closest she could

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Speaker 2: get to a normal world, a world populated with other people,

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Speaker 2: with conversations and eye contact. She was desperate to change

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Speaker 2: out of her prison uniform and maybe even wear a dress.

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Speaker 2: But as her new trial inch closer, things only got

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Speaker 2: worse and worse and attempted suicide. Where she once hoped

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Speaker 2: to have her sentence overturned, her only hope now was

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Speaker 2: the petition she had in front of the court requesting

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Speaker 2: the expedite her execution.

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Speaker 9: Well, I can't explain my thinking at the time because

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Speaker 9: I was insane, I was miserable, and I just didn't

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Speaker 9: want to be here anymore and was too weak, I

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Speaker 9: think to take my own life. And I'm not sure,

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Speaker 9: but it was.

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Speaker 5: It was.

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Speaker 9: I was in a really, really bad mental state, really bad.

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Speaker 3: This is Krista today.

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Speaker 9: I wasn't diagnosed, and I surely wasn't treated.

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Speaker 2: When we first started reporting this story, we knew we

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Speaker 2: needed to hear from Krista directly. We tried to arrange

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Speaker 2: an interview, but we soon learned that that would be

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Speaker 2: near impossible. Christa's access to the outside world is dreamly limited.

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Speaker 2: She's not allowed to speak to the media without special

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Speaker 2: permission that's rarely granted, so we had to ask her

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Speaker 2: lawyers to record an interview with Krista. We provided the

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Speaker 2: questions they asked them.

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Speaker 9: And it made me very agitated at times and miserable

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Speaker 9: at times. It's not easy to live in that mind state.

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Speaker 2: It wasn't just the isolation and untreated mental illness. Christa

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Speaker 2: was also grappling with years of neglect and trauma that

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Speaker 2: shaped who she was in that moment.

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Speaker 10: So I've been doing forensic work for over thirty years,

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Speaker 10: and the history that she reported was really remarkable for

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Speaker 10: just how extensive and severe and chronic her childhood map

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Speaker 10: treatment history is.

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Speaker 2: Bethany Brand is Professor Emerita Psychology at Tausan University. She

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Speaker 2: specializes in trauma disorders. Doctor Brand says that kids who

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Speaker 2: suffer extreme trauma and abuse at an early age, a

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Speaker 2: scale referred to as adverse childhood experiences or ACES, often

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Speaker 2: have lingering damage that lasts well into adulthood.

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Speaker 11: Children exposed to a very high number of ASES have

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Speaker 11: incredibly high risk for behavioral problems like aggression, getting picked

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Speaker 11: on or picking on other kids for example. They have

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Speaker 11: problems with memory, they don't remember their childhood very well.

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Speaker 11: They are at high risk for all kinds of psychological

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Speaker 11: problems depression, anxiety, suicide, attempts to dissociation, all kinds of things.

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Speaker 11: They have a high need for psychiatric medications. One of

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Speaker 11: the ACE studies showed that people into their nineties were

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Speaker 11: at higher risk for needing antidepressants. This stuff doesn't necessarily

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Speaker 11: go away to because the abuse, the maltreatment is over.

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Speaker 11: So we're learning as a mental health field that this

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Speaker 11: changes people's stress response system. It changes the wiring as

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Speaker 11: well as the structures in their brain, and they don't

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Speaker 11: respond like non traumatized people when they're under great stress.

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Speaker 11: It's not that some people are born monsters, it's what

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Speaker 11: stress and early maltreatment can do to the brain.

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Speaker 2: In two thousand and two, kristaph finally got what perversely

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Speaker 2: felt like some form of relief. Judge Lebowitz granted Christa's

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Speaker 2: wish to drop her appeals and die in court. Christa

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Speaker 2: sobbed profusely, thanking the judge for letting her end her misery.

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Speaker 2: Her execution date was set for August two thousand and two.

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Speaker 2: Not long after, lawyer Kelly Gleason became involved in christ

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Speaker 2: this case. Christa was twenty six.

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Speaker 7: Her attorneys were struggling with how to respond to where

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Speaker 7: Christa was at, knowing that she's an intelligent person, but

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Speaker 7: knowing that she was having a very, very difficult time

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Speaker 7: with her conditions. I was consulting with them and telling

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Speaker 7: them that they could not let the conditions of confinement

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Speaker 7: drive her decision making.

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Speaker 2: Gleeson didn't want Christa to make the decision to die

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Speaker 2: from a place of desperation. Maybe there was something that

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Speaker 2: could help Christa relieve the worst of her symptoms.

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Speaker 7: And That's when they began to request Judge li Bewitz

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Speaker 7: to appoint an expert to determine whether she was competent

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Speaker 7: to make the decision, and that is actually what led

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Speaker 7: to her first being diagnosed with the severe mental illness

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Speaker 7: of bipolar disorder.

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Speaker 2: The doctors overseeing Christa's care decided to reevaluate her, and

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Speaker 2: that's when she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and PTSD.

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Speaker 2: She was put on lithium and her moods stabilized. She

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Speaker 2: was able to sleep, and she wasn't overcome with self

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Speaker 2: loathing and a desire to end her life. In July

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Speaker 2: two thousand and two, just three weeks before she was

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Speaker 2: scheduled to be executed, Christa's lawyers successfully petitioned the court

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Speaker 2: to overturn the decision to abandon her appeals. But as

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Speaker 2: Christa returned to the fight for her life, as she

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Speaker 2: adapted to her new medications and started therapy and learned

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Speaker 2: about all the ways she had been set up for

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Speaker 2: failure in early life, as she grappled with her killing

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Speaker 2: of Colleen, she and her team would face a new challenge.

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Speaker 2: What would it take to prove to a court that

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Speaker 2: she deserves to Live.

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Speaker 12: I think we have a myth about our justice system

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Speaker 12: that comes through the news and popular media, something about

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Speaker 12: how doing this fixes problems and that victims are made

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Speaker 12: whole once someone has been the victim. However, in a

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Speaker 12: murder rate, even robberies, it changes the victim and the

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Speaker 12: victim will never be whole. And we've developed a myth

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Speaker 12: about our super effective justice system that it does make

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Speaker 12: people whole and it can't.

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Speaker 2: That's next time on Proof of Life. Unrestorable is executive

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Speaker 2: produced and hosted by me Sarah Chelevin and Beth Carras,

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Speaker 2: mixing and sound design by Reza Daiah for Anonymous Content.

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Speaker 2: Jessica Grimshaw is our executive producer, Jennifer Sears is our

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Speaker 2: executive in charge of production, and.

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Speaker 3: Nicole Pronk is our legal counsel.

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Speaker 2: For iHeart executive producer Christina Everett, and supervising producer Abu

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Speaker 2: Zaphar