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Speaker 1: This is a take recorded statement. Person being interviewed is

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Speaker 1: Krista C h.

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Speaker 2: R I T A gale g A I L Pike.

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Speaker 3: The I K E.

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Speaker 1: This in regards to the death of Colleen C L

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Speaker 1: l e E N Slimmer s L E M M

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Speaker 1: E R, who was also a job course student whose

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Speaker 1: body was found on Friday thirteen, nineteen ninety five.

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Speaker 2: Christal Eu state your full name, honey.

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Speaker 4: It's January nineteen ninety five. An eighteen year old Krista

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Speaker 4: Pike is being interviewed by Knoxville, Tennessee police detective Randy York.

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Speaker 2: Well, right, where are you?

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Speaker 1: Where are you staying right now?

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Speaker 5: What are you doing?

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Speaker 1: Not the job of course? And how old are you?

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Speaker 6: Nineteen much?

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Speaker 4: Eighteen year old Christa is accused of brutally murdering a

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Speaker 4: teenage girl named Colleen Slimmer. They were both living at

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Speaker 4: job Corps, a residential program for troubled kids in Knoxville.

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Speaker 4: Krista was picked up by police soon after Colleen's body

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Speaker 4: was found in the clearing of a wooded area.

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Speaker 1: So how did you get her to go up there?

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Speaker 7: I just told her that I wonder her to come

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Speaker 7: to Blackcoster what's me about?

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Speaker 3: What time?

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Speaker 7: I don't know, somewhere between eight and ten, eight and

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Speaker 7: ten then what happened?

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Speaker 4: Christa said that she and Colleen didn't get along, that

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Speaker 4: Colleen was bullying her. She asked Colleen to go for

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Speaker 4: a walk with her, that the two of them could

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Speaker 4: go and smoke wheed in the park. But when they

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Speaker 4: got there, things changed in an instant.

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Speaker 3: We got up there and she thought, there's not really any.

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Speaker 7: Weed up here is And I just wanted to talk

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Speaker 7: to you. I want you to tell me why you're

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Speaker 7: doing all this stuff to me, you know, And I've said,

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Speaker 7: you know, I've been under a lie test from everything

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Speaker 7: that's been going on.

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Speaker 3: I said, I don't know why you can't.

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Speaker 7: Just trying to do things and their things above me,

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Speaker 7: you know, try to.

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Speaker 1: Get me in trouble.

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Speaker 4: Krista confronted Colleen, accusing her of trying to get her

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Speaker 4: in trouble at job Corps.

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Speaker 7: She has started going off on me.

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Speaker 2: Bitch that.

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Speaker 8: Going off, and I hit her.

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Speaker 4: Krista Pike hit Colleen until she killed her, and for

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Speaker 4: thirty years, Krista has sat in prison. The only woman

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Speaker 4: on Tennessee's death Row, the youngest woman ever sentenced to

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Speaker 4: death in America's modern era, and for almost thirty years,

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Speaker 4: lawyers have appealed Christa's conviction and sentence on any number

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Speaker 4: of grounds, that she was denied a fair trial, that

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Speaker 4: she suffered unimaginable childhood abuse, that so many years after

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Speaker 4: the crime, she's a different person, a caring, remorseful person

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Speaker 4: who doesn't deserve to die. So far, none of those

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Speaker 4: arguments have worked, and the clock counting down Christa's life

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Speaker 4: is ticking louder and louder. If killed, she'll be the

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Speaker 4: first woman executed in Tennessee in two hundred years.

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Speaker 9: Where we're at right now is one of the scariest

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Speaker 9: places to be because the state has asked for an

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Speaker 9: execution date for Christa.

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Speaker 4: This is Kelly Gleeson, one of Chris's attorneys.

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Speaker 9: I just would be devastated if we're not able to

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Speaker 9: prevail somehow. She is a warm, loving, compassionate person. She

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Speaker 9: deserves to live. She doesn't deserve to die for all

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Speaker 9: the reasons that we've got in front of the Tennessee

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Speaker 9: Supreme Court right now, in terms of her youth, her

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Speaker 9: undiagnosed severe mental illness, the severe abuse and trauma that

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Speaker 9: she has suffered from the earliest ages.

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Speaker 4: My name is Sarah Trelevin, and I was drawn to

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Speaker 4: Christa's story because it poses so many questions about the

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Speaker 4: capacity for change, even in the worst possible circumstances, about

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Speaker 4: how we let people languish in prison for decades, and whether,

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Speaker 4: after so much time, we're even punishing the same person

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Speaker 4: we initially condemned. The determination to kill Christa makes me

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Speaker 4: wonder how we determine, from a systemic and moral perspective,

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Speaker 4: whose life no longer has value, who we consider fundamentally unrestorable,

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Speaker 4: and what it means to earn the right to keep living.

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Speaker 4: This is Unrestorable Season two. Proof of Life, an original

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Speaker 4: podcast from Anonymous Content and iHeartRadio. When Krista Pike was

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Speaker 4: a fifteen year old kid in North Carolina, she busted

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Speaker 4: into a community center with a friend and stole some candy.

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Speaker 4: Christa was already on a rough road. She projected innocence

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Speaker 4: with her big mop of curly red hair and pale

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Speaker 4: complexion just a smattering of pepescanacne, but she was prickly

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Speaker 4: and defiant, prone to outbursts of rage. She had long

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Speaker 4: been in trouble for skipping school, running away, taking drugs.

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Speaker 4: She spent periods of time living on the streets in

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Speaker 4: volatile relationships. She was raped by a stranger at sixteen,

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Speaker 4: not the first time she was sexually assaulted. Her parents

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Speaker 4: were long divorced and neither showed much interest in her.

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Speaker 4: Her mother drank too much. From her earliest years, Christ

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Speaker 4: was treated like baggage, a burden. No one seemed to

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Speaker 4: care if she had what she needed, and at fifteen,

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Speaker 4: after being caught trying to steal that candy, she was

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Speaker 4: charged with breaking and entering and eventually sent to a

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Speaker 4: juvenile facility. She was there for over a year.

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Speaker 10: She's in this juvenile detention center that she does not

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Speaker 10: like and will tell you she doesn't like, but that

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Speaker 10: she self sabotages over and over again to stay in

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Speaker 10: it because she knows, this is what I need to do.

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Speaker 10: The choice to go to job Corps is the same thing.

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Speaker 4: This is Randy Spivey, another of Christ's attorneys.

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Speaker 10: She chooses to go to job Corps with the sense

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Speaker 10: that this may be her last chance to kind of

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Speaker 10: straighten things out for herself, and so like there are

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Speaker 10: efforts all along the way to try to turn the

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Speaker 10: ship that she is making to try to deal with

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Speaker 10: all the stuff that has been done to her in

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Speaker 10: one way or the other. And you just need to

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Speaker 10: see no help, No help come in.

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Speaker 4: Job Corps was a program for kids who need help

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Speaker 4: getting on the right path, to learn a skill to

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Speaker 4: get their ged. At eighteen, Krista wanted to be a

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Speaker 4: nurse to help other people, but that's not what happened.

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Speaker 4: Job Corp was an there. This is Kelly Gleason, one

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Speaker 4: of Chris's attorneys.

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Speaker 9: Again, it was extremely violent, it was extremely chaotic. This

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Speaker 9: is a conveyor belt into this disaster.

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Speaker 4: Job Corps was referred to in a local paper as

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Speaker 4: a crime school. Teenage kids with difficult backgrounds discipline issues

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Speaker 4: were all living in dorms together with little supervision. Tell

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Speaker 4: me about the backgrounds of these kids, Like, what kind

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Speaker 4: of kids were ending up in job Corps.

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Speaker 11: I guess one parent homes.

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Speaker 4: Joe Mode was a teacher at job Corps.

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Speaker 11: They came from one parent homes. Maybe you know, mother

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Speaker 11: or father who are alcoholics or you know, into drugs,

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Speaker 11: maybe in and out of prison. And that that's, you know,

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Speaker 11: not across the board. Because there was a lot of

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Speaker 11: great kids that maybe came from good homes but still

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Speaker 11: needing a second chance. Maybe they messed up in school,

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Speaker 11: because that happens, you know, even with the best of families.

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Speaker 11: You know what was heartbreaking is if you ever felt

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Speaker 11: like you reached these kids knowing they had to go

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Speaker 11: back to that environment.

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Speaker 4: Job Corps was suppose to provide a pathway to real

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Speaker 4: world skills like nursing or building maintenance or clerical work,

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Speaker 4: but students at Job Corps reported violence and gang activity.

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Speaker 4: Some kids carried weapons. Even the teachers were afraid.

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Speaker 11: I had problems with the kid where he was in

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Speaker 11: the class talking about what he wanted to do to

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Speaker 11: my wife. He knew where we lived, had the address,

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Speaker 11: my name, first name, and I had to walk out,

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Speaker 11: and I walked down the hall and turned around just

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Speaker 11: in time to see a broom go flying past me.

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Speaker 11: He had thrown it like a spear to go thick room.

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Speaker 11: Nothing happened to him.

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Speaker 4: By Christmas, of Christa's first semester at Job Corps, she

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Speaker 4: would tell her family that she was desperate to come home,

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Speaker 4: but she stayed for one Home wasn't much better, and

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Speaker 4: there was also her boyfriend to Darryl Joe Mode remembers him.

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Speaker 11: If he did come to class, he'd come in either

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Speaker 11: hire or hungover. So you know, I ended up writing

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Speaker 11: a lot of disciplinary reports on him.

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Speaker 4: Christa later reported that to Daryl was abusive and controlling. Mode.

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Speaker 4: Says that teachers heard he had beaten up one girl

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Speaker 4: at job Corps and gotten another pregnant, but that wasn't all.

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Speaker 8: You know.

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Speaker 11: And again things we heard, you know, like that they'd

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Speaker 11: found a stanic altar in his room, a pistol.

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Speaker 4: But to Christa, to Darryl was everything. She told people

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Speaker 4: she was terrified of losing him, that he was her

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Speaker 4: only protector, the only person that really cared about her,

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Speaker 4: And she became convinced that nineteen year old Colleen Slammer

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Speaker 4: was trying to take to Darryl away from her. Colleen

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Speaker 4: was from Florida. She had curly, long blonde hair and

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Speaker 4: an easy smile. She was studying computers. On the evening

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Speaker 4: of January eleventh, nineteen ninety five, Christa told another job

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Speaker 4: course student that she was going to kill Colleen, that

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Speaker 4: she just felt mean that day. The next evening, January twelfth, Krista,

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Speaker 4: her boyfriend to Dare, and a third teenager named Shaidola

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Speaker 4: Peterson lured Colleen into the woods. There, Krista and to

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Speaker 4: Darryl taunted Colleen, ripping her shirt off. They beat her

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Speaker 4: and slashed her with a box cutter and carved a

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Speaker 4: pentagram into Colleen's chest. Christa snapped at Colleen to stop crying,

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Speaker 4: to stop begging for her life. The torture went on

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Speaker 4: for at least thirty minutes and only ended when Krista

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Speaker 4: picked up a piece of concrete and smashed it on

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Speaker 4: Colleen's head.

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Speaker 11: The brutal murder created fear and speculation among students and staff.

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Speaker 6: Please say the murder suspects were close to the victim.

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Speaker 1: The motive of the program appears to be love triangle.

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Speaker 5: So can you talk now?

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Speaker 11: Is it good?

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Speaker 5: I should retire?

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Speaker 9: Yes?

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Speaker 4: Okay, this is Beth Carris. She's speaking with Randy Yorke

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Speaker 4: RETI hired Knoxville Police officer and lead detective on Christa's case.

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Speaker 4: Beth is a legal analyst and investigative journalist based in

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Speaker 4: New York City, and this is the third podcast we've

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Speaker 4: made together.

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Speaker 5: I want you to describe what you recall of the

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Speaker 5: scene the morning of January thirteenth, nineteen ninety five.

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Speaker 4: Colleen was killed on the evening of the twelfth, but

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Speaker 4: she was discovered by a groundsworker at the University of

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Speaker 4: Tennessee early on the morning of the thirteenth.

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Speaker 3: There's an area called Tison Park and it's the jogging

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Speaker 3: trail that goes to the University of Tennessee, and a

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Speaker 3: lot of people walk it and run it. It's a

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Speaker 3: real remote area. When I arrived at the scene, then

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Speaker 3: I was led back to where the body was located in.

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Speaker 3: Whoever did it apparently pulled her off of the trail

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Speaker 3: back into there a large dirt bank there piled up

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Speaker 3: and they had pulled her back into the base of it,

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Speaker 3: and there was clothes hanging from tree limbs and stuff

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Speaker 3: where they've tossed her clothes.

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Speaker 4: York says. The police didn't find anything at the scene

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Speaker 4: that pointed to a suspect.

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Speaker 3: But I sent the body to the Morgan University of Tennessee,

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Speaker 3: and on my way back to the police station, I

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Speaker 3: got a call to come to ut right away. They

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Speaker 3: had cleaned up the body and they found a panogram

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Speaker 3: carved on her chest. Are you familiar with a pentagram?

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Speaker 5: Yes.

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Speaker 4: In nineteen ninety five, the American South was still in

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Speaker 4: the grips of what was called Satanic panic, baseless conspiracy

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Speaker 4: theories about cult activities and devil worshiping daycares and weird

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Speaker 4: ritualistic abuse of children and animals.

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Speaker 3: Okay, they found it, and so I thought it was

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Speaker 3: kind of odd because I had just gone to the

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Speaker 3: Satanic and Deviate cul School in Jacksonville, Florida for a week,

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Speaker 3: and so I knew right away for what it was.

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Speaker 4: This satanic cult school Detective York attended was a workshop

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Speaker 4: for law enforcement. It wasn't uncommon for detectives to go

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Speaker 4: to the these kinds of programs to help them identify

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Speaker 4: Satanic elements and the crimes they investigated.

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Speaker 5: So when the emmy called and said we found this

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Speaker 5: pentagram carved on her chest, that must have really pictured curiosity.

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Speaker 5: Since you had just been in Florida.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I still had all that on my mind. But

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Speaker 3: when I saw the pentagram, I knew what it was.

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Speaker 3: It was involved in Satanic worship.

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Speaker 4: And then Detective York got some information that connected the

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Speaker 4: pentagram and Satanic worship to Job Corps.

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Speaker 3: I think it's around three or three thirty that next morning,

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Speaker 3: I got a call that they had gotten a call from,

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Speaker 3: but someone whose daughter was scared because she was in

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Speaker 3: the job core, and there was a bunch of kids

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Speaker 3: that was involved in Satanism, and so anyway, then I

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Speaker 3: realized that this could be a Job Corps student.

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Speaker 4: Job Corpse students had sign out sheets, so Detective York

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Speaker 4: asked to see the sheets for the night his youngvictim

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Speaker 4: was killed. Four students signed out that evening, but only

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Speaker 4: three signed back in the fourth Colleen Slummer his victim.

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Speaker 4: The others now his suspects.

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Speaker 3: I started going room to room interviewing him, and I

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Speaker 3: found bloody evidence in the rooms and satanic altar and

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Speaker 3: other things that led me to believe that they were

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Speaker 3: my applying suspects.

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Speaker 5: And then what did you find that job where you

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Speaker 5: said you found an altar?

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Speaker 3: To Daryl Shiff he had an altar set up in

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Speaker 3: his room in the closet. It had a Satanic Bible

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Speaker 3: and had a little statue of the equivalent to Saint

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Speaker 3: Peter who would guard the gates of Hale. It was

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Speaker 3: a statue of that character. So that's how I tied

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Speaker 3: it all in together.

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Speaker 4: It didn't take long for the three teams involved to

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Speaker 4: start confessing.

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Speaker 5: Really, within twenty four hours, you were getting confessions.

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Speaker 2: Yes, are you emotionally stable? And they will talk to

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Speaker 2: me boy hopefully. Okay, do you need anything?

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Speaker 4: This is tape from an interview between Krista and Detective

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Speaker 4: York two days after the murder.

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Speaker 2: All right, then, what happened?

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Speaker 7: Jesus the scrange scream up?

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Speaker 5: Can't hit her and.

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Speaker 8: Pull on the left.

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Speaker 9: A little.

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Speaker 4: Christa blasted her pent up rage, blaming Colleen forgetting her

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Speaker 4: in trouble at job corps, for making up gossip and

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Speaker 4: lies about her. She told the detective about how she

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Speaker 4: started hitting Colleen while Colleen tried to defend herself, and.

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Speaker 1: I was like, don't touch ma'am.

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Speaker 7: I don't want to touch ma'am. You know I can't stand.

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Speaker 9: Let me.

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Speaker 7: I really thought I was going crazy because I've never

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Speaker 7: seen myself act like that before in my life.

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Speaker 3: I been so mad before my life. You just kind

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Speaker 3: of lost control.

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Speaker 12: Yeah, okay, Christa, we are recording now.

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Speaker 8: Please state your first and last name, Christa Pike.

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Speaker 4: In August twenty twenty four, Beth and I went down

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Speaker 4: to Knoxville to investigate this story. We met with a

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Speaker 4: lot of people, including all four of Christa's attorneys, and

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Speaker 4: we visited the scene of the crime, but we couldn't

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Speaker 4: get permission to speak to Krista.

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Speaker 13: To thank you, Christa. By participating in this Q and

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Speaker 13: A session today March twenty fifth, twenty twenty five, you

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Speaker 13: acknowledge that this recording may be used in connection with

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Speaker 13: the podcast currently known as Unrestorable Season two. If you

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Speaker 13: understand and agree, please repeat yes, I understand and agree.

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Speaker 8: Yes, I understand and agree.

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Speaker 4: Death row inmates are often functionally barred from speaking to

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Speaker 4: the media, so Christa's lawyer, Kelly, offered to talk to

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Speaker 4: her on our behalf.

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Speaker 13: Is it harder now that the Tennessee is looking at

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Speaker 13: execution dates.

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Speaker 4: At the time of this conversation, Tennessee had recently announced

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Speaker 4: an end to the state's moratorium on executions. The pause

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Speaker 4: was triggered by a series of botched lethal injections, but

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Speaker 4: now Tennessee is planning to move forward with new protocols,

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Speaker 4: and Christa's execution is echine closer.

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Speaker 8: It's really hard to sit back and know that there's

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Speaker 8: like a list and a line of people waiting to die,

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Speaker 8: and thinking of how many are there before you and

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Speaker 8: who's next? In line, and how many are left before Europe?

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Speaker 8: And you know, well, there's eight before me, there's four.

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Speaker 8: Now that half dates, there's four left. How many months

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Speaker 8: are there? It's it's ridiculous. It shouldn't be. It shouldn't

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Speaker 8: be this way. That shouldn't be a process. You shouldn't

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Speaker 8: have to think of how many people have to die

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Speaker 8: before you have to die.

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Speaker 4: Kristin has had thirty long, solitary years to think about

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Speaker 4: a lot of things, including why she killed Colin.

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Speaker 8: It was hard for me. It was hard because as

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Speaker 8: a teenager and when this happened, I just didn't care.

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Speaker 8: I didn't care. I didn't care about her, I didn't

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Speaker 8: care about myself. I didn't care that I took someone's life.

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Speaker 4: Krista Pike today seems to understand that she was set

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Speaker 4: on a disastrous path long before she killed someone. At

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Speaker 4: the cusp of adulthood.

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Speaker 8: I was so just angry within myself and at home

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Speaker 8: at me. I never thought I had potential to be

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Speaker 8: anything anyway. I never thought my life would amount to

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Speaker 8: anything anyway. So it didn't really mean anything to me

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Speaker 8: at the time that I had just flushed all that

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Speaker 8: and now growing up and growing into myself, and I

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Speaker 8: can look back and see that we were all just

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Speaker 8: really screwed up kids. We were all going through things

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Speaker 8: that no one understood that we weren't getting the correct

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Speaker 8: help for. And you know, she needed help like I did,

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Speaker 8: and she wasn't getting it. I needed help like she did,

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Speaker 8: and I wasn't getting it. And I'm sure my co

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Speaker 8: defendants did also. We were all just really in a

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Speaker 8: bad situation. And it breaks my heart now knowing that

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Speaker 8: I took someone's sister, I took someone's daughter, I took

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Speaker 8: someone's friends. Like she had a whole world of her

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Speaker 8: own that I just jerked her out. And there's a

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Speaker 8: big anti spot there where she could be shining right now,

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Speaker 8: and she's not.

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Speaker 4: The murder of Colleen Slammer was a media sensation. The

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Speaker 4: age of the defendants, their personal backgrounds and history of

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Speaker 4: problematic childhoods, coupled with the satanic elements and absolute brutality

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Speaker 4: of the crime, made for salacious and constant headlines, and

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Speaker 4: among the many awful details that emerged in the case

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Speaker 4: regarding Colleen's terrifying last moments, the public learned something else

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Speaker 4: that Christa had taken a souvenir of the killing. That

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Speaker 4: one act, maybe even more than the murder itself, seemed

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Speaker 4: to condemn Christa in the public imagination. It turned her

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Speaker 4: into the main villain, someone unstoppably dangerous, and to many

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Speaker 4: it seems like evidence of some kind of natural wrath

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Speaker 4: proves that Krista was just born bad, incapable of redemption.

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Speaker 12: Do you think that you're entitled to some form of justice.

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Speaker 8: I don't think I'm entitled to anything. I don't think

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Speaker 8: I'm entitled to anything. I feel like things in my

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Speaker 8: case could have been handled better. I feel like things

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Speaker 8: in my childhood could have been handled better. But I

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Speaker 8: don't feel I'm entitled to anything. That's a very loaded

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Speaker 8: and word that I don't like.

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Speaker 4: But Christa says that she's changed and entitled or not,

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Speaker 4: she's now asking for a second chance. She and her

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Speaker 4: attorneys are making a desperate case that she deserves to live.

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Speaker 4: The fight to have her death sentence overturned raises questions

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Speaker 4: about who deserves our empathy, about how we benefit from

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Speaker 4: a narrative of good versus evil, and the persistent idea

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Speaker 4: that monsters walk among us. Does the criminal justice system

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Speaker 4: meaningfully allow for rehabilitation for perpetrators to accept responsibility, find

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Speaker 4: remorse and become better people, or do we insist that

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Speaker 4: they remain villains, rejecting the change that many prove capable

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Speaker 4: of because it somehow makes us feel safer. Coming up

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Speaker 4: on proof of life.

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Speaker 14: People can be like, Okay, she was young. Okay, maybe

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Speaker 14: we just give her a laugh about parole and she

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Speaker 14: can live her best Lafe Bahambars doing whatever she can

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Speaker 14: be productive member of prison society. The piece of skull.

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Speaker 14: You're not coming back from that.

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Speaker 15: In the South, Christa's life was just this locomotive of violence, instability,

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Speaker 15: lack of connection, lack of people she could trust, rely on,

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Speaker 15: feel loved, and then the train went off the tracks.

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Speaker 6: If there's nothing else that I've learned in the nearly

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Speaker 6: thirty five years that I've been defending people on death row,

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Speaker 6: it is that there are no evil people. There are

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Speaker 6: people who do evil things, but those people are deeply human,

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Speaker 6: They are deeply flawed, and they are very damaged. That

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Speaker 6: is the story of violent crime that nobody is telling.

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Speaker 4: Unrestorable is executive produced and hosted by me, Sarah Chilevin,

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Speaker 4: and Beth Carris. Our producer is Kathleen Goldhear mixing and

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Speaker 4: sound design by Reza Daia for Anonymous Content. Jessica Grimshaw

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Speaker 4: is our executive producer, Jennifer Sears is our executive in

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Speaker 4: charge of production, and nick Yannas is our legal council.

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Speaker 4: Heart executive producer Christina Everett and supervising producer Abu Zafar