Psychiatrist: Pike sees herself as a leopard, as a puppy

Retired KPD investigator testifies she acted 'very jovial'

Christa Gail Pike

Photo by J. Miles Cary

Christa Gail Pike

Christa Gail Pike breaks down in tears Thursday as she listens to tape of her initial confession to police that she killed Colleen Slemmer in January 1995. Pike is trying for a new trial in Slemmer's slaying.

Photo by J. Miles Cary // Buy this photo


May Martinez, mother of Christa Gail Pike's victim, comments on the case

On the bad days, Christa Gail Pike’s a leopard.

On the good days, she’s a puppy.

That’s how the death row inmate sees herself, depending on her mental state and what medications she’s taking, a psychiatrist testified today in Knox County Criminal Court.

Dr. William Kenner said he’s examined Pike since 2001, when she first asked to drop her death penalty appeals. He diagnosed her as suffering from severe bipolar disorder.

His testimony came on the fifth day of Pike’s final bid to overturn her death sentence for killing fellow Job Corps student Colleen Slemmer in 1995.

The first time he met her was on a bad day, he said.

“The hair on the back of my neck stood up,” he testified. “It felt like a powderkeg was about to go off.”

He said that’s the mental state that Pike’s mood swings and cycles of sleep deprivation create.

Those conditions create a mental climate that’s ripe for violence and most likely stem from brain and neurological damage as a child, he said.

During one interview Pike told him she had been awake for the past 72 hours.

“I’m having a bad day,” she told in a report he read on the witness stand.

“I feel my brain is swollen, and my eyes are going to pop out so forgive me if I seem scattered.”

On another occasion she said, “I would like to take half the people and throw them off a cliff,” Kenner testified.

Kenner said he feels Pike would have been in a similar state when she killed Slemmer.

After Pike began taking lithium, a common medication for bipolar disorder in 2002, she showed a “dramatic improvement,” Kenner testified.

“What’s been remarkable about her treatment is how much she’s changed,” Kenner said.

“For the first time she was able to understand how she felt and how she related to other people.”

Psychological tests from the various interviews show Pike compared herself to a leopard when depressed and a puppy while on lithium.

Judge Mary Beth Leibowitz expects to wrap up testimony today and issue a written ruling later.

On Thursday, the two faces of Pike met again in court — the smiling 19-year-old killer and the 32-year-old death row inmate fighting for her life.

Pike listened, wept and sobbed as prosecutors played the tape of her initial confession to Knoxville police. She watched herself, then a dry-eyed teenage Job Corps student in a police video, lead Investigator Randy York through the crime scene and point out the spot where she and two friends killed Slemmer.

Assistant District Attorney General Leland Price played the tapes to counter claims by Pike’s lawyers that she confessed while under the influence of marijuana and mood swings.

“I saw no sign that she was under the influence of anything,” said York, now retired. “She was acting very jovial and very cooperative. Sometimes she would laugh. I asked the questions. She went through and detailed what happened.”

Pike and classmates Tadaryl Shipp and Shadolla Peterson beat Slemmer and carved a pentagram on her chest with a box-cutter before Pike crushed her skull with a piece of asphalt the night of Jan. 12, 1995. Pike kept a piece of the skull as a souvenir.

Pike’s lawyers argue she didn’t get an effective defense at her trial in 1996 and that the jury never heard evidence about her mental problems that might have led them to spare her life. Prosecutors say nothing could have overcome the forensic evidence and Pike’s detailed confessions to York.

Pike sniffles and sobs on the tape as she describes luring Slemmer to the remote corner of the University of Tennessee’s agricultural campus where the trio killed her. She told police she’d competed with Slemmer for Shipp’s attention.

“Where in this statement was the jovial part?” her lawyer, post-conviction defender Donald Dawson, asked York. “We have a woman who seems to be struggling with her composure.”

York said Pike never broke down or asked to end the interview.

“I don’t detect any of that in here, and I don’t think you do either,” he said. “She never lost her composure. She was always able to keep talking.”

The video, shot a few hours after that confession, shows Pike smiling as she mimes dragging Slemmer’s body through the mud and bashing her head.

The jury that heard Pike’s confession never heard from Diana McCoy, a defense psychologist who interviewed her and believes she could have helped save Pike’s life.

“I wish I had this kind of evidence in all the cases I do,” McCoy said. “She’s a poster child for borderline personality disorder.”

Pike’s former lawyers, Bill Talman and Julie Ann Martin Rice, say they didn’t call McCoy to testify because she’d briefly dated Bill Crabtree, the lead prosecutor. McCoy said she told the defense team about her past early on.

Herbert S. Moncier, one of Knoxville’s best-known defense lawyers, praised McCoy on the stand Thursday but not Pike’s former lawyers or their handling of the case.

“I’m not going to say Mr. Talman was not competent to practice law,” Moncier testified. “But I cannot identify any high-profile cases he handled, nor are there any adjectives I can use in a good way to describe his practice.”

More details as they develop online and in Saturday’s News Sentinel.

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Comments » 17

diogenes writes:

What the article does not say (and what may not have come out in the court proceedings) is that Donald Dawson provided an affidavit for Mr. Moncier in Moncier's defense in the pending disciplinary proceedings in U.S. District Court in Chattanooga. Mr. Dawson is Pike's current attorney who has now called Moncier as a witness to disparage Pike's trial attorney. The guile of the Knoxville criminal defense bar never ceases to amaze me. If Mr. Moncier sincerely believed that Mr. Talman was incompetent to handle Pike's defense, why did he not step forward and volunteer for the appointment?

whitey writes:

(This comment was removed by the site staff.)

Chipmunk writes:

in response to whitey:

(This comment was removed by the site staff.)

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Blue_dog writes:

The News Sentinal has gotten their tape/captions mixed up. The woman you hear being interviewed is Collene Slemmers mother. In the last few seconds you hear her say that she will have to get her ( the skull) creamated again and put it all together.

98harleyrider#385132 writes:

As we seem to have a house full of rabid animals at the CC Bldg. today can we not just go ahead and euthanize them all. The community at large would be far better off.

jduke2817 writes:

Psychiatrists and doctors in a courtroom are about as useful as a turd in a punch bowl. They can support any opinion that the highest bidder wants them to, and the counter testimony can un-substantiate it, if they are paid enough.

He-said She-said.

KevinD writes:

Execute the psycho and let's be done with this once and for all.

shoes writes:

Does anyone really care how Pike sees herself now? Mental disease is progressive just like physical disease. The good doctor would be guessing as to how she was then, and still can't deny she did what she did.

Enough already with the lawyer games and peripherals. Pike has already had way many more chances than she gave her victim.

scaryworldET writes:

Does bi-polar disease really indicate you don't know the difference between right and wrong? It's not as if she hit or shot the victim quickly in a rage. She stalked her, tortured her and killed her. There were many times when she could have stopped and realized the gravity of her actions. She didn't.

jonathan#509413 writes:

The POSSIBILITY of 'borderline personality disorder', heck, even the reality of it (if, indeed, it is a reality) does not change the fact that Pike:

1. Organized accomplices to help her kill Slemmer
2. Organized and carried out a plan to lure Slemmer to a secluded area where there would be no witnesses
3. Left Slemmer at one point to determine if someone else was on the scene because she didn't want witnesses because she KNEW that what she was doing was wrong
4. Did not just 'snap' and kill Slemmer but planned the events leading up to killing her and then, from Pikes own estimation, took 30 minutes to an hour to kill her, torturing her first. Someone might 'just snap' and bash someone elses skull in with a rock, but I do not believe that anyone 'just snaps', makes someone remove her shirt so she can't run away, cuts someone repeatedly with a box cutter, repeatedly knocks them down when they try to get away, carves a recognizeable symbol into their chest and then repeatedly beats them in the head with a piece of pavement.

Pike claimed she didn't plan to kill Slemmer but talks as if events just got out of hand. Well, you know what, when you plan to take someone to a remote area, beat them, cut them and torture them, and they die as a result, it really doesn't matter that you only decided to kill them 'at the last minute' - it is still a premeditated crime and the victim still died as a result. To me, there is no question that Pike is an exemplary candidate for the death penalty. In fact, the only question is, "Why is she still breathing?"

skipp5 writes:

The saddest part of this story is the line"the two faces of Pike met again in court-the smiling 19-yr-old-killer and the 32-yr-old-death row inmate fighting for her life.
Taxpayers have been paying thousands if not millions for lawyers, court cost, and psychiatrist for 13 yrs. Plus the mother of the victim has gotten no closer to closure. If she had been sentenced to life without parole there would be no automatic appeals, the skull would probably been released to the mother and possibly some small amount of closure.
Not an opponent of the death penalty just the way it is applied. The only one who seems to benefit from a death sentence is the criminal.

itsmybiz writes:

whats the name of the court they are at?

chiliwillie writes:

Why are we wasting time, pull the switch and go on. She has had her trial, now let finish it. I am so tired of the lawyers prolonging justice so they can make money. I think once the person is found guilty, then it is up to them or their family to pay for any future lawyer services.

Sgt_Wambo302 writes:

I am going to speak on behalf of the law enforcement field by saying that executing a person, even for murder is not as simple or as easily done as some think it is. It is not something to brag about that is for sure. The problem here is that we have a person that did in fact commit murder, and I have watched this case for some time now. Justice has to be done. The big problem I have seen in this case is that Ms. Pike has proven that she cannot make it in prison without getting into trouble and have definately shown that she is not one to have in population. Looking at the evidence I have seen, I am going to agree with the vast majority that her execution should go on. The down side of the execution is that it will not bring Ms. Slimmer back and her family has to go on. It's not so much about what has been done as it is about what has to be done.

bretticus25#294810 writes:

in response to jduke2817:


He-said She-said.

That's exactly right. "Experts", though some are deserving of compensation, often don't get to the heart of the matter.

flagirl writes:

I have been reading all the posts for this past week. I have held my tongue long enough.
All of this is just giving more and more attention to Christa....which is what she thrives on.

It's time to talk about how her borderline personality actions has affected a family that I personally know and love. They have lost a daughter, a sister and a friend. A mother has endured 13 years of living Hell because the justice system (not to mention the media) gives so much to the criminal and not the victim. Almost EVERYDAY, I walk in her mother's home and see pictures of Colleen; the roses planted in her front garden in memory of her daughter and the urn holding her ashes--waiting for the remainder of her body so she can finally Rest in Peace. I cannot tell you how much I admire this woman for the strength she possesses in order to fight for her daughter and seek justice. She is not a vengeful person - she is a very loving and compassionate person. So let's stop giving all this attention to a sad, tormented murderer and let the justice system prevail. Christa will pay for what she did, one way or the other.

amyers01#510359 writes:

I say take her off her meds, give her a box cutter and lock her in a isolated cell. See if she premeditates her own demise or just snaps. Wonder what she'll carve on her body? I'm against the death penalty but I'm sick and tired of my tax money going to purchase the meds and daily care of those who don't value life. Instead of our tax money going to buy her meds let her die and use the tax money to buy care for those who really need it...the working poor!
