Just Felt Mean That Day: Christa Pike and the Knoxville Job Corps Murder

Colleen Slemmer could take a computer apart and put it back together, and she had a shirt that said Computer Geek to prove it. She moved more than 500 miles from home for a job program in Knoxville, Tennessee. A classmate there decided Colleen was after her boyfriend, and she told another student she’d just felt mean that day.

Colleen Slemmer, the Computer Geek From Orange Park, Florida

You could hand Colleen Slemmer a computer and she’d take it apart and put it back together, and she owned a shirt that said Computer Geek and wore it. She grew up in Orange Park, Florida. Her stepdad, Raul, was the guy she worked on computers with. Her mom’s name is May, and Colleen was the big sister in that house.

Her family remembers an easygoing girl who was always smiling. She was into roller skating and bowling and surfing, plus the old family games. At lunch she’d go help the kids with disabilities and autism, and she volunteered at Special Olympics events.

Her grandfather is the one who brought up Job Corps. It’s a federal program where, if you’re young and short on money, you can live at a center and get schooling and job training, and Colleen picked the one up in Knoxville, Tennessee, so she could study computer technology. She left home on Halloween in 1994. She was 19. Knoxville is more than 500 miles from Orange Park.

Life at the Knoxville Job Corps Center

The Knoxville center was on Dale Avenue, close enough that you could walk over to Tyson Park or onto the University of Tennessee’s agricultural campus.

Another student there, Christa Pike, was 18. She was working on her GED and training to be a nursing assistant, and her boyfriend was a student named Tadaryl Shipp, who was 17.

Most of what you’ll hear about how Christa grew up came from her own family on the witness stand. Her mom, Carissa, admitted to heavy drinking and to smoking marijuana around her. An aunt told the jury about a time Christa was a toddler having seizures bad enough to put her in the hospital, while her mom stayed at the bar.

Her dad, Glenn, testified that he kept picking his new wife and family over her, and at one point he signed adoption papers that never went anywhere. Christa spent a lot of her childhood with her dad’s mother, who was the person she was closest to, and when that grandmother died in 1988, Christa tried to kill herself, and her mom admitted she never got her much help. Decades later, Christa’s lawyers put together records of sexual abuse going back to when she was in preschool, and the state told a court it didn’t contest that history.

Tadaryl Shipp, a Ouija Board, and a Jealous Girlfriend

Days before Colleen died, a student named Kip O’Hara heard Tadaryl say he needed a human sacrifice because the celestial bodies were aligned, and Kip said Tadaryl was holding a Ouija board while he explained it, and you’d have to ask Tadaryl what the Ouija board was adding to the astronomy.

Christa had decided Colleen was after Tadaryl and running her mouth about her. Nobody knows if either one was true.

On the 11th of January, Christa told a classmate named Kim Iloilo she was going to kill Colleen. Kim remembered her saying she’d “just felt mean that day.” Kim didn’t go to the police.

January 12, 1995: The Walk Toward Tyson Park

Colleen called her mom the next evening around 6. May says Colleen told her 3 students were bothering her.

Sometime that day, a student named Daniel Wayland ran into Christa and Tadaryl and another student, Shadolla Peterson, while they were out looking for Colleen. One of them said that when they found her, she was dead. Daniel couldn’t say which one.

Christa had a box cutter on her and a miniature meat cleaver, and she got Colleen to come along by saying there was marijuana stashed in Tyson Park and they could walk toward the Blockbuster Music store, which was a Blockbuster where you bought CDs. The 4 of them ended up by the steam plant on the UT ag campus.

The Murder of Colleen Slemmer

Christa confronted Colleen about Tadaryl and started hitting her. It went on for 30 minutes to an hour.

Colleen tried to get away more than once. Tadaryl admitted tripping her once. Another time he brought her back. Christa cut her with the box cutter. Tadaryl told police Shadolla hit and cut Colleen too, and Shadolla has said she never touched her. Nobody knows which version is true.

Colleen begged them to let her go. She said she’d walk home to Florida and wouldn’t come back for her things. Florida was more than 500 miles away.

Christa told police it was harder to hurt Colleen while Colleen was talking, and she kicked her more. Colleen died from being hit in the head with rocks or asphalt. Tadaryl admitted he carved a pentagram into her chest and told police the idea of a sacrifice only came to him partway through, and afterward they dragged Colleen toward the trees and hid her clothes nearby.

The Skull Fragment in Christa Pike’s Jacket

That night Christa told Kim she’d killed Colleen and showed her a piece of skull, and I don’t know what you’re supposed to do at 18 when a classmate pulls a piece of bone out of her pocket. The next morning Christa showed another student a bone fragment and said the stains on her shoes were blood. Nobody who heard it called the police before Colleen was found.

A UT grounds worker found Colleen around 8 that morning.

That afternoon, Christa went into the Job Corps office about an ID card and left her jacket in there. Security handed it to police. There was a piece of skull in the pocket, and a UT anthropologist matched it to a gap in Colleen’s skull.

Christa gave a detective a detailed statement early on January 14. Tadaryl talked too, and the blood on his clothes matched Colleen’s DNA. The Job Corps center closed soon after.

Christa Pike’s Trial and Death Sentence

Christa’s trial started in March 1996. The jury heard her recorded confession, and her lawyers called a psychologist who said she had very severe borderline personality disorder and lost control that night. The jury convicted her of premeditated first-degree murder and conspiracy. They found she tortured Colleen and killed her to avoid arrest, and they sentenced her to death.

Tadaryl was 17 that night. In Tennessee you have to be at least 18 at the time of the crime to get the death penalty. A jury convicted him in 1997, and he got life. The judge stacked 25 more years on top for conspiracy.

Shadolla’s murder charge got dropped in a plea deal. The prosecutor said the evidence could prove she was there. She pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact and testified against Tadaryl at his trial, and she got 6 years of probation on top of credit for the time she’d already spent in jail.

Christa spent decades on appeals, and every court turned her down. During a fire evacuation at the women’s prison in 2001, she strangled another inmate with a shoelace until the woman passed out. That added 25 years.

The Failed Execution of Christa Pike

Tennessee set Christa’s execution for September 30, 2026, and you probably saw her face on the news that week. Governor Bill Lee turned down her request for clemency. May and Raul raised money from donors to make the trip up from Florida, headed north the same way Colleen went when she left home for Knoxville. Their granddaughter told reporters May went hoping to see the sentence carried out.

After hours of last-minute court fights, the state gave Christa 2 doses of pentobarbital. She kept breathing. Somebody at the prison called for an ambulance at 8:40 and told the dispatcher, “The person is not yet deceased.” A Nashville TV station reported that the worker who called didn’t have the security code dispatch uses to verify prison calls, and dispatch supervisors decided the call was fake, and I had no idea you needed a password to get an ambulance into a prison. It took about half an hour for prison officials to confirm the call was real.

Christa ended up in the hospital on a ventilator. Her lawyers say doctors came to believe she was brain dead and she was about to come off life support. The next morning she woke up, and one of her lawyers believes her first words were, “Where am I and who are you?” Governor Lee paused the state’s next execution and ordered an outside review.

Where the Christa Pike Case Stands Today

As I’m telling you this, Christa is back at the women’s prison in Nashville, where she’s been since October 10. Her lawyers say her arms are badly damaged and she’s having trouble with memory and concentration, and her doctors told them it could take months before anybody knows for sure whether any of that is permanent. Her lawyers’ theory is that the IV failed and the drug went into the tissue of her arms. The review hasn’t released any findings. They want her sentence changed to life without parole, and nobody has set a new execution date. Her next court date in one of her cases is October 23. Tadaryl is still in prison, with his next parole review in 2031. Colleen’s little sister died in 2021. That sister’s daughter has a little girl of her own now, and she told reporters her daughter looks like Colleen.