The Knoxville Nightmare: Christa Pike & The Murder of Coleen Slemmer

0:06 Welcome to Unspeakable, a true crime podcast where I tell stories of real crimes with real victims, whose cases are so shocking that many are left wondering how is this even real? I use my experiences in law enforcement corrections, and combined with my years as a criminal justice educator, dig deep into complex cases of evil acts, some so evil many feel they are unspeakable.

0:50 Warning. Unspeakable as intended for mature audiences. If you are easily offended, then I'm not your girl. Listening discretion is advised. In three, Hey y'all, kJ You're back with another episode of Unspeakable. How's your week? How is it going? Mine's great. I feel for some reason like really renewed, really refreshed, and really excited for the year and to give y'all some amazing content and this episode is gonna be no different. But first I have got to do some shout outs from Texas all the way to Arizona. So if your name is Shannon Schmidt and you are in Silsby, Texas, this one is for you. My friend, Thank you for joining my Patreon.

1:31 How are things over in Silsby? I hope that they're They're fantastic. And then we're gonna go to Port Allen, Louisiana, where we've got Miss Kim Lemoyne. Hi, Kim, you're right down the road from me. You need to stop buy some time so that I can meet you, since you're so close. And then in Sabbatis, Maine, Sabbat, and I had to look this one up because I was afraid I was gonna say it wrong. So if I said it wrong, blame the news because I listened to them say it. But Jessica mcconvill or McConville, however you pronounced that one. Hi, Jessica, how are things all the way over there in Maine. I hope you're eating some lobster and things are just fantastic for you as well. And then in Mankato, Minnesota, j C. McLeod, how are you?

2:12 I mean, all I can say is how are you? Because I I haven't got to meet y'all yet, But please talk to me on Patreon. That is me. There's no team, it's his I and I would love to speak with you and answer your questions and interact with you. So please be feel free to reach out to me, talk to me. There's private chats and there's prompts on there and things that we can talk about. And then, last, but certainly not least, for today, we're gonna go to Santan Valley, Arizona, where Mark Porto is. Hello, Mark, I hope that you are just living it up and things are going well in your neck of the woods. I'm waving to you on camera. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for supporting my podcast. This is how I'm able to keep doing this because y'all are helping me to make my dreams come true. Now for the story, we're gonna head to Tennessee, where there is a case so vile and so unbelievable that it is a notorious one. Okay, so this might be something you may know about, but you have to trust your girl that I'm going to do this story some more, some more justice than you might already think, you know, and it's one that currently right now is back in the news.

3:17 So as such, you know, I want to give you the whole story, not just the not just the headlines, the whole thing. So I want you to strap in, keep your arms and legs in the vehicle at all times while we are in motion here, and let's handle this one. So job Core have you ever heard of that? Have you ever been a part of job Corp? If so, I don't know, you. Might you might look at me kind of squirrely as I get into this episode, But I want to discuss what it is for a second. What is job Core. Well, basically, this is an education program that was formed years back for sixteen to twenty four year olds in which career training is given. So there's tons of campuses around the US today, there's like one hundred and twenty of them nationwide, but the one that we're going to be talking about is going.

4:06 To be located in Knoxville, Tennessee. And while the program began as an amazing opportunity for young people to gain worldly skills that were in demand, which is huge, the program started to take a shift in around the nineties and that shift wasn't really for the better. So the classes that they offer there are unique, so students can get benefits while they're also getting their education. And by benefits, I mean things like room and board, food, you know, all that kind of stuff. And it's free, okay, So it's funded by the federal government. And the concept here was that people could or young people could go in and even if they were low income, this would be an absolute blessing because they may not be able to afford trade school or go to college, but they could go to this program and get good skills to create a better life.

5:03 But where the problems started, so to speak, was. That young people who were facing criminal charges or maybe they had big disciplinary issues in their homes or at school or whatever, they started to be referred to job Corp As an alternate to going to like. Jail or juvi or whatever. Okay, So basically this is kind of where it went from such a beautiful and amazing concept for people in society to more of a hug, a thug component that was being pushed. Now, I want to say this real quick, if you are a product of job Core, I am not saying this is everybody that went there or that goes there. I'm saying that the shift in the nineties was real, and it was documented, and it was prevalent throughout campuses. So as such, the client tell that would be enrolled there continued to become more and more troubled.

6:04 Regardless though at least job skills are being taught and the opportunity to change or better your oneself was there, and that's a good thing. But unfortunately, students who didn't have problems such as these, they began to kind of fade out because they were being dominated and run off by these less desirables that were being funneled into the program. And that didn't mean that all students were rough, but I'm just saying it was a trend. Now, one good kid who attended classes in this Knoxville job Corps was nineteen year old Colleen Slimmer. Now her life, I'm not going to even pretend with some like magical fairy tale or anything like that, but she was making good decisions for herself. Her parents were divorced. They had split, and that had been kind of hard on her. But she was wanting to get an education beyond high school, and she wanted to get a real career. She didn't want to just go work at some convenience store or at some retail outlet. She wanted a real career. And she was very, very interested in computers. That said, she was a very sweet and mild mannered individual. Seems like a good fit for someone who's going to be working on computers.

7:16 She was a girl trying to make her way in her own terms. But she was young, and that hardheadedness was also kind of poking through at times. I mean, she's nineteen. You remember how you were when you were nineteen. Hell, you might be nineteen. You got a little hard headedness in you. I know I did. But she had a heart for people, and so everyone's got good and bad. She had so much good to her and that was exemplified in her love for the Special Olympics. For example, she would volunteer and she loved seeing the smiles on those faces as they were achieving success in their own right. And she was very active, so she liked to run marathons, and she would roll her skate every weekend. And she was a self identified computer geek. So she seems really well rounded in so far as the things that she's interested in. She was very close with her mother, and she also loved her sisters.

8:11 So how did she get to job Corps in Knoxville, Tennessee. I'm glad you asked. Well, she was born and raised in Florida. But to join job Corp and complete this program, which would last about six months, they offered that only at this Knoxville location. At that time, so she would have to go there if she really wanted to achieve her goals, and she really really wanted this. Now. Her family did not want her to go, but Colleen was a go getter and she was confident, Mom, I can do this, just trust me. I can do this. I'm nineteen years old and I know what I want. So begrudgingly, on October thirty first of nineteen ninety four, she hugged her mama goodbye. She told her siblings, I'll see you later, and she set out for her adventure at Job Corp. So when Colleen arrived at the school, of course, she was bright eyed and bushy tailed and had rose colored glasses and everything is going to be great and I'm going to start my life. And the teachers really took to her. They liked her when they saw her with her curly her curly hair, and she had just a sweet temperament, and she was, you know, interesting to some of the other students who started kind of sniffing around and trying to feel her out and see what she was like. And it was exciting to make all of these new friendships and relationships. Well, about two months into the semester, the sun rose over Knoxville, and workers outside of job Corps and the surrounding university and elsewhere they were really starting their day. It was

9:44 about eight oh five in the morning on January thirteenth when an employee at the University of Tennessee in the grounds department, he was doing his daily tasks. Now, the college, of course, is an agricultural one, and there are greenhouses on property, and this area where the greenhouses were kind of was on. The edge of the campus. So as he's doing his job, he noticed that there was something in the brush that was out of place. It was something that he wasn't used to seeing. There definitely not anything that was there the day before. And he really thought, oh, that might be a dead deer or something like that, Like what is this? So he starts walking towards the pile of debris, and as he got closer, I'm sure you can imagine what I'm about to say, but he realized that it was not brush.

10:35 It was a horribly beaten animal, like horribly beaten. It was in terrible shape. But as the he got closer, because you know, curiosity got the best of him. What the hell happened to this animal? It's not like there was a roadway there that had hit it or something. But as he got closer, he then wasn't sure if it was an animal at all. The condition of it was horrific. But he leaned in and he said, my god, is this a person? Is this really a human being laying on the ground. So he approached slowly because he didn't want to startle this person. But as his eyes fixed on the body, he realized this person wasn't here because they wanted to be.

11:16 By any stretch of the imagination, this was a dead body and it was so badly beaten that it was unrecognizable as a person when he got up close on it. Only when he. Got literally right above it could he tell, holy crap, this is a semi nude person. The shirt was completely gone. He knew that this was a female because her breasts were exposed without the shirt there. Just shocked and scared, he ran and immediately called police for help. So, as you can imagine, this was totally something out of the ordinary. For sure, multiple agencies actually responded to the scene to see what was going on.

12:00 Now. The detective on the case or assigned to the case arrived rather quickly, and he observed exactly what the caller had described. There was a woman's body lying on debris, nude from the waist up, but covered in blood and dirt. Also, the victim's head had been bludgeoned, and a quick immediate assessment. Also he was. Able to see that there was multiple cuts and slashes on the body as well. And this beating was absolutely brutal. And for your perspective, because I want you to understand this, I want to relate to relate to you that the detectives thought that they were looking at the victim's face, but they couldn't even tell because it was that extremely mutilated.

12:52 Only the autopsy would confirm what was what on what they thought was the head. So as more officers are they began securing the scene and they were trying to get the crime area, you know, laid out. But they eventually realized that the crime scene extended well past where this body was found. I mean, there were items strown about the further that they looked. There was blood, there were articles of clothing, there were footprints, there were broken limbs of trees and brush, and it's like it almost painted a picture that a fight had taken place in this area. All of this had to be documented.

13:32 And the scope of the area had to be fully contained before the full investigation could even begin. But eventually the crime scene was contained, it would have tripled in size at that point and the area for your if you like to like know it was about one hundred feet long by sixty feet wide. And this will matter later. That's why I'm giving you these specifics. It's a pretty large crime scene. Now. The area was wet and muddy, and because of that, you could tell immediately that there had been an incredible fight for life that took place in this mud pit that was there. The trampled bushes showed a progression of bodies or this body moving.

14:21 You could make. Out handprints and knee prints in the mud, and it just looked like someone had been falling, someone had been bending down and probably attacking, like a knee print indented in the mud, and then a handprint for stability, or maybe someone fell over and fell forward and was on their hands and knees in the mud. But there was also drag marks in this mud and they extended about thirty feet from where the body was located, so over where the drag marks must have started. They followed it and police located a very very large pool pool of blood.

15:02 Now when I say a pool of blood, that's not for theatrics. A pool meaning it was it was deep, you know, it was it was more blood than someone who was slightly injured. This was a lot. Now looking back at the victim, they knew that she was. They believed that she was face down on top of the pile of debris. Again, the head was so smashed, the breast location kind of oriented the body and she was. It wasn't until she was rolled back over that officers realized where her throat would have been and that it had been slashed. They could see the cut through the throat, but there was also a bloody rag still around her neck.

15:50 So it was curious, you know, if someone's having their throat cut, what is this rag then applied over their neck. The scene was of such immense brutality that it was really hard for investigators to wrap their mind around what could have possibly led to this level of violence. And right here, like it's not like they're in the middle of inner city, you know, Detroit or something. This is Knoxville, Tennessee, you know, so Detective Donald Cook he went to the morgue. He followed the body there, and he was there whenever the autopsy was conducted. It was not until after the victim's body had been stripped down of the remaining clothing and completely washed off that he noticed she wasn't just sliced up, but there was an actual image carved into her chest, a very clear and unsettling image, to be exact, and it was that of a pentagram. Whomever had killed this girl had taken a knife and carved a pentagram into her chest. Now, I am no Satanist, nor do I even want to entertain such darkness, but in the spirit of being a well rounded podcaster, I did some research for you to ensure accuracy and understanding of what the pentagram means to other people. Now, a pentagram is

17:20 a five pointed star and it's in a circle. But it's not until the star is inverted or it's upside down with the the two points of the star pointing up, that it symbolizes the Satanic philosophy. So that is the key there. And if you know about the goat in Satanism, you know it symbolizes a lot. But in essence that goat is supposed to be about, like rebellion and questioning everything. Whatever. You can do your own research and you can interpret that however you want to. The reason that I bring it up is because the inverted star in the circle actually creates a general outline of the goat if you look at it how it's intended. And it sounds really, really odd. But I will be grudgingly post that photo on my Patreon for you to see what I mean. Regardless, though, detectives now wondered if maybe this was like a Satanic ritual or something that had taken place, because murder is scary enough. I think we can all agree. But when you straight up ad Satan, I mean, I'm like, you know, no, thanks, as are most most people. But detectives had a job to do. They had to solve this murder. Now, the autopsy was one that definitely stands out, especially in the minds of the people who investigate.

18:40 Murder for a living. This one really was just some some different animal here. So doctor Sandra Elkins, she was the Knox County Medical Examiner. She performed the autopsy on this victim, but iding her would be extremely difficult because her face was nonexistent, it was gone, it wasn't there. So for now she would be a Jane Doe. And what we could tell you is that this Jane Doe had been through a lot. She was a white female, She was estimated to be in her late teens to her early twenties. Her body was covered with dirt and twigs and evidence of this struggle.

19:21 As I've already explained to you, she was nude from the waist up. The only clothing she had on and that was documented was her jeens, her socks, and her shoes, and all of this was removed and her body was washed for a more complete and thorough examination. Now, doctor Elkins is a professional, and she attempted to catalog the slash and the stab wounds on this victim's torso by assigning each cut a letter of the alphabet. So how many letters on the alphabet? I think we all know that that's twenty seven right. Well, very quickly into this autopsy, she ran out of letters A through Z. Gone done very quickly. There were so many wounds that eventually the doctor shifted gears and she said, okay, well I'm just gonna log the most serious and major wounds, and she basically explained that if she had kept going in the original fashion she had started, she would have been in the morgue for three days and used the alphabet many, many, many, many many times over. It just wasn't conducive. She couldn't write the report that way, so eventually, in her own words, she said, I just threw my hands up and said innumerable.

20:37 There's just there's too many cuts on this body for me to accurately count each and every one. She did describe a more superficial slash wound on the back of the arms, and some on the chest and all over the place. She also marked that there was purple contusions on the victim's knees, which indicated fresh bruising, consistent with this girl having crawled at some point trying to I guess escape her attackers. There were documented defensive wounds on her right arm as well. The major slash and stab wounds were concentrated on this victim's back, her arms, her abdomen, and her chest. There was also a six inch gaping wound across the middle of her neck which had sliced through the fat and the muscle, so this was a very deep penetrative wound that just gaping, meaning it laid open when she was documenting it. There were ten other slash wounds on the victim's neck as well that were.

21:43 Originally believed to be part of her face. But again her face was kind of distorted to so the chest pentagram was confirmed to be carved into the victim's chest wall. That's what the detective thought it was. The doctor confirmed that, and because the area around each wound was still red in appearance, this meant that this poor girl's heart had been beating as she was being cut, sliced, stabbed, and carved on. And for me to say that, it just kind of rolls off the tongue, you know, when I'm telling the story. But man, I just put myself in this girl's place, and to think this was this wasn't quick, This was torture. This is horrific. And it was clearly documented that all of this alone would not int would not have rendered her unconscious.

22:43 She felt every one of these wounds before she died. In all, it was estimated that approximately three hundred slice wounds were on this poor girl's body. Well, if the stabs and the cuts didn't kill her, I know your question is, well, then what did well? I mean, obviously, if we put it all together here, it was the blunt force injuries to her skull. She had suffered multiple extensive skull fractures, but the one listed as W because she had started at the top. The one listed as do W was the most extensive, and it focused on the left side of the victim's head. This one was caused, like I said, by blunt force trauma, likely something smashing into her head. There was a minimum of four separate blows to this young girl's skull, two to the left side, there was one over the right eye, and there was also one to the nose which had broken her nose very severely as well. I mean, this just hurts describing it.

23:52 Have you ever been punched in the face, because you don't forget it, what's the saying. Everyone has a plan of what to do until they get punched in the face. And this girl's head was just being destroyed. So the right side injuries of her head, the doctor believed were caused by her head laying against a firm surface like the ground or something of that nature, and the right side of the skull was fractured while a portion of the skull bones were embedded into her brain. Okay, so she didn't just crack her head into a. Wall and collapse. I mean, this was a damaging blow to the head. Now. That said, there were small divots in her skull too, where the doctor was able to pull out small pieces of what appeared to be black asphalt embedded into the skull. Again, we know she was alive as all of this was happening to her because there was blood in her sinus cavity.

24:50 So she was, according to the doctor, probably conscious to a point and definitely bleeding and alive until the crushing of the skull took over. So as her horrific as that. Was, I mean, that's horrific, but this next part is going to be kind of unnerving as well. So I just want to let you know that. But the reality is that science isn't always pretty. All it's not always pretty, and the shows on TV and a lot of people gloss over this, but I want you to understand what investigators went through to try to solve this. In order to determine the cause of death, the doctor was forced to have to physically remove the victim's head from her body, she had to take it off, and that was because it was necessary to reconstruct the skull for forensic purposes, and in order to have this happen, that's why the victim's head was respectfully and scientifically removed from her body.

25:53 The doctor then took off the top of the skull and removed the traumatized brain, so it was kind of mixed together. And so this was a process where she had to carefully pick out all the pieces of embedded skull, and she needed every piece of it because she would clean it up. And then she forwarded all of this to a doctor Murray Marx, who was a forensic anthropologist right there at the University of Tennessee. And doctor Marx painfully and painstakingly reconstructed that skull down to the tiniest, tiniest little pieces. However, when it was all said and done, there was one missing chunk of that skull, a little rock sized piece missing from the skull. All right, Well, maybe it had been left at the scene, maybe it was mixed with blood or something. They didn't know, but she or I don't Actually, I'm not sure if Murray is a he or a she as i'm recording this, but the doctor Murray Marx was able to get it all put back together minus that one piece. All of that being said, obviously that was taking time to happen. Well, let's go back to the crime scene. Now, this girl, I'm gonna tell you. I want to kind of lay this out for you because it could be kind of confusing or it may not matter to you, But she seemed was believed to have been killed sometime between the night and morning of like the eleventh or twelfth, But some dates in documents will say the thirteenth, So I

27:23 know it's gonna look like three days, but this is really more of like a fluid two days if you want to think of it like that, containing day and night. All right, Well, either way. The day after the body was found, an officer, Harold Underwood Junior, was assigned to secure the crime scene as it was still being protected and they were still investigating the actual site where the body was found. Now, when you're assigned to secure a scene, it's not just standing there and looking cool. Okay, they actually have a job there. They have to keep unwanted people out of the crime scene, and they also have to make sure to maintain a law of anyone that enters or exits the scene in a professional capacity during the day, so I e. Detectives, CSI personnel, Maybe the Prosecutor's office sends somebody. I don't know, but all of that has to be documented because these people are now coming in and out of a crime scene. So he has a very important job. While he's there, Well, while he is standing at his post, a group of four or five young females walked came walking up to the area, and it was the area was a park, okay, so it's not like this was just like a crazy place for people to show up.

28:39 I mean there was people in movement on this campus. Well, while he's standing there, this group of about four or five young females walked up to him between roughly four and five pm, and one of the girls was curious about what was going on, and she asked Officer Underwood, Hey, what's going on? Why do y'all have this taped off? What's going on? Well, when he gave the base sick answer, limited but basic, he said, you know, we got a crime scene here, a body was found. The girl then said, oh, okay, who's the victim? Do you know who it is? And he's looking at this young girl like, no, I don't, but even if I did, I wouldn't tell you, Hello, it's a crime scene. Well, that didn't. Thwart this girl's efforts of still or this group of girls even from trying to figure out what wanting more information, So she was still curious, and she asked that officer, Hey, well, do y'all have any suspects, Like do we know who we're looking for? Or like what's happening? It's kind of scary, you know if somebody was killed here? Do we need to be afraid?

29:37 Blah blah blah blah blah. Well, the girl that was asking all of these questions and very curious about the scene, she came across as the ringleader of this friend group because she was the only girl to speak the entire time to this officer. So after he answers whatever he's going to answer, and he's like, all right, y'all can move along, girls, you. Know, we got work to do here. The girls didn't immediately leave. They kind of moled around the crime scene area outside of it really for about fifteen minutes before eventually going on and doing their thing. Now, he also didn't take to this leader girl very very kindly. I mean, he wasn't ugly to or anything, but she came across as a bit immature and just just not likable considering the circumstances that were happening here.

30:28 And she just was. Seemed very amused by it and was giggling and giddy the whole time. Very very immature. So I'm sure that that was very aggravating, but look, officers are used to this nosiness of bystanders. It is what it is. And the officer didn't think much more of it and he finished out his shift. But the following morning after that, officers met up for a role call and to get their briefing for the day, and Lati da So while this briefing is going on, his ears would perk up because these supervisors gave a little bit more information about the victim at this scene that he had been securing the day before. And when the supervisor mentioned that the victim had a pentagram carved into her chest, his mind went straight back immediately to that group of teenage girls that had stopped by. See sometimes and I know you've had this happen to you in your own life. It's happened to me.

31:29 Sometimes the seemingly most unimportant things that happen or that you see throughout the day become huge after the fact when they're put into perspective. But in the moment, it's just like a thing, it's just whatever. Well, that mainteen girl who was talking to him, he noticed that she had a very strange choice of jewelry. And it had caught his eye while the girl was talking to him because that girl was wearing a necklace that was in the shape of a pentagram. That's not something that you see all the time. And what are the chances, right, Well, y'all, if you've been a listener long enough of the show, you know that I don't believe in coincidences, and neither did this officer, and he realized very quickly this might matter. Why would the victim have a pentagram and then this girl have a pentagram?

32:19 Hmm, maybe there's a connection here. And so he decided that he needed to report this to his supervisors, and he did it right then. But that said, it was documented in everything what happened to this victim. Who was she? They still had no clue who this girl was. Well, lucky for police, someone nearby this person's conscience was starting to get the better of them, and this would result in a tip being called in advising police that they may need to focus on job Core students to identify the body. Now, this tip would be followed up on, and quite frankly, I want you to know that this wasn't the first time that students at job Corps had been on police officer's radar, because two years prior, back in December of nineteen ninety three, two Job Corp students were accused of attacking to University of Tennessee students who were sitting in their car right there on the edge of campus. And this wasn't an attack like, oh, they roughed them up or over a dispute. No, the male student was ripped out of the car and beaten within an inch of his life. And then the female student that was in that same vehicle was taken captive by these students the car. They drove off with her in the car to a secondary location where she was brutally raped.

33:43 So that case, I will let you know that one had been solved and both of those Job Corp students had been convicted of the crimes that. I just mentioned to you but murder. I mean, damn, Like, things are just getting worse and worse and worse here. I mean it's crazy. What the hell is going on with the students at job Corps. Well, when detectives arrived at the school, they would find that there was a total of somewhere near three hundred and sixty plus students enrolled at that time at the school. So where would you even start? I mean, the tip was great if it says, go check out the school. We got three hundred and sixty freakin people. How are we gonna do this? Well, the answer became, let's think smarter, not harder. They walk up and the detectives quite frankly, asked, Hey, do you have a missing student? And if so, what are the procedures to keep up with students when they leave campus? Because remember many of these students are still teenagers.

34:39 They still have to be accounted for as they came and they left, because they lived there too, someone had to keep an eye on these kids. Well, a supervisor at the school led the detective to a log that was kept and the procedure was that anytime someone came and went from the school, they had to sign out on the LOG, so the morning that the body was found. This is kind of be They knew that the body was relatively fresh. I know that's kind of tacky to say, but it was a relatively new body that hadn't been there for a long time. So the detectives decided to focus on the night before log to see any movements of students that had gone out the night before the body was found, and sure enough, one student signed out but never signed back in, and that student was Colleen Slimmer.

35:27 She had signed out about eight thirty that night before the body was found, but no one had seen or spoken to her since at the school. So the detective again, you can't take any liberties here. The detective looks up and says, hey, Colleen, can you tell me what she looks like? And the description he's given is look, she's a white female, late teens to early twenties, brown hair, and bingo. The detective thinks we may have our victim here. It matched the body as far as he had seen. Now, again, they weren't going to be one hundred percent sure yet because there was no way to confirm the face of this person by just visual ID So this could either be something huge, or this could be nothing until Colleen was located. So detectives wanted to speak with Colleen's mom and see if maybe she could give some insight to where her daughter's whereabouts are or if she had even spoken to her. So Colleen's mom's name was May, and May was caught off guard, as I think anybody would be, when she received a call from law enforcement homicide unit asking questions about her daughter, and that questioning was along the lines of when is the last time that you spoke with her? And so, thinking just for a moment, she told the police, well, the last conversation I had with her would have been two days ago, but we didn't speak long. I don't know if you want to call that our conversation.

36:49 She said. I was in a hurry. I was trying to head. Out the door and I needed to go get groceries. I had a lot of things going on when Colleen called me. So she told Colleen, look, look baby, I can't talk to you right now. I'm going to have to call you back. But later on, when she tried to call Colleen, she could not get in touch with her. Matter of fact, she had spent the previous night before this phone call from homicide trying to get in touch with Colleen, calling over and over again, asking people at the school administrators, and she was never able to get in touch with her. So the school told her, and this is what she related to police, that Colleen had checked out but she didn't return. But right in that moment, her mother didn't realize they meant all night. She thought that at that moment she was calling, Colleen had left and was not back. So when the school said that she wasn't there, Colleen had just hung up. Now she eventually had to leave and take her younger children, colleen siblings, to the doctor. So she did that and when she had returned back home, that's when Homicide was now calling her.

37:56 Now the tone in the voice on the other end of the phone started to make Mama May begin to stress and rightfully sew, because when the news was broken that they believed Colleen might be dead, and on top of that horrific circumstances, Miss May almost collapsed. What do you mean, No, no, no, no, no, she's at school. My daughter is at school. She is not a murder victim. No, you need to check the school. But she knew her daughter wasn't there, And the reality was that the officer's stance never changed, and this was real, and they wanted to know, now, as sickening as this is, is there any way that you might would be able to identify your daughter's body through markings? And her mom's thinking, why don't.

38:46 I just what's the face? What does she look like? But that's when she says, or they say, you have to look at the markings because her face, unfortunately, is completely unrecognizable. And can you, as a listener, even process what that must feel like to hear that your daughter not only may be dead, but her face is Goneugh. And those words that she had said to her daughter last may have unknowingly been the very last thing she would ever say to her, And I can't talk now would be a phrase that would forever haunt Colleen's mother as it replayed in her head over and over and over again. Oh my god, the last thing I ever said to her might be I can't talk to you right now. So she kept thinking about this as she hung up the phone. But she was thinking about how Colleen had been complaining in recent calls home about her school program and what had started out as this new and exciting experience had started to kind of dull the more that the students were around one another, because there were some misfits in the student body, and quite frankly, they were just given Colleen a hard time. Remember this program meant that they went to school together, they lived together, they ate together, and so they never really got a break from one another, which we all know in teenage life causes friction over time. Just overall, the feeling I got was there was some mean girl bullying type stuff

40:18 going on. Colleen had expressed the frustrations about girls taking her clothes. They had stolen her jewelry from her room when she wasn't in there. But another part of the frustration is proving that, because that'd be really hard to prove. But she knew what was missing, and nobody was giving her stuff back. And calling home, she would vent to her mama about her frustrations, and her mama did what all mamas would do. She tried to encourage her baby, girl, don't worry about it. It's just physical things. Stick it out if you can. You only have to do this for six months, and then you can come back home and you can start your life and you can do this, Colleen. You're tough, you're strong, and you're a smart girl. Mama's have this way of calming our minds and making us feel better, which is just what Colleen needed and would receive from her mama when she called, except that very last phone call when she said, I'll have to call you back. So, thinking back, they had just talked it out, and before that last conversation they had come to the conclusion that Colleen should try to stay friendly, keep things kosher, and that would hopefully help this time pass faster. But dental records were something that would be necessary and that would be the only way that police would be able to one hundred percent identify that this was Colleen, and May agreed to go get those for them, and she got them and she turned them over. Yet the entire time,

41:50 she was praying that somehow this would actually prove that this was not her Colleen that they had found. But when the comparison was done, it was confirmed that this was the body of nineteen year old Colleen Slimmer. May's daughter had one hundred percent been murdered. So with this confirmed, detectives wanted to see if anyone else had signed out with or around the same time as Colleen the knight of her death, and sure enough, there were three others on the sign out log around the same time. Now, investigators were prompt in their interviewing of those students, which proved a rather easy task because they didn't have to hunt them down. They all lived right there on campus.

42:34 So who were these kids and what was their connection to each other and Colleen if anything, because this didn't even mean that they hung out with her or anything. Well, their names were eighteen year old Krista Pike, seventeen year old to Daryl ships An, eighteen year old Shadala Peterson. Was it possible that these three young people knew something about Colleen's disappearance? And if so, could they help police solve Colleen's murder? Well, here's a spoiler alert. I'm gonna have all of those answers and more for you in next week's conclusion. And if you think you know this one, you've got to hang tight, because I'm about to blow this case wide ass open with an additional thirty years of follow up just for you, wrapped up nice and meat in one place and tied.

43:27 With a beautiful bow. For now, though, I'm gonna leave you with this. I don't like mean girls. I really don't like mean girls who also think they're untouchable. And while police may not have their hands on a suspect yet, there's about to be some serious finger pointing going on,