As questions remain as to what happens next for Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike after a botched execution attempt last week, her accomplice and former boyfriend has at least another five years before his next parole hearing in the 1995 torture and murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville.
Tadaryl Shipp, 49, was 17 years old when he, Pike and another person tortured and killed Slemmer, their classmate from a vocational school, in a crime with “satanic elements” that still haunts investigators 31 years later.
Prosecutors accused Shipp of holding Slemmer down when she tried to escape her attackers and of carving pentagrams into her chest and face.
“It was a grotesque crime scene,” former Knoxville Police Chief Phil Keith told Fox News Digital last week. “It was one of the worst crime scenes I’d witnessed. and I was with the police department almost 34 years.”
Shipp showed no remorse after his arrest and even fell asleep during his interrogation, Keith told Fox News Digital.
Due to his age at the time, Shipp was not eligible for the death penalty after his conviction, Keith said. He was sentenced to life in prison for first-degree murder and 25 years for conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, and is currently incarcerated at Tennessee’s Northwest Correctional Complex.