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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.
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Tadaryl Shipp pictured in a June 2024 mugshot taken by the Tennessee Department of Correction. (TDOC)
“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.”
Due to his age at the time, Shipp was not eligible for death penalty charges, 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.
University of Tennessee forensic anthropologist Dr. Murray Marks testifies about the wounds to Colleen A. Slemmer’s skull during Christa Gail Pike’s murder trial in Knox County Criminal Court on March 25, 1996. (USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect)
According to court documents, Shipp had explored satanism as a child and investigators found “satanic paraphernalia” in his dorm room. He and Pike were said to be wearing pentagram pendants at the time of their arrests.
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Christa Gail Pike appears remotely from Deborah K. Johnson Rehabilitation for her hearing in Knox County Criminal Court in Knoxville, Tenn., on Aug. 11, 2026. (USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect)
Tennessee prison records show he has since adopted the alias Abdul Khalip and was the plaintiff in an unsuccessful federal lawsuit seeking access to halal food and Islamic prayer oils behind bars in 2016.
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Shipp first became eligible for parole in October 2025 and was denied after his first hearing. His next parole hearing has been scheduled for October 2031.
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His most recent mugshot, taken in June 2024, shows him with glasses and a salt-and-pepper beard.
An undated portrait photograph of Colleen Slemmer provided by her mother. (May Martinez/Special to the News Sentinel)
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Pike was convicted of slashing her dozens of times and crushing her head with a chunk of asphalt. She kept a skull fragment as a trophy and showed it off to another classmate before her arrest.
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Pike was sentenced to death but remains hospitalized in critical condition this week, days after two doses of lethal injection drugs failed to kill her in a mind-boggling mishap that came after she’d requested an alternate means of execution.
Emergency vehicles arrive at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tenn., on Sept. 30, 2026. Pike had not been declared dead when witnesses were asked to leave the room they were in. (Denny Simmons/The Tennessean/USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)
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A third suspect, Shadolla Peterson, pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact and testified against Pike and Shipp.