The Femme Fatal
True Crime - Femme Fatale Style
The Femme Fatal tells the stories of women who commit crimes, blending true crime, pop culture, and astrology to explore power, obsession, and the darker side of femininity.
The Femme Fatal
Deadly Survivor: Christa Pike
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In 1995, 18-year-old Christa Pike committed one of Tennessee's most disturbing murders, brutally killing fellow Job Corps student Colleen Slemmer. Sentenced to death, Pike spent three decades fighting her execution, with her troubled childhood and mental health becoming central to her appeals.
Now, Pike is back in the headlines following an extraordinary turn of events surrounding her attempted execution. This episode revisits the brutal crime, the trial, decades of appeals and the shocking developments that have raised new questions about Tennessee's death penalty.
Plus, in Horoscopes & Homicides, we explore Pike's Pisces Sun, Cancer Moon and Gemini Mars, along with the planetary transits surrounding September 30, 2026
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Welcome to the Femme Fatal, a true crime podcast with an astrology twist. I'm your host, Stacey Dotson. Each week I'll be joined by a guest host because this femme fatal prefers not to work alone. Hey everybody, welcome back to the Femme Fatal. And today I'm being joined by my husband, Greg. Hey babe, how are you?
SPEAKER_00Hey, Stace, how are you?
SPEAKER_01I'm good. We're going to be talking about Krista Pike and how she's been dominating the news headlines with definitely a good reason and the failed execution. So uh yeah, let's jump into this, Greg.
SPEAKER_00All right. Well, you know, like you said, she's been back in the news because Tennessee attempted to execute her and botched it. She was supposed to become the first woman like executed in the state of Tennessee in more than 200 years, but obviously this went extremely wrong. She survived two administrations of the uh pentobarbital, which is the lethal injection drug, and uh was hospitalized, and no one really knew what was going on at the time, right? We heard that she was brain dead, that we heard that she was on a ventilator. All these different stories were coming out, but as of now, as of just a day or two ago, she is actually awake and talking to people and working with her lawyers. And I think the most recent medical news we heard, and I haven't watched anything on the news today, but the last I heard was that she had pneumonia and was still in the hospital and had burns and all kinds of stuff going on with the arm they tried to do the injection in and was having trouble either using it or getting it to work or something along those lines.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they said that when she came to, she was extremely confused and angry and didn't even know where she was. And obviously, I can't even imagine like comprehending where you are, what happened, and how you got there, right? When with that situation. Yeah, so I don't know if you're gonna talk about this, but they gave the first dose and nothing happened, right? And then they did the second and they just said she sounded like she was snoring.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I got a little bit of a timeline we'll get into later that kind of breaks it down at this time this happened, at this time that happened, and it kind of lays it all out for us and all that. But you know, obviously this was botched, and so it's being investigated, right? The Tennessee Corrections Commissioner has resigned since this has happened, and the Tennessee governor has stopped executions for the rest of 2026.
SPEAKER_01Right? It happened before. On May 21st, in 2026, this year, Tennessee attempted to execute Tony Carruthers. From what I understand, the primary IV was established, but officials couldn't establish the required backup IV. And then they tried unsuccessfully to place a central line. And after more than an hour, the execution was abandoned and Governor Lee granted Carruthers a one-year reprieve. So Pike was Tennessee's second failed execution attempt this year. That's what makes this story crazier.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's pretty wild. I think the governor did a smart thing and they're bringing in an independent investigation agency to look at this, you know, so there's no perception of bias by like having the governor's special team look at it or something like that. So that's kind of where we are with that right now. I guess to understand kind of how we got here, I guess we can go back and start talking about kind of the crime, right? What happened?
SPEAKER_01Right, the victim and everything.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and what led us to this and all that. So the victim was Colleen Slimmer, and she was studying computer technology at this Job Corps campus, and she was there because her grandfather thought it'd be a good idea for her, and he suggested it because she was apparently uh really good with computers. Krista was also there at the time training, and while she was there, she fell in love with another Job Cor student, a 17-year-old kid named Tadero Shipp. And they started dating and also uh started dabbling into the occult and devil worship.
SPEAKER_01Wow. What was the year? What year was this?
SPEAKER_00This is 1995. And then somewhere along the way, Krista was convinced that Colleen was trying to steal Tadero away from her. So Krista recruits her friend Shadala Peterson to plan on luring Colleen to, I guess, a secluded spot near a steam plant near the University of uh Tennessee campus. So on January 12th, 1995, Pike Ship, Peterson, and Slimmer, they all signed out of the dormitory together and went into the woods, and Colleen was under the impression that Christo's wanted to make peace with her and was going to offer some cannabis. But uh when they got to the secluded location, Colleen was attacked by Tadaro and Krista, and then Shadala acted as a lookout during this. So, according to the court testimony that came out, for about 30 minutes, Colleen was taunted, beaten, and slashed during the attack. Apparently she was begging for her life, and Krista and Tadero held her down and used a box cutter to carve a pentagram into her chest while she was still alive. And while this was going on, Krista was using a meat cleaver and apparently sliced Colleen across the stomach, ignoring the victim's pleas for Christ to stop. You know, she's like obviously begging for her life. Please stop, please stop, and they were having none of it. Apparently Colleen was stabbed and slashed hundreds of times, and finally, uh Krista repeatedly smashed Colleen's skull with a large chunk of asphalt, killing her from a brain injury. Krista dug through the gaping open hole in Colleen's head and fished out a piece of her skull.
SPEAKER_01What?
SPEAKER_00And put the blood-soaked uh skull fragment in her jacket pocket, and then she would later show it off to people and boast about how she got it. Wow. Within 36 hours of the crime, all three were arrested. To Daryl's room was searched, and a uh satanic Bible and altar were found there. And then when they searched Colleen, and they obviously searched her jacket, that's where the uh piece of uh Colleen's skull turned up. Even despite all this, Krista still insisted over and over that she and her and her uh co-conspirators were merely trying to scare Colleen and that their plan just simply got out of control. And if simply getting out of control means carving pentagrams, bashing skulls, and removing skull fragments. I don't think that's out of control. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there's no doubt that she deserves to be where she is today.
SPEAKER_00And the pentagram part is what really made this case kind of blow up for those of us who lived through the 80s and 90s. There's this thing called the satanic panic. And uh basically, oh, how to describe the satanic panic, it was kind of like a moral panic, right? And then all these unsubstantiated cases of satanic virtual abuse or satanic rituals, maybe you want to think about that way, that started in uh America in the 80s and apparently spread all across the globe by the late 90s. And some of it still persists today, right?
SPEAKER_01A lot of it stemmed from like saying rock stars were, you know, like all the bands, what did they say? ACD Children's.
SPEAKER_00Oh, Tipper Gore, yeah, against Christ Devil's Children.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, Tipper Gore and PMRC. I saw an episode where they were interviewing ACDC, and they said, you know, people think it stands for what is it?
SPEAKER_00Anti- Against Christ Devil's Children.
SPEAKER_01Against Christ Devil's Children. And then and then uh Angus is like, no, that was on the back of my sister's sewing machine. A C D C.
SPEAKER_00That's where we got it from. And then when the Kiss, right? Nights and Satan's service. Overreaction. Yeah, it really was, you know, but all these reports of that kind of stuff and reports of like physical and sexual abuse in the name of the devil were pretty widespread and kind of on the social consciousness in a way. So when this happened, you know, it really just tied in all that and really blew up. So that, on top of the heinousness of the crime, is what made this such a huge story back in 1995. So anyway. So I guess we can talk about the trial a little bit next. Apparently she was offered a plea deal by the prosecution to plead guilty to the crimes in return for her life sentence, but without parole, but she rejected it. Both uh Pike and Ship and Peterson, they were all charged with first degree murder and conspiracy to commit first degree murder. Ship, who uh Tidero, he had turned 17 about two months before the murder, was tried as an adult. And then Shadula, who agreed to become a witness for the prosecution, only received probation after pleading guilty to being an accessory after the fact. The prosecution did seek a death sentence for Pike and life in prison without parole for today, even though he's the one that did the pentagram, but she's the one that bashed her head, so I guess that's why they did the distinction on that. Life in prison versus the death sentence.
SPEAKER_01She was a little older than him, too, right? Wasn't she nineteen?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, she was nineteen.
SPEAKER_01Okay. I don't know if that has anything to do with it.
SPEAKER_00She I guess technically an adult, right, at that point. Today I was technically a minor at 17.
SPEAKER_01He was on the cusp, I guess, if you will.
SPEAKER_00Well, anyway, shockingly, the jury found Krista guilty of first degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. During the sentencing phase of the trial, Krista's mom and dad and her aunt testified on Krista's behalf. The sentence came down on March 30th, 1996, and she was sentenced to death by electrocution for the murder charge and 25 years to prison for the conspiracy charge. But in January 1997, so we're now two years down the road, Tadaro was also found guilty on both counts. However, after the jury could not unanimously agree whether to sentence him to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, the judge sentenced him to life in prison with parole eligibility. Oh, really? Yeah. The court described Tadaro as a dangerous individual, and then the judge imposed a consecutive 25-year sentence to Tadero's conspiracy conviction. So this ensured basically that Tadero would not be eligible for parole until he was in his late 40s or early 50s. And then his latest parole came up in October in 2025, and Tadero was denied. So while this is all going on, Krista is in prison, and she had two really odd incidents happen while she was there. She was tied into an attempted murder for another inmate while she was there, and apparently she tried to escape as well. The other prisoner was a woman named Patricia Jones, and Krista was accused of attacking her and attempting to strangle her with a shoestring in August of 2001. And this apparently happened during a fire-related evacuation. At the time of the attack, Patricia had been serving a life sentence for the 1994 murder of 84-year-old person named Alberta Coker, and she lived in Knoxville, Tennessee. During the attack, Krista claimed she was trying to protect another inmate, a woman named Natasha Cornet. Krista was convicted of attempted first-degree murder again on August 12th, 2004, and was sentenced to another 25 years in prison.
SPEAKER_01So she was tried and convicted while in prison again for somebody else.
SPEAKER_00For first-degree murder again as well. So funny thing is, Patricia Jones later testified that Krista had intervened in a fight between herself and another inmate and likely saved the other woman's life. At Krista's appeal, the judge said that her stated intention was to protect convicted killer Natasha Cornet, but also said that there was ample evidence by her actions and Krista's own words that contradicted this position. So I guess it stuck.
SPEAKER_01So I guess she appealed that other one as well as all the appeals going on.
SPEAKER_00Yes. And there's quite a few appeals tied back to the original crime, yeah, and we'll go through all of them here in a moment. So let's fast forward eight years. We're now in March of 2012, still in prison. Apparently, Krista had made escape plans involving a corrections officer named Justin Helfin, as well as an individual named Donald Cohut, K-O-H-U-T Cahut, and Donald's from New Jersey. And so Donald was a personal trainer in his 30s, had entered into a letter writing correspondence with Krista around the beginning of 2011. And by July of that year, Donald was making the nearly 1700 mile drive, round trip from New Jersey to Nashville to visit her in prison once or twice a month.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Usually it's the women that fall for the men in prison, and this is reverse.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there's gotta be some like big-time psychological studies on why people are attracted to people in prison like that. I'm sure there's all kinds of stuff out there that I'm just not aware of. Anyway, eventually Donald uh communicated an escape plan to Krista, and they enlisted the help of the corrections officer, Mr. Heflin.
SPEAKER_01You can say they were in cahoots. I'm sorry. I couldn't resist. Okay, I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_00So anyway, Mr. Heflin decided to help out with the escape, and he was promised cash and gifts. I don't know how much or what kind of gifts were involved with this, but he was getting something out of it, right? The Tennessee Department of Corrections has not really provided many details about the plan that they uncovered somehow because of security concerns. But the indictment shed some light on it, I guess. They laid out a scenario where a prison key would be traced and then a duplicate created. So early in 2012, I guess the prison personnel received information about the escape plot, and this led to the attempted prison break being thwarted by a joint investigation involving the Tennessee DOC and the uh TBI, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and the New Jersey State Police.
SPEAKER_01So it didn't go anywhere, really.
SPEAKER_00No, the TBI said the plan was not very far along, went uncovered, and that the jailbreak was not imminent. They were still in the planning stages. So anyway, uh in 2012 of March, Mr. Kahoot was uh arrested and charged with bribery and conspiracy to commit escape. And Mr. Hefflin was arrested and charged with bribery, official misconduct, and conspiracy to commit escape.
SPEAKER_01I'm assuming he lost his job, too.
SPEAKER_00I would guess so. Krista was not charged in connection with the alleged conspiracy. Investigators said it was unclear whether she was a participant in the conspiracy beyond her awareness of the scheme. So Mr. Cahut got seven years in prison to be served at the Tennessee State Northeast Correctional Complex. And Mr. Heflin, who cooperated with authorities after his arrest, served no prison time, but was terminated from his job with the Tennessee Department of Corrections. There you go. Yep. There you go. There's all kinds of just stuff swirling around her, you know? I mean. I had no idea of this. Yeah, that second part reminds me of who's the lady we did in Idaho.
SPEAKER_01Right, I was thinking about that.
SPEAKER_00I can't remember her name right now, but she's the one that escaped as well, right? So let's rewind again. Let's go back to the original crime, the murder of Colleen. So, you know, she's been in prison since 1995, and she was scheduled to be executed in 2026. So again, that's like 31 years or so, right? So she's had multiple, multiple, multiple appeals. And I'm just going to list a couple of them here. And we can go in a little deeper dive because there's like a 226-page one and stuff like that, but uh we'll talk about that a little bit more. So let's go back to the original crime. You know, she's been in prison since 1995, so uh over a little over three decades at this point. And there were many appeals that were done. And I mean a lot of appeals. So we'll go in chronological order here. Of course, they had a direct appeal, and this happened in 1998, and it was denied. And then they had a state post-conviction proceeding and voluntary request, and that was denied. And that was a little confusing because it looks like she wanted to make these appeals, and then she asked for an execution date, and then the lawyers fought to continue the proceedings. They were unsuccessful at first, but then they were successful. So anyway, life goes on. They had a new trial request in 2008, and it was formally denied, and then she had a federal habeas review, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied review of the federal habeas corpus petition, and this completed the standard three tiers of review the direct appeal, the state post-conviction proceedings, and the uh federal habeas. In 2023, she filed a juvenile sentencing motion and this was dismissed. And the rationale behind that was to reconsider her death sentence based on the arguments that she was under 18 when the crimes occurred. That was in 2023. She was under 19, right? Yeah, she was 18, almost 19 at the time of the crime. And then August of 2026, they had the lethal injection protocol challenge, and this dealt about her veins and medical conditions, and they requested an alternate execution method because of this, and it was denied as well.
SPEAKER_01I think it's called thrombocytosis, right? Which just means difficult small veins.
SPEAKER_00Yep, that's it. So for these people, it'd be very difficult to find a vein to run an IV or to draw blood. Any needle stick would be very, very difficult with people with that condition. So we're now at September 29th, which is the day before the execution, 2026. And she had her clemency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court and it was denied. And then on September 30th, the day of the execution, she had her 11th hour stay in lifting appeal, and the US Court of Appeals issued a temporary stay regarding her history of childhood trauma and sexual abuse, but then the Supreme Court lifted that hours later at the state's request, allowing the execution to proceed.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so just back and forth and back and forth.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. So execution is botched, and now, as of October of 2026, a post-execution evidence preservation order was requested and approved by a Davidson County judge. So everything associated with the execution, the needles, the syringes, phone calls, text messages, video, all that stuff has been collected and preserved to be used. I'm assuming it's part of the investigation that's going on right now. So, needless to say, the public had an opinion on this. A lot of people thought because of her mental state of the crime that the uh death penalty was too harsh. And recently, Lindsay Clancy, right, with her post mortem psychosis is really brought kind of like mental health and what role it may play when people kind of lose it and do these horrible things. Krista had made comments saying that she felt a kinship with Lindsay. And her quote was, uh, we are both females who got into trouble because of uniquely female issues. One thing is different, however, is that times have changed a lot on awareness of women's issues since I was put on trial.
SPEAKER_01I didn't know she commented on that current trial.
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SPEAKER_00Several NGOs and human rights organizations have spoken out against the execution. The Cornell University Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide has characterized Krista's
(Cont.) Deadly Survivor: Christa Pike
SPEAKER_00request for commutation as consistent with Tennessee's treatment of Todaryl ship. That makes sense. Yeah. Amnesty International called for a halt to Pike's execution. And then the advocates for human rights have called Krista's sentence unjust and unethical. Apparently the United Nations got in on this too.
SPEAKER_01This reminds me of when we talked about Carla Faye Tucker, how everybody at the end, you know, came out against the execution.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you're exactly right. Reem Al Salom is, I guess, associated with the uh United Nations, and she's involved, or he is involved, with violence against women and girls. Okay. Pal Perez Sales is involved with, you know, a group that's investigates torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. Morris Tidball Benz does extrajudicial summary. Arbitrary executions. I'm going to go through all these names. A lot of people at the UN were like called on the governments of the United States and Tennessee to prevent the execution. The UN Working Group on Discrimination Against Women and Girls have also called on authorities not to execute Krista. However, other side of the coin, Colleen's mom very much wants the death penalty. I mean, understandably. And still does. Even now, you know, she's wanting the state to try to kill her again. But back in September, she has a quote saying, She did the crime. I think she should pay for it. I would feel better that she felt the same pain that Colleen did. And I just want Krista down so I can end it, relieve my daughter so she can be resting. So we kind of talked about the final appeals, and one of those appeals was a 226-page document. As we just recently summarized, everything was denied, denied, denied, denied, denied, denied, denied. Which brings us to the execution. I guess uh their Riverbend Maximum Security Institute in Nashville is similar to our death row in Huntsville. Normally, Tennessee would use a single drug lethal injection using the pentabarbital. And Krista would have been the first woman executed in the state since 1820. So here's kind of the timeline with it and kind of some of the quotes that Krista said at the time. Witnesses were led into the execution room at 6.41 p.m. And then the blinds were opened at 7.26. And Krista was on the gurney with Ivy Cenula already placed in her arm. Krista made what was what was expected to be her final statement at the time, saying, I just want to say that I'm going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life, and that is with love. She said that she loved both her supporters and those who hated her and stated, I'm at peace and I'm ready to go. She sang a song called I Love You So Much with her spiritual advisor. And so at 734, Krista complained of pain in her arm. She said, The vein in my arm feels like it's about to bust. She then later blinked, smiled, and laughed and lifted her head and looked towards her left arm. And around 739, she kicked off the sheet that covered her. At 741, according to Molly Davis at the Tennessean, a small white rock appeared in a window on the wall, believed to be a signal that a round of deadly drugs has been pushed through the IV lines. The blinds closed at 746. So under the uh Tennessee DOC's lethal injection protocol, if a person remains alive five minutes after receiving the first dose, a second injection is to be administered. So they reopened the blinds, right? And when they did that, they could still see Krista in there moving around, according to her attorney. Her attorneys report that the district court then said that she did not appear to lose consciousness. The curtains were drawn a second time around 805 or 806, and media witnesses were escorted out of the building at 853. And people that left stated they heard that she was snoring. That's crazy. It's wild, right? So needless to say, the execution protocol for the state of Tennessee does not say what should happen if the person remains alive after the second injection. Unprecedented. Krista's lawyer, Kelly Gleason, said that she needs immediate medical care, and the public defender, Amy Harwell, was unable to reach emergency contacts at the Tennessee Supreme Court. So she drove to the court with an emergency motion. They were filed in the Sixth Circuit in Eastern District, Tennessee District Courts, and then Krista was taken in ambulance to Vanderbilt University Medical Center. The next day, her lawyer made a press statement and said she was in critical condition at the hospital. And the day after that, her lawyers further revealed that she was unconscious, intubated, and on a ventilator, and that both of her arms were swollen, blistered, and burned. By day four, she has still not regained consciousness. But as we know now, she has. And who knows what's going to happen now.
SPEAKER_01By the time this episode drops, things may have changed.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. I mean, I watched some talking heads on TV, and they say that her lawyers are fighting to have the death sentence commuted to life in prison at this point. Colleen's mom has come out and says, I want justice for my daughter. You need to execute her again.
SPEAKER_01So we don't know where that's gonna go.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it'd be an unprecedented thing, I think, if they killed her or tried to kill her again for a second time. So it's to be decided and all that. Yeah. So to kind of wrap up, I guess, a little bit here, let's talk about her early life a little bit, because I I think it did play a role with kind of who she was and what was going on.
SPEAKER_01It wasn't her first appeal, but the 226-page clemency, right? This is where they really went hard. Like they talked about her life.
SPEAKER_00And so this is some of the stuff they kind of talked about in that. You're absolutely right, babe. So her official full name was Krista Gail Pike. She was born on March 10th, 1976, in Beckley, West Virginia. She grew up as a neglected child, and both of her parents were alcoholics. She apparently was exposed to alcohol while she was still in the womb. And she was raped as a toddler.
SPEAKER_01Oh.
SPEAKER_00And raped again at ages eleven and seventeen. She attempted suicide at the age of twelve. And in 1991, she was sent to a juvenile evaluation center in North Carolina after being placed on probation for breaking into a community center to steal candy. So that's rough. Think about toddler, you're raped, 11, you're raped, you try to kill yourself at 12, and then you're raped again at 17.
SPEAKER_01That's rough.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so the center she was sent to was designed to reform troubled youth. And yeah, I guess, you know, when you're born drunk because you're alcoholic parents and were raped three times before the age of 17, you're probably a troubled youth. I can't even imagine. I can't either. So anyway, at this place, it was a point system, right? So kids there would either earn or lose points based on compliance with rules and their uh progress through this program, right, depending on how many points you accrued, right? The more points you got, the more you progressed, and eventually, I guess, progressed to the point where you can get out. It was promoted as an alternative way to more punitive forms of juvenile incarceration. However, by the 1990s, this place had become increasingly punitive, relying on a uniform points and punishment system rather than behavioral change. Obviously, Krista being who she was, this did not work on her. She repeatedly uh violated the rules, usually in minor ways, and remained there for more than a year, far longer than most kids did. In the months leading up to her arrest at 12, North Carolina Social Services removed her from her home after her mother's live-in boyfriend physically and sexually assaulted her. During her time at the center, it was called Swannanoa. Swannanoa, S-W-A-N-N-A-N-O-A, Swannanoa. She became a teacher's assistant in her GED. She was released from the juvenile center on March of 93, and that's where she enrolled in the job corps program at Knoxville, Tennessee, and that's where she met Colleen, and we kind of know where the story goes from there.
SPEAKER_01It could have gone so much better. You know what I mean? But she had that's a rough start.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's pretty terrible.
SPEAKER_01So So I would imagine, you know, the clemency report says that none of that was even introduced to the first jury, right? The first jury didn't even know any of Krista's backstory at all.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's my understanding.
SPEAKER_01Ugh, it's terrible.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's really bad.
SPEAKER_01So this is still unfolding, and uh we might have to do some bonus episodes after that to catch everybody up.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the whole thing's tragic. It's what happened to Colleen's terrible, what happened to Krista's terrible, the decisions she made, the lot she fell in with, what happened to her in prison with the execution was terrible. I mean, it's just there's so much bad all around this story.
SPEAKER_01So yay, now it's time for horoscopes and homicides. What do you think about that name?
SPEAKER_00I like it.
SPEAKER_01Well, where we look at the person in the crime through an astrological lens. That's gonna be sort of my spiel on introducing this segment. Okay, so let's go to Krista. Krista Pike was born March 10th, 1976, and that makes her a Pisces sun, Cancer Moon, and Mars and Gemini. And we don't have a verified birth time, so we're just gonna stick to the planetary placements rather than her rising sign or houses. So let's start with her Pisces sun. Pisces is a water sign associated with sensitivity, intuition, imagination, and empathy. But its shadow side can include escapism, blurred boundaries, a victim mentality, and creating an emotional reality that doesn't necessarily match the facts. And then there's her cancer moon. The moon represents our emotions, instincts, and early experiences with home and family. Cancer is ruled by the moon, making this a particularly strong placement. Cancer moons crave security and belonging, but again, their shadow side can include fear of abandonment, hypersensitivity, and an intense reaction to rejection. Considering Krista's childhood, this becomes especially interesting because she also has her Saturn in cancer. And Saturn represents hardship, restriction, and difficult life lessons. So both her moon and Saturn emphasize childhood, family, and emotional security. Those very issues would eventually become central to her appeals, with attorneys arguing that the jury never fully understood the trauma she experienced growing up. And we have Mars and Gemini. Mars governs anger, aggression, and how we take action. Gemini Mars can be restless, impulsive, mentally reactive, and sharp with words. It's quick moving energy where thoughts can turn into words and words into actions before there's much time to reflect. There's quite a contrast to her emotional Pisces and Cancer placements. She also has Mercury in Pisces, suggesting an imaginative but sometimes subjective way of thinking, where feelings and facts become intertwined. So to summarize her natal chart, Pisces feels, cancer remembers, and the Gemini Mars reacts. But I didn't want to just cover Krista Pike without looking at the transitions on the actual botched execution date of September 30th. So some interesting connections. The transitioning sun was within a few degrees of her natal Pluto. Pluto represents death, survival, destruction, power, and transformation. Sun Pluto transits can symbolize intense confrontations with authority or forces beyond our control. And on this particular day, the state was literally attempting to end her life. Saturn was also squaring with cancer moon by sign. Without her birth time, we can't determine how close that aspect was, but you know, a little bit of the symbolism is pretty interesting. Saturn represents authority, confinement, consequences, and mortality. And after three decades on death row, Krista was facing the ultimate consequences of her sentence. But perhaps the most fascinating symbolism involves Uranus, the planet of shock, disruption, and sudden reversals, which also making connections to her natal chart. Think about what happened that day. Her execution was scheduled. Then a federal court stopped it. Then the Supreme Court allowed it to proceed. Then the execution began and the drugs were administered and she didn't die. A second dose was administered and she still survived. And instead of being pronounced dead, she's rushed to a hospital. So if you're looking for Uranian symbolism and an extraordinary and complete unexpected reversal, that's a pretty remarkable example.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think that kind of checks all the boxes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it does. So whether you believe in anything about astrology, it's just an interesting way to examine a situation in a person.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. That's pretty wild.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for doing this with me, and we'll have to like come back to it as things unfold because it is still unfolding.
SPEAKER_00To be continued.
SPEAKER_01To be continued. Thank you, babe.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for having me on, Stacy. Love you.
SPEAKER_01Love you. Bye. The Femme Fatal. Created and hosted by Stacy Dotson. Produced by Mark Williams. Music by Marcia Yingling, Chad Chane, and Greg Loycano.