39. Executions: Lisa Montgomery & Christa Pike

Update: At the time of recording, Lisa Montgomery was set to be the first woman executed by the federal government in almost 70 years. On January 13th, 2021, Lisa received a lethal injection in a prison in Terre Haute, Indiana In this week’s episode, we review two cases of women on death row. Nathalie covers the story of Lisa Montgomery, who murdered Bobbie Jo Stinnett and cut her unborn child from her womb. Bobbie’s child survived the attack and was safely recovered by authorities. We discuss Lisa’s history of abuse and how trauma may have influenced her actions. Rachel reviews the case of Christa Pike, the only woman on death row in Tennessee. Christa was responsible for the heinous murder of Colleen Slemmer. Christa, along with her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, and Shadolla Peterson, lured Colleen off of the Job Corps campus where they all lived to perform a human sacrifice to Satan. The group participated in devil worship and was drawn to Satanism. Christa bragged about the murder to her fellow classmates and was quickly arrested. While we agree the actions of these two women have warranted a prison sentence, we have our doubts about the effectiveness of the death penalty. We review research that shows it is not likely the death penalty deters violent crime. Additionally, death penalty cases are more costly than housing an inmate in prison. Rachel’s Sources https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55642177 - Lisa Montgomery story released 1/13/2021 (post-recording) Christa Pike story: https://medium.com/@mattypar/christa-pike-on-death-row-series-9a15ea4ac56f https://www.wbir.com/article/news/crime/the-job-corps-killing-passage-of-time-cant-erase-christa-gail-pikes-savage-crime/51-47dd53f5-ca2b-48aa-bdcf-7e3c93d66922 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christa_Pike https://amp.democratandchronicle.com/amp/21840647 Charles Witman story: https://bigthink.com/philip-perry/these-types-of-head-injuries-could-increase-your-risk-of-committing-a-crime https://murderpedia.org/male.W/w/whitman-charles.htm https://www.healthline.com/health/frontal-lobe Death Penalty Information https://documents.deathpenaltyinfo.org/alike-kingfisher/production/documents/pdf/FactSheet.pdf http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/capitalpunishment/against_1.shtml