A former Tennessee police chief who investigated the murder that led to Christa Pike’s death sentence recalled the convicted killer as “ruthless” and “almost giddy” when she described the crime to investigators. His comments came as Gov. Bill Lee indicated that Pike’s sentence is unlikely to change after she survived the failed execution.

Pike, now 50, survived Tennessee’s attempt to execute her by lethal injection on Sept. 30 and was returned to prison. Her case has raised questions about whether the state may try to carry out the death sentence again.

Lee addressed Pike’s legal status Wednesday, saying she remains incarcerated under Tennessee law.

“I suspect her sentence will be the same as it was before unless determined otherwise by the courts,” Lee said.

The governor spoke as Pike’s attorneys urged him to commute her death sentence to life in prison without parole following the unsuccessful execution attempt.

Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, who was taking part in a federal Job Corps program in Knoxville alongside Pike.

Former Knoxville Police Chief Phil Keith, who participated in the investigation, recently described Pike’s demeanor during questioning in the New York Post documentary “No Mercy: Christa Pike Unraveled.”

“I heard somebody that was ruthless, without any remorse, almost giddy,” Keith said. “You know, she was describing what took place, like, almost the sense that she was bragging about it.”

Keith reaffirmed those remarks to News Media, describing them as “spot on.” He summed up his view of Pike in two words: “Pure evil.”

Keith also recalled Pike speaking openly about the killing after she returned to the Job Corps program.

“Pike, when she got back, you know, immediately had to express her joy with killing Colleen,” Keith said in the documentary. “And then the very next day in class, she bragged again, talking about how she killed Colleen. She showed her shoes that had blood on them.”

Pike was 18 when she, her 17-year-old boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp and 19-year-old Shadolla Peterson were charged in Slemmer’s killing. Court records show that all four were participating in the Job Corps at the time.

The three took Slemmer to an isolated area of the University of Tennessee’s Knoxville campus. Prosecutors said her throat was cut several times, she was hit in the head with a large piece of asphalt and a pentagram was carved into her chest.

According to court records, Pike later confessed to her role in the killing.

Keith said the violence at the crime scene stunned even experienced homicide investigators.

“I was accustomed to seeing that kind of gore, if you will. But the brutality was different,” Keith said in the Post documentary.

“You know, the visual scene of it, it was so shocking,” he added.

Pike was convicted and sentenced to death in 1996, and the Tennessee Supreme Court later affirmed her convictions and sentence.

More than three decades later, Tennessee attempted to carry out that sentence on Sept. 30 after the U.S. Supreme Court vacated a last-minute stay issued by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The execution attempt failed after Pike received two doses of pentobarbital, and she was taken to a hospital.

She remained unconscious for days, and her attorneys at one point believed she was brain-dead and expected her to be taken off life support. Pike later regained consciousness and was discharged from the hospital before being returned to prison.

Her attorneys have since said she is able to walk and speak in full sentences.

Following the execution attempt, Lee halted Tennessee’s remaining executions for the year and ordered an independent review of what went wrong.

Pike’s attorneys have argued she should not be subjected to another execution attempt.

The push for commutation predates the failed execution.

In a 2021 filing with the Tennessee Supreme Court, Pike’s attorneys sought a certificate of commutation, pointing to her age at the time of Slemmer’s murder as well as her history of childhood trauma, mental illness and brain damage.

News Media reached out to Pike’s attorneys and Lee’s office for additional comment, and to Keith to confirm the context of his remarks.

An FBI investigation conducted during Barack Obama’s presidency uncovered evidence that appeared to support allegations that Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar entered a sham marriage with a man suspected of being her brother, according to an explosive new report.

The Minnesota congresswoman has faced claims for years that she married British citizen Ahmed Nur Said Elmi in 2009 to help him secure a green card. The allegations were previously reported by the Daily Mail.

Omar has repeatedly rejected the accusations, describing them as a right-wing conspiracy theory. President Donald Trump’s administration has now opened a new investigation into her immigration history.

The New York Times has reported that FBI and Homeland Security agents examined the alleged sham marriage in 2016 and found evidence that investigators believed could indicate fraud.

However, the inquiry ultimately stalled after prosecutors determined that any potential criminal charges were likely barred by the five-year statute of limitations.

A separate examination of Omar’s immigration records in 2019, during Trump’s first administration, produced a different assessment.

Three former immigration officials told The Washington Post that investigators found insufficient evidence of wrongdoing and uncovered no issues with Omar’s naturalization.

That review considered several of the same allegations now receiving renewed attention, including questions about Omar’s marriage, her age and her father’s immigration records.

Omar has categorically denied any wrongdoing and continued to dismiss the long-running marriage allegations as a conspiracy theory.

In an interview with MS NOW’s Chris Hayes last week, she called the claim that she married her brother “insane,” saying it began with a blog before being promoted by right-wing conspiracy theorists.

Asked by Hayes whether her former husband could have been related to her, Omar responded: “Not to my knowledge.”

President Trump seized on the remark at a rally in Iowa on October 22, ridiculing Omar for saying she did not know whether her former husband was related to her.

“She didn’t know whether or not she married her brother. She wasn’t sure,” Trump told the crowd, describing it as “one of the worst answers I think I’ve ever heard.”

He also called on Omar to resign from Congress, alleging that she had used a false name when she was sworn in.

Trump pointed to a Justice Department filing that referred to Omar by the name “Ilhan Nur Said Elmi.”

Investigators are also reviewing the circumstances surrounding Omar’s family’s arrival in the United States in 1995, including whether her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, provided inaccurate information on immigration documents.

According to The Washington Post, investigators are focusing on whether Omar or her father intentionally misstated her birth date to ensure she qualified for US citizenship through her father when he became a naturalized citizen in 2000.

Authorities are also examining whether her father omitted or misrepresented information about his past military service in Somalia.

Omar was born in Somalia in 1982 and arrived in the United States with her family in 1995, when she was around 12 or 13.

The current inquiry includes questions about whether her age was accurately recorded in immigration documents, an issue that officials reviewing her file in 2019 said they could not conclusively resolve because birth records for refugees from Somalia were often unreliable.

The scrutiny also extends to her marriage history.

Public records show Omar legally married Elmi in February 2009.

The pair separated in 2011, but did not legally divorce until December 2017.   

Elmi had previously sought to move his marriage-based green card from conditional to permanent status.

According to a former immigration official cited by The Washington Post, authorities requested additional evidence because of concerns about the marriage’s validity, but Elmi withdrew the application after that request.

The latest scrutiny comes weeks after federal agents searched Omar’s Washington, DC, home on October 12 as part of a criminal investigation.

Agents seized her phone and passport, and authorities have issued more than a dozen grand jury subpoenas connected to the inquiry, including subpoenas to some of her relatives.

The Justice Department has not announced charges against the congresswoman in connection with the allegations.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has also weighed in on the federal investigation, saying investigators were pursuing the case and indicating that it could be presented to a grand jury.

In an October 16 interview on The Charlie Kirk Show, Mullin said investigators expected to take the case to a grand jury, but his comments did not establish that Omar had committed a crime or that prosecutors had decided to charge her.

Omar has also accused the Trump administration of using the investigation to intimidate her because of her outspoken criticism of the president.

The congresswoman said she believed the search of her home was politically motivated, pointing to Trump’s repeated public attacks against her.

Trump has denied involvement in the search, while administration officials have maintained that law enforcement decisions are based on the facts and the law.

The Justice Department has also sought to keep the application for the search warrant sealed while investigators review the evidence seized from Omar’s home.

Prosecutors said releasing the material at this stage could jeopardize the ongoing investigation and that they had not yet decided whether to bring charges or whom to charge.

The investigation has raised questions about the timing of the search, which took place just weeks before the November 3 midterm elections.

A man accused of nearly beating a San Bernardino County grandmother to death with a baseball bat has been arrested in Oklahoma after nearly two months on the run.

The Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office arrested Erik Eduardo Navarro, 26, of Orange County, on unrelated traffic charges and booked him into jail.

After learning that Navarro was in custody, California investigators secured his extradition and flew to Oklahoma. They took custody of him on Tuesday.

“Working in coordination with the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office and the Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office, detectives obtained an extradition warrant,” the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said.

Investigators allege Navarro took advantage of 71-year-old Therese Garcia’s generosity earlier this year after she welcomed him into her Crestline home.

Navarro reportedly told Garcia he needed somewhere to stay before a job interview, prompting her to offer him a place in her home.

The grandmother cooked for him each night and initially came to view him as a “sweet kid” who had fallen on hard times.

According to Garcia’s family, Navarro soon began “making demands and taking over her home.” When Garcia became frustrated with his behavior and asked him to leave on Aug. 25, he allegedly responded with extreme violence.

Navarro allegedly obtained a metal baseball bat and attacked Garcia while she was sleeping.

Her family said the beating left her drifting in and out of consciousness and in need of immediate medical attention.

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“He just kept beating her until he finally thought she was dead,” her daughter, Abbie Garcia, told CBS News.

The family alleges that Navarro fled with Garcia’s credit cards, keys, phone, and e-bike.

The San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department said Garcia suffered “a laceration to her forehead, cut eyebrow, swollen hands, and swollen orbital area to the point she was unable to clearly see.”

She also spent “days” vomiting blood after the alleged attack. Her family launched a GoFundMe campaign to help cover her medical expenses and said she was close to death.

Navarro is being held pending prosecution on charges of battery with serious injury, elder abuse likely to produce great bodily injury or death, assault with a deadly weapon, robbery, and damaging a wireless communication device to prevent help. He was booked into the West Valley Detention Center.

Garcia’s daughter said her mother did nothing to deserve the alleged attack.

“My mom didn’t deserve this,” Abbie said. “She was simply trying to help someone she believed was in need, something she has always done throughout her life. This time, her kindness was met with unimaginable violence.”

Jail records show Navarro’s bail has been set at $250,000, with a court appearance scheduled for Friday.

It may be one of the most consequential maps in U.S. history—and soon, it could belong to a private collector.

A hand-drawn chart depicting the Mason-Dixon Line, later associated with the boundary between free and slave states, is headed to auction.

Remounted on Japanese rice paper, the document will be offered Thursday during a livestreamed sale.

“It’s not that often that you can really get this close to something that is so historically important,” said Lauren Brunk, vice president of Brunk Auctions in Asheville, North Carolina. “And it was awe-inspiring, really.”

Brunk estimates that the anonymous seller could receive between $800,000 and $1.2 million.

“Drawn between 1767 and 1768 by Charles Mason … and Jeremiah Dixon … the Mason-Dixon Line is the symbolic boundary between Northern and Southern states,” Brunk says on the auction house’s website.

The survey conducted by Mason and Dixon was originally commissioned to resolve a border dispute between the colonies of Maryland and Pennsylvania. Decades later, its use in the 1820 Missouri Compromise to define the limits of slavery in the young United States gave the line a far broader meaning—one tied to the divisions that would erupt into the Civil War four decades afterward.

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“The Mason-Dixon Line that most Americans know is this dividing line between the Northern free states and the Southern slaveholding states,” Brunk said. “But the line was not drawn for that reason.”

One longstanding theory holds that the name “Dixie” originated with Dixon, although the word’s true origins remain disputed.

Not long after the survey was completed, the linen-backed strip of paper—measuring 76 inches long and 6.5 inches tall—was given to the family of attorney Benjamin Chew, who represented the descendants of Pennsylvania founder William Penn. The map stayed with the family until 1982, when the late publisher Malcolm S. Forbes purchased it for $360,000 after outbidding the Library of Congress, Brunk said.

At the time, the sale was reportedly the highest price ever paid at auction for an American map.

The map was sold again in 2002.

A vertical section depicting the Delaware-Maryland border is held by Princeton University.

Brunk contacted officials at the Library of Congress to ask whether the institution might want to pursue the map a second time.

“I wanted them to be aware that this was coming back to the market,” she said. “And they said, at this point, budgets being what they are, they were just not in a position to buy it.”

Still, Brunk said that if a patriot wished to purchase the map on the library’s behalf, “they’d be happy to have it.”