The Dark Oak

Christa Gail Pike, born in 1976, endured severe childhood trauma including prolonged sexual abuse as a toddler by her paternal grandmother Delfa Clark Pike’s boyfriend (Ernest Johnson) and further abuse around age 11, along with neglect, instability, and other violence that experts later cited as contributing to fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, PTSD, and mental health issues. In January 1995, at age 18, she and accomplices Tadaryl Shipp and Shadolla Peterson lured 19-year-old fellow Job Corps trainee Colleen Slemmer into woods near the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where Pike tortured her for roughly 30–45 minutes (carving a pentagram into her chest, beating her, and ultimately killing her with a rock) in a jealousy-driven attack over a boyfriend; Pike kept a piece of the victim’s skull as a souvenir. She was convicted in 1996 of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, receiving the death penalty (Shipp got life with parole; Peterson a shorter sentence after cooperating). After decades of appeals focused on mitigation evidence, ineffective counsel, and proportionality, she remained on Tennessee’s death row. On September 30, 2026, her lethal injection was botched due to repeated IV access failures and extravasation; the procedure was halted, leaving her alive with medical complications. An independent review, preserved evidence, ongoing Eighth Amendment litigation over the execution process, and clemency advocacy are now expected to shape whether and how any future execution proceeds.   Sources: Tennessee Supreme Court Opinion State v. Pike, 978 S.W.2d 904 (Tenn. 1998). Mitigation / Expert Reports Bethany Brand, Ph.D., Forensic Psychological Evaluation of Christa Gail Pike (2023), reprinted in Appendix C to Petition for Writ of Certiorari, Pike v. Tennessee, No. 26-5696 (U.S. Sept. 25, 2026); see also The Guardian, Tennessee Says Child Rapists Deserve to Die. Now It Prepares to Execute One of Their Victims (Sept. 5, 2026). Accounts of the September 30, 2026 Execution Attempt Evan Mealins & Kirsten Fiscus, Tennessee to Review Procedures After Botched Christa Pike Execution, Tennessean (Sept. 30, 2026); Christa Pike Makes First Public Comments Since Botched Execution, CNN (Oct. 30, 2026); Christa Pike Says She’s in Constant Pain After Failed Execution, Associated Press (Oct. 30, 2026). Accomplice Cases and Parole Proceedings State v. Shipp, No. 03C01-9710-CR-00448 (Tenn. Crim. App. Sept. 11, 1998); Tadaryl Shipp Parole Denied, Tenn. Bd. of Parole (Oct. 20, 2025); Where Christa Pike’s Co-Conspirators Tadaryl Shipp & Shadolla Peterson Are Now, The Sun (Oct. 8, 2026). Post-Execution Litigation and Clemency Materials Order Preserving Evidence, Pike v. Tenn. Dep’t of Corr. (Tenn. Ch. Ct. Oct. 7, 2026); Christa Pike Requests Clemency Ahead of September 30 Execution Date, Death Penalty Info. Ctr. (Sept. 14, 2026); How Christa Pike Will Fight Tennessee’s Next Execution Try, Nolo (Oct. 13, 2026). Join The Dark Oak Discussion: Patreon The Dark Oak Podcast Website Facebook Instagram Twitter TikTok Youtube This episode of The Dark Oak was created, researched, written, recorded, hosted, edited, published, and marketed by Cynthia and Stefanie of Just Us Gals Productions with artwork by Justyse Himes and Music by Ryan Creep  

The disappearance and death of Chris Jenkins remains one of Minnesota’s most baffling unsolved mysteries. On October 31, 2002, the 21-year-old University of Minnesota business student and lacrosse team captain vanished after celebrating Halloween with friends in downtown Minneapolis. His body was recovered months later, sparking a long investigation that shifted from a ruled accident to an active homicide case. While investigators identified potential suspects—including a man in prison for an unrelated violent crime, no one has ever been charged.  The case gained broader national attention when retired detectives Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte theorized that Jenkins was the victim of the speculative "Smiley Face Murder" theory. They alleged a network of killers was targeting high-achieving college men across the Midwest, leaving smiley face graffiti near drowning sites. However, law enforcement and the FBI have largely dismissed this theory, and Chris Jenkins’ murder officially remains unsolved.   Sources: https://abcnews.com/GMA/story?id=4738621&page=1 https://www.mprnews.org/story/2006/11/20/jenkins https://www.twincities.com/2009/09/23/jenkins-family-continues-push-for-awareness-in-case-of-murdered-son/ https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna38601514 https://www.ourmidland.com/news/article/Missing-College-Student-Found-Dead-7085877.php   Join The Dark Oak Discussion: Patreon The Dark Oak Podcast Website Facebook Instagram Twitter TikTok Youtube This episode of The Dark Oak was created, researched, written, recorded, hosted, edited, published, and marketed by Cynthia and Stefanie of Just Us Gals Productions with artwork by Justyse Himes and Music by Ryan Creep  

Ieshia Nicole Jackson, a 22-year-old from El Dorado, Arkansas, disappeared in early November 2020 after attending a Halloween party and traveling to Houston, Texas, with relatives (her aunt Shakila and uncle William Parker Jr.). Police confirmed the trip and treat her last verified sighting as the evening of November 4, when the relatives dropped her off at her South Roselawn apartment around 9 p.m.; she left her phone and wallet inside, and the door was later found cracked open. Family members, including her mother Laquita Parker and brother Ji’quez Jackson, had already discovered the apartment in that state early on November 2 after losing contact, creating an unresolved timeline discrepancy. No remains or definitive trace of her have ever been found, though foul play is suspected. She had reported prior break-ins involving her ex-boyfriend Semajee Dismuke, who was briefly arrested in connection with her case (and later released without formal charges) and was separately sentenced in 2024 to five years in prison for child sexual assault offenses. The case remains open and active, with family advocacy continuing and a reward offered for information.   Sources: Iesha Jackson Is Still Missing | The Steve Wilkos Show The Charley Project –  charleyproject.org/case/ieshia-nicole-jackson MyArkLaMiss / KTVE – : iesha-jackson-a-clearer-timeline-unfolds Uncovered.com (or KATV) –  uncovered.com/cases/iesha-jackson-el-dorado-ar   Join The Dark Oak Discussion: Patreon The Dark Oak Podcast Website Facebook Instagram Twitter TikTok Youtube This episode of The Dark Oak was created, researched, written, recorded, hosted, edited, published, and marketed by Cynthia and Stefanie of Just Us Gals Productions with artwork by Justyse Himes and Music by Ryan Creep  

On October 31, 1987, Wichita, Kansas, was shaken when 15-year-old Shannon Olson, left her friend group and never returned. The following day two fishermen found Shannon's lifeless body floating in a sand pit. Rumors that Shannon's death had been related to the occult began swirling. At the time of Shannon's death, America was experiencing the phenomenon known as "Satanic Panic" which helped to fuel these theories.    Sources: Shannon Olson Unsolved Homicide Case | Wichita, Kansas | Wichita Police Department (KS) | Solve the Case 'The killer changed those plans': 1987 Wichita Halloween cold case still a mystery to detectives | Special Content | kake.com Murdered: Shannon Olson | Wichita, KS | Uncovered Six-Year Investigation Reexamines the Fager Family Murders and Corrects Longstanding Public Narrative | Alternative Eye Crime Reads » How ‘Satanic Panic’ Came to Roil the Nation During the 1980s Disappearances & Dragons: The James Dallas Egbert III Story | The Saturday Evening Post     Join The Dark Oak Discussion: Patreon The Dark Oak Podcast Website Facebook Instagram Twitter TikTok Youtube This episode of The Dark Oak was created, researched, written, recorded, hosted, edited, published, and marketed by Cynthia and Stefanie of Just Us Gals Productions with artwork by Justyse Himes and Music by Ryan Creep  

For ninety years, drivers on a dark stretch of Archer Avenue have been picking up the same girl. She is young, blonde, and dressed for a dance that ended decades ago. She is quiet. Her hands are cold. She asks to be taken home, and home is Resurrection Cemetery. At the gates she is gone—no door opened, no one in the road, sometimes only the feeling that the car just hit something that is no longer there. No grave fits her. The woman most often named died downtown, with dark hair. The girl who actually left the ballroom that night was twelve, and she is buried somewhere else. In 1976 a police officer answered a call about a woman locked inside the cemetery and found two bars bent apart, blackened with what looked like small hands. The cemetery said a truck did it. The marks stayed anyway, until the bars themselves were cut out. Richard Crowe spent a career collecting the rides and then was buried in the same ground. She is still the girl who never made it home, and Archer Avenue is still the road where someone stops.   Sources: Hunting a ghost named Mary. (1985, October 31). Chicago Tribune. https://www.chicagotribune.com/1985/10/31/hunting-a-ghost-named-mary/   Chicago History Museum. (2022, October 25). Resurrection Mary, the hitchhiking ghost of Archer Avenue. https://www.chicagohistory.org/resurrection-mary/   Deathly dancer. (1992, October 25). Chicago Tribune. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1992-10-25-9204060394-story.html   Join The Dark Oak Discussion: Patreon The Dark Oak Podcast Website Facebook Instagram Twitter TikTok Youtube This episode of The Dark Oak was created, researched, written, recorded, hosted, edited, published, and marketed by Cynthia and Stefanie of Just Us Gals Productions with artwork by Justyse Himes and Music by Ryan Creep

Kent Jacobs, a 41-year-old Lumbee man with an intellectual disability who functioned at about a nine-year-old level, disappeared on March 10, 2002, while taking his usual Sunday walk through his childhood neighborhood in Hope Mills, North Carolina, after a weekend at his mother Martha’s home; he was last seen around 5 p.m. wearing a distinctive Harley-Davidson hoodie and carrying about $200 in cash. A massive search involving helicopters, dogs, boats, and hundreds of volunteers found no trace of him. Authorities later classified the case as a presumed homicide based on an informant tip that he may have been robbed and killed in a planned attack, possibly by people who knew him, though no arrests were made and his body was never found. A later lead involving felon Clifton Jones, who allegedly said Jacobs was buried in a refrigerator on his property, produced an incomplete 2010 search that recovered nothing; Jones had already died and much of the land went unexamined. Jacobs was declared legally dead in 2012, but the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office still lists the case as an open homicide. His family, especially sister Jackie, who left her life in Seattle to search for him, has never stopped seeking answers, and his mother kept his bedroom unchanged with a candle in the window hoping he would find his way home.   Sources: Dateline: Missing in America. (n.d.). Via Fyyd: Podcast, Search, Engine. https://fyyd.de/podcast/dateline-missing-in-america/3 Buczek, K. (2025, February 13). He left for a routine walk in 2002 but missed curfew, never made it home, and has remained missing ever since. Chip Chick. https://www.chipchick.com/2025/02/he-left-for-a-routine-walk-in-2002-but-missed-curfew-never-made-it-home-and-has-remained-missing-ever-since Sederstrom, J. (2023, December 20). Family still searching for answers after man vanishes during routine Sunday walk. Oxygen. https://www.oxygen.com/crime-news/kent-jacobs-missing-in-north-carolina-dateline-recap Kent Jacobs – The Charley Project. (n.d.). https://charleyproject.org/case/kent-jacobs   Join The Dark Oak Discussion: Patreon The Dark Oak Podcast Website Facebook Instagram Twitter TikTok Youtube This episode of The Dark Oak was created, researched, written, recorded, hosted, edited, published, and marketed by Cynthia and Stefanie of Just Us Gals Productions with artwork by Justyse Himes and Music by Ryan Creep

In June 1962, 20-year-old Marlys Gross gave birth to a daughter named Mary Agnes at Worthington Regional Hospital in Minnesota after a difficult, heavily sedated labor; she later recalled seeing the infant’s feet move and briefly viewing a baby who did not look dead—not cyanotic, with dark hair and forceps marks—before being told the child had lived only about an hour. She was too ill to attend the funeral, but her friend Judy Voges saw a different-looking infant at the funeral home, her mother Clara photographed a closed casket and noticed an unknown family mourning at the gravesite, and only one fresh grave was visible despite reports that another baby, Pamela Rae Dickey, had also died and been buried the same day. Official records later proved contradictory—a birth certificate describing a healthy live birth at 6:23 p.m. versus a death certificate calling the infant stillborn at 6:20 p.m.—the cemetery had no burial record for Mary Agnes, an anonymous photo of a family with a newborn arrived three months later, and a 1996 exhumation found remains that DNA showed belonged to neither Mary Agnes nor Pamela. The case remains unsolved: whether Mary Agnes died and the records and burial were simply mishandled, or whether a living infant was taken and another child’s body placed in the grave, has never been resolved.   Sources: https://web.archive.org/web/19990222082412/http:/unsolved.com/magross.html https://groups.google.com/g/alt.crime/c/GGrerrScq1Y https://unsolvedmysteries.fandom.com/wiki/Mary_Agnes_Gross https://open.spotify.com/episode/2u6PQBzRUwzE1BfMe3rjwA   Join The Dark Oak Discussion: Patreon The Dark Oak Podcast Website Facebook Instagram Twitter TikTok Youtube This episode of The Dark Oak was created, researched, written, recorded, hosted, edited, published, and marketed by Cynthia and Stefanie of Just Us Gals Productions with artwork by Justyse Himes and Music by Ryan Creep

When 25-year-old graduate student failed to come home on a routine August day, his family immediately knew something was wrong. His family filed a missing persons report and Jelani's vehicle was found an hour away from where he was last seen, abandoned on a dead-end street. More than a week went by before a badly decomposed body was found in a nearby river, but it took nearly three weeks for the remains to be identified as Jelani Day. Investigators immediately believed that Jelani took his own life but his friends and family have never believed that to be the case and instead believe Jelani to be the victim of foul play.   Five years after his death, Jelani's family created the Jelani Day Foundation which offers support to the families of missing persons of color and honors Jelani's life and legacy while continuing to keep his case in the public eye.    Sources: https://www.kcra.com/article/help-me-find-justice-questions-outweigh-answers-in-the-case-of-jelani-day/38081079 https://www.wandtv.com/news/illinois/5-years-later-jelani-day-s-family-continues-fight-for-answers/article_4727c96f-ffe8-470f-ad91-3ca7a2ccf684.html   https://will.illinois.edu/21stshow/story/turning-pain-into-purpose-jelani-days-family-talks-foundation-four-years-after-his-death   jelanidayfoundation.org     Join The Dark Oak Discussion: Patreon The Dark Oak Podcast Website Facebook Instagram Twitter TikTok Youtube This episode of The Dark Oak was created, researched, written, recorded, hosted, edited, published, and marketed by Cynthia and Stefanie of Just Us Gals Productions with artwork by Justyse Himes and Music by Ryan Creep

On July 1, 1980, a woman calling herself "Sheila" approached Kevin's parents, Angelina and Kevin Verville Sr. at their off-base military apartment complex. Posing as a social worker from a military family assistance program, she gained their trust by offering free support for young families.  The woman offered to drive Angelina and baby Kevin to her office to enroll in the program. Under the guise of picking up another family, the abductor asked Angelina to step out of the car to knock on a door, but when Angelina complied, sped away with baby Kevin inside.  Authorities believe that baby Kevin is still alive and has probably been living under a false identity for the last 46 years.    Join The Dark Oak Discussion: Patreon The Dark Oak Podcast Website Facebook Instagram Twitter TikTok Youtube This episode of The Dark Oak was created, researched, written, recorded, hosted, edited, published, and marketed by Cynthia and Stefanie of Just Us Gals Productions with artwork by Justyse Himes and Music by Ryan Creep

In the dead of night, pale figures that look like children—yet somehow are not—appear at car windows and doorways, their eyes pure voids of black that swallow the light. They speak in flat, too-adult voices, asking only to be invited inside, for the ancient rule binds them: without permission they cannot cross the threshold. First whispered into the world by a Texas journalist’s chilling 1996 encounter and then carried on the early internet’s currents, these Black-Eyed Children leave witnesses frozen in primal dread; refuse them and they simply vanish, accept them and misfortune is said to follow. Whether demons wearing the faces of the innocent, travelers from some other realm, or a collective nightmare given form, they continue to surface across the globe, their true nature still hidden in the dark.   Join The Dark Oak Discussion: Patreon The Dark Oak Podcast Website Facebook Instagram Twitter TikTok Youtube This episode of The Dark Oak was created, researched, written, recorded, hosted, edited, published, and marketed by Cynthia and Stefanie of Just Us Gals Productions with artwork by Justyse Himes and Music by Ryan Creep