On the night of Jan. 12, 1995, Pike — along with her boyfriend Shipp and friend Peterson — lured 19-year-old Slemmer into a secluded part of campus. All four students signed out of their dorm at the same time and went to the woods.
Shortly after bringing Slemmer to an isolated area in the woods, Pike and Shipp brutally attacked her. Shipp further said that he carved a pentagram into her body, according to The New York Times.
Slemmer’s body was found the next morning, and police began investigating the murder. Within 36 hours, all three teenagers were arrested and charged.
Investigators made the arrest after Pike had taken a piece of Slemmer’s skull and showed at least one person not involved in the crime. At the time, investigators and the media connected the murder to the ongoing “Satanic Panic” because of the pentagram and the alleged presence of a satanic altar in Shipp’s room, according to the Discovery series Mean Girl Murders.
“The media painted me as being an evil person, as being a devil worshipper,” Pike said in the doc, while denying she was the one interested in satanic worship. “Tadaryl was into Satanism and demonology. That’s where that stems from. I was never into those things.”
Shortly after she was taken into custody, Pike confessed to the crime and reenacted the killing, according to WBIR. Pike claimed that she thought Slemmer was interested in Shipp, so she originally wanted only to threaten and fight her but was unable to “put on the brakes,” per court docs.