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KNOXVILLE — The parents of a University of Tennessee student who was carjacked, raped and killed along with her boyfriend have no sympathy for the defendants or extremists who want to use the racial aspects of the case for their own purposes.

"This was not a racial crime," Gary Christian said of the January murders of his 21-year-old daughter, Channon Christian, and her 23-year-old boyfriend, Christopher Newsom.

The victims were white; the four suspects charged with the murders and a fifth suspect charged with being an accessory after the fact in the carjacking all are black.

Conservative critics claim the national media ignored the crime because the victims weren't black and the suspects aren't white. Internet buzz suggests white supremacists are planning rallies in Knoxville, calling it a black-on-white crime.

But Gary and Deena Christian, in their first extensive interview Sunday with The Associated Press and local television affiliates, see only the horror of the deaths and know only their own deep personal loss.

"I don't think they went out — black people looking for white people," Gary Christian said. "What it turned into, I don't know. But I know this. I believe in my heart that wild animals come in lots of different colors. The end result is that they are still wild animals."

"I could care less if they were pink or purple, they took our children," Deena Christian said. "They took our daughter. They took Chris away from the Newsom family. So color doesn't matter. It is what they took from us that matters."

Gary Christian was seen pointing a finger like a gun at one of the defendants in court while wearing a Confederate flag T-shirt. He hasn't done that since.

The provocative T-shirt apparently was more for effect than philosophy. It was "the only shirt I had to put on that day," Christian said flippantly Sunday, while the gesture was "just a finger," though it did get him "in a little hot water with my wife."

But he has no desire to become part of a cause, particularly one based on race hate.

What would he tell such groups? "It ain't about you," Gary Christian said.

"I try not to think about it," Deena Christian said. "We have enough to deal with based on what actually happened and having to learn to live life without one of our kids. Just leave me alone. I don't want to have anything to do with it."

The Christians said Internet accounts have exaggerated aspects of the crime, particularly accounts that the victims were mutilated. "Seventy-five percent of the stuff you are reading on the Internet is fallacies," Gary Christian said. "They are stretching it out of proportion. (Though) it was horrific and they were tortured."

The couple was carjacked after leaving a friend's apartment late Jan. 6. His body was found the next day, shot, burned and dumped along some inner-city railroad tracks. Her body was found two days later in a trash can in a house nearby. Both had been raped.

By week's end, four young black men were arrested in connection with the carjacking — two in Knoxville and two 180 miles north in Kentucky. Two weeks later, a former girlfriend of one of the suspects also was arrested in Kentucky. She and three of the males have been indicted on dozens of state charges, including the murders. Their trials are set for next year.

Gary Christian, who personally led a group of her friends on a search that found Channon's stolen sports utility vehicle just four houses from where her body was later found, said he is left with a sense of "pure hate" and a promise to his family that this will never happen to them again.

"Nothing is the same," he said.

The Christians are a middle-class family. He is a sales manager for a car dealership. She is an office administrator for an investment firm. Channon was their only daughter. They have a son Chase, 23.

Channon was a UT senior majoring in sociology. She hoped to work with underprivileged children or maybe go into forensic science. She wanted to have four children of her own one day. She worked part-time in a mall shoe store and still lived at home.

She had been dating Newsom a couple of weeks. They met through friends.

"She was a beautiful person inside and out," her mother said. "She loved life. She never met a stranger. She loved being with her friends. She was just a very happy person."

A scrapbook several inches thick of pictures and other mementos collected by her friends sits on the coffee table in the family's living room. A photo of Channon and her dog "Rebel" are on the mantle. Preserved flowers from her funeral are under a glass dome on a table.

Newsom was "a good kid, a good Southern gentleman. Just very attentive to her. He was a hard worker," Deena Christian said.

The Christians didn't know Newsom's parents before; now they are close. "They are the only people I have talked to since January 7th that know how I feel," Gary Christian said.

Channon's parents have attended every one of the defendants' court hearings. They say they go for their daughter's sake.

Gary Christian said he has no empathy for the defendants. He wants the death penalty, though prosecutors have yet to say if they will seek it.

The defendants, most high school dropouts and some with criminal records, have given statements against one another. Court documents suggest physical evidence links some to the crimes.

"We can't talk about evidence," Deena Christian said.

But her husband is convinced of their guilt.

"Do you have children?" he asks. "Let somebody take one of them and see if you don't know in your heart when you see them. I know it was them. All of them. Every one of them."

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, or redistributed.