Missouri executed a man Tuesday night accused of sexually assaulting and murdering a fourth-grade girl in 2007 who called him “Uncle Chris.” Gov. Mike Parson rejected his clemency petition earlier this week and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his request to hear an appeal, clearing the way for the process to move forward.
Christopher Collings, 49, was pronounced dead at the state prison in Bonne Terre at 7:10 p.m. Eastern time, the Missouri Department of Corrections said in a statement. Missouri uses high doses of the same drug, pentobarbital, to carry out executions by lethal injection. Heavy sedatives are commonly used to euthanize animals.
Collings was convicted of first-degree murder in the death of Rowan Ford, the 9-year-old stepdaughter of his friend David Spears, in a crime that Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey and others have described as “despicable, horrific and inhumane.”
On the evening of November 2, 2007, Spears was drinking with Collings and another friend, Nathan Mahurin, at her home in Stella, a small village in southwestern Missouri, while the young girl was sleeping and her mother was at Walmart the night before. Was working full shift. Court records show. They moved to a different town near Collings' trailer at one point, leaving Ford alone at home.
At the end of the night, when Mahurin took Spears home, he went back onto the streets to avoid the police because he was drunk. Meanwhile, Collings arrived at Spears' house, kidnapped Ford, and brought her back to his trailer to rape her. Collings later testified that he did not originally intend to kill the girl, but became nervous when the girl recognized him. According to records, he said he found a rope in the bed of a nearby pickup truck and used it to strangle her to death. Collings said he dumped her body in the cave, where she was eventually found.
Missouri Department of Corrections via AP
Ford knew Collings because he lived with him and his family at their home for several months that year. The girl's mother, Colleen Spears, reported her missing on November 3 when her daughter did not return from school that afternoon. When she couldn't find Ford that morning, Coleen Spears' husband told her that the girl was at a friend's house. After a lot of search, the child's body was finally found.
David Spears was implicated in the child's murder along with Collings, and investigators initially believed that the stepfather was responsible for her murder. Court records show inconsistencies in Spears' and Collings' respective accounts of the crime, with both men confessing to sexually assaulting and murdering her, though Collings has denied Spears' involvement.
Spears pleaded guilty to a lesser charge. He spent more than seven years in prison before his release in 2015.
In Collings' clemency petition, lawyers argued that he suffered from a brain abnormality that caused “functional deficits in awareness, judgment and deliberation, cooperation, appropriate social inhibitions, and emotional regulation” and that he had suffered from mental disorders throughout his childhood. Had experienced abuse and sexual exploitation during. The petition to Gov. Parson and the appeal to the Supreme Court also called into question the credibility of a law enforcement witness central to the prosecution's case during Collings' trial.
“Mr. Collings deserves every protection afforded by the Constitutions of Missouri and the United States, and Mr. Collings' conviction and sentence will be upheld for his horrific and brutal crime,” Gov. Parson said in a statement Monday. “The State of Missouri will carry out Mr. Collings' sentence and deliver justice as ordered by the court.”
Collings's execution was the 23rd in the US this year and the fourth in Missouri. Only Alabama and Texas have executed more people in 2024 — six and five, respectively.