ST. LOUIS (AP) — A Missouri man will be put to death Tuesday night for sexually assaulting and strangling a 9-year-old girl whose body was thrown into a sinkhole.
Christopher Collings, 49, will receive a single injection of the sedative pentobarbital at 6 p.m. CST for the 2007 murder of fourth-grader Rowan Ford.
The girl was attacked and strangled with a piece of rope in the small southwestern Missouri town of Stella on November 3, 2007, and her body was discovered six days later in the sinkhole outside the town.
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Collings’ fate appeared sealed Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal and Republican Gov. Mike Parson rejected a request for clemency. Parson, a former sheriff, has overseen 12 previous executions and has never granted clemency.
Collings’ execution would be the 23rd in the US this year and the fourth in Missouri. Brian Dorsey was executed on April 9, David Hosier on June 11, and Marcellus Williams on September 24. Only Alabama with six and Texas with five have made more appearances. executions in 2024.
Rowan was a fourth-grade student described by teachers at Collings’ trial as a hard-working and happy student, a lover of Barbie dolls who had her room painted pink. Collings was a friend of Rowan’s stepfather, David Spears, and lived for several months in 2007 in the home Rowan shared with Spears and Rowan’s mother, Colleen Spears. The child called Collings “Uncle Chris.”
Collings told authorities that in the hours before the attack on Rowan, he drank heavily and smoked marijuana with Spears and another man, according to court records. Collings said he took the still-sleeping child from her bed, took her to the RV where he lived, and assaulted her there.
Collings told police he planned to take Rowan home and lead her outside the RV, facing away from him, so she couldn’t identify who attacked her. But when the moonlight illuminated the darkness, Rowan was able to see him, Collings told police. He said he “panicked,” grabbed a rope from a nearby pickup truck and killed her.
Colleen Spears came home from work at 9 a.m. on November 3 and was shocked when she couldn’t find Rowan. Court records show Spears insisted Rowan was at a friend’s house. But when Rowan failed to return home in the afternoon, Colleen Spears called the police, sparking a massive search.
Collings, Spears and a third man came to the attention of police because they were the last people seen at Rowan’s home. Collings told police that after killing Rowan, he took the body to a sinkhole. He burned the rope used in the attack, along with the clothes he was wearing and his blood-stained mattress, prosecutors said.
Court documents and the pardon petition show that Spears also implicated himself in the crimes. A transcript of Spears’ statement to police cited in the clemency application stated that Spears told officers that Collings had handed him a cord and that Spears had killed Rowan.
‘I’ll strangle her with it. I realize she’s gone. She’s… she’s really gone,” Spears said, according to the transcript. Meanwhile, court documents said it was Spears who led authorities to the sinkhole where the body was found.
But Spears was allowed to plead to lesser charges. It was not clear why. Prosecutors during the original trial did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Spears served more than seven years in prison before being released in 2015. No phone listing for Spears could be found.
The clemency petition stated that Collings suffered from a brain abnormality that caused “functional deficits in consciousness, judgment and deliberation, behavior, appropriate social inhibition, and emotional regulation.” It was also noted that he was often molested and sexually abused as a child.
“The result was a damaged human being with no guidance on how to grow into a functioning adult,” the petition said.
The pardon petition and the Supreme Court appeal both challenged the reliability of the key law enforcement witness at the trial of Collings, a police chief from a neighboring city who had four AWOL convictions while serving in the military. Failure to disclose details of that criminal history at trial was a violation of Collings’ right to a fair trial, argued Collings’ attorney, Jeremy Weis.
“His credibility was really at the heart of the entire case against Mr. Collings,” Weis said in an interview.
