Missouri’s governor on Monday rejected clemency for Christopher Collings, a death row inmate accused of sexually assaulting and killing a 9-year-old girl and dumping her body in a sinkhole.
At 6 p.m. CST on Tuesday, Collings, 49, will receive a single pentobarbital injection at the state penitentiary in Bonne Terre, Missouri, for the 2007 murder of fourth-grade student Rowan Ford. This would be the 23rd execution in the United States this year and Missouri’s fourth.
Republican Governor Mike Parson said in a statement,
Parson’s judgment is likely to cement Collings’ fate. Earlier on Monday, the United States Supreme Court refused Collings’ appeal without comment. Attorney Jeremy Weis for Collings stated that he anticipates no future appeals.
Parson’s decision was not surprising; as a former sheriff, he had overseen 12 previous killings without offering clemency. Weis stated that Parson has approved previous executions for criminals claiming innocence, intellectual infirmities, and men who were “reformed and remorseful” for their crimes.
“In each case of redemption, the Governor has ignored evidence and sought vengeance,” Weis said in a statement.
After residing with the girl’s family in the small town of Stella, Missouri, Collings confessed to the murder of Rowan, a child who called him “Uncle Chris.” Rowan met her demise on November 3, 2007. They discovered her body in a sinkhole just outside of town six days later. She had been strangled.
According to the clemency petition, Collings’ brain condition leads him to have “functional deficits in awareness, judgment and deliberation, comportment, appropriate social inhibition, and emotional regulation.” The clemency petition further stated that he experienced regular and violent maltreatment as a child.
“The result was a damaged human being with no guidance on how to grow into a functioning adult,” according to the request.
The petition also questioned the fairness of Collings’ execution, given that another man involved in the crime, Rowan’s stepfather, David Spears, confessed but was permitted to plead guilty to lesser charges. Before his release in 2015, Spears spent over seven years in prison.
According to court filings, Collings admitted to authorities that he drank extensively and smoked marijuana with Spears and another man in the hours leading up to the Rowan attack. Collings claimed he scooped up the sleeping youngster from her bed, transported her to the camper where he lived, and raped her. He claimed he strangled the youngster with a rope when he learned she recognized him.
Collings informed detectives that he had taken the girl’s body to a sinkhole. He torched the rope used in the crime, as well as the clothes he was wearing and his blood-stained mattress, according to prosecutors.
According to court documents and the clemency petition, Spears admitted to the offenses. According to the petition, Spears informed police that Collings gave him a cord and that he killed Rowan.
“I choke her with it.” I see she’s gone. “She’s really gone,” Spears declared in the transcript. Court filings reveal that Spears guided officials to the sinkhole that revealed her body.
Spears does not have a listed phone number.
The Supreme Court appeal called into question the credibility of the major law enforcement witness at Collings’ trial, a nearby town police chief with four AWOL charges while in the Army. Weis alleged that Collings’ right to due process was violated because data concerning his criminal background were not disclosed before trial.
“His credibility was really at the heart of the entire case against Mr. Collings,” Weis told reporters in an interview.
Missouri has executed three men this year: Brian Dorsey on April 9, David Hosier on June 11, and Marcellus Williams on September 24. In 2024, only Alabama (six) and Texas (five) had more executions than Missouri.
