Missouri man executed for girl’s murder after governor denies clemency

Missouri executed a man Tuesday night for the 2007 sexual assault and murder of a fourth-grade girl who called him “Uncle Chris.” Gov. Mike Parson denied his clemency petition earlier this week and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his request to hear an appeal, clearing the way for the procedure to go forward.

Christopher Collings, 49, was pronounced dead at 7:10 p.m. Eastern Time at the state prison in Bonne Terre, the Missouri Department of Corrections said in a statement. Missouri uses high doses of a single drug, pentobarbital, to carry out executions by lethal injection. The heavy sedative is typically used to euthanize animals.

Collings was convicted of first-degree murder in the death of Rowan Ford, his friend David Spears’ 9-year-old stepdaughter, in a crime that Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey and others have described as “vile, horrible and inhumane.”

On the evening of Nov. 2, 2007, Spears was drinking with Collings and another friend, Nathan Mahurin, at his home in Stella, a small village in southwestern Missouri, while the young girl slept and her mother worked an overnight shift at Walmart, court records show. The men relocated at one point to Collings’ trailer in a different town, leaving Ford at home on her own. 

At the end of the night, when Mahurin drove Spears home, he took back roads to avoid police because he was intoxicated. In the meantime, Collings rushed to Spears’ home, abducted Ford and brought her back to his trailer to rape her. Collings later testified he did not originally intend to kill the girl, but panicked when she recognized him. He said he spotted a cord in the bed of a nearby pickup truck and used that to strangle her to death, according to the records. Collings said he then disposed of her body in the cave where she was ultimately found.

Ford knew Collings because he had lived with her and her family at their home for several months that year. The child’s mother, Colleen Spears, reported her missing on Nov. 3 when her daughter did not return from school that afternoon. When she could not find Ford that morning, Colleen Spears’ husband had told her the girl was at a friend’s house. The child’s body was eventually discovered after a massive search.

David Spears was implicated in the child’s murder alongside Collings, and investigators initially believed the stepfather was responsible for her killing. Court records show inconsistencies in Spears and Collings’ respective accounts of the crime, with both men confessing to sexually assaulting and killing her, although Collings denied Spears’ involvement. 

Spears pleaded guilty to a lesser charge. He served more than seven years in prison before his release in 2015.

In Collings’ clemency petition, attorneys argued that he suffered from a brain abnormality that caused “functional deficits in awareness, judgment and deliberation, comportment, appropriate social inhibition, and emotional regulation” and said he experienced abuse and sexual abuse during his own childhood. The petition to Gov. Parson and appeal to the Supreme Court also called into question the credibility of a law enforcement witness central to the prosecution’s case against Collings during his trial.

“Mr. Collings has received every protection afforded by the Missouri and United States Constitutions, and Mr. Collings’ conviction and sentence remain for his horrendous and callous crime,” Gov. Parson said in a statement Monday announcing the clemency petition had been denied. “The State of Missouri will carry out Mr. Collings’ sentence according to the Court’s order and deliver justice.”

Collings’ execution was the 23rd carried out this year in the U.S. and the fourth carried out in Missouri. Only Alabama and Texas have executed more people in 2024 — six and five, respectively.