Missouri man faces execution today for girl murder after governor denies clemency request

Missouri is scheduled to execute a man Tuesday night for the sexual assault and murder of a fourth-grade girl who called him “Uncle Chris” in 2007. Gov. Mike Parson rejected his request for clemency earlier this week and the U.S. Supreme Court denied his request to hear an appeal and clear the way for further proceedings.

Christopher Collings, 49, will receive a lethal injection at the state prison in Bonne Terre. Missouri uses high doses of a single drug, pentobarbital, to carry out executions. The powerful sedative is typically 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, a crime that Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey and others have described as “heinous, horrific and inhumane.”

On the evening of November 2, 2007, Spears was drinking with Collings and another friend, Nathan Mahurin, at his home in Stella, a small village in southwest Missouri, while the young girl slept and her mother worked a night shift at Walmart. Court records show. The men eventually moved into Collings’ trailer in another city, leaving Ford home alone.

As Mahurin Spears drove home at the end of the night, he took back roads to avoid the police because he was drunk. Meanwhile, Collings rushed to Spears’ house, kidnapped Ford and took her back to his trailer to rape her. Collings later testified that he had not originally intended to kill the girl but panicked when she recognized him. He said he discovered a cord in the bed of a nearby pickup truck and used it to strangle her, according to records. Collings said he then disposed of her body in the cave where she was eventually found.

Ford knew Collings because he had lived with her and her family in her home for several months that year. The child’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, Colleen Spears’ husband told her the girl was at a friend’s house. The child’s body was eventually discovered after an extensive search.

David Spears was implicated in the child’s murder alongside Collings, and investigators initially believed that the stepfather was responsible for the child’s murder. Court records show contradictions in Spears and Collings’ respective accounts of the crime. Both men confessed 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 until his release in 2015.

In Collings’ clemency petition, lawyers argued that he suffered from a brain anomaly that resulted in “functional deficits in the areas of consciousness, judgment and deliberation, behavior, appropriate social inhibition, and emotional regulation,” and that he suffered from abuse and abuse in his own childhood experienced sexual abuse. The petition to Governor Parson and the appeal to the Supreme Court also called into question the credibility of a law enforcement witness who was central to the prosecution’s case against Collings during his trial.

“Mr. Collings has been afforded every protection afforded by the constitutions of Missouri and the United States, and Mr. Collings’ conviction and punishment for his terrible and cruel crime stands,” Gov. Parson said in a statement Monday announcing his conviction stated that the request for clemency had been rejected. “The State of Missouri will execute Mr. Collings’ sentence as directed by the court and ensure justice.”

If Collings’ execution goes ahead as planned, it would be the 23rd this year in the United States and the fourth in Missouri. Only Alabama and Texas executed more people in 2024 – six and five, respectively.