Cargreen

BONNE TERRE, Mo. – A Missouri man was executed Tuesday for sexually assaulting and killing a 9-year-old girl and dumping her body in a sinkhole outside a small, rural town.

Christopher CollingsThe 49-year-old woman was a family friend of the victim, fourth-grader Rowan Ford, so much so that he lived with the family for several months before the girl died in November 2007. Sometimes he helped Rowan with her homework. She knew him as ‘Uncle Chris.’

Collings was put to death with a single dose injection of pentobarbital and pronounced dead at 6:10 p.m. CST at the state prison in Bonne Terre, Missouri, authorities said. The execution was the 23rd in the US this year and the fourth in Missouri. Only Alabama with six and Texas with five have carried out more executions in 2024.

Collings’ fate was sealed Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal and denied Republican Gov. Mike Parson a pardon.

“Right or wrong, I accept this situation for what it is,” Collings said in a written closing statement. “I am sorry to everyone I have hurt in this life. I hope you can get closure and move on.” He added, “I hope to see you in heaven one day.”

Rowan was described by teachers at Collings’ trial as a hard-working and happy student, a lover of Barbie who had her room painted pink.

Collings told authorities that in the hours before the attack on Rowan, he drank heavily and smoked marijuana with Rowan’s stepfather, David Spears, and another man, according to court records. Collings said he took the still-sleeping child from her bed and took her to the RV where he lived, where he attacked her.

Collings planned to take Rowan home and lead her outside the RV, facing away from him, so she couldn’t identify him, he said in his confession. But when the moonlight illuminated the darkness, Rowan could see Collings, he told police. He said he “freaked out,” grabbed a rope from a nearby pickup truck and strangled her.

Rowan’s mother, Colleen Munson, came home from work at 9 a.m. on November 3, 2007 and was alarmed when she could not find Rowan as she walked around the neighborhood looking for her. Court records show Spears insisted Rowan was at a friend’s house. But when Rowan failed to return home in the afternoon, the mother called police, sparking a massive search.

Collings, Spears and the third man came to police attention because they were the last people seen at Rowan’s home. Collings confessed to the crime and 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 states that Spears told police 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 telephone directory could be found for him.

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.

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This victim’s mother’s last name has been corrected throughout to Munson, not Spears.