Christopher Leroy Collings was pronounced dead at 7:10 p. m. Central Time on Tuesday, November 5th, 2024, inside the Potosi Correctional Center in Mineral Point, Missouri, ending a 12-year stay on death row for the brutal murder of nine-year-old Rowan Damia Ford.
The execution by lethal injection, carried out under a single-𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 protocol of pentobarbital, took approximately nine minutes from administration to the official declaration of death. Collings, 48 at the time of his execution, had exhausted all legal avenues after the United States Supreme Court rejected his final appeal on April 1st of this year. Missouri Governor Mike Parson declined a clemency petition that cited a documented brain abnormality and alleged due process violations, stating that Collings had received every protection afforded by the Constitution.
The crime that led to Collings’ execution unfolded in the tiny, tight-knit community of Stella, Missouri, a village of a few hundred people near the borders of Arkansas and Oklahoma. Rowan Ford, born on April 11, 1998, was a fourth-grade student, the youngest of five siblings, described by her older sister as a “ray of sunshine.” Collings was not a stranger to the Ford family; he had lived with them in their basement for several months during the summer and fall of 2007.
Rowan called him “Uncle Chris,” and the trust fostered by that familiarity became the tragic foundation of her abduction and murder.
On the evening of November 2nd, 2007, Rowan’s mother was working an overnight shift at Walmart. The girl was at home asleep, under the care of her stepfather, David Wesley Spears.
Spears was drinking at home with Collings and another friend, Nathan Mehuron. At some point, the men moved the gathering to Collings’ trailer in a different town, leaving Rowan alone in the house. When Mehuron drove Spears back home later that night, he took back roads to avoid police due to their intoxication.
During that brief window when Spears was not yet home, Collings went to the house and took Rowan.
According to Collings’ own later account, he did not originally intend to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 the girl. He said he panicked because she recognized him.
He spotted a cord nearby in the bed of a truck and used it to strangle her. Rowan Ford, just nine years old, did not survive. Collings then disposed of her body by throwing it into a sinkhole known locally as Fox Cave, near the town of Powell, Missouri.
In the days that followed, he worked to destroy evidence, burning materials that connected him to the crime.
When Rowan’s mother returned from her overnight shift and found her daughter missing, an alarm went out across Stella. For six days, the community and law enforcement searched the rugged, wooded terrain.
On the sixth day, Rowan’s body was found inside the cave. The medical examiner determined the cause of death to be strangulation, with evidence indicating she had been subjected to a sexual assault before she died. The discovery transformed a missing child case into a homicide investigation, and two men were arrested: Christopher Collings and David Wesley Spears.
The legal proceedings that followed drew widespread attention and sharp criticism. David Spears initially confessed to sexually assaulting and killing Rowan and led police to her body. Christopher Collings denied involvement.
However, in 2012, prosecutors withdrew the murder charge against Spears entirely. He accepted a plea agreement, pleading guilty to endangering the welfare of a child and hindrance of prosecution, and was sentenced to 11 years in prison. He was released in 2015.
Collings, meanwhile, was convicted and sentenced to death.
The disparity between the two outcomes raised persistent questions. If Spears confessed to the killing and knew where the body was, why was his murder charge dropped?
Investigators believe Collings told Spears where he had left the body. The two men knew each other well and had been together the entire night. Spears, carrying guilt about his role in the chain of events, likely came forward with that information, presenting it in a way that made his confession sound first-hand.
False or exaggerated confessions are not uncommon under psychological pressure, guilt, or fragmented memory after a night of drinking. The prosecution concluded that Collings was the primary perpetrator who abducted, assaulted, and killed Rowan, while Spears bore criminal responsibility for enabling the situation and concealing what he knew.
Collings’ case moved to Phelps County, Missouri, with a jury brought in from Platte County to ensure impartiality.
In 2012, the jury convicted him and sentenced him to death. He was transported to Missouri’s death row, where he would spend the next 12 years. What followed was more than a decade of legal battles, appeals filed at every level of the American judicial system.
In January 2014, his first major appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court was rejected. A second appeal was denied in March 2018. In September 2022, the U.
S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri dismissed another appeal. In January 2023, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a follow-up.
And on April 1, 2024, the United States Supreme Court rejected his final appeal. Every door had closed.
Before the execution could proceed, Collings’ legal team filed a clemency petition with Governor Mike Parson.
The petition raised significant arguments: that Collings suffered from a documented brain abnormality causing functional deficits in awareness, judgment, emotional regulation, and social behavior, and that he had experienced 𝓪𝓫𝓾𝓼𝓮 as a child. It also alleged a serious due process violation, claiming the state had withheld crucial evidence about the criminal history of the local chief of police, who had obtained Collings’ incriminating statements. The defense argued this officer had four prior criminal convictions and had falsely testified about whether Collings had signed a rights waiver.
Religious voices, including the Missouri Catholic Conference, urged clemency, citing the sanctity of human life. Governor Parson reviewed the petition and denied it, stating that Collings had received every protection afforded by law.
In his final days, Collings was held at the Potosi Correctional Center.
A spiritual advisor was permitted to be with him in his final hours. He chose his last meal: a bacon cheeseburger, breaded mushrooms, tater tots, and a chef salad. He also submitted a written final statement rather than speaking aloud in the chamber.
His words read: “Right or wrong, I accept this situation for what it is. To anyone that I have hurt in this life, I am sorry. I hope that you are able to get closure and move on, regardless which side of this situation that you are on.
You are in my prayers, and I hope to see you in heaven one day.”
After the execution, Collings’ attorneys released a statement expressing their belief that he had been taken too early from this earth. They hoped his death would provide some closure for the victim’s family but said that what occurred was not justice, but an act of vengeance.
Rowan’s older sister, Ariane Max, spoke publicly, saying she wanted Collings dead and that he deserved the death sentence for what he did to her little sister. But she also expressed that lethal injection felt too easy, that it could not reflect the pain Rowan experienced. She spoke of Rowan’s size, her innocence, the absolute powerlessness of a nine-year-old child against a grown man.
Rowan Ford was nine years old. She was in the fourth grade. She was the youngest of five siblings.
She called Christopher Collings “Uncle Chris.” And she never came home. The case was so significant that a book, “Lost Angels: The Murders of Rowan Ford and Doug Ringler,” was published in 2019, covering the murder and the profound shock it sent through the small community of Stella, Missouri.
Collings was the 23rd person executed in the United States in 2024 and the fourth executed in Missouri that year. Missouri continues to carry out executions, and the legal debates around capital punishment persist. In McDonald County, a family continues to live with the loss of a little girl who never had the chance to grow up.