A convicted killer from southwest Missouri who abducted, raped and killed a nine-year-old girl in 2007 has been executed.
Missouri’s governor denied a clemency request from 49-year-old Chris Collings, who was put to death by lethal injection Tuesday evening at the state’s maximum-security prison in southeast Missouri’s Bonne Terre. The Missouri Department of Corrections (DOC) says Collings was pronounced dead at 6:10 pm.
Governor Mike Parson rejected clemency, saying Collings abducted nine-year-old Rowan Ford near Stella, raped her, strangled her with chicken wire and threw her into a sinkhole. The governor says there is not and never has been any doubt about Collings’ involvement or the heinousness of his crimes.
The “Springfield News-Leader” reports Collings’ defense attorneys argued at trial that Collings never intended to kill Rowan that night and deserved a life prison sentence, not the death penalty.
