Missouri to execute Christopher Collings for 9-year-old girl's rape, murder. Who is he?

Note that this story contains material about disturbing crimes against a young girl.

A death row inmate convicted of raping and killing his friend's 9-year-old stepdaughter in 2007 is set to be executed in Missouri on Tuesday in what would be the state's fourth execution of 2024.

Christopher Leroy Collings, 49, is set to die by lethal injection for the murder of 9-year-old Rowan Ford in the tiny southwestern Missouri village of Stella on Nov. 3, 2007. If the execution moves forward, Collings will be the 23rd inmate executed in the U.S. this year, with at least three more scheduled before January.

Rowan was described by teachers and family members as an eager, hard-working and beloved student who went everywhere on her purple bicycle, had her room painted Barbie pink and loved going to church so much, she sometimes went alone.

Collings was her stepfather's friend who lived with the family for several months and had even helped her with homework, court records say. She called him Uncle Chris.

Court records describe Collings as a man who developed an emotional detachment disorder as a boy as he was passed around between his birth and adoptive families and experienced sexual abuse.

As Collings' execution approaches, USA TODAY is looking back at the crime, who Collings and his victim were and what led him down a path that will end in his own execution.

What was Christopher Collings convicted of?

On the night of Nov. 2, 2007, Collings was drinking heavily with two friends. One of the friends, David Spears, had a 9-year-old stepdaughter named Rowan Ford, whose mother was at work.

At some point that night, the men left Rowan home alone and started hanging out at Collings’ trailer. As the third friend drove Spears home on back roads to avoid getting pulled over, Collings later told police that he raced to Spears’ home and kidnapped a sleeping Rowan, put her in his truck and took her to his trailer.

Once there, he raped her, he told police. After that, he said he intended to take her home.

“He led her outside facing away from him so she couldn’t see his face,” according to court records. “He made sure to keep the lights off and didn’t speak so she wouldn’t recognize his voice.” But he said Rowan turned around and, because there was moonlight, recognized who he was. That’s when he said he “freaked out.”

“Seeing a coil of cord in the bed of a pickup next to him, he took the cord, looped it around her neck and started pulling real hard,” court records say. “She struggled a little and fell to the ground; he went to the ground with her and held tight until she stopped moving.”

Collings said he then dumped her body in a cave. She was found on Nov. 9, about a week after her disappearance triggered an Amber alert and intensive search.

In recommending the death penalty for Collings, the jury in his murder trial found the killing to be "outrageously and wantonly vile, horrible, and inhuman."

Spears also confessed to police, saying he raped Rowan and strangled her, while Collings denied that Spears was involved, the Missouri attorney general's office said in court documents. Spears ultimately was convicted of child endangerment and hindering prosecution, and got out of prison in 2015. USA TODAY could not find a phone number for Spears.

Christopher Collings' attorneys didn't argue innocence

Collings was a problem child who never formed an emotional attachment to anyone because he experienced severe neglect from his birth parents and several traumas after he was placed in foster care, including at least two rapes, his attorneys argued during his trial.

Collings and his five older siblings ended up in the system − and separated from each other − because their parents "were involved in a lot of crime, involved in a lot of substance abuse," his attorney at the time, Charles Moreland, told jurors, adding that "the evidence will also show that there are seeds of redemption within Christopher Collings."

Collings' trial attorneys emphasized to jurors that he never intended to kill Rowan that night and that he deserved life in prison, not the death penalty. They asked jurors to set aside Rowan's age and the horrific autopsy and crime scene photos they saw, and focus on the law and the facts of the case, which they said showed her murder was not planned.

"I am asking you to take as long as it takes to experience whatever anger you feel, whatever grief you feel for the loss of this child, whatever sympathy you feel for her mother, however horrified you feel at what happened to her ... and then you have to set it aside," one of Collings' attorneys, Janice Zembles, told jurors. "When you deliberate, nothing you decide is going to bring Rowan Ford back. Nothing you decide is ever gonna make her 10 years old."

Prosecuting attorney Johnnie Cox argued that Collings never intended to return Rowan home that terrible night.

"He'd gone to deep, dark place ... that led him to rape this girl that had called him Uncle Chris, that had led him to kill this girl, that led him to put that cord around her neck for what he described as minutes that seemed like an hour," Cox said. "This was brutal rape. This was stealing a child out of her house in the middle of the night and having his way with her. He was never gonna put her back in that house."

Can anything stop Christopher Collings' execution?

Collings' current legal team has been raising questions about his confession, saying it wasn't recorded and was given to then-Wheaton Police Chief Clinton Clark, who had four convictions for absence of office without leave. They've also been emphasizing Spears' own confession to the crime, saying it indicates even further doubt that Collings' alleged confession is the truth.

Collings' hopes for a reprieve lie with the U.S. Supreme Court, the Missouri Supreme Court and Republican Gov. Michael Parson. Parson has never granted clemency to a death row inmate and this year has denied such requests from three men who have since been executed, including Marcellus Williams despite strong arguments that he was innocent.

The Missouri Catholic Conference recently wrote to the governor requesting that he grant Collings clemency, saying the death penalty "disregards the sanctity and dignity of human life."

“The death and other circumstances of Rowan’s murder are tragic and abhorrent, and though her death was a great injustice, it still would also be an injustice if the state carries out a man’s execution in lieu of confining him to life imprisonment,” the bishops said.

Jeremy Weis, Collings' attorney, told USA TODAY that his team expects Parson's response on Monday.

Meanwhile he said that Collings is in "constant contact" with his two daughters, Susan and Skylar, "and they are incredibly supportive of their father."

"Chris is incredibly proud of his children and so happy that he can occupy a part of their lives," Weis said.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Christopher Collings to be executed for rape, murder of Missouri girl