Christopher Leroy Collings was executed in Missouri on Tuesday for the rape and murder of a 9-year-old girl.

Collings, 49, died by lethal injection at 6:10 p.m. CST at the Potosi Correctional Center in Bonne Terre.

“Right or wrong I accept this situation for what it is,” Collings said in a written final statement. “To anyone that I have hurt in this life I am sorry. I hope that you are able to get closure and move on.”

Collings is the 23rd inmate to be executed in the U.S. this year and the fourth in the state of Missouri.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to grant a stay of execution on Monday.

“Mr. Collings has received every protection afforded by the Missouri and United States Constitutions, and Mr. Collings’ conviction and sentence remain for his horrendous and callous crime,” Governor Michael Parson said in a statement on Monday. “The State of Missouri will carry out Mr. Collings’ sentence according to the Court’s order and deliver justice.”

In 2007, Collings kidnapped Rowan Ford, the 9-year-old stepdaughter of one of his friends, according to court records. He was found guilty of raping the child and strangling her with chicken wire.

Collings has said that he did not intend to kill Ford, but he panicked when she recognized him. He had lived with her family for several months that year.

Ford’s body was found in a cave about a week after her disappearance. An autopsy ruled that she died due to strangulation.

Ford’s stepfather, David Wesley Spears, was also charged with rape and murder related to the incident. He had confessed to sexually assaulting and killing Ford, but Collings denied his involvement.

Prosecutors withdrew the murder charge in 2012.

Spears accepted a plea deal, agreeing to plead guilty to endangering the welfare of a child and hindrance of prosecution. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison and released in 2015.

“I am so proud of the girl that she was turning out to be,” Rowan’s older sister, Ariane Macks, Ford’s sister, told USA TODAY. “A part of me died when my sister died. I did lose my ray of sunshine.”

Macks said Collings deserved to be sentenced to death for killing Ford.

“I wanted him dead, I still do…but they could have done something better than lethal injection because he’s going out easy,” she said. “I cannot even imagine the pain when [Rowan] was strangled. Chris being so tall and so big [compared] to my little sister, she didn’t have a fighting chance.”

In Colling’s clemency petition, his attorneys said he suffered from a brain abnormality that caused “functional deficits in awareness, judgment and deliberation, comportment, appropriate social inhibition, and emotional regulation” and he experienced abuse as a child. Parson denied the petition.

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Four-star offensive tackle Lamont Rogers committed to Texas A&M Tuesday morning, he announced on social media, landing with Aggies one day after the No. 24 prospect in the 2025 ESPN 300 pulled his pledge from Missouri.

Rogers, the 6-foot-7, 310-pound lineman, is ESPN’s No. 7 offensive tackle prospect in the 2025 class. Committed to Missouri since July, Rogers reopened his recruitment Monday and now stands as the top prospect in Texas A&M’s 2025 class. He joins the Aggies as the program’s 13th ESPN 300 pledge less than 24 hours before the start of the three-day early signing period on Wednesday.

Texas A&M was a finalist for Rogers alongside Texas and Oklahoma when the three-year starter from Horn High School (Mesquite, Texas) gave his pledge to Missouri in July. But Rogers’ recruitment remained fluid through the fall and he took at least four trips to Texas A&M following his commitment to the Tigers, including a visit to the Aggies in Week 14 for the program’s 17-7 loss to Texas on Saturday.

Rogers lands with Texas A&M as the Aggies’ third top-100 pledge at the end of coach Mike Elko’s first full recruiting cycle with the program alongside four-star cornerback Adonyss Currie (No. 55 in the ESPN 300) and outside linebacker Noah Mikhail (No. 64) atop the nation’s 11th-ranked class.

Rogers marks a key pre-early-signing period addition for Texas A&M as the Aggies’ lone ESPN 300 offensive line commit in 2025. But the program is set to sign a deep in-state offensive line class in this cycle with pledges from three-star tackles Marcus Garcia and Jonte Newman and three-star guards Connor Carty, Nelson McGuire, Ty Thomas and Joshua Moses, all from Texas.

Rogers may not be Texas A&M’s last high-profile addition of the cycle. The Aggies enter Wednesday in the mix for five-star offensive tackle Michael Fasusi (No. 9 in the ESPN 300) and four-star wide receiver Jerome Myles (No. 33) — both of whom visited the program in Week 14 — while Texas A&M continues to battle Michigan for four-star defensive end Javion Hilson (No. 77).

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A Missouri man is scheduled to be put to death Tuesday evening for sexually assaulting and strangling a 9-year-old girl whose body was thrown into a sinkhole.

Christopher Collings, 49, is set to receive a single injection of the sedative pentobarbital at 6 p.m. CST for the 2007 murder of fourth-grader Rowan Ford.

The girl was assaulted and strangled with a length of rope in the tiny southwestern Missouri town of Stella, on Nov. 3, 2007, and her body was discovered six days later in the sinkhole outside town.

Collings’ fate appeared to be sealed on Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court denied an appeal and Republican Gov. Mike Parson turned aside a clemency request. Parson, a former sheriff, has overseen 12 previous executions and never granted clemency.

Collings’ execution would be the 23rd in the U.S. this year and the fourth in Missouri — Brian Dorsey was executed on April 9, David Hosier on June 11 and Marcellus Williams on Sept. 24. Only Alabama with six and Texas with five have performed more executions in 2024.

Rowan was a fourth-grader described by teachers at Collings’ trial as a hard-working and happy student, a lover of Barbie dolls who had her room painted pink. Collings was a friend of Rowan’s stepfather, David Spears, and lived for several months in 2007 at the home Rowan shared with Spears and Rowan’s mother, Colleen Spears. The child called Collings “Uncle Chris.”

Collings told authorities that he drank heavily and smoked marijuana with Spears and another man in the hours before the attack on Rowan, according to court records. Collings said he picked up the still-sleeping child from her bed, took her to the camper where he lived, and assaulted her there.

Collings told police that he planned to take Rowan back home, leading her outside the camper facing away from him so that she couldn’t identify who assaulted her. But when moonlight lit up the darkness, Rowan was able to see him, Collings told police. He said he “freaked out,” grabbed a rope from a nearby pickup truck and killed her.

Colleen Spears returned home from work at 9 a.m. on Nov. 3 and was alarmed when she couldn’t find Rowan. Court records said Spears insisted Rowan was at a friend’s house. But when Rowan failed to return home by the afternoon, Colleen Spears called police, prompting a massive search.

Collings, Spears and a third man became the focus of police attention because they were the last people seen at Rowan’s home. Collings 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 bloodstained mattress, prosecutors said.

Court documents and the clemency petition said Spears also implicated himself in the crimes. A transcript of Spears’ statement to police, cited in the clemency petition, said Spears told officers that Collings handed him a cord and Spears killed Rowan.

“I choke 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 wasn’t clear why. Prosecutors at the original trial didn’t respond to messages seeking comment.

Spears served more than seven years in prison before being released in 2015. No phone listing could be found for Spears.

The clemency petition said Collings suffered from a brain abnormality that created “functional deficits in awareness, judgment and deliberation, comportment, appropriate social inhibition, and emotional regulation.” It also noted that he was frequently abused 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 stated.

The clemency petition and the Supreme Court appeal both challenged the reliability of the key law enforcement witness at Collings’ trial, a police chief from a neighboring town who had four AWOL convictions while serving in the Army. Failure to disclose details about that criminal history at trial violated Collings’ right to due process, Collings’ attorney, Jeremy Weis, contended.

“His credibility was really at the heart of the entire case against Mr. Collings,” Weis said in an interview.