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Dec. 3 (UPI) -- The State of Missouri executed death row inmate Christopher Collings by lethal injection Tuesday evening for the 2007 abduction, rape and murder of a 9-year-old girl. Collings, 49, was pronounced dead at 6:10 p.m. CST at the Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre, Mo., the Missouri Department of Corrections confirmed to UPI in an emailed statement.
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His execution was carried out a day after both the U.S. Supreme Court and Missouri's Republican governor, Michael Parson, denied Collings clemency.
"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," Parson said in a statement.
"The State of Missouri will carry out Mr. Collings' sentence according to the Court's order and deliver justice."
In his final statement, Collings accepted that he was to die.
"Right or wrong I accept this situation for what it is," he wrote. "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."
Collings was convicted of first-degree murder by a jury and sentenced to death for the November 2007 murder of Rowan Ford.
He had confessed to killing the girl, who died by strangulation Nov. 3, 2007.
Collings was a family friend, having lived with Ford's mother, Colleen Munson, and stepfather, David Spears, for a time before the incident.
According to court documents, Collings had been drinking heavily and smoking marijuana along with Spears and another man at Spears' home while Munson was working the night of Nov. 2.
Leaving Ford alone at the house, the trio then went to Collings' trailer, where they continued drinking. After Spears and the other man left, Collings raced back to Spears' house, knowing he could beat them back, and picked up the sleeping Ford, whom he placed in his truck.
He then drove back to his trailer, where he assaulted her, which caused Ford to awake. Court documents state that Collings killed Ford with a cord after she saw his face in the moonlight.
Collings discarded her body in a Fox Hollow sinkhole. He then returned to the trailer where he burned his clothing, mattress and the cord used to kill Ford.
When Munson returned home from work the next morning, Spears had told her Ford spent the night at a friend's house, but when she never returned, she reported her daughter missing to police.
Ford's body was found on Nov. 9
Collings confessed to the crime. However, according to court documents and Collings' request for clemency, so did Spears, who told authorities he had been involved in both the rape, murder and disposal of his stepdaughter.
Spears was allowed to plead guilty to lesser related offenses after Collings received the death penalty and served 11 years in prison.
The sentencing disparity is one reason cited by Death Penalty Action in seeking to halt Collings' execution.
His clemency petition also cited his traumatic youth and "structurally abnormal brain." The document states that as a result of this condition, Collings, who is a father of two grown women, "suffers from functional deficits in awareness, judgment and deliberation, comportment, appropriate social inhibition and emotional regulation."
Collings was the fourth death row inmate to be executed in Missouri this year and the 23rd in the United States.
