Christopher Collings set for execution Tuesday in Missouri for 9-year-old's murder

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

Christopher Leroy Collings, a father of two daughters convicted in the rape and murder of a 9-year-old girl in 2007, is set to be executed in Missouri on Tuesday.

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 and the fourth in Missouri.

Collings lost his last chances at a reprieve on Monday, when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to grant a stay of execution and Republican Gov. Michael Parson denied him clemency, saying in a in a statement that Missouri would deliver justice "for his horrendous and callous crime."

Collings' attorney told Paste BN that his client is remorseful and has been treated unfairly by the justice system, while Rowan Ford's older sister said that lethal injection isn't a painful enough end for her him.

Here's what you need to know about Collings' execution.

When and where are Christopher Collings execution?

Collings is set to be executed at 6 p.m. at the Potosi Correctional Center in Bonne Terre, Missouri. He will be allowed a last meal request and is expected to deliver last words.

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 her overnight shift at Walmart.

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, according to court records.

Once there, he raped her, police say he told them. 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.

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. Paste BN could not find a phone number for Spears.

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."

Who was Rowan Ford?

The news of Rowan's disappearance − reported when her mother returned home from work and couldn't find the girl − was shocking for her tiny community in Stella, which has a population of less than 200 people.

Everyone knew Rowan as a bubbly little girl who was always on her purple bicycle, worked hard in school, loved going to church so much she sometimes went alone and had her bedroom painted Barbie pink.

"I am so proud of the girl that she was turning out to be," Rowan's older sister, Ariane Macks, told Paste BN this week. "A part of me died when my sister died. I did lose my ray of sunshine."

Rowan, who was the youngest of five siblings, was so shy, she would sometimes hide behind her older sister, said Macks, who was 18 when her sister was killed.

"She was very shy but when she opened up, it's like the whole room lit up," Macks said. "Rowan, she was something very special. There was nobody that did not like her."

The morning before Rowan's funeral, teachers and students at Rowan's school planted a pink dogwood tree in her honor and released purple balloons, attached to which were notes from her classmates. A concrete angel was placed in the spot, as well as a marker reading April 11, 1998, for the day she was born and Nov. 9, 2007, as the day her body was found.

Macks, now 35 and living in Lineville, Alabama, said Collings deserves to be put to death for her sister's killing but that lethal injection falls short.

"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."

Who is Christopher Collings?

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 eventually became a father to two daughters but struggled with an alcohol and marijuana addiction, court records say. Macks recalled Collings' drinking problem, saying he became a different person while drunk.

Collings' trial attorneys emphasized to jurors that he never intended to kill Rowan and that he deserved life in prison, not the death penalty.

His current attorney, Jeremy Weis, told Paste BN that Collings "is definitely incredibly remorseful" and has been "remarkably positive about his outlook" as his execution day approaches.

In his arguments for Collings' life to be spared, Weis has raised questions about his client's 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 and should never been allowed on the force. He has also been emphasizing Spears' own confession to the crime, saying it indicates even further doubt that Collings' alleged confession is the truth, as well as pointing out the extreme disparity in the two men's sentences.

Who is witnessing the execution?

Macks said that one of her and Rowan's brothers and their mother will be among the execution witnesses but that she was not able to make the trip from Alabama.

Weis said he will also be among the witnesses to his client's execution.

The witnesses from the news media are: The Associated Press, Missourinet (a statewide news radio agency), the Kansas City Star and KFNS-FM.