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When Anglo-Mestizo Inbreds Attack Baby Anglo-Mestizos -- The Rowan Ford Trial

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  • When Anglo-Mestizo Inbreds Attack Baby Anglo-Mestizos -- The Rowan Ford Trial

    When Anglo-Mestizo Inbreds Attack Baby Anglo-Mestizos -- The Rowan Ford Trial


    http://whitenationalist.org/forum/sh...=5400#post5400


    Here in Southwest Missery we have a largely anglo-mestizo popjewlation living in rural poverty as inbreds. And anglo-mestizo inbreds have no problem with getting theyz' pussy when or as they can get it, whatever, however.

    Combine this with a crooked anglo-mestizo piglice farce, you have Mexico and Brazil with snow.

    This thread is devoted to the interaction of anglo-mestizo sexual predators and anglo-mestizo piglice all pretending to a Puritan whigger morality and the attendant lies and imbecility resulting therein.

    Of course if you are White and have White grandchildren, your babies will be stolen and sold to whiggers and perverts by these crooked lawyers, judges and piglice and you will be charged with doing their usual sins. I got to see the process up close and personal, and what these mamzers do shouldn't be any mystery to those who will listen.

    Hail Victory!!! Hasten on The Great Tribulation!!!

    Pastor Martin Luther Dzerzhinsky Lindstedt
    Church of Jesus Christ Christian/Aryan Nations of Missouri
    http://whitenationalist.org/forum
    http://www.mamzers.org/useful/audio/TMT/


    Last edited by PastorLindstedt; 03-20-2012, 06:50 PM.

    Pastor Lindstedt's Web Page
    Pastor Lindstedt's Archive Page & Christian Nationalist Forum

  • #2
    Collings’ trial begins

    Collings’ trial begins
    Is accused in rape, murder of Stella girl


    http://www.neoshodailynews.com/news/...s-trial-begins
    http://whitenationalist.org/forum/sh...=5421#post5421

    By Staff Reports
    Neosho Daily News

    Posted Mar 13, 2012 @ 07:02 AM

    .

    Christopher Collings
    .

    Rolla, Mo. — Jury selection has been completed and the trial is underway for Christopher L. Collings, 37 of Wheaton, who is accused in the 2007 kidnap, rape and murder of 9-year-old Stella girl, Rowan Ford.

    Jury members were selected from a panel of about 500 residents in Platte County, located north of Kansas City, then bused to the Phelps County Courthouse in Rolla to ensure a fair trial in the case. Last May, a mistrial was declared after attorneys for both the state and the defense could not agree on a jury in Phelps County.

    The 16-person jury is made up of seven women, five men and four alternates.

    Jurors began hearing opening arguments around 10:30 a.m. Monday morning, starting with Johnnie Cox, Barry County prosecutor.

    According to media reports, Cox told jurors he would seek a first-degree murder charge against Collings.

    Jurors then heard from Janice Zembles, an attorney from the state public defender’s office. She told jurors she plans to seek a second-degree murder charge, based not on intent, but on Collings’ state of mind at the time of the incident. Media reports indicate Collings has said in previous statements that he had been drinking heavily and had smoked marijuana in the hours prior to the incident.

    The body of Rowan Ford was discovered in a sinkhole near Mike’s Creek in eastern McDonald County nearly a week after the 9-year-old girl was reported missing from her Stella home.

    Collings and David Spears, Ford’s stepfather at the time, are charged in the death.

    Ford’s mother, Colleen Munson, took the witness stand Monday morning. Jurors also heard from Nathan Mahurin, who is reported to have been with Collings and Spears the night of Ford’s disappearance.

    Monday’s session recessed with the questioning of Newton County Chief Deputy Chris Jennings.

    The trial was set to reconvene at 8:30 a.m. this morning.

    Spears is set to go to trial late this year in Pulaski County, where it was moved on a change of venue. Jury selection will be held Nov. 5, with pre-trial conferences slated for April 2, Aug. 27 and Sept. 26.


    ===666===666===666===

    The Neosho Daily Douche

    All the ZOGling-Approved Shit That Sorta Fits We Print
    http://www.neoshodailynews.com/

    Comment


    • #3
      Rowan Ford murder trial underway

      Rowan Ford murder trial underway


      http://www.whitenationalist.org/foru...=5427#post5427
      http://www.joplinglobe.com/crime_and...trial-underway

      By Jeff Lehr
      Globe Staff Writer

      ROLLA, Mo. — Opening arguments in the Chris Collings trial began this morning after jury selection was completed.

      Johnnie Cox, Barry County prosecutor, told jurors that Collings, 37, abducted Rowan Ford, 9, from her home in Stella on Nov. 2, 2007, drove her to his home east of Wheaton in Barry County and sexually assaulted her there.

      Cox said Collings, who had lived at the girl’s home for a period that year and was familiar to her, was concerned that she not be able to recognize him as her assailant.

      Cox said the girl had been asleep on the drive to Collings’ home and did not wake up until she had clothing removed from the lower half of her body and he began sexually assaulting her. The assault took place in the dark inside his trailer home, said the prosecutor. Cox told jurors that when Collings had finished assaulting her, he took the girl and started guiding her out of the house ahead of him so she could not see his face. But Collings told investigators in a series of confessions on Nov. 9, 2007, that the girl caught a glimpse of him while they were leaving and he decided that he would have to kill her. Cox told jurors that Collings then grabbed a piece of cord and put it around her neck and began strangling her.

      He said Collings told investigators that he then took the girl, drove about with her body in his truck before finally taking her to a sink hole in McDonald County known as Fox Cave and leaving her body there.

      Janice Zembles, an attorney with the capital murder team with the state public defender’s office, told jurors that the issue at this trial will not be who killed Rowan Ford, that is not what is in question. She acknowledged that her client made four separate statements to investigators acknowledging his involvement with the crime, “We’re arguing about what his state of mind was. She said the defense is seeking a verdict of second-degree murder for Collings.

      The panel of 16 jurors consists of 11 women and five men all from Platte County. Four are alternate jurors.


      .
      ================
      .

      Rowan Ford rape, slaying trial opens
      Defense says defendant’s state of mind at issue

      http://www.joplinglobe.com/crime_and...ng-trial-opens

      By Jeff Lehr
      news@joplinglobe.com

      ROLLA, Mo. — Chris Collings was afraid Rowan Ford recognized him as her rapist.

      The 9-year-old girl who knew him as “Uncle Chris” had been asleep when he snatched her from her home in Stella, and she never awakened in his truck on their way to his place east of Wheaton.

      Barry County Prosecutor Johnnie Cox told a jury Monday during opening statements at Collings’ trial in Phelps County that the defendant admitted to investigators the girl did not wake up until he had removed the clothes from her lower body and had begun sexually assaulting her inside his trailer home.

      He had left it dark inside his place to prevent her from knowing who he was, and after raping her, he had guided her out the door ahead of him, still trying to keep her from seeing his face.

      But he failed, and she caught “a glimpse” of him, Cox said. So he grabbed a piece of cord and slipped it around her neck, the prosecutor said.

      “He kept holding that tight around her throat ... until she died,” Cox said.

      The prosecutor’s account of the defendant’s alleged confession to the rape and murder of the girl on Nov. 2, 2007, and the testimony of her mother highlighted the first day of the trial in Rolla.

      Collings, 37, is being tried on charges of forcible and statutory rape, and first-degree murder. The state is seeking the death penalty. A jury was selected over the past two weeks in Platte County, north of Kansas City, and is being sequestered in Rolla for the duration of the trial, which could take two to three weeks.

      Janice Zembles, an attorney with the state public defender’s office who is representing Collings, told jurors that who killed Rowan Ford is not at issue. She acknowledged that her client admitted to the crime in four statements he provided investigators.

      “We’re arguing about what his state of mind was,” she told the jury.

      She said Collings repeatedly told investigators that he “freaked out” that night and does not know why he did what he did. She said jurors will hear testimony about how much alcohol he drank that night and how he had smoked marijuana.

      Zembles said that while “remorse is not a defense to a crime,” there will be evidence that Collings felt a great deal of remorse about what happened, as well as confusion. She said that in the end, the defense will be asking the jury to find him guilty of second-degree murder instead of capital murder.

      The Ford girl’s mother, Colleen Munson, formerly Colleen Spears, was the first witness to take the stand for the state. She told the court that she married David Spears, Rowan’s stepfather, in 2004, and that they had been living in Stella for a couple of years before her daughter’s death.

      She said Spears and Collings had been friends for years, and that Collings stayed at their house for a few weeks earlier in 2007. He slept in the basement, she said. He later moved to property his father owned east of Wheaton.

      The night in question, she went to work between 8:30 and 9 p.m. Spears, Collings and a another one of her husband’s friends, Nathan Mahurin, were there playing pool and drinking. She said Rowan came down from her bedroom, gave her a hug and a kiss, and told her she loved her as she was leaving.

      It was the last time she saw her daughter alive.

      She said that when she returned home the next morning, Spears was asleep on their couch, but Rowan was nowhere to be found. She woke her husband up and asked where the girl was, and he said he thought she had gone to a friend’s house, but he did not know which friend.

      She said that as the day progressed and she became more concerned, Spears wouldn’t let her call for help or walk the streets of Stella looking for her daughter. She said he gave her the impression that he had called for help before he actually did late in the afternoon of Nov. 3. Deputies did not show up at their house until it was almost dark, she said.

      She said that when she later learned from investigators that Spears had left Rowan alone in the house that night to go out with Collings and Mahurin, she stopped having anything more to do with her husband. He moved out before he ever confessed to involvement in the girl’s murder, and she later divorced him.

      Munson said that two days after her daughter’s disappearance, while law enforcement was still looking for her, Collings came to see her in Stella.

      “He asked what was going on and what he could do to help,” she said.

      He told her that he had just been questioned by a Newton County Sheriff’s Department investigator at the cafe in Wheaton.

      “He said he was going to go out and see if he could help find Rowan,” she said.

      Spears, who is facing the same charges as Collings, is scheduled to go to trial in November in Pulaski County. Jurors will be chosen in Clay County and taken to Waynesville for that trial.

      According to opening statements by both the prosecution and the defense, Collings never implicated Spears in his statements to investigators.

      Zembles said that even when investigators told him that Spears had admitted his involvement, Collings stuck to the claim that he acted alone.

      “Chris Collings continues to tell them: ‘I don’t know. I don’t know why David Spears is saying that because I was the only one involved,’” she said.

      Resumption

      TESTIMONY is to continue this morning at the Phelps County Courthouse in Rolla.



      All the shit unfit to print

      http://www.joplinglobe.com

      Comment


      • #4
        FBI photographer testifies in Collings trial - NDN

        FBI photographer testifies in Collings trial
        Neosho Daily Douche



        http://www.neoshodailynews.com/newsn...Collings-trial
        http://www.whitenationalist.org/foru...=5436#post5436


        IMG]http://d2nxvnj9b2h8rk.cloudfront.net/archive/x299882159/g12c000000000000000154558cd3a8475343ad4e45c6c722d9 cdcc86452.jpg[/IMG]
        Christopher Collings
        .

        By Staff Reports
        Neosho Daily News
        Posted Mar 15, 2012 @ 10:42 AM


        Neosho, Mo. — Photographs of Rowan Ford’s body were entered into evidence as three FBI agents took the stand Wednesday in Rolla in the capital murder trial of Christopher Collings.

        Collings and another man, David Spears, are accused of raping and killing 9-year-old Rowan Ford in November 2007, then dumping her body down a McDonald County sinkhole.

        First to testify Wednesday morning at the Phelps County Courthouse was Robert Stuart, special agent with the FBI’s Kansas City office. Stuart, a special counsel for the FBI, is also a photographer for the bureau.

        Stuart testified about photos he had taken of Ford’s body inside Fox Cave, a sinkhole located near Powell in eastern McDonald County. The body was clad in a shirt and a single sock.

        Looking at one of his photographs, Stuart said he noticed tissue damage and blood in the girl’s nether regions, as well as a ligature mark on her neck and tissue damage on her left leg. He testified that the body was photographed before it was removed from the pit, as “once the body gets moved, the evidence could change.”

        Despite objections from defense counsel Jan Zembels, the photographs were allowed into evidence by Judge Mary Sheffield. Jurors saw the photos via PowerPoint.

        Stuart’s testimony lasted all morning. After the court reconvened from a lunch recess, testimony continued, this time focusing on photos of Collings’ white Dodge Ram pickup, a 50-gallon barrel that had been converted into a stove, and pictures of a Chevrolet Suburban that were taken at the Newton County Sheriff’s Department.

        At about 2:20 p.m. Chedric Maggart, FBI administration specialist and associate member of the evidence response team, took the stand. Maggard testified that he and other law agents at the scene pulled Ford’s body — encased in a body bag — out of the pit with a rope.

        He testified he then went to Collings’ home in Wheaton, where he was assigned to collect material out of a burn barrel. This included either a nylon or fiberglas string, which was allowed into evidence.

        The third agent taking the stand Wednesday was Tricia Gentry, a former evidence technician for the FBI. Gentry answered questions about how the evidence was bagged up, sent to the FBI’s lab at Quantico, Va., for processing. Included in evidence was another nylon string and other items collected from Collings’ truck.

        The court then adjourned, with testimony to continue today.


        Last edited by PastorLindstedt; 03-20-2012, 11:32 PM.
        ____________________________
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        Comment


        • #5
          Rowan Ford case jury hears FBI agent testify of contradictory statement

          Rowan Ford case jury hears FBI agent testify of contradictory statement

          http://www.whitenationalist.org/foru...=5437#post5437
          http://www.joplinglobe.com/crime_and...tory-statement


          By Jeff Lehr
          news@joplinglobe.com


          ROLLA, Mo. — An FBI agent testified Tuesday that Chris Collings told him three days after Rowan Ford disappeared the night of Nov. 2, 2007, that he thought the girl’s stepfather, David Spears, may have had something to do with the crime.

          Special Agent James “Benny” Stinnett Jr. took the witness stand on the second day of the 37-year-old Collings’ trial on charges that he raped and killed the 9-year-old Stella girl.

          Stinnett said he encountered Collings and the girl’s mother at her home the night of Nov. 5, 2007, and he asked Collings to sit in his vehicle and talk to him. At that point, investigators knew that Collings, the girl’s stepfather, and Nathan Mahurin, another friend of the stepfather, were the last people to have seen the missing girl.

          Collings told Stinnett that he’d known David Spears for 10 years and that he’d lived in the basement of the family’s home for “about three or four months” earlier that year but was no longer staying there. Collings was close enough to the family that Rowan was in the habit of referring to him as “Uncle Chris,” the agent said.

          “He had baby-sat her a couple of times for the Spearses,” Stinnett said. “He had helped her with her homework.”

          The agent also discussed with Collings what he, Spears and Mahurin had done the night in question, how much alcohol they had consumed and how they left the girl alone at her home to go get alcohol and to go to Collings’ place and smoke marijuana.

          Collings reportedly told Stinnett that he was “pretty drunk” and stayed at his place when Mahurin and Spears left to go back to Stella. He told the agent that he needed to get some sleep because his family planned to disperse his deceased mother’s estate the next day.

          Stinnett told the court that Collings acknowledged having heard about the girl’s disappearance the morning of Nov. 4 and speaking with David Spears about it. He told the agent he asked Spears what he had done and where he went after leaving his place near Wheaton.

          Stinnett said Collings told him that he thought Spears might have had something to do with Rowan turning up missing. The agent said he asked Collings if he would be willing to wear a wire to help them determine if that were true, and Collings said he would.

          The agent said it never came to that. Investigators never had him wear a wire. But Collings also suggested a couple of locations where he thought Spears might have taken the girl. The agent said those suggested locations were at Longview in McDonald County and at Jolly Mill park in Newton County.

          Stinnett’s account of Collings’ initial willingness to implicate David Spears in the crime contrasts sharply with the self-incriminating statements he allegedly made four days later on Nov. 9 when the girl’s body was found at the bottom of a cave in McDonald County.

          In each of four statements Collings provided investigators on that day, he insisted that he had acted alone in abducting the girl, taking her to his home and sexually assaulting her, and then strangling her with a cord and disposing of her body in the cave. He denied that Spears was involved even when told by investigators that Spears also allegedly confessed.

          Prosecutors Elizabeth Bock, an assistant attorney general, and Johnnie Cox, the Barry County prosecuting attorney, also called witnesses to testify Tuesday about the discovery of the girl’s body in the cave.

          Michael Hall, a former lieutenant in the McDonald County Sheriff’s Department, told how he and former Deputy Jacob Boles went to Fox Cave the morning of Nov. 9. The search for the girl had extended into McDonald County the previous day and there had been discussion among officers of the need to check out the cave, Hall said.

          He met Boles and his wife there with flashlights and ropes and Boles lowered himself part way into the sinkhole to look.

          “The color drained from his face when he looked back up at me,” Hall recalled in court.

          He said they immediately notified the Newton County sheriff that they’d found the missing girl and began securing the area.

          Andrew Alvey, senior leader of the evidence response team at the FBI division in Kansas City, testified about the processing of the crime scene in the cave. Near the start of his testimony, the prosecution entered into evidence a photo of the girl’s body as it was found at the bottom of the cave, nude from the waist down except for one sock.

          The sight of the photo displayed electronically on a large screen for the benefit of the jury proved overwhelming for the girl’s mother, Colleen Munson, who was present in the courtroom. As she put her hand over her mouth, stood up and walked out, Collings turned in his chair and watched her leave.

          Collings’ attorney, Janice Zembles, promptly requested a sidebar with prosecutors and Circuit Judge Mary Sheffield before Alvey’s testimony was allowed to resume. The case is being heard in Phelps County Circuit Court in Rolla on a change of venue from Barry County.

          Ligature

          “It appeared that there was a mark around her neck that, in my experience, was consistent with some sort of ligature,” FBI Special Agent Andrew Alvey testified Tuesday at Chris Collings trial.


          .
          ================
          .

          ‘Facial trauma’ cited in Rowan Ford case
          Jury sees numerous photos of body, defendant’s property

          By Jeff Lehr
          news@joplinglobe.com
          March 14, 2012


          http://www.joplinglobe.com/crime_and...owan-Ford-case

          ROLLA, Mo. — Besides ligature marks on her neck, Rowan Ford’s body showed “significant facial trauma” and other injuries, an FBI agent testified Wednesday.

          The testimony of Robert Stuart, a photographer for the evidence response team in the bureau’s Kansas City office at the time of the 9-year-old Stella girl’s rape and murder in 2007, was used by prosecutors to introduce a number of photographs into evidence on the third day of the Chris Collings trial in Phelps County Circuit Court in Rolla. The trial was moved to Rolla on a change of venue from Collings’ home county of Barry. Testimony will continue today.

          Stuart took numerous photographs of the crime scene at the bottom of the cave in McDonald County where the girl’s body was recovered, and of Collings’ property east of Wheaton in Barry County, where her rape and murder allegedly took place.

          Collings, 37, is charged with forcible and statutory rape and first-degree murder. He could be assessed the death penalty if convicted of the latter charge.

          State public defender Janice Zembles indicated during opening statements on Monday that the defense intends to argue that their client’s state of mind at the time of the crime did not permit the premeditation or deliberation required for a capital-murder conviction.

          Prosecutors Johnnie Cox and Elizabeth Bock spent the third day of the trial getting numerous photos and various materials admitted as evidence.

          Some of the photos taken by Stuart showed the girl’s body at the bottom of the cave, which a prior witness estimated to be about 20 feet below ground surface. Stuart said the floor of the cave is conical, with the highest point being only about 10 to 15 feet below ground.

          The body was lying in leaves and other debris beneath a rock overhang near the bottom of the lowest point of the sloping floor. There was a branch from a tree next to the body.

          Her face appeared bloodied about the mouth and nose and her left knee showed what appeared to be a deep-tissue cut. No testimony has been offered as yet as to how those injuries were caused.

          Similarly, the full relevance of many of the photos Stuart took of several buildings, vehicles and other items on Collings’ property remains to be established by testimony.

          Cox said in opening statements that investigators believe Collings abducted the girl from her home in Stella and drove her to his place in his pickup truck. The prosecutor said the defendant sexually assaulted her inside as camper trailer and then strangled her with a piece of cord out of fear that she had seen his face and recognized him.

          The prosecutor said Collings told investigators that he then disposed of her body in the cave and burned evidence at his property, including some clothes and the mattress on which the rape took place.

          Among the photos Stuart took were ones showing a set of box springs with no mattress inside the camper trailer, a depleted spool for cord in the back of a silver pickup truck parked on the property, an outdoor wood-burning stove fashioned from a 55-gallon drum and another 55-gallon drum inside a shed that apparently had been used for burning.

          Other photos admitted into evidence Wednesday showed a burn pile behind a dilapidated trailer home on the property and a piece of cord found in the burn pile.

          That piece of cord became a bit of an issue during testimony in the afternoon by Chedrick Maggart, an administrative specialist with the FBI and a member of the evidence response team that collected material on Collings’ property the day the girl’s body was found.

          Maggart was testifying as to the chain of custody of various items the prosecution was introducing into evidence when the opening of an envelope believed to contain the piece of cord found in the burn pile produced a surprise.

          Instead of the cord, a canister and a smaller envelope fell out. That caused Cox to interrupt his examination of Maggart and to seek a consultation with defense counsel and the judge. Circuit Judge Mary Sheffield had the jury removed from the courtroom prior to speaking with the attorneys, at first in her chambers and later back on record in the absence of the jury.

          The canister contained what was marked as “clear fiber glass strands/debris” and the envelope a DNA swab presumably taken from those strands. Cox explained on record that Maggart could not testify as to the chain of custody of those two items since he had not put them in the bag.

          He said the cord had been examined by Missouri State Highway Patrol crime lab technicians at the request of attorneys for David Spears, Ford’s stepfather, who is also charged with her rape and murder. He indicated that he would wait until the state crime lab examiners are called as witnesses before having them opened.

          The prosecutor said the state has no evidence to tie that particular piece of cord to the girl’s murder, only that there was a piece of cord found in the burn pile.

          Charles Moreland, co-counsel for Collings, objected to admission of the contents into evidence. He pointed out that in a pretrial deposition the state patrol evidence examiner said the bag did not contain a cord , just “clear fiber glass strands.” Moreland argued that admitting the items could be prejudicial to his client in that the jury was being led to infer there was nylon cord found in the burn pile.

          Cox pointed out that the photos show an apparently intact cord.

          The judge ordered that the canister be admitted into evidence over the objection of the defense and in light of a pretrial stipulation between the prosecution and the defense as to the laying of foundation for evidence.

          Jury makeup

          The jury, members of which are from Platte County, are being sequestered at night. The panel consists of seven women and five men. Four alternates, all women, also are hearing the case.


          All the shit unfit to print

          http://www.joplinglobe.com

          Comment


          • #6
            Jurors hear videotaped confessions - NDN

            Jurors hear videotaped confessions
            Neosho Daily Douche


            http://www.whitenationalist.org/foru...=5439#post5439
            http://www.neoshodailynews.com/news/...ed-confessions


            Christopher Collings
            .

            By Staff Reports
            Neosho Daily News
            Posted Mar 16, 2012 @ 04:50 PM

            Neosho, Mo. — Two videotaped confessions were played for jurors Friday in the Christopher Collings capital murder trial, currently being held at the Phelps County Courthouse in Rolla.

            Collings and another man, David Spears, are accused of raping and killing 9-year-old Rowan Ford of Stella in November 2007. Ford was Spears’ stepdaughter.

            Jurors also heard testimony from two law enforcement officers: Clint Clark, Wheaton police chief; and McDonald County Sheriff Robert Evenson, who was a detective with the Barry County Sheriff’s Department at the time. On Thursday, Clark recalled Collings’ confession, including graphic details of how he kidnapped and raped the girl before strangling her with a loop of cord. On Friday, Clark reiterated that testimony in about an hour of questioning from the defense.

            According to live Twitter feeds provided by KSPR-TV of Springfield, Evenson told of questioning Collings at the Barry County Sheriff’s Office in Cassville.

            A video of Collings’ confession was then played for jurors. Collings described how he, Spears and another man had been partying, first at the Spears’ home, then later at his own travel trailer, where the group smoked a large joint.

            Collings said Spears and the other man, Nathan Mahurin, left to backroad a bit before Mahurin dropped Spears off at his home. Collings said he then hurried to beat Spears back to his home, where Rowan Ford lay sleeping wrapped in a blanket on the floor.

            “I picked her up, carried her to the truck, put her in the seat and headed back to my house,” Collings said on the tape.

            At that point, Collings told authorities he lowered the lower portion of the girl’s clothing and had sex with her.

            “It lasted about four [or] five minutes,” he said. “It was over before I even realized it had started.”

            Collins then told investigators he led Rowan outside by the arm. He said the girl turned around and looked at him.

            “I started thinking ‘Oh my God, she knows who I am,’ ” he said. “There was a cord laying on the truck right beside me. I just grabbed it. I wrapped it around her neck and started pulling really hard until she quit moving.”

            He said he then put the girl’s body in the bed of his truck and then took off, driving toward Muncie Chapel, located on Route U near Rocky Comfort. He followed the highway until it forked, then went right past Fox Cemetery to Fox Cave, a sinkhole located near Powell. There, he said, he tossed the body in and tried to cover the hole with leaves, but it was too large.

            “I got back in my truck and headed back to my house,” he said. “[I] flipped the light on and noticed there was blood on the mattress and on my clothes. I said ‘Oh [expletive deleted], then I took my cloths and took them to the stove in the front yard there.”

            He said he rook the mattress and rolled it up to burn it, but thought it was going to give off a bright light. He then took it to the calf barn on the property.

            In the video, Clark asked Collings if he had told anyone what he had told investigators that day. In reply, he said “I had not told anyone until I had told you.”

            However, in the second videotape, an unidentified detective tells Collings that Spears has confessed to the murder, describing incidents in nearly the same detail as Collings.

            “He’s telling the story that’s so much like you …, but he’s putting himself in the story with you in it. He’s saying he was there,” Evenson is heard saying on the tape.

            “Like I said, I was there by myself,” Collings said.

            ‘If you know you’re screwed anyway,” the unidentified detective started, to which Collings interjected “It’s not going to change things.”

            “He’s saying he watched you do that stuff to his daughter, described what you used to strangle her,” the detective can be heard saying.

            “Oh God. This is weird how he would be … Now I know he wasn’t there. Oh my God.” Laughing, Collings added “Why would an innocent man confess? That makes no sense to me.”

            “That’s what we’re asking,” Evenson said. “The only way it could be the same is if you both were there or if you had a story set up between the two of you. See what I mean?”

            Collings concurred he did, but insisted the only people present were he and Rowan Ford.

            Spears allegedly told investigators in Newton County he went in the home and found Rowan missing, then called his mother to borrow her car. He told authorities he then drove to Collings’ home, where he found Collings in the process of raping the girl. He told authorities he also raped her, then the two killed her and dumped her body in the sinkhole.

            “When I worked other cases before, I would trust the confession 10 times more of someone who said more than one did it rather than someone who said ‘It’s just me.’ ” Evenson said. “Sometimes people tell me a portion of the truth to begin with, and it’s so hard for them to change. I won’t think any worse of you if you just tell me David was there.”

            Collings insisted Spears was not involved. Shortly afterward, Clark enters the room and announces Spears had confessed.

            “I wouldn’t do that for David or for anyone else. If he was there, I’d tell you,” Collings said.

            “It’s not going to make anything any heavier, it’s not going to make anything any lighter.”

            “I don’t know what to tell you because he wasn’t there at my house that night,” Collings replied.

            Clark briefly left the interrogation room, then came back.

            “You’re telling me you acted alone, is that right? Then why in the name of God is he over there telling us … What kind of hold has he got on you?” Clark asked. “I can’t understand what kind of a hold he would have on you?”

            “I’m not covering for anyone, Clint,” Collings replied.

            Testimony was continuing this afternoon. More on that testimony, as well as that taking place on Saturday, will be featured online and in Sunday’s print edition.


            Last edited by PastorLindstedt; 03-20-2012, 11:23 PM.
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            • #7
              Wheaton police chief testifies in Rowan Ford murder trial -- jewplin Glob

              Wheaton police chief testifies in Rowan Ford murder trial

              By Jeff Lehr
              Globe Staff Writer
              March 15, 2012


              http://www.whitenationalist.org/foru...=5441#post5441
              http://www.joplinglobe.com/crime_and...d-murder-trial
              ROLLA, Mo. — Chris Collings initially thought he would throw Rowan Ford’s body off the Muncie Bridge before deciding instead to dispose of her at Fox Cave in McDonald County, the Wheaton police chief testified today.

              Police Chief Clint Clark was called as a prosecution witness on the fourth day of the trial in Rolla.

              Clark told the court how Collings sought him out in the days following the 9-year-old Stella girl’s disappearance, and how he gradually broke down and confessed to Clark on the day her body was recovered.

              Clark said Collings finally confessed to him in detail at the Muncie Bridge where the two had gone to have a private talk together. The details included how he abducted the girl from her home while she was sleeping and took her to a camper-trailer on his property and raped her.

              Collings, 37, told Clark how in the aftermath of the sexual assault he had tried to lead her out of his place with the intention of taking her back to her home. But the girl turned and looked at him and Collings feared she would be able to identify him. He decided then that he had to kill her.

              After strangling her with a piece of cord he grabbed off a spool in the back of one of his trucks, he told Clark he decided he would throw her into the creek off the bridge a short distance from his home. He became concerned that someone would find her and decided instead to take her to the cave in McDonald County.

              A videotaped interview of Collings made later that same day in which he confessed to Clark is expected to be played this afternoon at the trial.


              .
              ==================
              .


              Wheaton police chief testifies in detail about initial confession
              Defense in Rowan Ford case still to conduct cross-examination

              By Jeff Lehr
              news@joplinglobe.com
              March 15, 2012


              http://www.joplinglobe.com/crime_and...ial-confession

              ROLLA, Mo. — The day Rowan Ford’s body was hoisted out of a hole in the ground in McDonald County, Chris Collings again went looking for Clint Clark.

              Collings had been catching the Wheaton police chief’s ear almost every day that week, telling Clark about his various contacts with Newton County sheriff’s deputies and the FBI in their search for the missing 9-year-old girl.

              Clark has known Collings since he was a boy. He knew something was troubling Collings about the girl’s disappearance, and on Nov. 9, 2007, he seemed “really upset and emotional,” Clark told the jury Thursday in the fourth day of Collings’ trial in Rolla.

              After going over his Miranda rights with him for the second time that week, Clark sat Collings down in his office and told him: “Son, it’s over. We found Rowan’s body this morning.”

              Clark testified that he told Collings he knew something was weighing on his heart, and that he couldn’t live with it any longer and he needed to get it out. Clark told the court that what he had been thinking up to that point was that Collings knew something about what David Spears, the girl’s stepfather, had done to her. He told Collings: “You need to tell me what David (had) done did with Rowan.”

              Clark was taken aback by the look of “surprise” that Collings gave him, he told the court. Just then the town’s fire chief happened to walk in, saw that he was talking to Collings and went back out. Collings told Clark that he couldn’t talk to him there, that there were too many people around. They decided to take a ride out to Muncie Bridge to talk.

              Once they got to the bridge and got out of Clark’s patrol car to sit down and talk, Collings put both his hands out to be handcuffed, commenting that what he was about to tell the police chief would necessitate his arrest.

              Clark declined and sat down with him, suggesting that Collings start his account with when he and Spears got off work a week earlier on Nov. 2.

              The two friends had been working on the Bobby Brown farm, helping build a barn. Collings told Clark that Nathan Mahurin had come by as they were getting off work. They were going to buy some alcohol and go shoot pool at Spears’ place in Stella.

              But first they went to pick up a goat that Collings bought from another man. Spears held the goat in his lap in the cab of Collings’ truck, and Mahurin followed them in his car to Collings’ father’s property southeast of Wheaton. After penning the goat there, they stopped at the convenience store in Wheaton and bought some Smirnoff Ice, then went to Spears’ home.

              Collings told Clark that Rowan and her mother were there, although Colleen Spears soon left for work and Rowan went upstairs to bed. Clark said Collings told him that they made a couple of trips to the convenience store in Stella to buy more Smirnoff Ice. But when they went the last time, the store was closed. So they decided to go to Wheaton to buy more alcohol at the store there, leaving Rowan home alone. Once they bought more alcohol, they decided to go to Collings’ place and smoke some marijuana.

              Collings told Clark that he rolled a “hog leg,” meaning a large marijuana cigarette, and they all “really got messed up.” Mahurin and Spears decided to go back to Stella by the back roads to avoid having to go through Wheaton, where Clark might stop and arrest them, and to smoke some more marijuana on the way, Collings told Clark.

              The police chief said Collings told him that once they left, he made a beeline through Wheaton to Stella in his truck and beat them to the house. He went inside, went downstairs at first to use the bathroom, and then went upstairs looking for Rowan and found her asleep on the floor of her room.

              “He said, ‘I flipped the blanket off her, picked her up and carried her out to my truck,’” Clark testified.

              He said Collings told him that the girl never woke up all the way back to his place, where he carried her inside his camper trailer and laid her down on the bare mattress of his bed. He told Clark that he kept the lights off so she would not be able to see him, and that he removed her slacks and panties and sexually assaulted her in what Collings referred to as “the missionary” manner.

              He told Clark that afterward, he had every intention of taking her back home and leaving her there. He started guiding her out of the trailer ahead of him, trying to keep her from seeing who he was. But she looked back at him, and Collings believed she had seen him.

              He told Clark that he grabbed a piece of “chicken cord” from the back of a silver pickup truck parked on his property and looped it around her neck.

              Clark recalled on the witness stand Thursday the following conversation between them:

              “Did she struggle?” he asked Collings.

              “Yeah, a little.”

              “And then what?”

              “She went to the ground.”

              “What did you do?”

              “I kept it tight. I went right to the ground with her. I kept it tight until she stopped moving.”

              Clark testified that Collings told him he “knew he had to get rid of her.” He put her in his truck and headed at first for Muncie Bridge, where he figured he would throw her into Shoal Creek.

              Then he thought someone might find her there, Clark said. So he headed for the cave in McDonald County instead.

              Clark said Collings told him that when he got back to his place, he took Rowan’s clothing and the piece of rope, and threw them on the fire in an outdoor wood-burning stove on his property. Then he went inside the trailer to get the mattress and realized that his own clothes were bloodied. He told Clark that he had not removed his clothes when he raped the girl.

              So he rolled the clothes up in the mattress, took them out to a burn barrel in a calf barn on his property and burned them too, Clark said.

              The police chief said Collings then told him: “I went back in the trailer and laid down on the floor, and just looked up at the ceiling.”

              Initial confession

              THE TESTIMONY OF CLINT CLARK, the Wheaton police chief to whom Chris Collings first confessed to the rape and murder of Rowan Ford, took up most of the day Thursday at Collings’ trial in Phelps County. Cross-examination of Clark by Collings’ attorney, Janice Zembles, is expected to resume today. Collings, 37, and David Spears face murder and rape charges. The state is seeking the death penalty for both men.



              Last edited by PastorLindstedt; 03-21-2012, 01:57 AM.
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              • #8
                Spears testifies in Collings' trial, invokes 5th -- NDN

                Spears testifies in Collings' trial, invokes 5th
                Neosho Daily Douche



                http://whitenationalist.org/forum/sh...=5442#post5442
                http://www.neoshodailynews.com/newsn...al-invokes-5th



                Christopher Collings
                .

                By Staff Reports
                Neosho Daily News
                Posted Mar 17, 2012 @ 04:12 PM


                Neosho, Mo. — One of two men suspected of raping and killing 9-year-old Rowan Ford of Stella in November 2007 took the stand Saturday morning, but ended up not saying anything, according to updates posted by KSPR-TV.

                David Spears was called as a defense witness in the trial of Christopher Collings, which is being held at the Phelps County Courthouse in Rolla on a change of venue from Barry County. Spears and Collings are accused of raping and killing the Triway Elementary student at Collings’ home in Wheaton, then dumping her body in a sinkhole in eastern McDonald County.

                By calling Spears to the stand, the defense likely hoped to prove that Collings — despite what he said on two taped confessions the day Ford’s body was found — did not act alone.

                However, Spears invoked his Fifth Amendment rights not to incriminate himself repeatedly in response to questions. Spears is to go to trial later this year in the case. Because Spears repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment rights, the court proved him “unavailable,” meaning he cannot be brought back to the stand for additional questioning.

                Spears appeared in the courtroom Saturday morning with his defense attorney.

                Barry County Prosecutor Johnnie Cox is seeking the death penalty in the case, while Collings’ defense is seeking 10-30 years or life in prison.

                More on this story will be in Sunday’s print and online editions.


                Last edited by PastorLindstedt; 03-20-2012, 11:42 PM.
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                • #9
                  Jury sees videotapes of Collings’ confessions Defendant steadfast in denial of any involvement by friend

                  Jury sees videotapes of Collings’ confessions

                  Defendant steadfast in denial of any involvement by friend

                  By Jeff Lehr
                  news@joplinglobe.com
                  March 16, 2012



                  http://whitenationalist.org/forum/sh...=5447#post5447
                  http://www.joplinglobe.com/crime_and...gs-confessions

                  ROLLA, Mo. — The day Chris Collings provided four statements to investigators confessing to the rape and murder of Rowan Ford, he steadfastly denied that David Spears had anything to do with the crime.

                  He refused to acknowledge otherwise, even when his interrogators at the Barry County sheriff’s office told him during his final interview of the day that Spears had just confessed to Newton County investigators that he’d participated in both the sexual assault and strangling of his 9-year-old stepdaughter.

                  “Why? Why would he do that?” Collings responded during the second of two videotaped confessions that were played for jurors Friday on the fifth day of his trial in Rolla.

                  “He’s saying he had sex with her?” Collings asked the investigators who informed him of the matter near the start of the tape.

                  He sneered and shook his head in seeming disbelief.

                  “I was there by myself,” he said.

                  Collings stuck to his denial of Spears’ involvement for the full hour and 43 minutes of the interview, just as he had done in three previous statements made to investigators on Nov. 9, 2007.

                  “The only thing he’s guilty of is leaving that house and leaving that little girl alone,” Collings said.

                  Collings, 37, first admitted his own involvement in the crime to Clint Clark, the Wheaton police chief, in a private conversation at Muncie Bridge east of Wheaton. Clark had convinced him to repeat his confession to investigators with the Barry and Newton county sheriff’s departments and the FBI at Wheaton City Hall, before being taken to the Barry County sheriff’s office for the first of two videotaped interviews.

                  In the first interview, conducted by Clark and Robert Evenson, the current McDonald County sheriff who was an investigator in Barry County at that time, Collings claimed not to know why he committed the crime.

                  “It was like I was there, but I wasn’t,” he said. “It was like I was somebody else watching it from the outside.”

                  He denied any previous sexual desire for the girl. He said he did not believe he even knew what he intended to do when he drove to her home in Stella after David Spears and Nathan Mahurin left his home the night in question. He said he had consumed about five six-packs of Smirnoff Ice and smoked a large marijuana cigarette with Spears and Mahurin. He said he was extremely intoxicated.

                  Collings said when he arrived at the Spears home in Stella, he went inside and “kind of just spaced out and wandered around.” Eventually, he wound up in Rowan’s room. She was asleep on the floor, he recalled.

                  “To this day, I still don’t know why I did it,” he said. “But I picked her up and took her out to my truck.”

                  He said that it probably was at some point on his way back to his place that he first considered sexually assaulting her.

                  Clark asked him about the “weird thoughts” and “urges” he had spoken to the police chief about in their conversation, and Collings seemed to evade the question. He said what he had meant by that was a physical sensation he’d been feeling that was “almost like heartburn.”

                  “It felt like something was burning in my chest,” he said to the question. “I don’t know what it was. I could feel it, but I couldn’t’ tell you what it was.”

                  Evenson asked him about his medical history and if he’d had any head injuries. Collings told him that he’d been in a traffic accident when he was 19 and struck his head.

                  Collings acknowledged “rage issues” when he was 15 and being put on tranquilizers at the time. He had stopped taking them and started smoking pot instead, he said.

                  Late in the interview, when they asked him if he might be suicidal, he laughed at the notion of taking his own life and said the last time he’d tried that, it hadn’t worked out so well. He was 8 years old and put a rope around his neck and jumped out of a tree. But the rope “snapped” and he was left with rope burns on his neck for about a week, he said.

                  After the prosecution played the first taped interview, Prosecutor Elizabeth Bock had an entry made in the trial record regarding a prior motion by the state to use a redacted version of the second videotaped interview of Collings.

                  She said the prosecution was prevented from seeking to introduce the entire tape into evidence because of the hearsay nature of some statements by investigators to Collings regarding Spears’ alleged confession. Since those statements are inculpatory to Collings, they could create reversible error, she said.

                  She said the prosecution was willing to introduce a redacted version of the interview, but the defense had objected, saying the whole interview should be brought into evidence and that the defense would seek its introduction if the prosecution did not.

                  Collings’ attorneys then played the tape of the second interview on cross-examination of Evenson. He and Detective Brian Martin of the Barry County Sheriff’s Department were the primary interrogators of Collings on the second tape, although Clark also plays a role.

                  The second taped interview was necessitated by Spears’ alleged admissions to Newton County investigators that he realized Collings had taken the girl when he got home that night, and that he then borrowed his mother’s van and drove to Collings’ home.

                  The stepfather allegedly told investigators that when he got there and found Collings sexually assaulting the girl, he participated in the rape and subsequently strangled her with a length of cord. In his confession, they both disposed of her body at a cave in McDonald County.

                  Evenson told Collings on the second tape that he can’t see him remembering all the other details of what happened that night and not remembering that Spears was there.

                  “You see: He wasn’t,” Collings responded. “That’s the stupid part about it.”

                  The investigators tell him that Spears knew a number of things he couldn’t have known any other way, and ask him if he told Spears or anyone else about what he did. Collings denied telling anyone.

                  He said he could understand Spears getting the detail about the rope right. He said that was “the rope we always use to haul stuff.”

                  Evenson suggested that the reason Spears confessed might be that he knew Collings was shouldering all the blame himself and felt guilty about it. But Collings scoffed at the suggestion.

                  “When the DNA comes in, it’s going to tell the truth,” he said.

                  Clark comes into the room later in the interview and tells him that he owes it to Rowan to set things straight. “You have to understand that,” Clark said.

                  “Better than anybody,” Collings replied.

                  Clark then challenged his claim that he used a rope to strangle the girl.

                  “Did you do that or did you choke her with your hands?”

                  Collings hesitated a couple of seconds before answering that he used a rope. He said he grabbed a piece of cord off a spool in the back of a silver truck parked at his place. After he’d killed her with it, he cut it from the spool, he said.

                  Evenson and Clark then tell him that Spears was the one who told investigators where they could find Rowan’s body.

                  “Now, that is just really blowing my mind,” Collings said in response.

                  Saturday session

                  Circuit Judge Mary Sheffield is holding court again today for the Chris Collings murder trial in Rolla. A jury selected in Platte County is hearing the case in Phelps County on a change of venue from Barry County.



                  .
                  ===================
                  .


                  Rowan Ford’s stepfather invokes Fifth Amendment at Collings trial

                  From Staff Reports
                  March 17, 2012


                  http://www.joplinglobe.com/crime_and...Collings-trial

                  ROLLA, Mo. — Rowan Ford’s stepfather, David Spears, invoked his Fifth Amendment rights today when called as a witness by the defense in the capital-murder trial of co-defendant Chris Collings.

                  The defense’s calling of David Spears, 29, to testify in the Collings trial in Rolla was not particularly surprising. Nor was his invoking of the constitutional protection against self-incrimination.

                  What was surprising was that Spears was called out of order by the defense in the midst of the state’s presentation of its case against Collings, 37, and on a day when testimony was expected to be limited to the calling of technicians to lay foundation for the admittance of various evidence.

                  Prosecutors Johnnie Cox and Elizabeth Bock agreed to the interruption to customary trial order to accommodate Collings’ defense with respect to the availability of Spears and his attorney. Spears, who appeared with attorney Sharon Turlington, was sworn in as a witness without the jurors for the Collings trial being present in the courtroom.

                  After identifying himself at the request of Charles Moreland, an attorney for Collings, Spears answered each question from Moreland: “I am taking the Fifth Amendment right on the advice of my attorney and will answer all questions in this manner.”

                  Moreland consequently sought and obtained a finding from Circuit Judge Mary Sheffield that Spears had made himself unavailable as a witness by invoking the Fifth.

                  Collings and Spears are charged with forcible and statutory rape and first-degree murder in the 2007 death of the 9-year-old Ford girl, who was abducted from her home in Stella in the middle of the night. Her body was recovered a week later from a cave in McDonald County.

                  Jurors chosen in Platte County in Northwest Missouri are being kept sequestered during the Collings trial this month in Phelps County, where the case was moved on a change of venue from Barry County. Spears is scheduled to be tried in Pulaski County in November by a jury chosen in Clay County.


                  Last edited by PastorLindstedt; 03-21-2012, 02:34 AM.
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                  • #10
                    Spears mum on witness stand in Collings trial -- NDN

                    Spears mum on witness stand in Collings trial
                    Neosho Daily Douche



                    http://whitenationalist.org/forum/sh...=5453#post5453
                    http://www.neoshodailynews.com/news/...Collings-trial

                    By Staff Reports
                    Neosho Daily News
                    Posted Mar 18, 2012 @ 04:30 AM



                    David Spears took the stand in the Chris Collings
                    murder trial Friday. Both are charged with the murder of
                    9-year-old Rowan Ford in 2007 but are being tried separately.

                    .


                    Neosho, Mo. — One of two men suspected of raping and killing 9-year-old Rowan Ford of Stella in November 2007 took the stand Saturday morning, but ended up not saying anything, according to updates posted by KSPR-TV.

                    David Spears was called as a defense witness in the trial of Christopher Collings, which is being held at the Phelps County Courthouse in Rolla on a change of venue from Barry County. Spears and Collings are accused of raping and killing the Triway Elementary student at Collings’ home in Wheaton, then dumping her body in a sinkhole in eastern McDonald County.

                    By calling Spears to the stand, the defense likely hoped to prove that Collings — despite what he said on two taped confessions the day Ford’s body was found — did not act alone. Those taped confessions — running about 2 ½ hours long together — were played during testimony Friday.

                    However, Spears invoked his Fifth Amendment rights not to incriminate himself repeatedly Saturday in response to questions. Spears is to go to trial in November in the case.

                    Because Spears repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment rights, the court proved him “unavailable,” meaning he cannot be brought back to the stand for additional questioning. Spears appeared in the courtroom Saturday morning with his defense attorney.

                    Friday’s proceedings included testimony by Clint Clark, Wheaton police chief; and McDonald County Sheriff Robert Evenson, who was a detective with the Barry County Sheriff’s Department at the time. On Thursday, Clark recalled Collings’ confession, including graphic details of how he kidnapped and raped the girl before strangling her with a loop of cord. On Friday, Clark reiterated that testimony in about an hour of questioning from the defense. According to the live Twitter feeds, Evenson told of questioning Collings at the Barry County Sheriff’s Office in Cassville.

                    A video of Collings’ confession was then played for jurors. Collings described how he, Spears and another man had been partying, first at the Spears’ home, then later at his own travel trailer, where the group smoked a large joint.

                    Collings said Spears and the other man, Nathan Mahurin, left to backroad a bit before Mahurin dropped Spears off at his home. Collings said he meanwhile hurried to beat Spears back to the Stella residence, where Rowan Ford lay sleeping wrapped in a blanket on the floor.

                    “I picked her up, carried her to the truck, put her in the seat and headed back to my house,” Collings said on the tape.

                    At that point, Collings told authorities he removed the lower portion of the girl’s clothing and had sex with her.

                    “It lasted about four [or] five minutes,” he said. “It was over before I even realized it had started.”

                    Collins then told investigators he led Rowan outside by the arm. He said the girl turned around and looked at him.

                    “I started thinking ‘Oh my God, she knows who I am,’ ” he said. “There was a cord laying on the truck right beside me. I just grabbed it. I wrapped it around her neck and started pulling really hard until she quit moving.”

                    He said he then put the girl’s body in the bed of his truck and then took off, driving toward Muncie Chapel, located on Route U near Rocky Comfort. He followed the highway until it forked, then went right past Fox Cemetery to Fox Cave, a sinkhole located near Powell. There, he said, he tossed the body in and tried to cover the hole with leaves, but it was too large.

                    “I got back in my truck and headed back to my house,” he said. “[I] flipped the light on and noticed there was blood on the mattress and on my clothes. I said ‘Oh [expletive deleted], then I took my cloths and took them to the stove in the front yard there.”

                    He said he rook the mattress and rolled it up to burn it, but thought it was going to give off a bright light. He then took it to the calf barn on the property.

                    In the video, Clark asked Collings if he had told anyone what he had told investigators that day. In reply, he said “I had not told anyone until I had told you.”

                    However, in the second videotape, an unidentified detective tells Collings that Spears has confessed to the murder, describing incidents in nearly the same detail as Collings.

                    “He’s telling the story that’s so much like you . . . , but he’s putting himself in the story with you in it. He’s saying he was there,” Evenson is heard saying on the tape.

                    “Like I said, I was there by myself,” Collings said.

                    “If you know you’re screwed anyway,” the unidentified detective started, to which Collings interjected “It’s not going to change things.”

                    “He’s saying he watched you do that stuff to his daughter, described what you used to strangle her,” the detective can be heard saying.

                    “Oh God. This is weird how he would be … Now I know he wasn’t there. Oh my God.” Laughing, Collings added “Why would an innocent man confess? That makes no sense to me.”

                    “That’s what we’re asking,” Evenson said. “The only way it could be the same is if you both were there or if you had a story set up between the two of you. See what I mean?”

                    Collings concurred he did, but insisted the only people present were he and Rowan Ford.

                    Spears allegedly told investigators in Newton County he went in the home and found Rowan missing, then called his mother to borrow her car. He told authorities he then drove to Collings’ home, where he found Collings in the process of raping the girl. He told authorities he also raped her, then the two killed her and dumped her body in the sinkhole.

                    “When I worked other cases before, I would trust the confession 10 times more of someone who said more than one did it rather than someone who said ‘It’s just me.’ ” Evenson said. “Sometimes people tell me a portion of the truth to begin with, and it’s so hard for them to change. I won’t think any worse of you if you just tell me David was there.”

                    Collings insisted Spears was not involved. Shortly afterward, Clark enters the room and announces Spears had confessed.

                    “I wouldn’t do that for David or for anyone else. If he was there, I’d tell you,” Collings said.

                    “It’s not going to make anything any heavier, it’s not going to make anything any lighter,” Clark said.

                    “I don’t know what to tell you because he wasn’t there at my house that night,” Collings replied.

                    Clark briefly left the interrogation room, then came back.

                    “You’re telling me you acted alone, is that right? Then why in the name of God is he over there telling us . . . What kind of hold has he got on you?” Clark asked. “I can’t understand what kind of a hold he would have on you.”

                    “I’m not covering for anyone, Clint,” Collings replied.


                    Last edited by PastorLindstedt; 03-21-2012, 12:23 AM.
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                    • #11
                      Judge allows autopsy photos in Rowan Ford murder trial

                      Judge allows autopsy photos in Rowan Ford murder trial

                      Medical examiner testifies


                      By Jeff Lehr
                      Globe Staff Writer
                      March 19, 2012


                      http://www.whitenationalist.org/foru...=5458#post5458
                      http://www.joplinglobe.com/crime_and...d-murder-trial


                      ROLLA, Mo. — The forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy on 9-year old Rowan Ford, four and half years ago, testified Monday at Chris Collings trial on Monday that her body had a number of injuries sustained both before and after her death.

                      Keith Norton of Southwest Missouri Forensics in Springfield, said injuries to the Stella girl’s mouth and jaw could have taken place before or after death. Norton said the girl’s front four upper teeth had been knocked up and out and were missing. Norton said the same blunt force trauma that knocked the teeth broke her jaw bone and caused injury to her gums.

                      The medical examiner said a scrape in front of her right ear and an abrasion and bruise on her left forearm were injuries suffered prior to death. Norton also described significant trauma indicative of brutal rape.

                      The medical examiner said the cause of death was strangulation.

                      Attorneys for Collings, 37, of Wheaton, who is being tried of charges of forcible and statutory rape and first-degree murder, objected to the admission into evidence of many of the autopsy photos that prosecutors introduced with Norton’s testimoney. Circuit Judge Mary Sheffield admitted all the photos over the objections of the defense.



                      .
                      ==============
                      .

                      Partial DNA profile cited by criminalist in Rowan Ford case

                      By Jeff Lehr
                      news@joplinglobe.com
                      March 19, 2012


                      http://www.joplinglobe.com/crime_and...owan-Ford-case
                      http://www.whitenationalist.org/foru...=5458#post5458

                      ROLLA, Mo. — A partial DNA profile obtained from the root of a hair retrieved from the bed of Chris Collings’ truck contained female gender characteristics and is consistent with 9-year-old rape and murder victim Rowan Ford’s profile, a DNA criminalist testified Monday.

                      Stacey Bolinger, a DNA criminalist supervisor with the Missouri State Highway Patrol crime lab, told jurors at the capital murder trial of Collings, 37, of Wheaton, that there is a 1 in 328,700 chance of anther Caucasian having the same partial profile.

                      The prosecution introduced autopsy and DNA evidence as the trial in Rolla moved into its second week.

                      Collings, who is charged with forcible and statutory rape and first-degree murder, told investigators on the day the girl’s body was recovered in November 2007 from a cave in McDonald County that DNA would show he acted alone.

                      He made the claim in response to being told that the girl’s stepfather, David Spears, 29, of Stella, allegedly confessed to joining in the rape and murder with him.

                      While relevant to the issue of the conflicting confessions, Bolinger’s testimony does not resolve the matter.

                      She told the court that there were insufficient amounts for DNA testing in vaginal and rectal swabs of the victim. She also testified that there were indications of the presence of semen on both swabs, and that fractions both with and without sperm were obtained from each swab. Prosecutor Johnnie Cox asked Bolinger what impact a vasectomy has on semen, and she said it would remove the sperm cells.

                      Collings can be heard on a videotaped interview played for jurors last week acknowledging that he’d had a vasectomy.

                      Bolinger testified that there was not enough DNA for testing on fiberglass strands of a piece of cord seized as potential trace evidence in the case.

                      She was asked to examine two hair roots. A DNA profile could not be developed for one of the roots, she said. But the partial profile was obtained from a hair found in the bed of the defendant’s pickup truck.

                      Collings told investigators that he put the girl in the bed of his truck after strangling her, and later dropped her into the sinkhole known as Fox Cave. Bolinger said the girl’s mother, Colleen Munson, was eliminated through DNA profile testing as a source of the hair.

                      On cross-examination by Collings’ attorney, Janice Zembles, the DNA criminalist said Rowan’s profile was developed from a blood sample taken after her death for purposes of comparison with any DNA evidence that might be found. Bolinger acknowledged on cross-examination that the popular notion of a DNA “match” is an incorrect term and said the frequency calculation she came up with was what is known as a random match probability.

                      Zembles tried to keep Bolinger from testifying as to the partial DNA profile. In arguments heard by Circuit Judge Mary Sheffield while the jury was in recess, Zembles pointed out that the profile was developed from DNA found at just four of 13 loci, which are the positions on a chromosome occupied by particular genes. She said that was “not enough probative value” to let Bolinger tell the jury that the partial profile was “consistent with Rowan Ford.” She argued that it would be too prejudicial to her client.

                      “Juries love DNA,” Zembles said. “They love DNA and think (it) is perfect.”

                      Prosecutor Elizabeth Bock countered that the Missouri Supreme Court has repeatedly said that partial hair profiles are admissible and that there is no minimum on how many loci are needed. The judge declined to exclude the evidence on face value.

                      The forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy testified earlier in the day that the Ford girl’s body displayed a number of injuries in addition to the marks left by the ligature strangulation that caused her death.

                      Dr. Keith Norton of Southwest Missouri Forensics in Springfield said the girl’s four front upper teeth were missing and had been pushed up and out of her mouth by some form of blunt force trauma. He said the trauma also broke her jawbone and injured her gums.

                      Norton said bleeding into those gums might suggest that the injury took place before death, although the bleeding also might be explained by post-mortem gravity since she was found lying facedown on the floor of the cave.

                      The pathologist said a scrape in front of the girl’s right ear and both an abrasion and a bruise on her left forearm appeared to have been suffered before death. A laceration on the lower part of her body may have been the consequence of sexual assault and would have been extremely painful, Norton told the court.

                      The pathologist’s testimony and accompanying autopsy photos cleared up a mistaken impression created by an earlier photo of the girl’s body in the cave. Just one of her feet was showing in the photo, and an FBI agent’s testimony made it sound as if she was found wearing just a single sock and a shirt. The autopsy photos show that both feet were clad in socks.



                      Caution

                      THE PROSECUTION had planned to call two forensic examiners from the FBI to testify Monday about DNA testing of evidence in the Rowan Ford murder case but had second thoughts when the defense raised objections.

                      DEFENSE ATTORNEY JANICE ZEMBLES argued that allowing the examiners to testify about the results of tests with steps that other biologists on their FBI team actually performed would violate her client’s Sixth Amendment right to confront his accusers at trial.

                      PROSECUTOR ELIZABETH BOCK told Circuit Judge Mary Sheffield that the prosecution was deciding against calling the FBI examiners “out of an abundance of caution” with respect to a pending ruling in a U.S. Supreme Court case, Williams v. Illinois, that could apply to the situation.

                      BOCK SAID the prosecution never intended to try to get the FBI report on its tests admitted into evidence. She said the examiners had formed opinions about their testing, and that is what the state had hoped to present to the jury, but it decided otherwise.


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                      • #12
                        Jurors see autopsy photos in Collings trial -- NDN

                        Jurors see autopsy photos in Collings trial
                        Neosho Daily Douche



                        http://www.whitenationalist.org/foru...=5459#post5459
                        http://www.neoshodailynews.com/news/...Collings-trial

                        By Staff Reports
                        Neosho Daily News
                        Posted Mar 20, 2012 @ 09:24 AM



                        Chris Collings

                        Neosho, Mo. — Despite arguments from defense attorneys that the photos were irrelevant and too gruesome in nature, photos from 9-year-old Rowan Ford’s autopsy were admitted as evidence in day seven of Christopher Collings’ trial held Tuesday at the Phelps County Courthouse in Rolla.

                        Collings, as well as David Spears, Ford’s stepfather, are suspected in the 2007 rape and murder of the young Stella girl. Collings’ trial is being held at the Phelps County Courthouse following a change of venue from Barry County, while Spears’ trial is scheduled for November of this year.

                        According to live updates from KSPR-TV, the photos presented showed Ford’s body from different angles. One photo showed the girl’s neck and face from the right, with a scrape near her ear and on her arm. Two photos of Ford’s private area were also presented, showing a laceration of a little more than three-fourths of an inch, according to the live reports.

                        Dr. Keith Norton, forensic pathologist who performed Ford’s autopsy in 2007, testified that the injury was inflicted while Ford was still alive, and said it would have been “very painful.” Norton said the cause of death was ligature strangulation, and an additional photo was presented, showing the marks on the back of the child’s neck.

                        Jurors took a lengthy recess following the lunch break, as attorneys objected to Constance Fisher, biologist forensic examiner with the FBI and Dina Delgado, from the FBI, as witnesses. Neither of the two were allowed to testify.

                        When jurors returned, they heard from Nicholas Gerhardt, a criminalist with the Missouri Highway Patrol.

                        The prosecution brought several pieces of evidence gathered from Collings’ truck before Gerhardt for review.

                        Gerhardt testified that he found hairs among those items gathered, two of which he said were of evidence value. He said one was a Caucasian medium brown hair and the other a Caucasian medium blonde hair. He said the blonde hair included a root, which meant it could be DNA tested. He said he passed the evidence along to the DNA unit.

                        Next, jurors heard from Stacy Bolingor, a DNA criminalist with the Missouri Highway Patrol. Bolinger said the hairs found came from the bed of the suspect’s truck. She said one of the hairs did not return a DNA match, while the other returned a partial match to Ford, though not enough to build a full DNA profile.

                        Questioning of Bolinger wrapped up Monday.

                        Court reconvened for the eighth day of the trial this morning.


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                        • #13
                          Collings convicted of first-degree murder in Rowan Ford case

                          State rests in Rowan Ford murder case
                          Defense declines to present evidence, testimony

                          By Jeff Lehr
                          Globe Staff Writer
                          March 20, 2012


                          http://www.joplinglobe.com/crime_and...rd-murder-case
                          http://whitenationalist.org/forum/sh...=5466#post5466


                          ROLLA, Mo. — The prosecution in the Chris Collings murder trial rested its case this morning, after presenting a final trace evidence witness.

                          The completion of the state’s case today came as a surprise, since prosecutors had indicated on Friday that they thought their case would last throughout the day.

                          The time frame for the trial appeared to be shortened when the defense announced a few minutes later they would not be presenting any evidence or testimony.

                          The announcement of that strategy by defense attorneys Janice Zembles and Charles Moreland was followed by an inquiry of the defendant by Circuit Judge Mary Sheffield regarding his concurrence with the advice of his attorneys not to testify.

                          Collings, of Wheaton, responded that he was in agreement.

                          The case would appear to be headed to jury deliberation either later this morning or early this afternoon.

                          If the defendant is convicted, a punishment phase of the trial would follow.

                          Collings is charged with forcible and statuary rape and first-degree murder in connection with the death of 9-year-old Rowan Ford, Stella.



                          .
                          =================
                          .


                          Jurors to receive instructions on Chris Collings murder case
                          Closing arguments to begin today at 3 p.m.

                          By Jeff Lehr
                          Globe Staff Writer
                          March 20, 2012


                          http://www.joplinglobe.com/crime_and...gs-murder-case
                          http://whitenationalist.org/forum/sh...=5466#post5466

                          ROLLA, Mo. — Final jury instructions and closing arguments in the Chris Collings murder trial are set to begin at 3 p.m. today. That means the case could go to jury by the end of day.

                          It remains unclear if Circuit Judge Mary Sheffield will allow the jury to begin deliberations yet today or if she will send jurors home for the night, and let them begin discussing the case in the morning.

                          Chris Collings, 37, of Wheaton is charged forcible and statutory rape, and first-degree murder in the death of 9-year-old Rowan Ford of Stella in November of 2007.

                          The rape charges were severed from the murder case about a year ago and jurors will only be deciding the murder charges. The instructions they are to receive will allow verdicts of not guilty, guilty of first degree murder or guilty of second-degree murder.


                          .
                          =================
                          .


                          Collings convicted of first-degree murder in Rowan Ford case

                          By Jeff Lehr
                          news@joplinglobe.com
                          March 20, 2012


                          http://www.joplinglobe.com/crime_and...guilty-verdict
                          http://whitenationalist.org/forum/sh...=5466#post5466

                          ROLLA, Mo. — Jurors decided Tuesday night that Chris Collings acted with deliberation and cool reflection, and was guilty of first-degree murder in the 2007 strangulation death of 9-year-old Rowan Ford, leaving open the possibility that he might be sentenced to death.

                          The jury of seven women and five men took about four hours to reach the verdict after receiving the case for deliberation earlier than anticipated at Collings’ trial in Rolla.

                          Collings, 37, of Wheaton, faced charges of forcible and statutory rape as well as capital murder. The rape counts were severed about a year ago in accordance with state law in death-penalty cases, and the jury was asked to decide only the murder charge.

                          The prosecution finished presenting its case about midmorning Tuesday, and the defense filed a motion for an acquittal that was overruled by Circuit Judge Mary Sheffield. In a somewhat surprising move, Collings’ attorney, Janice Zembles, then told the court that the defense did not intend to produce any evidence or call any witnesses.

                          The judge asked Collings if that was correct and that he did not wish to testify, and the defendant said it was. The trial then proceeded to jury instructions and closing arguments, with the jury receiving the case about 5 p.m. The verdict was returned at 9:06 p.m.

                          Prosecutor Elizabeth Bock told jurors in closing arguments that Collings had come to his “day of reckoning.” She said it was not the day of reckoning for David Spears, 29, the girl’s stepfather, who also is charged with her rape and murder. He is scheduled to be tried later this year.

                          Bock said Collings began lying to law enforcement about his hand in the disappearance of the girl from her home in Stella when he first met with Newton County deputies at the cafe in Wheaton on Nov. 4, 2007. At the time, the victim had been missing less than 48 hours and was already “at the bottom of a cold, dark, wet hole” in McDonald County, Bock said.

                          The next day, Collings looked up the Wheaton police chief, Clint Clark, and told him he had been in Newton County assisting deputies in the search for the girl. When he talked with the FBI the same day and with Clark and another FBI agent on Nov. 6, the girl was still down in the hole, and Collings knew it, Bock said.

                          Until the body was found the morning of Nov. 9, Collings “benefited” from not admitting to his involvement in the crime, she said.

                          “Only after that, only after that, did he make his statements to Clint Clark,” Bock said.

                          She said Collings knew that the girl was home alone, and that he could beat his drinking buddies, Spears and Nathan Mahurin, back to Stella from his home and get her. He knew what he was going to do to her on that eight-mile drive to her home, Bock said. When he finally did confess to Clark, he began minimizing what he had done, claiming to have been “outside himself,” she said.

                          Bock said the thing he could not admit to Clark or any of his interrogators later in the day was his “attraction to a 4-foot-4-inch, prepubescent girl.”

                          “That’s the sick fact,” she said.

                          Bock said that when the defendant went to his truck and grabbed a piece of cord to strangle the girl, he acted with deliberation. When he pulled the cord tight, that was deliberation, she said. And when he pulled it tighter and went down to the ground with her, that was deliberation, she said.

                          Zembles, the defense attorney, began her closing argument with a reminder of what her client told Clark at the Muncie Bridge: “I fully intended to take her right back where I found her and leave her. But she saw me, and I freaked out.”

                          Zembles reminded the jury that the defense acknowledged from the start of the trial that Collings was guilty of killing the girl. The question was to what degree, she said. To find him guilty of first-degree murder would require belief beyond a reasonable doubt that he acted with cool reflection, she told jurors. She said cool reflection is “not just a matter of time.” It is “a state of mind,” she said.

                          Collings told Clark over and over again that he was “paranoid” and “freaked out,” Zembles said. He did not go looking for a weapon as Bock had suggested, the defense attorney said. The cord was right there in the back of his truck, and he reached and grabbed it, she said.

                          She told jurors that many of the photographs they had been shown during the trial were graphic and likely to make them angry or sad or sympathetic with the girl’s mother, Colleen Munson.

                          “I’m asking you to take as long as you need to experience that,” Zembles said. “But then you have to set it aside.”

                          She told jurors that nothing they decided would bring back Rowan. Her young age may add to a sense of tragedy with respect to her death. But it is not a determining element of the law in this case, she said. “Cool reflection” is the key to what the jurors were being asked to decide, she said. And this was not a case where that took place, she said.

                          Prosecutor Johnnie Cox said in rebuttal that Collings could not let investigators know “the deep, dark place” he was in when he did what he did to the girl. Cox said the claim that he intended to take her back home was a lie.

                          “That was never going to happen,” Cox said. “That was never going to happen.”

                          He pointed out that Collings admitted in his own statements that it had taken minutes to kill the girl, but it had seemed like hours. He also attacked the defense’s argument that deliberate actions Collings took in the aftermath of killing were not relevant since the requisite deliberation must take place before the act of killing.

                          Cox said acts such as looking for and finding the cave in McDonald County, and tossing the body down the hole do reflect on Collings’ state of mind before killing her as well as afterward.

                          He finished by again showing jurors a photo of Rowan’s body on an autopsy table.

                          “This is the defendant’s handiwork,” Cox said. “This is the result of his deliberation: a dead 9-year-old girl on a slab.”


                          Penalty phase

                          CIRCUIT JUDGE MARY SHEFFIELD asked for the jury in the Chris Collings trial to return for the penalty phase at 10 a.m. today. Jurors will hear evidence before deciding if Collings should be assessed the death penalty or a life sentence.



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                          • #14
                            Collings found guilty of first-degree murder -- NDN

                            Collings found guilty of first-degree murder

                            By Staff reports
                            Neosho Daily News
                            Posted Mar 20, 2012 @ 09:25 PM


                            http://www.neoshodailynews.com/news/...-degree-murder
                            http://whitenationalist.org/forum/sh...=5469#post5469



                            Christopher Collings
                            .

                            Neosho, Mo. — After about four hours of deliberations, a seven woman, five man jury has found Wheaton resident Christopher Collings guilty of first-degree murder.

                            Collings was accused of raping and killing 9-year-old Rowan Ford of Stella in November 2007, then dumping her body in a sinkhole in eastern McDonald County. Ford’s step-father at the time, David Spears, is also accused of the crime and is set to go to trial in November in Pulaski County.

                            Collings was motionless as the verdict was read, according to live updates provided by KSPR-TV.

                            The penalty phase of the trial begins Wednesday.

                            Jurors asked to review a videotaped confession that had been played last week.

                            Before jurors left the courtroom at about 5 p.m. today, they heard closing arguments from both the prosecution and the defense. Elizabeth Bock with the Missouri Attorney General’s Office, who is a prosecutor in the case, said Collings deliberately plotted to kill the girl when she looked at him after he raped her at his trailer in Wheaton.

                            “Ask yourself: Was Collings really going to return that girl to her bedroom after raping her?” Bock said in her closing argument. “A little 9-year-old girl laying on her floor and he scooped her up. She was dead the minute she left her house.”

                            Collings had told investigators he, Spears and another man, Nathan Mahurin, had been drinking heavily and smoking marijuana before Mahurin left to take Spears home. According to testimony, Collings then decided to drive to the Spears home in Stella, where he knew Rowan Ford would be. In a videotaped confession played for jurors last week, Collings indicated he found the girl asleep on a floor in the house. He said he picked her up, loaded her in his truck, drove her to his camping trailer in Wheaton, then had sex with the girl before strangling her with a cord, then driving her body to a sinkhole near Powell and dropping her in.

                            “He wasn't so drunk and stoned that he couldn't leave her in a wide open area, that he could go find this hole in the middle of the night that fireman couldn't find in the middle of the day,” Bock said. “These actions reflect on his state before the rape and murder as well.

                            “This little girl was dead the moment she left her house. He had a little girl that could identify him as a rapist. He created this situation. You can look at his actions after the fact to determine his state of mind. He looped the cord around her neck, and he pulled tight until she stopped moving.”

                            Holding up a photo to the jury, Bock added: This was his handiwork. We are asking you to believe that the defendant killed her because she could identify him. It wasn't a freak out. It was deliberated.”

                            Defense attorney Jan Zembels agreed the photos of where the body was found and of the autopsy were “bad,” but asked jurors not to make a decision based on emotions such evidence raised.

                            “I would be stunned if those did not make you angry, sad, break your heart,” she said. “You heard for her mother who is now, and who will always be grieving. But, when deliberating, I am asking you to take as long as it takes to experience whatever anger, grief, sympathy you feel. Take as long as you need to experience that. Then set it aside to make your decision.

                            “Your decision is based on facts. You are not allowed to make your decision based on emotions. That may seem dreadful, unfair. But that is the law.”

                            She said a prosecutor may argue that the only way to bring justice for Rowan Ford would be to convict Collings of first-degree murder. However, she added, “Nothing you decide is going to bring her back. Nothing is going to make her 10 years old instead of just 9.”

                            She also asked that jurors speak up if they feel there is a shadow of a doubt.

                            “Everyone has a right to be heard,” she said. “If there are 10 people who think a fact is important and two who don't, don't give in. This is not the way this is designed to work.”

                            The defense did not call Collings to the stand to testify.


                            Last edited by PastorLindstedt; 03-21-2012, 01:01 AM.
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                            • #15
                              Rowan Ford’s family, teachers tell of loss, depression in girl’s death

                              Rowan Ford’s family, teachers tell of loss, depression in girl’s death
                              Jury to hear defense testimony in push against death penalty

                              By Jeff Lehr
                              news@joplinglobe.com
                              March 21, 2012



                              http://www.joplinglobe.com/local/x22...n-girl-s-death
                              http://whitenationalist.org/forum/sh...=5473#post5473


                              ROLLA, Mo. — Rowan Ford went to school early to meet her fourth-grade teacher, Tammy Marshall, the morning of the day she disappeared 4 1/2 years ago.

                              Marshall was concerned because Rowan had been showing up at school in recent weeks somewhat more carelessly attired since her older sister had moved out of their home in Stella. Rowan’s hair was often tangled and matted, and Marshall had offered to brush that hair and fix it up if she would come to class a little early.

                              The little 9-year-old girl, who Marshall considered a “very sweet” and eager B student, took her up on it. Her other teacher, Todd Holt, remembers her running next door minutes later, her hair freshly put up in a ponytail, exclaiming: “Look at what Miss Marshall did.”

                              That afternoon, during second recess out on the playground at Triway Elementary School, Marshall’s thoughts again turned to Rowan and how her hair was holding up.

                              “By about the time I thought to look for her, she came skipping by,” Marshall recalled Wednesday. “She seemed so happy.”

                              The girl’s teachers were called as witnesses by the state on the first day of the penalty phase in the capital murder trial of Chris Collings. Also called were the girl’s mother, Colleen Munson, and older sister, Ariane Parsons.

                              On Tuesday night, the jury in the trial in Rolla found Collings, 37, of Wheaton, guilty of first-degree murder in the girl’s death in November 2007. The jurors, who were chosen in Platte County and are being kept sequestered throughout the trial, now must decide if Collings should be assessed the death penalty or a sentence of life in prison without parole.

                              Prosecutor Elizabeth Bock told the jurors at the start of the penalty phase that the state is asking them to consider three possible statutory aggravating circumstances.

                              The first concerns whether the killing of the girl was “outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible, or inhumane” in that it involved either “torture” or “depravity of mind.” The second potential aggravating circumstance, Bock said, was if the murder was committed while Collings was engaged in perpetrating another violent crime, namely rape. A third circumstance concerns whether the victim was killed as a result of being a potential witness in any past or pending investigation.

                              Jurors need to find at least one of those aggravating circumstances to have been proved beyond a reasonable doubt before proceeding to the second step of the penalty phase, Bock said. The second step entails weighing any aggravating circumstance, or circumstances, against any mitigating circumstances the defense may raise.

                              Charles Moreland, one of Collings’ attorneys, told jurors that the defense will raise a number of such circumstances, including the defendant having taken full responsibility for his crime through four statements he provided investigators the day the girl’s body was found in a cave in McDonald County.

                              Unlike the first phase of the trial, Moreland said, the role of the victim’s stepfather, David Spears, will be at issue in the penalty phase. Spears, 29, also is charged with the rape and murder of the girl, but he has yet to go to trial.

                              Moreland said jurors also will be asked to consider the defendant’s own childhood and life path. He said his client was born to parents who were involved in crime and substance abuse, and sorely neglected him. By the time he was 7, Collings and his brothers and sisters had all been removed from their home by the state of Arkansas and placed in foster care.

                              Collings consequently developed “a severe attachment disorder” early in life that has remained with him into adulthood, Moreland told jurors. While the foster parents who eventually adopted him were good people, the shuttling back and forth between birth and foster parents led to his hospitalization for psychiatric care as a teenager with “intermittent explosive disorder,” and left his client with the current emotional maturity of a 14-year-old, Moreland said.

                              The state began presenting its case in the penalty phase by calling the girl’s mother back to the witness stand to tell of the impact of her daughter’s murder on her life. Munson said she kept working at the Wal-Mart store in Jane after Rowan was killed but finally had to transfer to another store in February 2009.

                              “So many people knew who I was,” she said.

                              “What effect did that have on you?” Prosecutor Johnnie Cox asked.

                              “It hurt every time,” she said.

                              She said that six months after Rowan’s death, she couldn’t take it any longer and began contemplating suicide. She said she remains under psychiatric care today. She eventually lost contact with her adult sons and one of her daughters, her children no longer able to understand where she is now emotionally, she said. To this day, she has just one daughter with whom she still remains in touch, she told the court.

                              “It’s not much of a life,” she said. “I cry a lot.”

                              Rowan’s teachers spoke of the impact of the girl’s death on their students and themselves.

                              Holt remembered Rowan as “a hard girl to keep out of books” who was “quiet” and “shy” but “charismatic.”

                              “I miss her smiles,” he said. “I miss the way she would work for me. She was the kind of student every teacher would want.”

                              Holt said the girl’s fate tore him up personally. He broke down emotionally on the witness stand describing how he eventually had to move her desk out of his classroom. He said it became a struggle for him to keep such emotions “bottled up” so his students would not see him “falling apart.” He said he became angry and depressed, and eventually had to seek help.

                              Marshall said that during the week Rowan was missing, she and her students had just one thing on their minds: Where was Rowan? Later, on the morning of her funeral, they planted a pink dogwood tree outside their classroom and released purple helium-filled balloons into the air with notes to Rowan tied to them.

                              “They were grieving greatly,” she said. “We thought if we did something where they could write notes and release them up to the sky, it would help.”

                              Some of the most powerful testimony of the day Wednesday came from Rowan’s older sister, Parsons, who moved out of their home in Stella just a few weeks before Rowan was killed.

                              Parsons had just turned 18 and moved to Mississippi to be with her boyfriend. She had wanted to move out for some time before that, but her mother made her wait until after she turned 18 in August 2007, she said.

                              She’d also had enough of her stepfather, Spears, and his friend, Collings, by then, she told the court. She did no like Spears treating her as if he were her father. She told the court on cross-examination that he would make her give him a portion of her paychecks.

                              Parsons testified that Collings began talking to her and touching her inappropriately when she was 15. He would brush up against her and grab her inappropriately, she said. She said she told her mother and Spears about it, but Collings would tell them that he was just “joking around” and nothing would be done about it. But she never saw him do anything to Rowan, she said.

                              Parsons, now 22 and living in the state of Nevada, said she had lived with Rowan all of Rowan’s life until she moved out at the end of September 2007. She considered her role to be her little sister’s protector. She would see to it that Rowan’s clothes got washed and that she got fed since their mother worked nights and often slept during the day.

                              Parsons would walk Rowan to school and then take the bus to her high school. They would go to church together and over to the home of Rowan’s best friend, Tyler Counts, about two blocks away.

                              “She was just a little bundle of love,” Parsons said. “She was an actual angel.”

                              Rowan had given her a hug the day she left the house for the bus station to move to Mississippi. That’s where she was when she heard a few weeks later that Rowan was missing. She collapsed to the floor, telling herself that this must be some kind of joke, she said.

                              She came back to Missouri to help in the search, walking the roadways out of Stella with another older sister, flashlights in hand, looking for Rowan. After the girl’s body was found and it became known what had happened to her, a sense of guilt began to plague Parsons. She had been Rowan’s protector. She had failed to protect her.

                              “Everyone in my family went into depression,” she recalled. “There were times when my mother has thought about suicide, my sister the same, and me.”

                              Later, they found a diary Parsons left behind at the house in Stella when she moved out, she said. On the last page, Rowan had written the day after her sister left: “Dear Diary: This is my sister’s diary. She moved. What should I do? I will talk to you in the morning.”


                              ‘Life path’

                              DEFENSE ATTORNEYS have indicated that they intend to call an expert witness to testify about the “life path” of Chris Collings. The defense is expected to begin calling witnesses in the penalty phase of Collings’ capital murder trial at 8:30 a.m. today.


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