Christina Riggs became the first female executed by Arkansas in the modern era for the asphyxiation murder of her two small children in 1997. It was the culmination of a train wreck of a life that began with her birth as Christina Thomas in Lawton, Oklahoma on September 2, 1971. Her stepbrother molested her from the ages of 7 to 13 and then a neighbor did likewise. By 14, she was drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, and using marijuana. Struggling with obesity issues, Christina became sexually promiscuous since she thought otherwise she couldn't interest boys due to her weight. She became pregnant at 16, allegedly by an African-American boyfriend, gave birth to a son in January 1988, and immediately gave him up for adoption.Graduating high school in 1989, she became a licensed practical nurse, doing part-time home visits and also working at the VA Hospital in Oklahoma City. Christina had several boyfriends during this time, including a bar bouncer, a Navy serviceman named Jon Riggs, and an Air Force serviceman named Tim Thompson, who was stationed at Tinker Air Force Base. In October 1991, Christina discovered that she was pregnant and enthusiastically told Tim the news but he doubted the child was actually his and went back to his native Minnesota.
Shortly after this, she got together with Jon Riggs who was happy to accept the baby and raise it as his own. She gave birth to her son Justin on June 7, 1992. Jon Riggs moved in with Christina and she became pregnant again in early 1993. The two got married in July, but she had a miscarriage on their wedding night. This and her unhappy marriage made her increasingly depressed and suicidal; she started using Prozac. It wasn't long before she became pregnant for the fourth time; her daughter Shelby Alexis arrived December 1, 1994. Christina claimed to have worked a triage station near the blast site of the Oklahoma City Bombing in April 1995 where she suffered PTSD from viewing the mutilated victims of the bombing, but her work records from the VA Hospital have no indication of her doing this assignment.That summer, her and Jon decided to move to Sherwood, Arkansas to be closer to her mother Carol. She went to work at Baptist Hospital where Carol worked in food service. Justin and Shelby also suffered from a myriad of childhood health issues including chronic ear infections and attention deficit disorder, making them a handful to deal with. Shortly after that, Jon punched Justin in the stomach so hard that he required hospitalization. Christina filed for divorce, having little money to support them with.Christina was supposed to receive child support payments from Jon but they came only irregularly and she also had to spend considerable money on daycare services for Justin and Shelby while she was working at the Arkansas Heart Hospital. She claimed she was struggling to pay her bills and was considering suicide.
The end came on November 4, 1997 when she collected a deadly cocktail of drugs--her prescription antidepressants, morphine, and potassium chloride from the hospital where she worked. She gave Justin and Shelby a small dosage of Elavil to get them asleep. Potassium chloride, as some may know, is used to execute death row inmates via lethal injection. Normally it is administered diluted or it will cause a painful burning sensation. Christina injected Justin with it, but hadn't bothered diluting the stuff first. The 5 year old boy woke up and started yelping in pain. Next she tried giving him morphine without success, so she decided to simply smother him with a pillow. She went to Shelby's room and having decided now that potassium chloride was a bad idea, just smothered her. Christina placed both bodies next to each other and covered them with a blanket.Then she penned suicide notes to her mother and ex-husband, consumed 28 Elavil tablets, and injected herself with a large dose of undiluted potassium chloride, which burned a hole the size of a quarter in her right arm. The next day when she didn't show up at the hospital for work, her mother decided to call her house. There was no answer so she drove there herself, stepped inside, and discovered the horror within. Her two grandchildren lay dead on the floor. Nearby was an unconscious Christina, whom Carol assumed to be dead too. "I walked in there, saw the bodies, and started panicking and yelling 'No, no, no!' I called 911 and yelled 'My god, my daughter and her babies are dead!'"
Police and paramedics found that Christina was alive, but barely. Taken to the Baptist Memorial Medical Center in North Little Rock, her condition was stabilized and then moved to intensive care after police found the syringes and suicide notes in the house. She was arrested for first degree murder as soon as she was released from the hospital. Tried in Pulaski County Superior Court in June 1998, she pled innocent by reason of insanity. Her defense said she had a lifelong history of depression and serious weight issues; she was currently over 280 pounds. It was obvious that she had attempted a murder-suicide and was seriously mentally ill.The defense mentioned that Christina's family had a history of depression and mental disorders, that she had been sexually abused as a child, and she was in major financial trouble after her divorce, unable to pay her bills. The prosecution however depicted her in more callous terms. They disputed the claims of Christina's abysmal financial situation, noting that she was making good money as a full-time nurse with a $17,000 a year income ($30,000 in 2022 dollars, plus Arkansas was one of the cheapest states to live in) and that Jon Riggs had been reliably sending child support payments. They also claimed Christina often spent Saturday nights off in karaoke bars leaving the kids home alone or with her mother. The prosecution's conclusion was that they'd become an inconvenience to Christina and she wanted to be rid of them. Furthermore, they believed she didn't really intend to kill herself, just the children, and it was a fake suicide attempt for attention.
The truth may not be known. Had Christina succeeded in offing herself, she would have just warranted a brief headline in the local news as another tragic case of a mother who killed her children and herself. In any case, she was sentenced to death on June 30. Governor Mike Huckabee declined to grant her clemency and she was executed via lethal injection on May 2, 2000, the only female on Arkansas's death row and only the fourth executed in the United States since 1976. Christina showed no particular inclination to appeal her sentence and said she was at peace with herself and wanted to be reunited with her children in the next world. She admitted the prison food was enjoyable and she liked eating it, exacerbating her existing obesity issues; she claimed to have gained an additional 30 pounds since going to prison.Executions of women are relatively uncommon and controversial when they do happen. In fact, if one excludes lynched African-American women, there had only been one other legal execution of a female in Arkansas history, that of Lavinia Burnett all the way back in 1845 after she had carried out a Bonnie and Clyde-style heist with her husband Crawford--the two conspired to rob and murder a wealthy man in Fayetteville. What's more surprising is that the Burnetts were an older couple in their late 50s with two adult children, hardly reckless punk kids like Bonnie and Clyde. The pair were hanged on November 8; their son John followed them to the scaffold December 28 as an accomplice to murder after having fled across the state line to Missouri, where he was captured.But that was back when executions were carried out at the county level. The state of Arkansas took over capital punishment in 1913, replacing hangings with the electric chair. During the 87 years between this and Christina Riggs's execution, four women had been sentenced to death in Arkansas but all had their sentences commuted to life in prison.
>>16809173>>16809181>>16809194I hate the South and everything in it.
>>16809173>>16809181she never had a chance from the beginning. holy god, what a shitty life.
>>16809173>>16809181>>16809194>>16809203>>16809213dead coalburner. next.
>>16809173>>16809181le based trad red state voters
>>16809181>Justin and Shelby also suffered from a myriad of childhood health issues including chronic ear infections and attention deficit disorder, making them a handful to deal with.ya think it was because of her shitty trailer trash lifestyle and probably feeding them on a fast food and candy bars diet?
>>16809173absolutely dysgenic
her molestors should have been tracked down and executed with her lol
>>16809173Methbilly trash like this are just nogs with less melanin, there's no difference between the two, really.
Sneed
