Posted on 11/11/2007 11:10:08 PM PST by McCoMo
Sheriff: Men confess to crime
By Debbie Robinson
news@joplinglobe.com
STELLA, Mo. — Both defendants in the brutal rape and murder of 9-year-old Rowan Ford have confessed to the crime, the Newton County sheriff said Sunday.
David Spears, 25, of Stella, and Chris Collings, 32, of Wheaton, are charged with one count each of first-degree murder, forcible rape and statutory rape in the girl’s death. Spears is Rowan’s stepfather.
Newton County Sheriff Ken Copeland said investigators allege that Rowan was abducted early Nov. 3 from her home in Stella in Newton County, murdered in Barry County, and her body dumped in a sinkhole in McDonald County.
After a nearly weeklong search for the girl, Copeland said, Collings confessed Friday to Wheaton police Chief Clint Clark. Spears was arrested a short time later.
“Both confessed to raping and strangling her,” Copeland said.
Clark did not return a phone call Sunday. The Barry County sheriff’s office in Cassville said Sheriff Mick Epperly would have no updates on the case until Tuesday.
Investigators are continuing to work on determining what happened the night Rowan was abducted from her home, Copeland said.
David Spears has provided conflicting information to investigators since Spears and Rowan’s mother, Colleen Spears, reported the girl missing about 6:50 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 3, Copeland said.
During the search for Rowan, Copeland said, David Spears rode around with another man.
“He (Spears) was pointing out to this man where would be good places to put a body,” Copeland said.
One of those places was the sinkhole in McDonald County where the girl’s body ultimately was found, the sheriff said.
“It’s about 15 to 20 feet down, and it was getting dark,” Copeland said of the time David Spears reportedly pointed out the site during the search.
Rowan’s body was found the next morning, which was Friday, by McDonald County deputies Jake Boles and Mike Hall in the sinkhole near Powell.
According to reports, Colleen Spears last saw her daughter at about 8:30 p.m. Nov. 2 before she left for work at the Wal-Mart store in Jane.
David Spears, Collings and another man were playing pool at the Spears home in the town of Stella in southern Newton County while Rowan was asleep in her bedroom, Copeland said.
The three men decided to leave at 10:45 p.m. to take Collings home, Copeland said.
“They stopped so a man named Nathan and David could get more beer,” he said.
Copeland said Nathan reportedly dropped David Spears off at the Spears residence.
That’s where the story gets murky, Copeland said.
Authorities said David Spears has acknowledged that he went out a second time around 1:30 a.m. Nov. 3 after calling his mother, Myrna Spears, and asking to borrow her car. Myrna Spears has said she watched television and did not check on the girl. David Spears was gone for 5 1/2 hours.
Copeland said Sunday that David Spears has told investigators that he discovered Rowan missing before he called his mother.
“He said he knew Chris (Collings) would have her (Rowan),” Copeland said.
He said Spears has said that after borrowing his mother’s car, he drove to Collings’ travel trailer, where he alleged that he found Collings raping the girl.
Both men are suspected of raping and strangling the girl with a netting cord, Copeland said.
David Spears initially told investigators that he did not discover Rowan was missing until the next morning, after Colleen Spears arrived home from work.
“We had three different cadaver dogs hit on (Myrna Spears’) car,” Copeland said. “We know the body was in there at some point.”
The two defendants are expected to be arraigned Tuesday in Barry County Circuit Court. Both men were being held Sunday without bond in the Barry County Jail.
Myrna Spears said Sunday that she has not talked to her son since his arrest on Friday.
David Spears and Collings, who grew up in the Wheaton area, have been friends for about 10 years, Myrna Spears said.
She said Collings recently returned from Arkansas, where his estranged wife and two children, both younger than 10, live.
Myrna Spears said she thought she knew Collings, and never suspected that he or her son would be capable of murder and rape.
Copeland said Sunday that Spears and Collings recently had been working for a property owner on construction of a barn in McDonald County.
Neither man is listed as a registered sex offender, Copeland said.
Copeland said Collings, who lived in the travel trailer about a mile east of Wheaton, had been making a living by working odd jobs and selling scrap metal.
Services
Funeral services for Rowan Ford will be at 2 p.m. Wednesday at Gospel Lighthouse Church in Neosho. Visitation will be from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday at Clark Funeral Home in Neosho, where the family will receive friends from 5 to 7 p.m. A memorial fund has been established. Donations may be made at any Hometown Bank.
Well said! I am glad you weren't harmed....We tend to try to figure out why these creeps do these crimes & that we can rehabilitate them. That to me is just BS. If you kill a child or rape, murder then you need to be put down as you would a rabid dog. When you cross over that line into madness then IMHO there is no place for you in society any longer. We' ve seen what happens when we let these child rapists out..heres a fine example. Joseph Duncan, who had a past history before he committed the crimes on the Groene family. I still pray for Shasta. I don't see how such a little girl is able to cope with the killing of so many of her family. We don't need to Duncan's of this world. Had he faced serious jail time for his 1st crimes maybe he wouldn't have killed so many in that family.
Yeah, this is info I had not heard - I saw him claiming on the news (ala O.J. Simpson style) he was searching the area with friends because he knew the territory, but is this the tip that led the deputy to the sinkhole? The news made it sound like the LEO decided to search it on his own - not that it matters, I’m glad he found the body.
You would have definitely had to have lost your soul, (ie, be evil) to actually *do* something like that. However, Doughty One's question had to do with "getting it", or understanding the why. This indicates, at a minimum, loss of sanity, if not actual loss of human soul, so I stand by my comment...
the infowarrior
As far as I am aware, it sounds like he pointed out numerous possible sinkholes and caves to whomever he was riding around with. And believe me, our county is riddled with them. There is one behind my folks place that everyone jokes about being a still, because when it is cold, a column of steam can be seen rising from it.
Where the deputy lives, he passes within a few yards of this hole she was found in when he drives to work, and from what I hear around here... he recalled that hole when he was driving past it on his way to work, so he just decided to check it out.
It COULD be that they are saying he did it on his own initiative just to make him look good, but I do not know why they would really go to the trouble.
I suppose another poster said it best for me (may have been you as a matter of fact, but I don’t believe so), when he state that the men were thinking in the moment. They gave no thought at any level about what this act would cost them, whether it was right or not. They just did what they wanted to do.
I guess each us copes with this in a little different way. Yours is fine with me.
Take care.
Any evidence of that? Data? Links? Anything but your gut feel?
We're supposed to be scared. It makes us easy to manipulate.
The man, Thomas Shevlin, of 8404 Fifth Avenue, was arrested Jan. 30 after the two stepdaughters, who are 21 and 19 years old now, and his common-law wife went to the police, according to Andrea Bernstein, a spokeswoman for Brooklyn District Attorney Elizabeth Holtzman.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DEED81339F93AA35750C0A96E948260
State v. Matheson No. 9330SC58 (Filed 15 June 1993) Evidence and Witness 373 (NCI4th)-- second degree rape of stepdaughter -- rape of other stepdaughter ten years earlier -- relevancy -- remoteness -- admissibility to show common plan or scheme
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/nc-supreme-court/jun1593/matheson
ABBEVILLE, S.C. —The stepfather of a 10-year-old girl was charged with first-degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor after she became pregnant, police said. William Edward Ronca, 26, was being held Friday at the Abbeville County jail. The girl's mother told The (Greenwood) Index-Journal that she had no idea her daughter was pregnant.
http://www.wcnc.com/news/southcarolina/stories/012806cckkWCNCs.c.Ronca.48cc97dc.html Maybe you would want to read this
Escaping Hades, Survivor Stories ...
http://www.pandys.org/escapinghades/Survivors156.html
Well is that enough for you or do you need more????
I think what he is expressing doubt about is the notion that it is happening more and more, not whether it happens. I have the same doubts... I think mostly it is a case of us merely HEARING about it more. 40 years ago, it happened, it was just something nobody talked about.
What I'm asking for is any evidence that it is happening more then in the past.
No I generally don't read papers or watch TV news. They're simply too sensationalist and yellow for me. By reading widely on the net I attempt to filter out the various points of view.
'They' want you to be afraid of your own shadow. People in Tulsa expect Arab terrorists to attack them at any moment.
Note that I'm not against prudent caution, particularly where children are involved. Children can be overprotected and pay a price later in life.
But as I say, this sort of thing has been happening forever, and for the most part I think we are just hearing about it more. 40 years ago, discussing sexuality at all, publicly, was a lot more rare than today... and that was especially true of sex crimes.
That’s bizarre behavior by the perp - I mean, really - was he hoping she would be found, or, knowing she was hidden under a ledge 20 feet down as some reports have said, hoping to lead people on a lot of wild goose chases to other spots? Surely he knew it would get back to investigators what locations he was pointing out.
At any rate, good on the deputy. That had to be a traumatic discovery, and I hope he gets over it by knowing he helped Rowan’s family.
would you add me to your ping list? thanks.
Or maybe, in his twisted logic, he thought “Hey, if I show them this cave, and then later they find her there, they will think I could not possibly have done the crime because they will think that if I was guilty I would not have shown them where the cave was”.
I agree. Insanity implies that you have no control over your actions. These guys had a choice from the very beginning, and each step along the way. Sin can lead to the depths of depravity, but you have to be willing to follow.
These crimes happened regularly in the 1800’s that I know of, my husband writes for a couple of western magazines and I have helped him go through the old newspapers. Some of the articles were horrible, they described in detail what was done to children as well as adults who were murdered. We just hear about them much faster now and then it was just local knowledge that somes times took two or three months or longer to be in the paper.
Some jurisdictions don’t allow a guilty plea to a capital crime. Even if it is allowed, the court would likely be very reluctant to accept it.
Well, I know they do allow them here. An intent to seek Death Penalty must be filed here before a defendant makes his plea. In a recent case here, Levi King was going to plea guilty, and the prosecutor spoke up notifying the judge that they were going to file such an intent notice. The court DID allow Levi to withdraw his plea of guilty once he was aware that the death penalty was being sought.. but I do remember that they still left it up to him to decide if he wanted to change his plea. The court WOULD have accepted it after the intent notice was filed, if Levi wished to make that plea.
Levi did, however, change his plea to not guilty at that point.
Hard to figure about some women. Maybe they are afraid they won't be able to make it without a man. I had a student once whose stepfather told "Mom", make a choice, the kid or me, and "Mom" chose the man and kicked the kid out on the street.
Not the first time in history that's ever happened, but thankfully I haven't known of very many first hand.
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