Christina Marie Riggs Executed in Arkansas For k!lling Her Babies—US Death Row –
No matter how you sugarcoat it, no matter she was depressed, she was this, she was that, doesn’t make up for the fact that I took two innocent people’s lives that were my babies. with finally reached out and told somebody what I was feeling or thinking. [snorts] I regretted every day that I didn’t pick up the phone and call my mama that night and tell her what I was doing.
>> At 9:28 p.m. on May 2nd, 2000, Arkansas carried out the execution of Christina Marie Riggs by lethal injection, a case that still divides opinion to this day. She was 28 years old. She had spent less than 2 years on death row. And what happened inside that courtroom is what made this case unforgettable.
The crime was shocking. The verdict was swift. But what Christina Riggs did after being convicted is what separated this case from nearly every other capital murder trial in modern American history. She didn’t fight. She didn’t appeal. She asked for death. This is the story of the first woman executed in Arkansas in 155 years.
A licensed nurse, a mother of two, and a case that forces us to ask questions the justice system still struggles to answer. So, how did it all lead here? On the evening of November 4th, 1997, inside a small home in Sherwood, Arkansas, Christina Riggs committed an act that would horrify the state. She k!lled her two children. Her victims were 5-year-old Justin Dalton Thomas and 2-year-old Shelby Alexis Riggs.
According to court records, Riggs gave both children sedatives to make them drowsy. She then attempted to end Justin’s life by injecting him with potassium chloride, the same chemical used in lethal injections. When he regained consciousness, she smothered him with a pillow. She then turned to her daughter and did the same.
Afterward, she laid their bodies side by side in bed. She wrote a suicide note, then she attempted to take her own life, first with pills, then by injecting herself with the same potassium chloride she had used on her son. The injection missed her heart. It burned a hole through her arm instead.
She collapsed, but she survived. The next morning, her mother arrived at the home and made the discovery that would set everything in motion. But to understand how this happened, you have to look at who Christina Riggs was before that day. Christina Marie Riggs was born in 1971. She grew up quiet, reserved, and deeply private.
Those who knew her described her as someone who kept to herself, not cold, just careful. She had no history of violence, no criminal record, no red flags that anyone could see. By her mid20s, she was a single mother raising two children largely on her own. The fathers of her children were not consistently involved. Friends and family would later testify that Christina carried the weight of parenthood almost entirely by herself, financially, emotionally, and physically.
Her life revolved around two things, her work and her kids. There wasn’t much room for anything else. She had few friends, no social life to speak of. Those close to her said she seemed devoted to her children, sometimes to the point of exhaustion. To those around Christina Riggs, there were no obvious warning signs.
But there was something from her past that would later become impossible to ignore until something from the past resurfaced in court. At the time of the crime, Christina Riggs worked as a licensed practical nurse. She had trained in the field and held positions at medical facilities across Arkansas. By most accounts, she was competent, dependable, professional.
But in 1995, 2 years before the murders, something happened that would mark her deeply. Christina Riggs was part of the medical response team deployed after the Oklahoma City bombing. On April 19th, 1995, a truck bomb destroyed the Alfred P. Mura federal building, k!lling 168 people, including 19 children. It remains one of the deadliest acts of domestic terrorism in US history.
Rigs assisted with victims from the attack. According to psychiatric testimony that would later be introduced at trial. This experience left a profound psychological impact. She was exposed to trauma on a scale most people never witness. burns, injuries, death, chaos. At the time, she received no formal counseling, no follow-up mental health care.
She returned to work. She went on with her life. But experts would later say that the trauma didn’t go away. It went underground, and this would soon become central to the defense. By the mid 1990s, people close to Christina noticed changes. She became more withdrawn, more distant.
Her already small social circle seemed to shrink even further. She spent most of her time alone with her children, working long shifts, and coming home exhausted. Medical experts who examined her after the crime testified that she had been suffering from severe clinical depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
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She had been prescribed anti-depressant medication, but the adequacy and effectiveness of that treatment would later be questioned in court. According to psychiatric evaluations, Christina experienced persistent feelings of guilt, hopelessness, and emotional numbness. She believed she had failed as a mother. She believed her children deserved better than what she could give them.
and she believed, according to the defense, that her children would be better off dead than left behind if she took her own life. The prosecution saw it differently. They argued that Christina Riggs planned the crime, that she knew what she was doing, that she made deliberate, calculated decisions, choosing the method, obtaining the drugs, carrying out the act in stages.
But the defense painted a very different picture. Psychiatrists testified that her actions were driven by a distorted belief system caused by severe mental illness, that she didn’t k!ll her children out of rage or cruelty, but out of a twisted sense of mercy. She thought she was protecting them. Experts emphasized one key detail. Christina did not attempt to flee.
She did not deny responsibility. She did not try to shift blame. From the moment she survived, she fully confessed. Then the trial took an unexpected turn. The trial began in June 1998 in Palaski County, Arkansas. The charges were two counts of capital murder. Christina’s defense team entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.
Multiple psychiatric experts testified about her depression, her PTSD, her emotional state at the time of the crime. The jury heard testimony about the Oklahoma City bombing, about her isolation, about the medication she was taking and the treatment she wasn’t receiving. The defense made their case. This was not a woman who k!lled out of malice.
This was a woman who was mentally ill, who believed she was saving her children from pain. The prosecution countered with the facts of the crime itself, the planning, the method, the deliberate steps she took. They argued that mental illness does not erase intent. The jury deliberated for less than an hour. They found Christina Riggs guilty on both counts.
But what happened next shocked everyone in the courtroom. During the sentencing phase, Christina Riggs made a decision that defied every instinct of survival. She refused to fight for her life. She waved certain legal defenses. She declined to pursue prolonged appeals. And when given the opportunity to address the court, she told the jury something almost no one in her position ever says.
She wanted the death penalty. She stated that she wanted to be reunited with her children. She told the jury not to feel guilt for their decision. She said she deserved to die. Mental health advocates would later argue that this was evidence of continued suicidal intent, that Christina was not of sound mind to make such a decision.
But the court moved forward, and with that, the jury made its decision. Christina Marie Riggs was transferred to the McFersonson unit, Arkansas’s women’s death row facility. It had been created specifically to house her. She was the only woman on death row in the state. She spent less than two years there, an unusually short period compared to most death penalty cases, which often stretch into decades of appeals.
But Christina waved nearly every appeal available to her. She declined clemency requests. She signed documents expediting her own execution. Mental health advocates argued that this demonstrated she was still suicidal, that the state was effectively assisting in her death wish. The state disagreed. They argued she had been evaluated, found competent, and that her decision was legally valid.
The execution was scheduled. On the morning of May 2nd, 2000, Christina Riggs woke knowing it would be her last day. Death Row staff followed protocol. She was monitored closely. She was allowed visitors, though it’s unclear who, if anyone, came to see her. For her final meal, she requested pizza, salad, pickled [music] okra, strawberry shortcake, and a cherry limeade.
It was reported that she ate calmly. That evening, as the sun set over the Cumins unit in Grady, Arkansas, preparations began. Witnesses were escorted into the observation room. Journalists, officials, and others legally permitted to attend. The atmosphere was described as tense, quiet. Christina was brought into the execution chamber and secured to the gurnie.
An IV line was inserted into her arm. At 9:28 p.m., they were asked for final words. Christina Riggs looked toward the witness area. Her voice was steady. She apologized for her actions. She expressed love for her children. Her final audible words were directed to them. words meant to reach across the divide between life and death.
Then the lethal injection began. The execution was carried out by three drug protocol. First, a seditive to render her unconscious. Then a paralytic to stop breathing. Finally, potassium chloride to stop the heart. At 9:28 p.m., Christina Marie Riggs was pronounced dead. She was 28 years old. The execution sparked immediate debate across Arkansas and beyond.
Some called it justice. A mother who committed the ultimate betrayal who took the lives of two defenseless children faced the consequences of her actions. Others called it a failure of the system. A mentally ill woman who needed treatment, not execution. They argued that the state had carried out a legally sanctioned suicide.
Christina Riggs became the first woman executed in Arkansas in 155 years. She joined a small number of women executed in the United States in the modern era, a group that remains statistically rare compared to male executions. Her case raised difficult questions that remain unanswered.
Should someone who is suicidal be allowed to wave their appeals? Can a person suffering from severe mental illness truly give informed consent to their own execution? Where is the line between justice and vengeance? And does that line shift when mental illness is involved? Legal experts, ethicists, and mental health professionals continue to debate these questions. There are no easy answers.
This case leaves behind difficult questions about responsibility, punishment, and where justice truly begins and ends. Two children lost their lives. A mother took those lives, then asked the state to take hers. Some see it as a closed case, a crime committed, a sentence carried out. Others see it as a tragedy compounded, a failure to recognize mental illness, to provide adequate treatment, to intervene before it was too late.
What remains undisputed is this. Justin Dalton Thomas was 5 years old. Shelby Alexis Riggs was two. They are gone. And the woman who k!lled them is gone, too. The questions that remain are the ones we’re still asking about how we treat mental illness in the justice system, about whether punishment can ever truly account for pain, and about what we owe to the most vulnerable among us, even when they’ve done the unthinkable.
This is the story of Christina Riggs, and it doesn’t offer closure. It offers something harder, the need to keep asking what justice really means.
