EP260: The Terrible Things Christina Did To Her Kids

back to work tomorrow. I guess I'd have a shit ton of stuff to do, so at least I'm busy in the day will go by and that'll be that.

believe hergo. She had a pretty rough childhood, Christina did. She grew up in Oklahoma City. According to records, she had two sisters named Rosanna and Elizabeth, and her parents they separated when Christina was really young. She stayed with her mother, Carol, who was living with a man who

had a son of his own. Christina said that between the ages of seven and thirteen, however, she was sexually assaulted by her stepbrother, and when she was thirteen, she said she was also sexually assaulted by her neighbor so around nineteen eighty five, when she was fourteen years old, that's when Christina she began drinking and smoking cigarettes and weed. Throughout her high school years, she was bullied for being overweight. She always thought that she would never have a boyfriend

due to the way she looked. You know how it is in high school, you just think you're not ready to be on the cover of Vogue and a size zero. What's you're worth right right now? Terrible? She became quite promiscuous, sleeping with anyone who gave her attention or wanted to have sex with her, and that's you know, that's just sad to look at yourself that way. She later stated that she thought this was the only way she could ever get a boyfriend, and she never knew if she

would ever get another chance. And that's that's how low her self esteem was. In January of nineteen eighty eight, she had become pregnant with a baby boy, who she gave up for a SIP because she was sixteen at the time. Now, she did finish her schooling, graduating high school, and she became a licensed practical nurse in LPN, but this line of work would eventually be your downfall. She worked a part time job as a home care nurse, and she would work a full time job in the

Veteran Affairs hospital system. Hey, that's where I go throughout the gyptandle down the VA Hospital in Detroit. These types of hospitals provide health care for vets, which include mental health, primary care, and health assistants for their loved ones. Shortly after, she began a relationship with a man named Timothy Thompson, who was stationed at Tinker Air Force Base located in Oklahoma City. In October of nineteen eighty one, Christina became

pregnant again with her son Justine. Oh, I'm sorry, thank you, No, this was we weregressed. We had the first child eighty eight. Then when he went back to a minute, okay, yep. This was October of ninety one. So Christina told Timothy about her pregnancy the day before. He was discharged from the Air Force and didn't want to accept the baby as his own. He didn't, so he then moved back to his hometown in Minnesota. Timothy later said that Chrissy's

luck with men was about zero to nothing. I think he just wasn't attached to Christina in that way that Christina wanted a relationship, and when she found out she was pregnant, he really didn't care enough about her to be there for her or the baby when he was born. Now, after giving birth to her son, Justin on June seventh, nineteen ninety two, so he's a Jenini, Christina got back in touch with a previous boyfriend, a sailor named John Riggs,

who was back home on leave. The two became romantically involved again, and she eventually moved in with him and brought along her little boy. According to Christina, their rekindled romance was great, and since he felt the baby's first kick when Justin sounds like that she may have been seeing Justin's dad and mister Riggs here. So John knew about Justin even though it wasn't his son, and he was the first to feel the baby kick. He was the father of the baby as far as he was concerned.

He was the father of Justin, and he took care of Justin and stepped up as his father even though he wasn't biologically the dad. All that's nice, Yeah, that is really nice. Now. In July of nineteen ninety three, she and John were married. Christina became pregnant again, and in December of nineteen ninety four, she gave birth to a daughter named Shelby Alexis and Justin referred to her as Sissy, as did the rest of the family. What

a great nickname, yeat cute. Christina and John were both so astatic when she was born, and the two of them cried happy tears together. Christina said, we were so happy. She was so beautiful. I didn't think things could get any better. John cried. I cried. There was so much love, so much love for her and the way he looked at her. The birth of their daughter brought Christina out

of her depressive state. She suffered from depression, but the happiness died down, and depression was right there to rear its ugly head. Justin and Shall be adorable children. A few months later, Christina packed up her kids with John and they moved to Sherwood, Arkansas. That's how I call Arkansas because I spell it. When I'm spelling Arkansas, I'm

with Arkansas. They moved to Sherwood, Arkansas, so that she could be closer to her mom and to get as much help as she could raising her two young children. Now she was able to find a job at Baptist Hospital in Oklahoma City. John ended up separating from Christina, Justin and Shelby, however, and once their divorce was finalized, the three of them were basically left to fend for themselves,

with child support coming from John irregularly. Now. The two broke up after Christina accused John of punching Justin in the stomach. John always denied that accusation and it was never proven. I'm not saying either way, I'm just saying that was the cause of their the beginning of their and around this time, Christina was working as a nurse, but she found herself drowning in debt when she couldn't make ends meet with how much she was making and

trying to feed two rapidly growing kids. As a car payment and Duran's bills were coming in along with all of her other bills. She fell back into a depression and was desperate to get out of the situation altogether, no matter what the cost and who she would have to hurt along the way. According to reports, she would drop off her kids at daycare so that she could work long shift at the hospital, but the cost of daycare was too costly for her to keep up with.

In nineteen ninety seven, Christina would come up with a plan to end it all. On her last day of work at the hospital, November fourth, nineteen ninety seven, Christina stole a level elavil, which is an antidepressant. Some sources said that she stole the elevil from the hospital and some said that she brought it from a local drug store. Either way, she didn't use it the way it was meant.

The main side effect of this drug is grogginess. The drug lasts anywhere from twelve to twenty four hours, and it's known to help patients with anxiety to sleep. Not only did she steal that, but she also stole syringes, potassium chloride, and morphine. When she returned home her kids were still awake around ten pm. To get her kids unconscious, she mixed the eleville with some water and gave it to both Justin and Shelby. After both children were out cold,

their mother proceeded to inject Justin with the potassium chloride. Now, to make this more heartbreaking, Justin awoke from the injection and was screaming from the excruciating pain he was in. She injected this right into his veins and he suffered pretty severely and pretty severe burns from it. You know, he's only five. Yeah, And after hearing him crying in pain, she then injected him with the morphine to help shut

him up. Oh my god, that didn't work. Yes, she's a problem solver, she's a tear worthm No, that didn't work. So what did she do?

her mother Carol, that Shelby only fought back song. Once both children were dead, she moved their bodies onto her own bed and she laid a blanket over them. Then she wrote out multiple suicide notes to her mother, her sisters, and her ex husband John She then proceeded to make an attempt on her own life, took a massive amount

of the oliville and injected herself with potassium chloride. This amount of Eliville she took twenty eight tablets along with the potassium chloride made her pass out on the bedroom floor. So spoiler alert, She's she's gonna make it.

daughter passed out on the floor. She later stated that she ran around the house screaming because she thought everyone was dead. She called nine one one and told the operator, my daughter and her babies are dead, and the EMT's arrived. Christina was taken to the hospital Baptist Memorial about an hour and a half later, and upon arrival Christina's stomach

was pumped and she was stabilized. While she was at the hospital, the police alerted the hospital staff of what she had done to her two young children, and the staff was instructed to not let Christina have any visitors. Oh her family really had no idea what was happening and they were really not sure why they weren't allowed to see Christina. So around midnight they got in touch with the lawyer to represent her for when the police

needed to speak with her. The attorney contacted the Sherwood police and said that they were not allowed to speak with her until he got to the hospital. The police stayed back and searched the home while Christina was in the hospital. While they were looking for evidence, the officers came across her suicide notes that she had left behind. Around nine twenty am on November sixth, detectives show up

at the hospital to speak with her Christina. They mirandized her and she gave them a statement that went on for eight minutes. In the statement, she walked through every step she took to kill both of her children, and she told the detectives how she tried to kill herself along with Justin and Shelby. A couple of hours later, Christina was released from the hospital and was transported to Pulaski County Jail. She was charged with two counts of

capital murder. Christina arrived at the Pulaski County Circuit Court in June of nineteen ninety eight, and she pleaded not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. Her defense attorney never once chose to deny that she had killed both of her children by drugging them and smothering them to death at the ages of five and two years old.

Her defense team merely argued that the fact that their client was depressed and had quite a long history of depression, along with zero self confidence, being sure and a bit on the heavier side, she was a poor single mother, and in the court it became relatively clear that she did plan to kill herself after murdering Justin and Shelby. One of the witnesses for the defense, a psychiatrists, got on the stand to testify that her actions were nothing

short of acts of love for her kids. Dont seeing me, I don't see it, yeah right. She thought that Justin and Shelby would be raised. The rest of their lives completely separate from one another, since they each had different fathers, and she knew that her mother would fight like hell to keep them for herself, but knew that the courts

would award custody to their biological fathers. Obviously, it's not one hundred percent that that you wo would have been raised separately, right since John raised Justin straight out of the womb, and Justin's father left to go back to Minnesota without a second thought.

As I mentioned earlier, According to Christina, she was sexually abused as a child by two different people, and this caused her to bottle all of her problems inside of her. That's not all that affected her every day life. Christina alleged that when the Murray Federal Building located in Oklahoma City, was bombed by Timothy McVeigh in April nineteen ninety five.

about her to be Alie. The defense team put her mother on the stand, and she told the court that her daughter specifically told her that when she injected justin with the potassium chloride, he began screaming and crying, saying it hurts, it hurts. She said that just hearing this retell the calmness of someone retelling the awfulness that they've.

out of pure love. When it was the prosecutions to turn at bat they painted a much different image of the murderous mother. They made Christina look like an evil mother who wanted nothing more than to be rid of her children from her own life, and to get rid of them she'd killed them. The state told the jurors that Christina thought of Justin and Shelby as an inconvenience

more than anything else. She even went as far as to plan the murders at least two weeks in advance before she finally chose to go through with ending their innocent lives. There was evidence presented that Christina would leave her kids with her mother, Carol, so that she could go out to karaoke bars long in the early morning hours.

Her eight minute long confession was admitted into evidence, and the court got a chance to hear every word that she told the two detectives on the mornings after the killings. This pulled up the juror's heartstrings as they held on to every word Christina was saying as she told the detectives how she had planned it for weeks. The suicide letters were presented to the court as evidence, and in the letter to her mother, Carol Thomas, she stated that

she killed her children. In her letter to John Riggs, her ex husband and Shelby's biological father, she told them she took the lives of both children. On June thirtieth, nineteen ninety eight, the jury deliberated for less than one hour to find Riggs guilty on both counts of first degree murder. The jury consisted of seven women and five men. This was a death penalty trial. When Christina heard the verdict run aloud to the courtroom, she collapsed onto the floor.

When the trial next phase of sentencing took place, Christina looked at the jurors and spoke out and uttered three sentences. I want to die, I want to be with my babies. I want you to give me the death penalty. The jurors heard her, and that's exactly what they, along with the judge, agreed to death by lethal injection. When Christina heard her sentence, she squeezed her defense attorney's hand and

she thanked the jury members for that decision. Her original execution date was set for August fifteenth that same year,

nineteen ninety eight. They weren't wasting any time. It did end up getting postponed, as many executions do, though, so her defense attorney, John Wesley Hall Junior, really had to talk her into filing emotion for retrial, which, as you know, Tanya, is just a certain parts that you get that conviction, and of course the next step is motion for a retrial, right right, yeah, he stated, we had to beg her

to file an appeal for the conviction. Christina's team chose to move to have her statement to the detectives suppressed, and her reasoning behind that was due to her medical condition of being drugged and due to the fact that her family made the decision to get an attorney for her. According to Christina, the detectives completely violated her right to counsel and her right to do process. Now here's something, Tanya.

You know, they come in and you know, she's in the hospital room and she's kind of drugged from herself trying to kill herself with that e a little, so she's doped up and they come in. Can you miranderize a person who is not fully in their capacity?

she said back, yes, I do. One detective then told her that they needed to start off the entire conversation by advising her of her rights, and throughout the entire reading of the Miranda Rights, Christina bowed her eyes out. At the end of the reading, the detective specifically asked do you understand your Miranda Rights, Christina, to which she responded, yes,

I do. Sorry. The detectives then stated they were running an investigation into the quote unquote death of your two babies and asked her if she wanted to tell them what happened to Justin and Shelby. She said, flat out, through their tears, I killed them, and then she talked about how she got bottles and stuff from the very hospital that she was in at the time of her hospitalization,

and then she stated she needed a cigarette. She went into the detail about how she wanted to get Justin out of the way first, since he would quote unquote give me more problem. She tried to give him the injection because she thought it would just stop his heart, but then he started screaming because of how much pain he was in. When the injection didn't work, Christina said

that he kept yelling, Mama, Mama, mama. She then said that there was no turning back at this point and explained that she had wiped out her checking account completely and gave all of her money to her mom. The detectives asked Christina why she did all of this, and she said that she did everything because she wanted to die, but she didn't want to die and just leave her children behind quote unquote to be a burden to somebody else.

She refused to just kill herself because she just didn't want her children to think she did it because she didn't love them. She also said that she didn't want them to grow up apart from one another because Justin and Shelby again had two different fathers. I knew if I passed away that they would be fighting. My mother for custody, and I didn't want that for nobody, she said. So, not only does she fail at committing suicide, but she

killed both of her children. The detectives then asked her if she did it for the sake of her children, and she said that she did it for her own quote unquote peace of mind. She felt it was better to kill herself and her children due to her own financial stability, because she felt she couldn't go on anymore. Christina told the detectives that both Justin and Shelby were already dead when she decided to take the eleville and inject herself with a potassium chloride. After they were dead,

she waited about twenty minutes before ingesting anything. She further explained that she drank a lot of alcohol and smoked a cigarette. She went back into the bedroom and sat for a moment before getting enough courage to kill herself. Her whole thoughts was that since she had already killed both of her kids, there was no turning back. After she killed Justin, she smoked a cigarette, then she suffocated

Shelby with the pillow. She gave her kids the eleville and a glass of water since it would help them sleep better and they wouldn't wake up to their mother killing them. What the f right? Right? Seriously, this is this thinking process. I love to hear people's thinking process, just to dissect it and see that this must have been the only choices they thought they had, or made

themselves believe that they only had, you know. Terrible. So when the police asked Christina how long she had been thinking about killing her children, her response was that she was thinking about it for two or three weeks prior. The detective asked what made her decide to go through with everything, and she said that she couldn't take it anymore and she felt that she was completely losing control

over her whole life. She told the detectives that she had tried to talk to people about her losing control, but she said that whatever she would try, nobody had time for her. The detective asked if she had anything else to say about what she did, and Christina said, I wish I hadn't done it now. She then started rambling about old people getting on and off escalators, just gibberish.

This statement had been transcribed before the hearing to suppress it, and the court had a statement from the emergency room doctor at the time that Christina was admitted. Doctor Buford testified that Christina was showing results of a drug overdose, which is why her stomach was pumped. Then said that Christina had been given a dose of charcoal so that any leftover drugs could be absorbed. On the morning that she spoke with the detectives, Christina was alert and her

vitals were stable. Doctor Buford said that whenever he asked her questions, she answered a probately to all of them, and she never showed any signs of being incoherent, nor did she show any signs of hallucinating. Another doctor, a registered nurse named Karen Styles, was working in the ICU on the night that Christina came into the hospital on the night of November fifth. She stated at the time that Christina came in, she was being confrontational and was

extremely confused. Styles then said that the following morning, Christina was stable and coherent as she answered all the questions she was asked. While testifying at the motion to suppress hearing, she looked at the note she had made in Christina's chart. Around seven point thirty the following morning, November six, she was alert and focused. She also testified that when she would ask Christina questions that she answered quickly and was talking very fast, but not fast enough to where she

couldn't understand. A test was done on Christine using the Glos Glascow coma scale, and this was to measure her level of consciousness at eight am that same morning. Christina got the highest grade of fifteen that can be achieved using this test, so she was alert while while Nurse Karen was being cross examined, she stated that Christina signed

the discharge papers, but her signature wasn't legible now. The detectives who handled the initial interview with Christina also testified at the suppression hearing, and they both testified to the fact that that once didn't she attempt to stop the interview as it was happening, even though her lawyer wasn't present. They also did not at all force her to provide a statement of her confessing to the murders of her

two children and her own attempted suicide. One detective, detective James Harper, he testified that while sitting in Christina's hospital room on the morning after the murders, he heard her say I had to do it so I wouldn't leave them behind. Christina called a few people to testify at her own suppression hearing, and her team called an er doctor who told the court that she was not making any sense and was utterly incoherent when she was brought into the er on the evening of the murders of

her children. Yeah. I can see, yeah, she's doped up on the evening, but these questions are in the morning where everything's worn off, you know, and she's made it, even though more doctors testified to the same fact on the night of the killings, but later testified that she was completely fine the following morning. The defense called another nurse, Julia Brown, who testified that Christina was confused and combative

up until at least worry. On the following morning, the same nurse testified that she wasn't all surprised when the nurse at Ship Change said that Christina was alert and completely fine. She ended her testimony by saying that it wasn't unusual for a victim of an overdose to be fine the next morning or within a couple of hours. They usually are. Christina actually said to nurse Julia, I killed my kids. She's probably in some sort of shock at her own telling the nurse. She's telling the detective

Christina's prod. You can't believe what you did. I'm sure yes, And hearing your own self say it, That's that's the vibe I'm getting too. Christina's mother, Carol, she got on the stand to testify for her daughter, and she told the court that her daughter was confused even after she gave her statement to the detectives. Apparently, Christina was claiming that she was confused on whether Shelby was even dead.

She literally told the detectives that she suffocated her with a pillow and she barely fought because she was so little. Now she doesn't even now, she's talking like she's still here. So Carol told the court that Christina was confused because she hallucinated conversation that she had had with her dead daughter. Christina's sister, Rosanna, testified to the same thing. She said that her sister was confused following the statement that she had given the detectives, and she told her that she

had played with Shelby. After the statement, Christina's aunt took to the stand and testified that Christina was hallucinating her dead kids. Her other sister, Elizabeth, took the stand and said that her sister was very dazed, confused, and was seeing things and was able to describe things that weren't even there. The last thing mentioned when it was Christina's turn to present witnesses and evidence was the fact that she was rambling on about escalators at the conclusion of

the interview with the detectives. Even after all of this, her motion to suppress the confession was denied. The court found that her statement was completely voluntary and was not at all a result of hallucinations. Many doctors testified that before she gave any statement to law enforcement, she was completely alert and not at all confused or dazed. Prior to any of these court proceedings, Christina received a mental evaluation from doctor John Anderson, a licensed psychologist from the

Arkansas Division of Mental Health and Sciences. He determined that she was able to understand what she did was wrong and against the law when she killed Justin and Shelby on November fourth, nineteen ninety seven. The court fully relied on his evaluation when the time came to make this decision to not suppress her statement, Christina tried to further escalate her motion by stating that she was never told

that her family had retained legal representation for her. Before making the statement, the lawyer who was retained by Christina's family did call the police department and he told him that he would be acting as her legal counsel. The attorney was then told by law enforcement that Christina wouldn't be interviewed about the murders until the following day, but only a few hours later police questioned Christina when she

confessed to killing her children. So to make their argument even more complicated, her attorney argued that the prosecution made some damaging notes during the opening remarks to the jury members, and then he accused the jurors of not taking their roles an oath seriously enough for his liking. The ruling was not reverse and her death sentence was upheld. She was told that she had the right to remain silent.

She waived her right. She was then deemed competent to be executed, so after all the bullshit, Christina was taken to the Correction Department McPherson's unit in Newport, Arkansas, and she was the only inmate in the three cell woman's death rope facility. She was provided some off white prison clothing along with sneakers. According to her reports, she was taken good care of as she awaited her execution date.

The food was pretty decent, and she even made a comment about putting on at least thirty pounds since she had been at that death row facility. She was actually allowed to see visitors at times within a visitation room that wasn't far from the death row cell. Whenever she was not in her cell, she was handcuffed, and when she spoke with her visitors, she talked to them through a window. She was allowed to use makeup and curl her hair for when she had people come see her.

Her mom sent her some books to read and she was able to watch TV. Since she had literally nothing else to do with her time as she waited for death, she would crank out multiple books per week. She was allowed to exercise in a tiny outdoor yard that was right next to her prison cell. She did an interview and when asked with how she was dealing with everything mentally, she stated that she struggled constantly with what she did to her children. She stated that God punished her by

letting her live without them. She told the person interviewing her that she was impatient and excited to die. I'll be with my children and with God. I'll be where there's no more pain. Maybe I'll find peace. The governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, took a look at Christina's case, but did not overturn it. He set her execution date to May second, two thousand and Her sentence was to be carried out between the hours of eight and nine

pm in the Commons Unit, Arkansas. Three days prior to her execution, she was transferred to the Commons Unit from McPherson and it's a two and a half hour drive. The execution was delayed by eighteen minutes due to difficulties finding viable veins for the catheters.

seven years prior. In nineteen thirteen. He was the fifth woman executed in the entire country since the death penalty was reinstated back in nineteen seventy six, and she was only twenty eight years old when her heart stopped. Potassium chloride, the same drugs she ejected into her son and into herself, is one of the three drugs used when carrying out her death sentence by lethal injection.

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