Christina Marie Riggs

Who was Christina Marie Riggs?

Christina Marie Riggs was a murderer executed in Arkansas by lethal injection. She was convicted of the November 4, 1997, murder of her two young children, Justin Dalton Thomas and Shelby Alexis Riggs. The children were killed in their beds at the family's Sherwood, Arkansas home. The murder plan involved giving the children undiluted potassium chloride just after giving them amitriptyline to sedate them. However, the potassium chloride was not diluted properly and it burned her son's veins, causing Justin terrible pain but not death. She eventually smothered him when the injection was ineffective. She then smothered her daughter Shelby, without injecting her, after seeing the pain that the drug caused Justin. She laid the children on her bed, covered them with a blanket, and wrote suicide notes. She then attempted suicide by taking twenty-eight amitriptyline pills and injecting herself with undiluted potassium chloride. Nineteen hours later, Riggs' mother discovered her unconscious on the floor of her home.

Riggs' defense said she was suffering from depression and apparently did not want to have her children split up after her envisioned suicide.