Lethal: The Christina Marie Riggs Case

0:06 Welcome to Unspeakable, a true crime podcast where I tell stories of real crimes with real victims, whose cases are so shocking that many are left wondering, how is this even real? I use my experiences in law enforcement, corrections, and combined with my years as a criminal justice educator, dig deep into complex cases of evil acts. Some so evil, many feel they are unspeakable. Warning.

0:51 Unspeakable is intended for mature audiences. If you are easily offended, then I'm not your girl. Listening discretion is advised. Hey, y'all. KJ here back with another episode of Unspeakable. How is your week going? I hope it is fantastic. I'm still working on my voice here. It might sound a little deeper than normal, so I guess we're going to do Unspeakable after dark. Does it sound deeper to y'all? Because it does to me. If not, I'm just totally being weird. But man, do I have an episode for you today. Now, I. I do think through what I want to do each week, and I try to invest a lot of time in choice and in making sure I pick cases that interest me, but I think will interest you. But I have to tell you, I am about to sound like a broken record when I tell you this story, because no lie, you're going to hear it, but it's mind-blowing, really, that this case is is gonna be so similar to some that I've already covered before, but it is absolutely a new case.

1:49 So don't say, wait, haven't I heard this before? Nope, you haven't. But you'll see exactly what I mean at the completion of this one. But it does pose a food for thought question. How can so many horrific things be damn near duplicated throughout the years? How can events result in the same outcome And us just see this over and over and over again. So it's like, are we that limited in our thought processes that outcomes are almost predictable at this point in true crime? And that's sad if the answer is yes, but I'm kind of here going. Maybe so.

2:29 Maybe that's just what we're seeing here. But this week, I'm going to take you to Sherwood, Arkansas. Now, this one does go back to November of 1997. And I'm actually recording this episode on the very date that that tragedy would strike a small family. And it was actually not on purpose. But when I was writing the episode, I said, oh, my God, I'm recording this on the day it happened, but just many, many years later. So maybe that is a sign that this case should be remembered and for us to pay attention of what we could continue to learn from it. And I'm telling you, it's going to be so relevant. OK, trust the process, folks.

3:10 So. I was only 13 years old when this happened, but here I am at 42. It's been a hot minute and I'm still talking about it because it hurts so deeply to know that these things could happen to the most vulnerable of our population. I wouldn't have necessarily looked at it that way. when I was 13. I don't think I understood why this one shocked me as bad as it did. But as an adult, I now understand why I felt the way that I did when I first heard about this case. And it's because it goes against all logic and all understanding of the order of the world as we know it, or at least how I understand it to be. And we're going to start here with some single moms, okay? And single moms, they just, they work so damn hard, don't they? It's got to be the toughest job. And just being a mom in and of itself brings about an inherent responsibility that you are the one when it's all said and done that holds the responsibility of children, especially when men walk away. Now, certainly, let me say this. Certainly, we have single dads out there. Shout out to the single dads that do everything. Everything they do for their kids and they work very, very hard. This is in no way a slight to you guys, my friends. OK, this case, though, specifically involves the single mom of two children. And she she was working hard to try to take care of these two kids. And her name was Christina Riggs. Now,

4:42 Christina was 26 years old as this story begins, but let's roll back the clock just for a moment and take a look at Christina's younger years. Originally, she was from Oklahoma, and her childhood did have some pretty serious bumps in the road that had made her decision-making, it faltered just a bit in her teenage years. So by the age of 14, It's pretty well known that she was already drinking and she was smoking, advancing from cigarettes to eventually marijuana. So she was already on a pretty rough track from the time that she was young. But within two years of her starting to go down the wrong path, the consequences of her actions would catch up to her because she would find that she had missed her period. She was freaked out. She was unsure of what to do. So she took a pregnancy test and sure enough, two pink lines. Christina was going to be a mother at just 16 years old. Now, obviously, she was in no position to care for another person. I mean, she could barely take care of herself. And so she did make the wise decision to look into adoption, which I want to tell you now, I applaud.

5:59 Standing ovation, my girl. Thank God she. Had the forethought to look forward into the future and what would be best for this child. It was a selfless act amongst all acts. And, you know, to carry a child for nine months and then just hand it away, I think that's a lot for anyone to consider, especially a teenager who we can, you know, is emotional and in those years of growth and big change. But in 1988, she would give birth to a healthy baby boy. And then immediately she turned him over to a family that was waiting with open arms. And I would love to tell you more about this little fella, but unfortunately, I don't have anything for you. That baby's name was never made public. And it's also unclear to this day whether that baby, now obviously a man, knows of his adoptive status or knows.

6:53 That any of that took place. So I really don't have much for you other than the fact that Christina did give the child up for adoption. Regardless of how that went, I think it a heroic moment that he was given not only life, but a chance at a good one at the hands of his young biological mother. That was great. But after this life-changing event, Christina took a long, hard look at what she wanted to do with her life. And while she was doing this reflecting, medicine seemed to be something that really had intrigued her. And it also elicited a passion in her that she wanted to chase. And so she would not only go on to graduate high school despite her pregnancy right there, slap dab in the middle of it, but she would continue forward in her education by starting nursing school. And she did well.

7:43 She did a good job. She eventually would earn her LPN. She was so proud of the accomplishment. Her mother was so proud of her. And she then went on to find gainful employment in not only one, but two jobs. One of her jobs was part-time. It was an in-home healthcare type situation, while her full-time job was working at the VA hospital in Oklahoma City. So while she worked with military men and women, she herself was a civilian nurse. And just to give you a little further information on that, it's a distinction that I'm making because It's often misrepresented that she was in the military, but she wasn't. And I think it's important to clarify that. Maybe you don't, but I do, because she was just a civilian, but she did work with these military men and women. So she would work there for about five years in total, but her first year of work would prove most exciting because it wasn't necessarily the work itself that got her going, but it was what it produced. Because her first year on the job, this was late October of 1991, Christina was a little bit older, but she would once again see those two pink lines. She had been fraternizing with a man named Timothy Thompson, who at that time was stationed at Tinker Air Force Base, and she found herself pregnant.

9:07 But when she went to give him the big news and let him know, he was much less than thrilled at this revelation, and he wasn't too keen on being long-term in Christina's life. And he was so upset at the mention of this that he actually completely denied that it was even his baby and packed up his stuff and he moved back to Minnesota. So Christina, once again, found herself single and pregnant. Less than ideal, of course, but it was what it was. She was an adult at this point and she was having a baby. So on June the 7th, this is in 1992, she once again gave birth to another son. But this time, this little fellow was staying with her. So she wrapped him up in his little striped hospital blanket and he was laid on her chest and she knew instantly when she laid her eyes on that tiny little face, she was going to love this baby forever. And the name Justin Dalton Thomas was signed to his birth certificate. So when it was all said and done, everything went well. She left the hospital smiling ear to ear and just so proud.

10:19 that she had a baby boy. To call her own. And, you know, they get out of the car, and they make it into the house together, and she sets him down, and she's just looking him over. And, you know, it's like, we got this, buddy. It's me and you. It's me and you against the world, but we're going to. Make this happen. But that thought process wouldn't last long because an old flame that she used to kind of rendezvous with, well, he would come back into her life. It wouldn't be shortly thereafter that that took place. Christina had dated another guy. He was a sailor. His name was John Riggs. This was prior to the birth of her son. And once again, they found themselves in each other's company. And John, by the way, did not mind that Christina now came with a built-in son.

11:05 He cared for little Justin just the same. And so they were back together. And now there was a baby with them. Well, in October of the following year, The couple then decided that they were gonna make it official when they got married. And so this was about a year later and they tied the knot. Well, a few months into their marriage, she found herself pregnant again. And the couple would give birth to a baby girl this time. And that was in December of 1994. So bring on the pink, my friends. How exciting, because not only did they have their little boy, now they had a little girl. And little Mr. Justin was the proudest big brother ever. This was a role that he took seriously at only two years old because that was his baby girl that he was looking at. And he knew how important he was to this baby. He was going to protect her and he was going to love her and maybe even share his toys with her. That was yet to be seen.

12:00 She'd have to learn how to hold a bottle first because she didn't even know how to do that. But this was a decision that could be made a little sooner in the future. And Mama, what's her name? He's looking over as he's peering down at the hospital and looking at the baby. And she said, well, Bubba, this is Shelby. Shelby. You know, he whispered it back. Wow. Shelby Alexis Riggs now completed the Riggs party of four. But when Bubby heard her name, it was nice and all, but he knew exactly what his name for her was going to be. And it was going to be Sissy. So he called her his Sissy. And from that day forward, that is exactly the name he stuck with when he was talking to his sister.

12:44 That was his sissy. So after leaving the hospital, the family quickly fell into their new routine and life was lifin'. But as we all know, or maybe we all know, maybe I'm older than some of the listeners, but something huge happened in 1995 that scared the living hell out of everybody in Oklahoma City. And that was the Oklahoma City bombing. That was the morning of of April the 19th of 1995, when an ex-army soldier and a security guard, his name is now the infamous Timothy McVeigh, he parked a rented rider truck right there in. Front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. This was in downtown Oklahoma City. And his intentions that day were to commit mass murder, and he planned to do so with a bomb that he had rigged up inside of the truck. It was a powerful mix of diesel fuel, agricultural fertilizer, and some other chemicals, and they were ready to explode, set to a a timed fuse. And at exactly 9.02 a.m., all hell broke loose when the bomb exploded, collapsing that massive building on one side. Cars were on fire. The building looked like it had been right in the middle of a war zone.

13:58 And people were either dead or they were dying. This scene was horrific. And at that time, it was the worst act of homegrown terrorism in U.S. history. But most horrifying, I think we could all agree on this, was the immense amount of loss of life. So many people died. 168 people lost their lives while hundreds more were injured, severely injured. But why? Why did this happen? Christina, her husband, as well as everybody else at that time was glued to the TV as the news broke. Oh my God.

14:40 Well, when everything was solved, that answer was that he was angry. That was the flat out simple answer. Timothy McVeigh was angry at the federal government because of the Waco siege and Ruby Ridge incidents. Those were between 92 and 93. Thus, he decided. That he needed to go kill. Innocent people as his personal retaliation to what he thought was political violence. And this was his political violent response against the U.S. federal government. It was just unconscionable. It still is to this day that someone would think that that was appropriate. But something he said after his arrest really, really chapped my ass. But I feel like it still applies in this case. Amongst the 168 people that were murdered, 19 of them were children.

15:37 They were babies. I'm talking actual babies. And they were in the building's daycare center for the employees. Whatever your feelings are in life, no matter who you're mad at in life, I can never and will never understand someone who takes out violence on children. And he knew they were there. There is no argument that he knew they were there because he scouted the location both inside and out before the bombing. And you could see, you know, they had stuff hung in the part of the building where the daycare was. He knew a daycare was there. So when this was mentioned to him later on, he referred to the children as, direct quote, collateral damage. These were babies.

16:27 These were children. These were not collateral damage. They were lives. They were people. And they were cut short. I would encourage you. To, and this is just kind of a side quest here, but if you haven't watched any of the documentaries, you can find them on Netflix, you can find them anywhere, go watch them. Go listen to the stories of the people that lost their babies that day. And I know we lost a lot of adults. I'm not saying we didn't, and it's terrible, but just children hit different for me. It's just so sad And everybody was horrified by this. So in the summer of 1995, the Riggs family decided to pack up and they moved away and they went to Sherwood, Arkansas in Pulaski County. Now, Christina's mother, Miss Carol, she was thrilled by this because now they were going to be near her and she'd be able to see those grandbabies all the time. They weren't that far away.

17:22 And this would also benefit Christina and John in that daycare costs would be cheap. Like zero. Grandma was watching them, right? Thank you, grandparents out there, by the way, who watch the grandbabies. You are the real MVP, the real hero in these stories. Well, this is the case there. She was going to help to watch the kids. So Christina did find work at Baptist Hospital doing what she loved most, which was nursing. And she was arguably very good at it. Coworkers said that she was good at it and she was caring and she was compassionate. And she was what you would hope to have in a nurse. The pay though, I will tell you, looking at it, it was a little less than stellar because she would work 12 hour shifts, but she was only making about $ 17, 000 a year. I know it was back in 95, but like, damn, you know, that's, I would have thought you'd make more than that. So life was hard. Life was hard for like it is for everybody. The bills stacked up. When bills stack up, what happens? Marriages can struggle. Marriages can be difficult even when things are going pretty smooth. but for them at this juncture, things weren't going too good in their marriage.

18:31 And so when you combine the normal stressors of life and you have a rocky marriage and then you start having kind of like some financial issues, marriages can crumble pretty quickly. But there was something that happened during this same time and it was something that Christina was just not willing to overlook any day of her life. And this had to do with her son, Justin, because he was now about four years old when, according to court documents, John hit Justin in the stomach. And he hit him so hard that the child allegedly needed medical attention. I can't confirm or deny with 100%. certainty, whether that is completely true or what the full story was. But I can tell you that it was so impactful to Christina that she did go ahead and file for divorce from John.

19:20 And this was around 1997 that that took place. So John would move out and then he would leave. And Christina would be the main caregiver for both children. And now I want to I want to be fair here when I'm telling this story, because to me, fairness matters regardless of what happens. And although she only earned that $ 17, 000 a year, both men who fathered these children were eventually at some point both making their child support payments to her. So the picture that I'm painting here is not simple. She wasn't living in luxury by any stretch of the imagination, but she also wasn't starving on the street without any help whatsoever whatsoever. She was a single working mother drowning in the ordinary math of raising two small children. And sometimes the most heartbreaking parts of these true crime stories is telling you just how ordinary the circumstances actually are.

20:24 There's no real dramatics at some of these points. It's just heartbreakingly ordinary. It's bills. It's the cost of living. It's love lost and it's divorce. like a sad country song we all know too well. But Christina powered through, and she continued to work to support her children. And although she wasn't having much fun in her life at that moment, she was still doing what was expected of anyone. She was putting one foot in front of the other, no matter how hard it may be, and she was trying to move forward. And that's why when on November the 5th, Christina, she didn't show up to work. And her coworkers wondered where the heck she was. She was a good employee. That was not normal. And so this no-show was kind of out of left field, but thinking she probably had overslept or something like that, they called the house, but there was no answer. So as time passed, Christina never showed up to work, nor did she call back. And the hospital would just have to go about their business, right? There's still things to do. So they would fill in her absence and other nurses would have to pick up her slack and As frustrating as it was, the patients can't be the ones that pay the penalty for this or pay the price for it, and so they still needed to be cared for, no show or not. But Christina's mother, on the other hand, she was a bit more invested in the ability to reach her daughter. And by this point, Christina had both of the children in daycare And then

21:56 in the afternoons, her mother would watch them after they got out of daycare. I always want to say school, but daycare, whenever Christina got off of work. The thing was that Christina did not want to send the kids to daycare for 12 hours. And so her mother also wasn't able to watch the kids all day long and all evening long. So it kind of worked for them. So whenever... mom was calling. The hospital to get Christina to try to firm up the plans for the day. They told her that Christina wasn't there. Well, that was odd. So Ms. Carroll tried to get in touch with her daughter. She couldn't. And that's when she called the daycare to see if they had already been picked up because usually she would be the one to pick up the kids from daycare.

22:40 But if Christina had taken off, maybe she had gone and picked them up if she had dropped them off that morning. But When the daycare answered, they said, well, actually, the kids hadn't shown today. They were never dropped off. When she heard this, Miss Carol got an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach because, you know, it was one thing to maybe not answer the phone for a while, but now the whole routine is messed up and she was just praying that nothing was wrong. But being a mama, she jumped immediately into her car and she drove straight over to Christina's apartment. So not only did she want to go check on her daughter and make sure her daughter was okay, she wanted to see her grandbabies and she wanted to hear their voices because she usually got to see them every day. By four o'clock that afternoon, Miss Carol was pulling into the parking lot of Christina's apartment and she was making her way up to the door and respecting that this was her daughter's home. She didn't just barge in. She knocked on the door, but there was no answer to the home.

23:44 So peering in the windows, she didn't see anything that was amiss, but She knew there had to be something wrong at this point, so she used her key and she made her way into the apartment. And she's, Christina, Bobby, where are y'all? Guys, where is everybody? And so she's walking through the hall until she made her way into the main bedroom where shock just took over. Her eyes widened really big for a moment because she's staring down thinking that maybe this is a Halloween joke or something. Her mind just jumped to that because the spooky season had just ended. They were just off the cusp of Halloween. But what she saw was unmistakably real horror.

24:26 Of course, if you ask people who've been in the middle of traumatic circumstances, at first, a lot of people will tell you, I didn't think it was real. I didn't process what was happening. I thought it was a joke, but this was not a joke. Christina was sprawled out on the floor and she was not moving. Her mom's like, oh my God, Christina, You know, what are you doing? And she went over and she started shaking Christina. What are you doing? And she said it literally out loud as if Christina may answer her. Christina didn't move. Miss Carol bent down and she's trying to shake her awake, but she quickly pulled her hands back because whenever she felt her daughter, she was cold. Her skin was cool to the touch and no one that is alive should ever be that cold.

25:10 What is going on here? So she looked up from where she was nailed down and in an attempt to kind of process what what she was seeing and feeling as if maybe something else in the room would catch her eye and could help explain this seemingly dead woman laying on the ground. In front of her. That's whenever her eyes focused on the bed. And her reality of what she was experiencing was now way bigger than just her daughter unresponsive and cold on the ground. Everything else came crashing down even harder than anyone could have ever prepared themselves for. Because both of the children were tucked into Christina's bed. Five-year-old Justin and two-year-old Shelby were side by side in the bed, but eerily still, just as still as their mother was. They were far too still to just be asleep.

26:04 Their coloring. I mean, you could look at him instantly and know that it was anything but normal. This pale white with almost a waxy gray hint of color to their faces. And with an absolute just instant millisecond, grandma snapped into reality that this is not a joke and her grandbabies are dead. They are dead right there alongside her daughter laying on the ground. Is there anything that could be more cruel that could happen to a woman? Is there anything that you can think of that could just be more hurtful than a grandmother walking in and seeing not only her beloved grandbabies, but her daughter that she gave birth to, all of them deceased? But she was praying for a miracle. She scrambled to the phone.

26:49 She dialed 911 and she was pleading for help. Please help me. Please, my grandbabies and my daughter, they're dead. So she's screaming over the phone to 911 and the operator could tell by the tone in her voice that this was no joke and that there was possibly a triple death scene that had just been stumbled upon in that apartment. So police lights lit up around town. And responders started rushing to the scene from all over. Paramedics, they were automatically notified as well. And so they showed up and ran inside to see if there was any chance at saving the lives that Miss Carol, I mean, was just falling apart over. The lives that made her life worth living. Without them, she literally was nothing. This was her family. Her whole world lay motionless in one room.

27:38 So the scene is buzzing with responders and there's officers in there. They're trying to determine what had happened. Was this a crime scene? Well, of course it was. None of this was natural. It wasn't normal, but incredibly, incredibly against all odds. And a paramedic's head shot up and yelled out, we have a pulse. We have a pulse. And everyone scrambled to get the person on the gurney. As Miss Carol, who was waiting anxiously outside of that room, waited to see who may still be alive. Anyone at this point would have been a gift from God. But who was coming out of the room? Who is still alive? And she's looking as they're rushing this gurney past her. And as it came rolling down the hallway, she could tell it was an adult. It was not the children.

28:22 Christina. It's Christina. She was alive, but barely. And she was clinging to basically the essence of life at that point. This was so dire that to me, in my mind, it brought up the image of Michelangelo's creation of Adam painting, if you know what I'm talking about, the God's touch painting. And the reason I say that is the fact here was that It had to be God, guys. It had to be that was working much harder than Christina's body was in this moment, just reaching out, just barely touching the life in her because nobody really believed that this was possible, that she was gonna survive. So as they worked on her lifeless body, she was rushed by ambulance to Baptist Memorial Hospital. This is in North Little Rock.

29:14 And she arrived there about 5.30 that evening. So back at the apartment, Things were not hopeful for the children. They were both positively pronounced dead where they lay far beyond help. And they had been dead for a while too. And by a while, I mean at least 12 hours, maybe 12, maybe, 14 hours. So detectives now had the prime purpose of determining what had happened to these babies. They're in this bed. They looked well cared for and they lived in a normal home environment. There was no obvious abuse or neglect.

29:58 That was noticeable, at least from the exterior, looking at them. So photos were taken just as the children were found before anyone would look at them in their entirety. So pulling back the covers, there they found that these siblings were laying right next to one another. And again, there were no signs of trauma or abuse. There was no blood. There was no nothing, really. I mean, none. So they looked as if they had been bathed. and then placed in their jammies before being tucked into bed. They were flat on their backs. They were face up just like little angels. But the key word that I want you to focus on here is the word tucked.

30:42 The covers weren't haphazardly just thrown on top of the children or just laid by them by chance. These children were tucked into this bed with purpose. There were no stab wounds. There were no head wounds, nothing of the sort. It was like they went to bed, someone who loved them tucked them in, and then they just never woke up. But I'm here to tell you, spoiler alert, that when I am done, you will wish that this would have been the actual case when I finish this for you. But for now, the children were loaded into body bags and they were sent to the morgue for autopsy because something had happened, but what it was, was yet to be determined. But focusing back on their mother, she had been on the floor, by the way. She wasn't in the bed with them. Who would care for the children in this way, but leave their mother on the floor like a heap of dirty laundry? Was this like a carbon monoxide situation? Was this something of those sorts? If not, and this was done on purpose, who would have wanted them all dead? It is very unusual to wipe out a whole family and specifically one of a woman and two very small children at that. So there was another question, too, that still remained is, you know, what had caused their deaths?

32:08 They weren't any closer to figuring out what had happened to them. Well, incredibly, Christina was still alive whenever she reached the hospital, despite her deplorable condition. toxicology was going to be first and foremost on the list as she too was not showing any signs of any physical trauma, something external that maybe she'd been cracked over the head or something like that. But the police weren't far behind her arrival at the hospital because while they were still at the house and they were searching the home for clues, they found some pretty horrifying evidence rather quickly. And it started with a note. Looking on a nightstand, detectives found some letters that were addressed to multiple people, including the fathers of both Shelby and Justin. And if they were opening up a diary and reading someone's innermost thoughts, the words as the detective's eyes scanned the page made his heart sink down just even further. There in Christina's handwriting, the tragedy of the situation became very clear when she wrote these exact words, I can't live like this anymore. And I couldn't bear to leave my children behind to be a burden on you or to be separated and raised apart from their fathers and live knowing that their mother killed herself. The detectives taking this in, oh my God, their mother did this to them. She did this to them and she did this to herself. Those babies were killed by the

33:40 hands of their own mother. She wanted to kill herself. And she took them with her. The detective was just like, you've got to be kidding me. So he drops the letters down on the table in disbelief when his eyes then locked on to some pill bottles that were nearby. And so he took a step over and he grabbed the medication off the table and he was squinting to read the label real close. But none of the detectives were doctors, of course. And so finding out what the medications were for became paramount at this point. And then something else caught their eye. It was a needle. So looking back at all the prescriptions that they saw, one of them was actually an injectable. It wasn't pills.

34:28 So they're like, shit, no wonder the babies don't have any injuries. I wonder if they were poisoned. What if they were injected with something? So the detectives are barking orders over the radio for someone, some officer, somebody to get to the hospital and see if Christine had survived or not. She had now shifted from victim number three to suspect number one in the eyes of the detectives. So when they arrived at the emergency room, they were surprised, honestly, to find that Christina had not only survived the trip by ambulance, but she was still alive. Her family also had been made aware of what was going on. And so they had rushed up there and they were anxiously waiting for an update on Christina because they were made aware of the tragedy that had occurred. They knew that their nieces and their niece and nephew, at least, and the grandchildren, whoever it was that you look through their lens, that they'd lost these children. But maybe by some chance, Christina would make it. So doctors came out. They're all sitting there anxiously waiting for an update on her condition.

35:33 And when the doctor came out, he informed them that her stomach had been pumped and that she had been given charcoal in an attempt to absorb anything that may have been in her stomach. Because whenever she arrived, it was their initial belief that overdose was the believed cause of her severe impairment. So officers intervened at that point, and they were very clear that due to the circumstances of this active investigation, the hospital was to not allow her to speak to anyone, specifically her family. And police said, if she is ever to wake up from this, we want to be the first people that she talks to and to question her.

36:17 And at that point, the doctors were like, wake up? What do you mean if she ever is to wake up? She is awake. She's also combative, and she's not making any sense at the moment, but, you know, officers, there's a high probability that she's probably going to survive this. We're considering her stable at this point, and she's been moved to the intensive care unit. So her family, who, like, breathes in a huge sigh of relief, and they're hugging one another. My God, this is great news. At least somebody is alive. But following this information... one of the detectives, his name was James Harper of the Sherwood Police Department, he made his way to her hospital room where he would remain overnight with her from November 5th into the early morning hours of November the 6th because she was now considered to be in police custody.

37:08 He would be staying with her. So as the hours passed, Christina's behavior would settle and she would eventually begin to come around to her senses. Where there was still. Some confusion and uneasiness as to what was going on, she was pretty much back to normal. I'd say normal-ish by the 6th. So detectives Charles Jones and Cheryl Williams, these are two other detectives from Sherwood PD, they arrived at the hospital around 9.20 that morning to get a statement from Christina. And everything that she had to say to them took eight minutes. It only took eight minutes for her to tell them everything that she could tell them.

37:55 And they did record, um, this, this conversation. So what they were told by Christina is that two to three weeks prior to the tragedy, she had reached a breaking point. She was depressed. She was stressed about money. She had always been, um, someone who was unhappy with the way that she looked and her weight. And so she basically just felt like her life was going nowhere. She made it clear that she was ready to throw in the towel and just be done with life altogether. Her antidepressants, she was taking them. They weren't helping her. And she was just done.

38:40 She was done. But there was an issue or two that she was thinking about. She, first of all, owed her mother some money. And she had not repaid that yet. And she also had two kids at home that she was in charge of. She told the detectives, you know, what would they think about me if they grew up knowing that I had killed myself? What would they think about me that I did that and just left? She was also, in the same breath, worried about them being separated. And she told the detectives that if they were to be sent to their respective fathers, who probably didn't want them anyway, that's her words, not mine, that she just didn't want them separated and then go off to these men who didn't want them. But she also told them... that she was really thinking about Justin. She said he was always rambunctious and the schools were constantly calling her and saying that he was being wild and that he was getting into something.

39:40 And she said, I just knew that nobody was going to want to deal with him because he was an exhausting child to parent. And just for shits and giggles real quick, And honestly, also for the people who like to say that I'm mean in my storytelling when I'm talking about these atrocities. Instead of you thinking I'm being mean right now, I'll just let her tell you her damn self in this recording so you can see just how exact I'm being whenever I'm telling you these cases. So here's Christina explaining what I've just told you in her own words. I can't say exactly when the kids became a part of it. But I was sitting there thinking, well, who's going to take care of the kids when I'm gone?

40:25 Because up until this point, all I ever heard, just my son had ADHD. And people who would take care of him, I was like, he's a handful. He wears me out. He does this. He does that. I get calls from the daycare. Mom was keeping them in the evening times. And she was always just so exhausted. And so in my mind, nobody wanted them. Okay. And now that you have heard that, I have to ask you something. Does that sound familiar in any way? My son was too rambunctious? Because when I heard this, it kind of jumped to my mind that Lindsay Clancy is apparently Christina Riggs 2.0. Little Justin and little Dawson would have probably been best buds in daycare had they gotten the chance to live and maybe make some friends.

41:19 But this is really echoing that same sentiment in both of these stories thus far. So with all of these thoughts that she just discussed and that I've discussed swirling in her mind, Christina made a plan and what she would do was quite literally unspeakable. And she, She was able to relay to these investigators and she was crying and there were tears. I'm not trying to say that there weren't, but she was able to relay to them exactly what had happened that night before at her apartment. And it all started with her shift at work. where she had unfettered access to lots of medications, things like morphine and potassium chloride. So she stole a portion of a patient's morphine that they were supposed to be administered, and she also swiped a vial of potassium chloride, which she had hidden in her pockets, to bring home. So as she completed her shift that afternoon, the ball had already been started, and it was rolling to her plant.

42:23 She said goodbye to her coworkers. She got in her car and she made her way to her mother's house to grab her children so that she could take them home. And she fully had the intentions of executing them. And I have another audio here of her explaining this in her own words. And so I'm gonna play that for you as well. And it was just like, this is it, this is the last time I'm gonna be here. In fact, I sent an email to the payroll clerk and asked her to send my last check to my mother. because I owed her some money and I wanted to make sure she got the money. And I remember I stopped on the way home and cleaned out my checking account to give my mom the money. And all the way there, you know, the kids were in the car and we were talking and I talked to my mom that night when I picked one of the kids, I picked the kids up from my mom's house. And I talked to her for a minute And I gave her the money, and she was like, where'd you get this from? You don't have this kind of money. And I said, oh, well, you know, I'll work some overtime. But I owe it to you. I want you to have it. And I made sure the kids hugged her and kissed her goodbye.

43:39 And I made sure they came. I made them come back and tell them that they loved her. And I took her trash out to the corner floor. And I told her that I loved her. And we got in. The car, and I just. Kind of looked at her, and I was like, this. Is the last time I'm going to see mom. There it is. Her poor mother had no idea that this everyday interaction would be the last time that she ever hugged, ever kissed, or ever spoke to her grandchildren, or possibly her daughter, ever again.

44:23 She had no idea. But Christina did. And she loaded the children into the car and she drove them back to the house where she then went about business as normal. She cooked them supper. She bathed them for the night. And nothing was amiss as far as Bubby and Sissy were concerned. It was just another night at home with Mama after a day at daycare and spending some time with Grandma. So once they were all cleaned up and their bellies were full, Christina then crushed up some of her amitriptyline, Elevil, right, is the name for that. And that was her antidepressant medication. She mixed it. Up in a cup of juice and then the children unknowingly drank the medication, which made them both super drowsy.

45:10 And this was around 10 p.m. And soon enough after drinking that dosage, they both were fast asleep, which was when Christina began the next step of her execution plans of her children. pulling a needle from her pocket and the stolen vial of potassium chloride. She lifted it up, inserted the needle and she drew up the medication and she prepared to inject it first in her son. But this is not by chance that she chose her son first. She chose him because in her own words, she knew that he would be the one to give her the most trouble. Again, is that not echoing in the ears of people in the Lindsay Clancy trial. This is strangely similar.

46:01 She then approached her little boy and she stuck the needle into the sleeping toddler's neck and began to push the drug into his vein when that child's eyes shot open And he began to screech out in pain. Mama, it burns. It burns. Mama, mama, mama. Little Bubby was writhing and crying in extreme pain as the medication, which, by the way, is supposed to be diluted and administered over time via a drip. She put it in undiluted directly into that child and it burned straight through his veins so caustic that it wouldn't ever logically have ever made it through his system. Instead, it was burning like acid through his veins and straight into his muscles. That child was screaming out, begging his mother to help him. And Christine started to panic because she wasn't expecting him to have this reaction. She thought she had knocked him out with the Elavil that she made him drink. And while begging for help and begging for comfort from the very woman that he trusted the most in the entire world, she was killing him. Out of the medical options that she had prepared, thinking that that would have gone to plan and now realizing she needed a plan B and C. She needed to make him stop crying. He was crying out. She freaked out, I guess, as you would say. But she methodically reached over and decided to go primitive on little Justin, grabbing her pillow

47:33 right off the bed and smothering it on top of his face. And as that child struggled desperately to take in a breath and he's wiggling back and forth and doing whatever he could to act defensively. But he was unable to because that Elavil that was already in his system had made him very weak and unable to react as strongly as he maybe could have. You know he was terrified. Don't even play for a second. You know that that baby was terrified. But he was eventually just unable to grasp any further air. And his eyes rolled back and he lost consciousness. But it would take a few more minutes of pressure. until Justin's little heart eventually stopped beating. And Christine held it there to ensure that that would happen. And just like that, little Justin's life that he had ahead of him was over. Never to be.

48:33 Now convinced that he was dead, his mother removed the pillow from his face. She checked his pulse and he was gone. Needing a break from what just happened, she went and grabbed a cigarette from her purse. She lit it up. She pulled a drag. And she slowly blew it out as she thought about what she had just done. It had not gone to plan. It had not gone the way that she had hoped. She had wanted the children to be asleep. I don't think there's any doubt about that, and I don't want to misrepresent this. She thought that she would knock this child out. But not realizing what was going to happen, Justin still woke up. She's thinking all of this through what what in the world what is going on and she's just inhaling that cigarette, blowing it out while she's walking around. And that's when she decided that she was going to pour herself some alcohol and she started gulping that down. She would need to handle things differently for Shelby.

49:39 She was going to handle him differently because she didn't want her to wake up. She didn't want to have to hear her cry. So she drug up another drag from the cigarette and she blew it out while she was staring at the wall, continuing to think through how was she going to handle the next murder? It was too late now. Those are her own thoughts. It was too late now, too late to turn back because Justin was already dead and she wanted to be dead too. So she was going to have to keep on keeping on, but she couldn't leave Shelby. She had to kill Shelby. So that's whenever her plan shifted. She decided no injections this time. I'm just going to go with what I know works. And she moved to straight suffocation as her plan. But her cigarette had burned out by that point while she was thinking. So she grabbed another one. She lit it. And this time she was trying to calm her nerves. She was trying to get herself organized, get it back together. And as she puffed on that cigarette and she started working herself back up, She was ready to go finish what she had started.

50:39 She blew out her last drag and she returned to the bedroom where Justin lay dead on the bed. Shelby was fast asleep in the bed. So she walked to that side, grabbed the pillow and again shoved it on top of Shelby's face. But the child woke up again. The child did not remain asleep. So Christine wasn't going to let it go. She applied her full body weight to that pillow as little Shelby, two years old, is struggling to escape. She was so little that she wasn't even able to struggle much. And she sunk down into the mattress under the pressure, trying to do what she could to get away. But the pressure of the pillow on her face and the weight, by the way, Christine weighed about 270 pounds, applied on top of that baby just made it completely unable for her to expand her chest.

51:32 And it did take a couple of minutes of that constant pressure, but eventually baby Shelby also stopped moving altogether. Christine peeled back the pillow and she could tell Shelby was gone too. She checked. There was no pulse. There's no heartbeat. That life was now gone out of that baby's eyes. It was gone. She was done. Both of Christine's children were now dead. And looking them over, she didn't want to leave them sprawled out on the bed. And she just didn't think that they looked at peace. She wanted them to be comfortable. And it's kind of like, well, no shit, they weren't at peace. They just died fighting for their lives. They're babies. They don't know what to do.

52:21 But she she wanted them to be comfortable and she knew that she had killed them. OK, there was no doubt in that. But her logic was that this was absolutely necessary so that they could go with her because no one. Else wanted them. She picked up Shelby's lifeless body and she pulled her up to the headboard, facing her face up on the bed, her head on the pillow. And then she pulled the covers down a little bit further so that she could get Justin, who was a little bit bigger, up right next to his sister on the pillow. Walked around the other side, fixed the sheets, and then pulled Justin straight. And then she took the time to tuck their hands down nicely by their sides. And then she pulled up the covers and tucked those babies back in the bed one last time. She then walked back into the kitchen.

53:15 grabbed her cigarettes, and she decided to light another cigarette and start sipping more on her glass of alcohol. But now it came the really hard part because she was going to have to kill herself. It would take her 20 minutes to get her nerve back to do what she said she had set out to do all along. She sat there for 20 minutes with her babies dead in the back, smoking a cigarette and thinking about everything that she had done. And again, there was no turning back. Finish it. I got to finish it. So she reached and she grabbed the bottle of Elevil. And in that bottle, there were 28 pills remaining. And with that glass in her hand, she swallowed mouthfuls of pills until all 28 were gone. Wanting to die quickly, she didn't want to suffer.

54:11 She then drew up roughly 10 cc's of potassium chloride, again undiluted, and she stuck the needle in her own arm and injected it into her arm. And she did get a taste of what baby Justin felt because her arm started burning like wildfire, a pain she had never known to exist as it was searing holes now in her veins. It was pouring out and burning into her skin. It wasn't diluted, guys. It burned straight through the vein. It leaked right into the muscle instead of it traveling to her heart and to her brain. She was only able to take a few steps towards the bed, towards where the children were, before collapsing on the floor. She lay there 14 hours. It would pass minute by minute and no one knew any different. The neighbors came and went with no idea the tragedy that had occurred just on the other side of the shared wall between them.

55:14 And from there, you know what happened. Mom showed up. The police showed up. Her confession to police was found to be completely credible because it aligned with all of the evidence at the scene, as well as the medical examiner's estimated time of death for the children. even down to the arm injury that she had at the hospital. When she first arrived, there was a small needle prick in her arm, but within the two days that she was at the hospital, it swelled up and it puffed up into a blistered burn the size of about a silver dollar. And whenever she was let go from the hospital and she was released, which was about two days after she was admitted, Christine wasn't released to go home. She was sent straight to jail and charged with two counts of capital murder for the deaths of her two young babies. And while her defense was mounted and she pled not guilty by reason of mental defect or disease, she remained adamant that she loved her children, but she just wanted to die more.

56:26 And at the conclusion of her trial, there was a trial, Christina Riggs was not only found guilty, but she was also sentenced to death. So here we are again. Here we are again, guys. Me sounding like a broken record with cases of mothers who are suicidal, yet they kill their children and survive themselves. And so again, I guess I'm going to say, who paid the price for this suicidal mom? Because the answer is is the children. The argument that was raised in court, guys, it's going to sound familiar. She was on antidepressants and those had messed up her psyche. That was the argument.

57:12 And I'm going to have to tell you, I just have to disagree with it. It implies that she did not know right from wrong, and that she wasn't in full control of her behavior because of the medication. And this was an argument that was pushed down the throats of television and everybody during this time. But let's just get down to the brass tacks, okay? Because planning ahead takes logic. Stealing medications, that takes deception, which also takes in-depth thinking. She said herself that she took the kids. And then made sure before she left her mother's house that they hugged her mother one last time, even sending them back in to make sure that they told her that they loved her. This means she understood the finality of it all and that a good goodbye mattered. She wasn't cuckoo off her rocker. She was thinking this through.

58:12 She also wanted to pay her mother back. That shows understanding of debts and accountability in society to repay them. Was this woman horribly depressed? I have no doubts. There is zero doubt in my mind, none whatsoever. But the issue again, and I will stand 10 toes down on this, is that your rights end at the exact point where someone else's begins. A distinction has got to be made. You can have all the empathy in the world for somebody who is so desperately sad that they no longer value living. But murdering others in the process, especially the most vulnerable.

58:55 Your own children, that isn't mercy. That is violence. That is the epitome of domestic violence. It does not matter that you gave birth to them. And again, I have to say this, but it's very interesting that a nurse who knew how this drug worked and she used it in her daily job couldn't even kill herself with it. Hashtag botched execution. If you ask me, it's very much giving Krista Pike. I feel like I'm repeating the same episodes just now combined in one. She gave herself 10 times the lethal dose and she lived with it only burning a hole in her vein and entering the surrounding tissue. Does that sound familiar? and even wilder a comparison in this case, is when her execution day actually came, they were unable to find a good vein in her arm.

59:50 Did they stop the execution? Nope. Did everyone jump up and scream, well, we should just give her life because her vein doesn't work? No. You know what they did? They placed the lines in her wrists instead. While most people People do fight a death sentence because I'm going to tell you all of it. While most people do fight a death sentence, I will tell you this. Christina did not. She waived all of her rights to appeal and she never filed any paperwork for clemency or asking for clemency. She, in fact, still wanted to die and she would then be obliged on May the 2nd, 2000, when Christina Marie Riggs was put to death by lethal injection in Arkansas.

1:00:36 But there's something else. I just, I'm compelled to say it. This story, it pained me greatly to tell because I searched high and low, yet I could only find Christina's story. The information about these two precious children was beyond limited, guys, beyond. I did find their headstone, if that makes anyone feel better, but not much about who they were. What was their favorite color? What was their favorite animal? What songs did they sing? What toys did they play with? Nothing. I found nothing. Who will write for them, guys?

1:01:18 Who will tell their story? Who? If it is not us, then who's going to do it? It's not there. It's not there. It's like they just were part of the story. They are the story. And I want to challenge you. Go find something. Help me. Help me. I'd love to share it. All I know are their names. That's all I know. I know, you know, I know how they were killed. Is that the essence of who they were? Is that their character? Is that their life? Their life is their death. That's all we get to know. It's sick. And I got to tell you, accountability, it's never going to be easy. Accountability, it's not easy, but it matters.

1:02:02 And at this point, I think I've come to a realization that my outrage at this point, it doesn't lay with Christina. Okay. She was held fully accountable. She's gone. She's dead. She got what she wanted. But my outrage at this point, it's in the people who continue to. Defend this sort of behavior as if somehow the killer is a victim. Christina, after the fact. OK, Christina, after the fact said that she didn't think that Justin knew what was happening. OK, and that was afterwards. That was after her first confession. This is later on down the road. But she must have been just trying to make herself feel better because that that doesn't fit what her own words of the experience that that child went through.

1:02:46 You know, she said it in her own words. What happened? That's how we know what happened. And then you're going to turn around and say, oh, I don't, I didn't think he, I don't think he felt much. Bullshit. You want that to be the truth, but it's not. And you can't say that Shelby didn't suffer either. They did. If it makes you feel better to lie to yourself, then you can lie to yourself, but don't lie to me. Christina cried in her interviews. Okay. And people that hurt people's hearts, but you know what? So did Justin. Justin sobbed and begged for help, but she continued forward in killing him. And Christina was really sad, y'all. She was depressed. She was sadder than anybody on the planet. Yes, she was. But you know who else was? Shelby. Shelby was the saddest two year old on the planet when she couldn't breathe. And Christina, in an interview, expressed later on that, you know, she was just so sad knowing that day was the day that she did the killings, that that was going to be the last time that she would ever see her mom. Well, imagine, Christina, the feeling if it was going to be her killing you.

1:03:51 Of course, it's sad. But this was your decision. And the betrayal, the betrayal of all betrayals. You knew that it was going to be y'all's last time. You know who didn't? It was the children. And it was actually only the children's last time, if we want to be exactly correct. You stole the opportunity from them. To even get to know that this was so important. Not that it would have mattered. They're children. But it. Just seems pretty selfish to me to then say how sad you were. We are in an era right now where software companies are being held accountable for making addictive programs geared towards teens.

1:04:34 People are outraged that they would do that. There's advertisements for injury lawsuits caused by medication companies. They are played every day all over television. Every single day, people are outraged that these medical companies could give medicine to people that could harm them. And drunk drivers who kill people today, they are responsible for those deaths. And hey, I'm just going to say it. Rest in peace to my friend, Miss Katie, the beloved crossing guard in my community who was just taken from me and my children this very year. But no one once in any of these instances that I have just listed, no one once has yelled out, but what about how the drunk driver felt? They had trauma in their life.

1:05:17 But you want to know why no one's yelling it? It's because it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Accountability, regardless of the ailment or the ignorance or anything else that is going on in somebody's life, it is still required. Alcoholic or fucking not. Depressed or not. There are victims in this case. There are victims everywhere. But your feelings be damned when you are the one who hurts or kills an innocent person because your emotions. Are out of check. If you are sad or you are depressed, I will implore you, please seek help. There are resources out there and you can get better. People want you to get better.

1:06:04 I want everybody. I want you to live. A full life. A full life that is just filled with joy and happiness and that you will see the sun shine again. However, if you ever cross the point of emotional non-return and you make up your mind that you are done, that you don't value or want your life anymore, then take your own life and leave the children out of it. Because if you don't, you will forever be the villain in the story. And for the rest of us, We have got to stop confusing an explanation with an excuse.

1:06:45 Trauma may be a legitimate part of a case, but it should never, ever be the deciding factor that becomes a child's obituary in the process.