Christina Marie Riggs

Riggs was born in Lawton, Oklahoma, and grew up in Oklahoma City. She stated that she was sexually abused as a child and began using alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana by age fourteen. She became pregnant at sixteen and placed the child for adoption. After finishing high school, she became a licensed practical nurse and worked in home health care and at a Veterans Administration hospital. Riggs became pregnant with her son Justin in 1991. The child's father was not involved in their lives, but before Justin was born in June 1992, she began dating Jon Riggs. Christina and Jon married in 1993 and had a daughter, Shelby, in December 1994. The family moved to Sherwood, Arkansas, in 1995, where her mother lived, and Riggs obtained a job at Baptist Hospital. Christina and Jon later divorced after she said he struck Justin in the stomach. ==Murders==

Riggs killed her children in their beds at the family's home in Sherwood. She had planned to give them a combination of potassium chloride, amitriptyline, and morphine, obtaining the amitriptyline from a local pharmacy and taking the other drugs from the hospital where she worked. She injected Justin with morphine, she said, to ease his pain. when it had no effect, she smothered him. She then smothered her daughter, Shelby, without injecting her, after witnessing the pain the potassium had caused Justin. She then attempted suicide by taking a large quantity of amitriptyline and injecting herself with undiluted potassium chloride. Nineteen hours later, her mother found her unconscious on the floor of her home. ==Trial and conviction==

At her June 1998 trial, Riggs argued that she was not guilty by reason of insanity, citing depression and the trauma she experienced while working as a nurse near the site of the Oklahoma City bombing. She later convinced the court to allow her to drop her appeals. The Arkansas execution chamber is located at the Cummins Unit. ==Execution==

On Sunday, April 30, 2000, Riggs was flown from McPherson to Cummins in preparation for her execution. She was executed at 9:28 p.m. Central Daylight Time on May 2, 2000. Her final words were, "I love you, my babies." Riggs was executed with a potassium chloride injection. ==See also==