In the quiet suburbs of Sherwood, Arkansas, Christina Marie Riggs was every neighbor’s favorite nurse: soft-spoken, quick with a smile, the kind of woman who’d drop off homemade cookies when someone was sick. Behind her tired hazel eyes, though, a storm had been brewing for decades. On the night of November 4, 1997, that storm finally broke—and two innocent little souls paid the ultimate price.

Christina was only 26, but life had already crushed her spirit more times than most people endure in a lifetime. Born in Oklahoma on September 2, 1971, she grew up in a house haunted by secrets. From the age of seven, she was sexually abused by a family member—a trauma that carved deep scars no child should ever carry. As a teenager, she turned to food for comfort, ballooning to nearly 300 pounds before anorexia flipped the switch the other way. By her early twenties, she was a single mother of two—Justin Thomas, a bouncy five-year-old with his mom’s dimples, and Shelby Alexis, a curly-haired two-year-old who still slept with a stuffed bunny.

Nursing gave Christina purpose. She loved the crisp uniforms, the way patients leaned on her strength. But off the clock, the darkness crept back. Severe depression swallowed her whole. Antidepressants barely dulled the pain. Nights were the worst—panic attacks that left her gasping, convinced she was dying. She attempted suicide twice, once with pills, once by slashing her wrists. Each time she survived, the guilt only grew heavier. “I’m a terrible mother,” she’d sob to her journal. “They deserve better than me.”

On that crisp November evening, Christina picked Justin and Shelby up from daycare like always. She cooked macaroni and cheese—Justin’s favorite—then ran them a bubble bath. Neighbors heard laughter through the thin apartment walls. Bedtime stories, pajamas with tiny dinosaurs, one last sippy cup of milk. To anyone watching, it was just another ordinary Tuesday.

But inside Christina’s mind, a terrifying plan had crystallized. She couldn’t bear another day of feeling like a burden, couldn’t stand the thought of her children growing up with a broken mother—or worse, being taken away by the state and split apart in foster care. In her twisted logic, death was mercy. “If I go,” she told herself, “they come with me. We’ll be together forever. No more pain.”

She started with the medicine cabinet. Elavil—her own prescription antidepressant—dissolved into cherry Kool-Aid. Justin drank it without fuss, trusting Mommy completely. Little Shelby needed coaxing, but she finished her cup too. Within minutes, both children grew drowsy, their tiny bodies slipping into toxic slumber. Christina laid them side by side on her bed, arranged their stuffed animals just the way they liked.

Then came the part she’d rehearsed in nightmares. One by one, she pressed a pillow over their faces. Justin stirred slightly, his small hand reaching out. Shelby never woke at all. Tears streamed down Christina’s cheeks as she whispered, “I’m sorry, babies. Mommy loves you so much.” When it was over, she injected herself with enough potassium chloride to stop an elephant’s heart—stolen from the hospital where she worked. She swallowed twenty-eight Elavil tablets for good measure. Then she lay down between her children, pulled the blanket over all three of them, and waited for the darkness to take her home.

But death refused her invitation.

A worried coworker called for a welfare check when Christina missed her night shift. Police kicked in the door at 11:47 p.m. and found a scene that froze even seasoned officers: two lifeless toddlers tucked neatly under the covers, their mother barely breathing beside them. Paramedics rushed all three to the hospital. Justin and Shelby were pronounced dead on arrival. Against all odds, Christina survived—revived by Narcan and sheer medical stubbornness.

Handcuffed to a gurney, still groggy from the overdose, she confessed everything. “I killed my babies,” she wept to detectives. “I just wanted us to be together. Please don’t save me. Let me die with them.”

Arkansas wasted no time. In June 1998, Christina stood trial in Pulaski County Courthouse. Prosecutors painted her as a cold-blooded monster who poisoned and smothered the very children she claimed to love. The defense argued severe mental illness, childhood trauma, and postpartum depression so crippling she couldn’t tell right from wrong. Jurors deliberated only 45 minutes before returning two death sentences—one for each child.

On death row at the McPherson Unit, something astonishing happened. Christina found peace. She refused every appeal, fired lawyers who tried to fight for her life, and wrote letters begging Governor Mike Huckabee to let the execution proceed. “I deserve this,” she told anyone who would listen. “My babies are waiting for me. I’m ready to go home.”

For nearly two years, she counseled other inmates, read Bible verses to women on the brink of giving up, and gained thirty pounds eating prison food—finally free from the eating disorders that had tortured her youth. She picked out her last meal with childlike excitement: a supreme pizza from Pizza Hut, a crisp garden salad, strawberry shortcake drenched in whipped cream, and a Cherry Coke. “Comfort food,” she laughed during the interview. “Just like I used to make for Justin.”

On May 2, 2000, at 9:28 p.m., the state of Arkansas carried out its first execution of a woman in 155 years. Strapped to the gurney at Cummins Unit, Christina looked calmer than anyone had ever seen her. Witnesses say she smiled softly as the lethal injection began coursing through her veins. Her final words—spoken clearly for the record—still haunt everyone who heard them:

“I love my children. Tell them I’m sorry. Now I get to hold them again.”

Twenty-eight seconds later, Christina Marie Riggs was gone. At 28 years old, the broken little girl from Oklahoma finally found the reunion she’d been chasing through every dark night of her life.

In the years since, her case still divides America. Some call her evil incarnate, a mother who betrayed the most sacred bond. Others see a desperately ill woman failed by every system meant to protect her—abused as a child, dismissed by doctors, crushed beneath depression no pill could fix. Death-penalty advocates point to her as proof the system works. Mental-health reformers hold her up as proof it’s catastrophically broken.

One thing no one disputes: on that terrible November night, three hearts stopped beating under the same blanket. And somewhere beyond this world, a mother finally got the goodnight hug she believed only death could give.