Ronald Gene Simmons - The Murders

The Murders

Shortly before Christmas 1987, Simmons decided to kill all the members of his family. On the morning of December 22, he first killed his son Gene and his wife Rebecca at his home in Dover, Arkansas, by shooting them with a .22 caliber pistol. He then killed his 3-year-old granddaughter Barbara by strangulation. Simmons dumped the bodies in the cesspit he had made his children dig. Simmons then waited for his other children to return to the house. After their arrival, he told them he had presents for them but wanted to give them one at a time. He first killed his daughter, 17-year-old Loretta, whom Simmons strangled and held under the water in a rain barrel. The three other children, Eddy, Marianne, and Becky, were killed in the same way.

Around midday on December 26, the remaining members of the family arrived for their Christmas visit. The first to be killed was Simmons’ son Billy and his wife Renata; both were shot dead. Then Simmons strangled and drowned their 20-month-old son Trae. He shot and killed his oldest daughter Sheila — with whom he'd had an incestuous relationship — and her husband, Dennis McNulty. Simmons then strangled his child by Sheila, 7-year-old Sylvia Gail, and finally his 21-month-old grandson Michael. Simmons laid the bodies of his whole family in neat rows in the lounge. All the corpses were covered with coats except that of Sheila, who was laid in state covered by Rebecca Simmons' best tablecloth. The bodies of the two grandsons were wrapped in plastic sheeting and left in abandoned cars at the end of the lane. After the murders, Simmons went for a drink in a local bar, then returned to the house and, apparently oblivious to the corpses lined up around him, spent the rest of the evening and the following day drinking beer and watching television.

On the morning of December 28, Simmons drove into Russellville, walked into a law office, and killed the receptionist, a young woman named Kathy Kendrick; he had been infatuated with her, but she had rejected him. He next went to an oil company office, where he shot dead a man named J.D. Chaffin and wounded the owner, Rusty Taylor, and then drove on to a convenience store where he had previously worked, shooting and wounding two more people. Afterwards he went to the office of the Woodline Motor Freight Company, where he shot and wounded a woman. Simmons then simply sat in the office and chatted with one of the secretaries while waiting for the police. When they arrived, he handed over his gun and surrendered without any resistance.