CRIME HUNTER: Christmas massacre in a small Arkansas town
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“You have destroyed me, and you have destroyed my trust in you… I will see you in Hell.”
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CRIME HUNTER: Christmas massacre in a small Arkansas town Back to video
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– Ronald Gene Simmons Sr.
It was a promise the Chicago-born Ronald Gene Simmons would keep – with interest – during the 1987 Christmas season.
In Dover, Ark., no one knew Simmons beyond the odd hello. He had been born in 1940 and was a service brat.
After serving in the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War he retired to Arkansas and had been living in the area for the previous four years.
He burned through a slew of low-paying jobs and residents of the small town described him as a recluse.
But there was no doubt, he was the king of his domain. His wife Rebecca wasn’t allowed out of the house unless she was accompanied by her husband.
As for his five children at home, they weren’t permitted to attend church and he drove them to the school bus each day. When they arrived home from school, chores were on the agenda. There was no phone.
“They just tiptoed around him,” classmate Liesl Smith said. “Whenever he wasn’t around, they would act like normal people. When he was around, her mom’s main concern was keeping the kids quiet … He was the keeper of his kingdom. The look he gave you in his house was, ‘When are you leaving?’ It was creepy.”
In 1981, his 17-year-old daughter went to the cops in New Mexico claiming her father had molested her – and she was pregnant with his child. When officers came to arrest him, the whole family was gone.
But sometime during the autumn of 1987, his long-suffering wife Becky was finally poised to leave him. Detectives believe that set in motion a horror show.
***
Around Dover, a lot of people hunt, so it isn’t that unusual to hear gunshots. Neighbour Ed Shaddon didn’t think it strange when he heard the shooting.
The Simmons family were the hillbillies from central casting: They lived in two adjoining trailers without running water or indoor plumbing, the yard littered with beer bottles.
But that December, Ronald Gene Simmons Sr. decided he was going to slaughter his family and settle old scores.
On the morning of December 22, murdered his wife Rebecca and eldest son Gene, first by bludgeoning them with a crowbar and then shooting them with a .22-calibre pistol.
Simmons then strangled his three-year-old granddaughter Barbara. He then waited for his other kids to return from school for Christmas break. Children Loretta, 17, Eddy, Marianne, and Becky were then strangled to death before the bodies were dumped in a cesspit.
On Boxing Day, other family members arrived. First to die was his son Billy and his wife who were shot to death. Williams proceeded to strangle and drown their baby. Next, he shot to death his daughter Sheila and her husband along with the child he fathered with his daughter.
***
After Act 2 of his slaughter, he drove to a local Sears store and picked up gifts he had previously ordered for his family and then he went for a couple of pops at a local watering hole.
On Dec. 28, Williams went to a Walmart in nearby Russellville and purchased another gun. Kathy Cribbins Kendrick, a secretary at a local law firm, had spurned Williams’ sexual overtures so he shot her to death.
He then shot oil exec Russell “Rusty” Taylor, a former employer, wounding him. James David Chaffin was a stranger but Williams still killed him. He shot and wounded two more people before ordering an employee at gunpoint to call the cops.
When officers arrived, Williams, then 47, turned over his guns.
He told cops: “I’ve done what I wanted to do and now it’s all over. I’ve gotten everybody who hurt me.”
***
Simmons was facing a mountain of evidence at his upcoming murder trials and headshrinkers gave him the all-clear.
The first trial was for the murders of Kendrick and Chaffin. Sentence? Death. And Simmons was in favour of that.
“I, Ronald Gene Simmons, Sr., want it to be known that it is my wish and my desire that absolutely no action by anybody be taken to appeal or in any way change this sentence. It is further respectfully requested that this sentence be carried out expeditiously,” the mass killer wrote.
On Feb. 10, 1989, he was convicted of murdering his 14 family members. Again, the sentence was death. During the second trial, Simmons punched the prosecutor and tried to grab a deputy’s gun.
Simmons was pissed at DA John Bynum when he introduced letters from Simmons to his daughter Sheila expressing outrage at her revealing their incestuous sexual relationship that produced a child.
Again, he insisted on getting the big adios: “To those who oppose the death penalty – in my particular case, anything short of death would be cruel and unusual punishment.”
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The other cons on the alley of the doomed did not like Simmons’ stance fearing it would expedite their journey on the night train to nowhere.
Arkansas governor at the time (and later president) Bill Clinton signed Simmons’ execution warrant. On June 25, 1990, the killer got his wish and he was dispatched via lethal injection.
No surviving relatives claimed his body.
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