It’s December 22, 1987, when Ronald Gene Simmons begins his killing spree on his own family in Arkansas. His rampage ended on December 28, 1987, leaving 14 members of his own family and 2 of his former coworkers dead.
Table Of Contents
Ronald Gene Simmons’s Upbringing
Ronald Gene Simmons was born on the 15th of July, 1940, in Chicago, Illinois. His parents are Loretta and William Simmons. Unfortunately Williams died of a stroke in January, 1943. Within a year Ronalds mom married again to William D. Griffen, who worked as a civil engineer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Because of William’s work, they were forced to move many times.
On September 15, 1957, Ronald dropped out of school and joined the U.S. Navy. His first station was Bremerton Naval Base in Washington. This is where he had met Bersabe Rebecca Ulibarri, who would go by the name Becky. The two instantly fell in love and got married in New Mexico on July 9, 1960.
Over the next 18 years, Becky and Ronald had a total of seven children. In 1963, Ronald decided to leave the navy and 2 years later, he joined the air force. On November 30, 1979, Ronald retired with the rank of master sergeant.
The Household of the Simmons Family
Let’s take a dive into the household of the Simmons. Ronald held the family isolated, they were mentally and physically abused and Ronald was a very dominant man, who liked to be in control over his wife and children. There was one daughter who got a special treatment, the 17 year old daughter Sheila. The reason for this is shocking; she was sexually abused by Ronald, and to make it even worse, in April, 1981, Ronald was being investigated by the Cloudcroft, New Mexico, Department of Human Services for allegations that he had fathered a child with his daughter Sheila. Ronald feared being arrested so much that he and his family had fled first to Ward(Lonoke County) in late 1981 and then to Dover(Poke County) in the summer of 1983.
In Dover, the family lived in a house with a big thirteen-acre tract of land, distanced from any neighbors, surrounded by woods. Here it was even easier for Ronald to isolate his family. The residence would later be known as “Mockingbird Hill”. The home did not have a telephone or indoor plumbing, and consisted of two older model mobile homes that were joined to form one large house. The property was surrounded by a privacy fence as high as ten feet tall in some places.
Ronald did not have a very easy time finding jobs at that time. He went from job to job to provide for all this land and his big family. At Woodline Motor Freight for example, where he had worked as an accounts receivable clerk, he was fired due to multiple reports of inappropriate sexual advances. After this he started to work at Sinclair Mini Mart where he had worked for about one year and a half before he quitted on December 18, 1987.
Around the house the children were forced to do a lot of tasks, such as cleaning, working on the land surrounding the house and other chores. One day however, Ronald had a very strange request. He asked the children to dig a big hole, which was later supposed to become a third family outhouse. As the children were used to doing work, they did not think anything of it and just obeyed what Ronald asked them to do.
The Murders
So now we came to December 1987. This is the dreadful time that all the horror happened in the Simmons family. Ronald is now 47 years old, his wife Becky is 46, Ronald Gene Simmons Jr, the oldest son is 26, Sheila 24, William 22, Loretta 17, Eddy 14, Marianne 11 and Rebecca who is only 8 years old. Ronald Jr, Sheila and William did not live with the family anymore, they had moved out, got married and now had children of their own.
It’s Tuesday, December 22, 1987. The oldest son Ronald Jr is visiting with his daughter Barbara, who is 3 years old. In the early morning, Ronald decides to take the car to Walmart, where he buys a handgun. With the gun he goes back to Mockingbird Hill, where he does the unthinkable. He murders his wife Becky, and his son Ronald Jr. He smacks them with a crowbar, and shoots them with the handgun he had just bought that morning. But then, what about his granddaughter Barbara? Sadly she is also targeted and Ronald strangles her to death. Allegedly, after killing his wife, son and granddaughter, he opens a beer, and drinks it. When the beer is finished, he takes the bodies to put them in the big hole that he made his children dig previously, supposedly for the third family outhouse.
If you thought Ronald was done after this triple killing of his family members, you are wrong. Later that day, the children who had been at school for the day, came back home. Loretta, Eddy, Marianne and Rebecca were not there when the previous killings had occurred. They came home excited because Christmas holidays had started, and father Ronald told them he had some presents for them. But, he would give the presents to each of the children privately. One by one the kids had to come to him to receive the present. Firstly, he calls Loretta, the oldest of the 4, to come with him. Close to where she had met her father, there was a rainborrow. Ronald had pushed her face in this, strangled her and eventually Loretta had drowned and suffocated from the water. After Eddy, Marianne and Rebecca also were told to come to him one by one, of course not knowing what happened before. All their lives ended in the same, horrible way. Drowned in the rain barrel and/or strangled. Ronald puts the bodies of his 4 children together with the other 3 bodies that were already in there, in the hole.
4 days pass by, it’s now December 26, 1987. The two other children, Sheila and William, visited for a family Christmass dinner. This is when the killing spree continued. William and his wife Renata arrived at Mockingbird Hill with their 1.5 year old son Trae. William and Renata are shot and killed, Trae is drowned. But it still doesn’t end here. Same time later Sheila arrives with her husband Dennis, they came with Sylvia, who is the daughter of Ronald and Sheila, now adopted by Dennis. Besides Sylvia the couple also brought their son Michael. As with William and Renata, Dennis and Sheila were also brutally shot and killed by Ronald. Sylvia and Michael were strangled.
Ronald lays the bodies, in a row on the dining table next to each other. Sheila was wrapped in the most beautiful tablecloth he could find, Trae and Michael were wrapped in trash bags. He takes the bodies of Michael and Trae outside and leaves them in abandoned cars in or around Mockingbird Hill. The bodies of Sheila, Sylvia and Dennis were still left in the house and weirdly enough, he left them like that for quite some time. Meanwhile he drives to a nearby town called Russellville, where he picks up Christmass presents that he had previously ordered, for his family that he just murdered. After this he goes to the local bar and starts drinking.
When he finishes at the bar, Ronald decides to go back home, where he opens some more beer and sits himself on the sofa and enjoys his beer. All this while 5 bodies are still laying around in the house. At this time, he had killed 14 people, all his family members, including sons and daughters in law and grandchildren. Sadly Ronald is still not done.
2 days after the murder of his own family, December 28, Ronald takes another trip to Russellville. He is wearing a straw hat and a leather jacket. Firstly he stops at Walmart, to buy a new handgun. After this he goes to his previous work, the law office Peel, Eddy and Gibbons Law Firm where he was fired a few years ago. He walks in, instantly shoots the receptionist Kathleen Kendrick, who was 24 years old. She was shot 4 times in the head. Other people present in the building had heard the gunshots and the screaming of Kathleen. They had called the police around 10:15 am. Unfortunately, when they arrived Ronald had already left the building.
Only 12 minutes after the report of a shooting at the law office, the police received another call of another shooting incident that had occurred. The call was made from a different location, a company named The Taylor Oil Company. The owner of this company is the same owner as from the Sinclair Mini Mart where Ronald had previously worked. Ronald walks in, starts looking for his previous boss called Russel Taylor. When he found Russel, he shot at him but luckily he survived the attack. This sadly doesn’t apply for someone else present in the building. He got fatally shot. His name is James David Chaffin, and he and Ronald had never met and did not know each other.
Lastly Ronald takes a stop at the Sinclair Mini Mart, where he was shooting on 2 employees who got injured but luckily did survive. Ronald however, is still not done. He is still targeting 1 last person, the former manager of Woodline Motor Freight, where again Ronald was fired previously. The manager, whom’s name was Joyce Butts, was shot multiple times on the head and chest. Miraculously she was badly injured, but she survived. Ronald then holds one of the coworkers Vicky Jackson at gunpoint, “I’ve come to do what I wanted to do. It’s all over now. I’ve gotten everybody who wanted to hurt me,” Ronald said to Vicky Jackson while he ordered her to call the police.
The Arrest and Verdict of Ronald Gene Simmons
Ronald Gene Simmons took the lives of 16 people in less than a week of time. Ronald is arrested and taken to jail. The police do a search at Mockingbird Hill and find the bodies of Ronalds entire family, with still 5 bodies inside the house. Ronald was found guilty of 16 counts of capital murder on February 10, 1989, he was sentenced to the death penalty in 1988 and was executed on June 25, 1990. His last words were: “Justice delayed finally be done is justifiable homicide.” No family members claimed the body, so Simmons was buried in a paupers’ plot at Lincoln Memorial Lawn in Varner (Lincoln County).