1987 — Dec 22, 26, 28, R. Gene Simmons Killing Spree, Dover, Russellville, AR — 16

— 16 Blanco, Juan Ignacio. Murderpedia. “Ronald Gene Simmons, Sr.” 2-28-2013 accessed.
— 16 Clark County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, IN. “Ronald Gene Simmons.”
— 16 Duwe, Grant. Mass Murder in the United States: A History. McFarland, 2007, p. 28.
— 16 Kudlac, Christopher S. Public Executions. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007, p. 65.
— 16 OJP, DOJ. Community Crisis Response Team Training Manual: 2nd Ed. (Appendix D).

Narrative Information

Blanco: “Ronald Gene Simmons was a retired Air Force Sergeant. Over the Christmas holidays in 1987, he methodically executed 14 members of his family: 6 daughters, 3 sons, 2 grandsons, 1 son-in-law, 1 daughter-in-law and his wife. (One of his daughters was also his granddaughter). Two days later, he went into town and killed two others.

“Shortly before Christmas 1987, Simmons decided to kill all the members of his family. On the morning of 22 December, he first killed his son Gene and his long-suffering wife Rebecca at his home in Dover, Arkansas, by shooting them with a .22 caliber pistol.

“Thereafter he killed his three-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. First to receive her “gift” was his eldest daughter, seventeen-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 26 December, the remaining members of the family arrived for their Christmas visit. The first to be killed was Simmons’s son Billy and his wife Renata; both were shot dead. Then their son Trae was strangled and drowned, soon followed by their daughter Sheila and her husband, Dennis McNulty, who were both shot dead.

“Ronald Simmons’s child by his own daughter, Sylvia Gail, was strangled, and finally his 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’s 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 Monday, 28 December, Simmons drove into Russellville, and at a law office shot dead the receptionist, a young woman named Kathy Kendrick, with whom he had been infatuated and who 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, ending his killing spree. Simmons simply sat in the office and chatted to one of the secretaries whilst waiting for the police. When they arrived, he handed over his gun and surrendered without any resistance.

“Simmons was charged with sixteen counts of murder, found guilty, and sentenced to death. He refused to appeal his death sentence, stating, “To those who oppose the death penalty in my particular case, anything short of death would be cruel and unusual punishment.”….

“On 31 May, Arkansas governor (later president) Bill Clinton signed Simmons’ execution warrant, and on 25 June 1990 he died, by the method he had chosen, lethal injection.” (Blanco, Juan Ignacio. Murderpedia. “Ronald Gene Simmons, Sr.” 2-28-2013 accessed.)

Clark County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office: Provides a list and names of victims, dates of death, method of murder for each, relationship to Simmons, and execution information.

Kudlac: “On Dec. 28, 1987, Simmons went on the attack in Russellville, Arkansas, randomly shooting and killing two people and wounding three others. When police searched his home, they found 14 members of his family, all murdered.”

Sources

Blanco, Juan Ignacio. “Ronald Gene Simmons, Sr.” Murderpedia. Accessed 2-28-2013 at: http://murderpedia.org/male.S/s1/simmons-ronald-gene.htm

Clark County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, IN. “Ronald Gene Simmons.” Accessed 10-13-2016 at: http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/US/simmons131.htm

Duwe, Grant. Mass Murder in the United States: A History. McFarland, 2007.

Kudlac, Christopher S. Public Executions. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007, 182 pages. Partially digitized by Google. Accessed at: http://books.google.com/books?id=FEo7J7x2ta8C

Office of Justice Programs, United States Department of Justice. Community Crisis Response Team Training Manual: Second Edition (Appendix D: Catastrophes Used as Reference Points in Training Curricula). Washington, DC: OJP, U.S. Department of Justice. Accessed at: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/ovc/publications/infores/crt/pdftxt/appendd.txt