12/28/1987 - The week long murderous rampage of sexual lunatic, Ronald Gene Simmons Sr., ends with the monster's arrest for sixteen killings (all but two members of his own family, the youngest a grandson of 20 months named William H. "Trae" Simmons III, the oldest, his 46-year-old wife, Bersabe Rebecca "Becky" Ulibarri Simmons) by local police at the Russellville, Arkansas offices of the Woodline Motor Freight Company.
Not Kris Kringle!
Born on July 15, 1940 in Chicago, Illinois to William and Loretta Simmons, the life of Ronald Simmons Sr. goes off the rails for the first time when less than three years later his natural father has a massive stroke and dies. Looking for a provider, in less than a year Simmons' mother marries a civilian engineer in U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, William Davenport Griffen, and Simmons begins manifesting narcissistic and controlling behaviors that are red flags for the future ... hitting his younger siblings, manipulating his parents, erupting in fits of rage and never admitting he is wrong about anything (his younger brother will describe him as a tyrant and bully). Beginning a decade of transfers to new locations, on orders from the U.S. Army, the family pulls up stakes in 1946 and moves to Little Rock, Arkansas. Tiring of his situation obeying the declarations of Griffen, at seventeen Simmons drops out of high school and joins the U.S. Navy. Assigned to duties at the Bremerton, Washington Naval Station, at a USO dance Simmons meets the woman he will love, abuse, and murder, "Becky" Simmons (a USO volunteer from the small town of Walsenburg, Colorado). The couple will be wed in New Mexico in 1960, and over the course of the next 18 years, the pair will have seven children. Thinking his military talents could be better used in the sky, in 1963 he quits the Navy and enlists in the United States Air Force (there is also a brief interlude in San Francisco in which Simmons works for a bank before leaving when his "know-it-all" attitude prevents promotions from coming his way). Structure over chaos, discipline in place of disorder, for twenty-two years, service in the military keeps Simmons from giving in to the darkness whispering inside his head, and he will be awarded a bronze star for bravery during 1968's Tet Offensive, the Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross for his service as an airman, and an Airforce Ribbon for Excellent Marksmanship (while Simmons is in Vietnam working for the Office of Special Investigations, he gets to live in civilian quarters in Saigon where he has maid service, a cook, and laundry delivered to the front door, meanwhile back in the States, his bride and three young children live in a tiny travel trailer on her parents' property on the small stipend of $40 a month) . He retires from military service in November of 1979 as a Master Sergeant.
Bremerton
"Becky" Simmons
In The Military
After getting out of the service, Simmons puts down roots in New Mexico, near the small mountain village of Cloudcroft (working for the Air Force's Computer Science Division as a civil servant employee), and it is there that he begins embracing the monster inside him. Ruling a fiefdom that consists solely of his own wife and children, King Ronald refuses to let his wife learn how to drive, schedules are rigidly set and followed for doing the laundry, eating meals, and cleaning, no one is allowed to answer the front door without permission from Simmons, Simmons opens the letters of his family going in or coming out, and commands the allocation of postage stamps, he takes care of all the finances, he spends most of time in a darkened room watching TV, and when any outsider sees him, he seems to always be glaring and holding a half drunk beer in his hand ... and his meek wife is beaten when she doesn't go along with her husband's commands. Real trouble begins though when after seven children and numerous arguments over the matter, Becky talks Ronald into allowing her to have a tubal ligation to prevent any future pregnancies. The unforeseeable result of the operation though is that Simmons stops having sex with his wife and begins grooming his daughter, Sheila Marie, to replace her mother. Duped by gifts of clothing, jewelry, money and the attention of being called her father's "little princess" and "ladybug," the youngest Simmons is being molested by King Ronald by the time she is fifteen, and by her seventeenth year, she is pregnant with a baby that will be both her daughter and sister. And of course, the local authorities eventually find out (not hard when Daddy is seen French kissing his daughter when he drops her off for school, and with the daughter admitting who the father of her child is when she is questioned) and the Department of Human Services for New Mexico begin proceedings against Simmons, who in 1981, suddenly vanishes from the community, along with his family.
Sheila Simmons
Simmons And Some Of His Family
Hiding from New Mexico justice, Simmons and his family move to the town of Ward located in Arkansas' Lonoke County, and then, wanting even more security, he takes the family to the state's Pope County and the small town of Dover (a community of approximately 529 households), where the clan puts down stakes on 13 acres of land 6.5 miles north of town, at a densely wooded site that will become known as Mockingbird Hill. Using his family as slave labor, the family builds King Ronald a "palace" at the end of rutted red clay road (which Simmons names "Little Princess Lane" after his favorite daughter) that consists of two mobile homes jury-rigged together into one structure that has eight rooms, no indoor plumbing (there are two outhouses and a well to take care of the family's bathing, drinking, and bathroom business), no telephone, and is surrounded by a barrier wall, in some places ten feet tall, studded with homemade "NO TRESPASSING" signs, that is made of bricks, concrete blocks, and lots and lots of barbed wire. Inside the complex there are piles of junk Simmons calls "building materials" that includes abandoned broken bicycles and numerous rusty Schlitz beer cans, a small chicken coop and occupants (beneath a hand written sign that proclaims the location to be a "Snake Pit"), and there are several derelict automobiles up on blocks about the property filled with yellow buckets of firewood and soiled clothing; a dump patrolled by two mutts named Bo and Duke operating out of a makeshift wooden crate doghouses. Reigning over his small kingdom, trying to make ends meet, Simmons takes jobs as a file clerk for the Veteran's Administration Medical Center of Little Rock, in a recruiting office, at a Sinclair Mini-Mart in the nearby town of Russellville, as a clerk at Russellville's Woodline Motor Freight, and a host of menial jobs in the area. Moving back to Arkansas to recreate the favorite part of his childhood, by 1987, Simmons is ruling a kingdom that is getting smaller and smaller and seemingly more rebellious with every passing day as Sheila (no longer Senior's favorite, on her leaving she is told by her father that he will see her in hell), Ronald Junior, and William II, all move out and start families of their own, 17-year-old daughter Loretta refuses to be her father's next bed buddy, and 46-year-old Becky calls her husband names behind his back ("fatso" is the kindest moniker), and backed by her older children, plots to leave King Ronald after the Christmas holidays are over, while threatening to tell the authorities about what her husband has been doing with his eldest daughter. Almost human at Christmas time, the family decides to get together for one final celebration before their mother departs Mockingbird Hill. Unbeknownst to the family, the King is making plans of his own for the season which begin with ordering his children to dig a large four-foot deep hole about 75 yards away from their home that he says is to serve as a third outhouse.
Sheila And Husband Dennis McNulty
On December 18, 1987, King Ronald quits his job at the Russellville Sinclair Mini Mart, goes home and starts adding out assignments to his family for getting Mockingbird Hill ready for the holidays; despite his personality disorders, Simmons loves Christmas, and the home gets a Christmas tree, decorations, and an assortment of shiny wrapped gifts. Four days later and three days before Christmas, the monster begins celebrating the holiday early with the seven members of his family living at the Dover complex. Wearing normal as a mask, King Ronald oversees the Tuesday morning rituals of sending members of his family off to school ... Loretta (17), Eddy (14), Marianne (11), and Rebecca (8). When the bus the youngsters ride is gone, Simmons drives to the local Walmart, buys a .22 handgun, and then with his purchase in hand (though he already has three guns at home), lets his mask drop, and with the new gun and an old crowbar, starts the winnowing of his family he has decided upon. First to go is his oldest child and his namesake, there while separated from his wife while trying to protect his mother until she can leave King Ronald, 29-year-old Ronald Gene Simmons, Jr. ... Junior is hit upon the head and shoulders with the crowbar, tries to fight back (in his struggle to survive, the young man leaves bloody palm prints on one wall of the home), and for his efforts, is shot to death five times, once in the chest and then four more times in the face and head. First murder completed, Simmons then gives his long suffering 46-year-old wife the same treatment, bludgeoning and then shooting his wife to death in her bedroom. Adults gone, the monster then strangles his 3-year-old granddaughter, Barbara, to death using a ligature of fishing line. First wave of killings completed, the maniac father then treats himself to a beer before dragging the corpses outside, placing them in a wheelbarrow and depositing them in the pit his children had recently dug. At the pit the bodies have kerosene poured on them to mask the smells of decay, then they are wrapped in green garbage bags tied with rope, before being covered by a sheet of corrugated tin and barbed wire, along with a thin layer of dirt. Then Simmons waits for the four children he sent off to school earlier in the day. Excited to begin their holiday season, when the school bus drops the children off, Simmons gathers them together and tells them he has "special" gifts for each of them that he wants to bestow to them privately. Lie accepted, in order of their births and ability to upset his plans, Simmons then strangles and drowns in a rain barrel Loretta, Eddy, Marianne, and Rebecca, then they too are moved into the pit.
Downtown - Russellville
First murders completed, Simmons spends the time leading up to Christmas watching TV, drinking beer at the death house, and goes into town to pickup some of the items he has purchased for his family for the holiday ... two girl's watches, a woman's hair styling machine, a box of 24 children's books, and an assortment of board games. On the day after Christmas, more members of the Simmons clan show up for a holiday visit and family dinner. Over from the small town of Fordyce in Arkansas' Dallas County, the first group of relatives to arrive at Mockingbird Hill on Saturday at midday are the threesome of William "Billy" Simmons II (22), his wife, Renata Simmons (21), and their son, youngster, William H. "Trae" Simmons III (20 months old). Shortly after entering his father's home, as they are removing their coats, the two adults are shot and killed (Billy is shot once in the head, while Renata gets five bullets in her head and two in her neck), and then Trae gets King Ronald's strangle and drown treatment. Within the hour, the final batch of family members arrives after driving up from their home in Texas ... Dennis McNulty (33), his wife and former father play toy, Sheila Simmons McNulty (24), the daughter and granddaughter of Senior, Sylvia Gail McNulty (6), and the McNulty's son of 21 months, Michael McNulty. First into the house is Sheila, who sees the bodies of her brother and his family laying on the living room floor near the home's twinkling Christmas tree, screams, and is shot in the head by her father. Hearing the scream, McNulty rushes into the house and he also gets shot in the head, then the monster father strangles and drowns Sylvia and the infant. Seven more murders added to the maniacs tally and family slaughtered, Simmons puts both infants in plastic and then places their corpses in the trunks of two of the derelict cars on the property. That task completed, he then lays the bodies remaining in the house, except for Sheila, in a neat row in the living room, and puts coats over the dead. As in life, only Sheila is treated differently. Taken into her former room, Sheila is placed on the room's bed and then wrapped in her mother's favorite tablecloth. Murders over for the moment, Simmons then spends the rest of the weekend drinking beer (he also goes out to a local saloon for a taste of hard liquor), watching television, and thinking about other people he believes have done him wrong, deciding that they should also pay.
"Love" Child, Sylvia Gail
Family Memorial
Up to take care of his last holiday errands, on Monday morning, Simmons drives into town in his dead son's brown Toyoda Corolla. First stop is the local Walmart, where Simmons buys and walks out of the store with another .22 pistol. From the Walmart, Simmons drives to the law offices of Peel, Eddy and Gibbons, walks in and shoots to death the firm's 24-year-old secretary/receptionist, Kathleen "Kathy" Cribbins Kendrick, a woman on Simmons death list for spurning, and reporting, King Ronald's' sexual advances while the pair worked at Woodline Motor Freight (survived by a husband and infant son, she is shot four times in the head). It is 10:17 in the morning and his visit to the law firm lasts all of 45 seconds. Returning to his ride, Simmons then drives to the Taylor Oil Company seeking to gift retribution on 38-year-old Russell "Rusty" Taylor, the owner of the Sinclair Mini-Mart the monster once worked for (Taylor's sin has been not paying Simmons enough). At the oil company, Simmons finds Taylor and shoots the man in the face (he will live), pivots, and kills 34-year-old James David Chaffin as the married father of four enters the business (an off-duty firefighter, there trying to make extra money at a second holiday job). Then, Simmons turns his weapon on the last occupant of the office, bookkeeper Juli Money (a mother of two children, a boy of 8 and a girl of 15, she has just begun her second hour of her first day on her new job), returning to the area from taking a bathroom break in the company's warehouse. Grazed in the head by a Simmons' slug, she crashes into a stack of crates, where, when she pops up only wounded, she points her fingers at the killer and scares him out of the office with her 'pretend" gun. The attack lasts less than a minute, with police being called at 10:27. Not yet done, seeking his next victim, Simmons drives three miles up US 64 to the mini-mart he once worked at, looking for the place's proprietor, 38-year-old David Salyer. Entering the store looking for his old boss, Simmons first comes upon 46-year-old Roberta Woolery at the store's front cash register, pulls one of his pistols and shoots her twice without saying a word (she will survive her facial and shoulder injuries). Drawn by the shot from where he is drinking a cup of coffee, Salyer sees the gunman turn his way, and trying to defend himself, throws a chair at Simmons, who rewards the effort by firing two rounds at the man (one of which wounds Salyer in the head), but fails to kill him when a customer and friend of the proprietor takes up a position behind a stack of groceries and begins throwing cans of Coke at Simmons' head, forcing the killer to flee the business. Already frantically driving from crime scene to crime scene in Russellville, as many businesses respond to the lights and sirens by locking their doors, the call to come to the mini-mart is received by police at 10:39.
Kendrick's Grave
Chaffin's Grave
Three malicious paybacks given, Simmons finally drives to the Woodline Motor's office to shoot his former supervisor and the woman that chastised him for his harassment of Kathy Kendrick, Joyce Butts. Seeing Butts drop to the floor after Simmons shoots her twice (she will survive, but never fully recover from being wounded in the chest and head), the maniac locks himself in the computer room of the prison, where he tries to surrender to terrified employee, Vicky Jackson. Refusing to take the gun Simmons offers her, she instead calls the police after her former co-worker tells her, "I just wanted to kill Joyce. Just Joyce. I've come to do what I wanted to do. It's all over now. I've gotten everybody who wanted to hurt me." Call from Jackson received at by the local authorities at 10:48, the rampage ends a few minutes (Simmons has been in town roughly an hour) later when police finally catch up with Simmons and he peacefully surrenders his two weapons ... an H&R .22 with a 3-inch barrel commonly known as a Saturday Night Special, and a Ruger .22 with a 9 1/2-inch barrel. Trying to figure out what has happened and knowing there is no phone at Mockingbird Hill, police drive out to the compound to talk to Mrs. Simmons and discover an even ghastlier crime scene then back in town; fourteen bodies of the Simmons Clan scattered about the property; the largest familicide in United States history.
Under Arrest
Refusing to talk about anything, Simmons is sent to the Arkansas State Hospital in Little Rock for evaluation of whether he is sane enough to stand trial. Competency test given by staff psychiatrist, Dr. Irving Kuo, passed, Simmons goes on trial before Judge John Samuel Patterson in the spring of 1988 for the murders of Kendrick and Chaffin; he is prosecuted by John Bynum and handling the dubious defense of the maniac are court appointed attorneys, Robert E. "Doc" Irwin and John Harris. Jury chosen in six hours, Simmons only participation in the trial is to ask the court to give him the death penalty. Wish granted, after a jury of his peers finds Simmons guilty of the two deaths, Patterson sentences him to death by legal injection, and just in case the monster proves to be some kind of magician and somehow survives his execution, he is also given 147 yeas behind bars. At Simmons' second trial, for the massacre of his family, events in the courthouse get a little more lively ... protesting the use of a note documenting the love/hate relationship between Senior and Sheila, the killer flies into a rage and punches Bynum in the face when the prosecutor uses the document to explain a possible motive for the deaths, then struggles with court personnel while grasping for a bailiff's weapon and is taken back to his cell in chains. Found guilty of fourteen more murders, Simmons is again given the death sentence for his crimes, and refuses to appeal. Execution scheduled for 1989, despite Simmons not appealing the sentence, a priest (Reverend Louis Franz) and a fellow death sentence convict (Jonas Whitmore) appeal as "friends" of the defendant (believing the move damages other convict's appeals, Simmons is kept away from other inmate at the Arkansas state prison) the actual execution slips into a new decade. Appeal shot down (the Arkansas Supreme Court votes 7-2 to reject the appeal), Simmons execution warrant is signed by Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton (yeah, that clown) on May 31, 1990. Refusing to have any visitors, including lawyers and members of the clergy, Simmons is watched 24/7 by guards, does a little reading, watches some TV, stares at the walls of his cell, and seems to only enjoy slaughtering the cockroaches that infest the prison. Last meal a supper of medium rare filet mignon, two raw onions, tomato slices, a banana, six dinner rolls and a 7-Up, the killer is strapped to the death table in the Cummins Unit, and on the Monday night of June 25, 1990, the first of three lethal chemicals is shot into Simmons at 9:07, with the killer pronounced dead at 9:24, 17 minutes later. The monster's last words are, "Justice delayed finally be done is justifiable homicide." It is the first execution in Arkansas since 1976 and the first in the state to take place by way of lethal injection. Body unclaimed by any surviving members of Simmons' family, the killer is buried in a pauper's grave at the Lincoln Memorial Lawn Cemetery in Varner, Arkansas.
Arriving For His Psych Evaluation
Death House
No comments:
Post a Comment