Ronald Gene Simmons

I had intended to spend the day mainly doing research on cases and then spend the day tomorrow putting them together to publish. That is how I have been trying to do things lately... spend one day on research and one day on composing. Yesterday I did two very long blogs and then a short one and I started researching more late last night. I had researched two and then I started looking into this one. This case is a bit unique.

We have seen family annihilators, those who murder their entire family, or at least those who live with them. We have also seen many of those annihilators then kill themselves. Then there are the annihilators like John List who murdered his family and then disappeared before being capture several decades later. In this case, after finishing what he considered to be his goals Ronald Gene Simmons had someone call the police and he waited patiently until they arrived and without resistance turned himself in even if he did not tell them about all of the bodies.

We have also seen plenty of cases of mass murder and spree killers. These types of killings are defined differently. A mass murder consists of several people being murdered at one time and in one place. School shootings would qualify as a mass murder if there are multiple deaths. Many consider the Jonestown Massacre as a mass murder. Spree killers on the other hand kill many people over a short period, or a period of days and generally in multiple locations.

What you do not see often are cases in which one killer falls into all three categories. The only one off the top of my head that I can think that even qualifies as being close would be that of Charles Whitman. Whitman killed his wife and mother at their separate homes and then went to the top of the tower at the University of Texas and opened fire, killing several and wounding many more before dying himself. I also want to point out that while Whitman is often vilified, as he likely should be I suppose, upon his death it was discovered that he had a brain tumor which explained to those who knew him the personality changes they had seen. Even still when you get down to it while Whitman does qualify as a family annihilator by killing his wife and mother and also falls into the other two categories of mass murderer (the shooting from the tower) and spree killer (he killed in multiple areas) he does not even begin to touch Ronald Gene Simmons and his crimes.

From the outside Ronald Gene Simmons may sound like an upstanding individual. But, even those who only knew him from afar seemed to fear him or thought something did not seem not right with him and those closest to him knew something was not right with him. Ronald dropped out of school in 1957 and joined the Navy. From everything I found it was said that not long later he met his future wife Bersabe “Becky” Ulibarri in Washington State and that they married on July 9, 1960 and that the couple would have seven children together. I do have a bit of a question though as it is reported that his first child, Ronald “Gene” Simmons Jr. was born in 1958. Nothing indicated that Becky was not “Gene's” mother but I am unsure if the dates are technically correct due to the time period. It was still around the time in which people, for the most part, but obviously not always, got married when the woman got pregnant. Regardless of that, between 1963 and 1979 Becky and Ronald would have six more children, Sheila, Billy, Loretta, Eddy, Marianne and Becky.

Ronald had been born in Chicago but his father died when he was still a toddler and when his mother remarried, her husband worked for the Army Air Corp and the family moved to Arkansas. It was said that they moved around Arkansas for most of his formative years. In 1963 Ronald left the Navy and two years later he joined the Air Force. In the Air Force he was known as an airman and fairly decorated it seems. What is not known is if the family remained living in New Mexico, where Becky was from, the entire time or they simply returned there in November of 1979 when Ronald retired from the Air Force as a Master Sergeant.

In 1981 the Department of Family Services had gotten a tip that something was not right in the Simmons home. There were allegations that Ronald was sexually abusing his seventeen year old daughter, Sheila. Friends of Sheila's would say that Ronald had always seemed odd around the house and they had seen him giving her what they called “more than friendly kisses good-bye each morning.” Apparently not only did Sheila talk to the authorities and admitted to the sexual abuse, she also admitted that she was pregnant by her father. It was reported that the New Mexico authorities filed charges but there was no mention of Ronald being arrested. New Mexico would later say that the charges were dropped for two reasons. One, they insisted that the family refused to cooperate and wanted the charges dropped and secondly the family then “fled” to Arkansas.

First the family settled in Ward Arkansas. It seems that it was probably here that Sheila would give birth to Sylvia in June of 1981. In the summer of 1983 the family moved to Dover Arkansas. They bought an isolated piece of land that was thirteen acres. By all accounts it was just simply the land without a house and the family took two old mobile homes and placed them together to make one bit house. While it seems there was electricity in the house there was not plumbing or a phone. It is unclear if they erected an outhouse or what they did when it came to that issue.

During this time Ronald seemed to go from job to job to job. And, by all accounts things at home were not good. It was said that Becky had either left him several times, only to return or that she had attempted to leave several times and failed. By late 1987 it seems that only four of their children were living at home, Loretta, Eddy, Marianne and “Little” Becky. It is also possible that “Gene” Jr. was also living there with his three year old daughter, Barbara but that is not clear. Both “Billy” and Sheila had moved out and were married with children. It also appears that when Sheila left home she had taken Sylvia with her. It is not clear whether Sheila's husband, Dennis McNulty adopted Sylvia or not but it does appear that she possibly carried the McNulty name by 1987.

While in the end, after going on a shooting rampage on December 28, 1987 Ronald peacefully turned himself into the police, he had begun his question several days before and no one was aware. On December 28^th he went into a law firm in Russellville and shot twenty-four year old Kathy Kendrick four times in the head. Then he went to Taylor Oil Company owned by Rusty Taylor. Taylor apparently owned a Sinclair Mini-Mart that Ronald had recently worked. Taylor was shot and he survived but employee Jim Chaffin was not so lucky as he died at the scene. Next Ronald went to the Mini-Mart. Ronald had worked there a little over a year and had quit about ten days before. Two employees of the store were shot but they survived. Then Ronald headed to Woodline Motor Freight. It is not clear how long he had worked there previously but it was said that he was forced to quit after several reports were made against him involving “inappropriate sexual advances.” Joyce Butts had been either his supervisor or in human resources and had pushed the issue. Butts was shot in the head and chest and by some miracle she would later survive.

After shooting Joyce Butts Ronald walked out of her office, aimed a gun at the secretary and ordered her to call the police. He sat down and chatted with her, waiting on the police. He was said to have told her “I've gotten everybody who wanted to hurt me.” When the authorities got there he willingly handed over his weapon and offered no resistance as he was being arrested. Once he was in custody investigators attempted to reach his family. It was unclear if they were just wanting to talk to them about what had happened and get more details, if they wanted to inform them of what was going on, or if something Ronald said after being arrested that indicated they needed to go check his home. Either way without a telephone going to the house was the only way to reach them anyway.

It is unclear what the authorities may have first seen that alerted them that something was seriously wrong at this home. By the time it was all over though they would find seven bodies in a hole in the back yard, five bodies in the front room near the Christmas tree and two more in two abandoned cars on the property. All fourteen people were relatives of Ronald Gene Simmons. This brought his body count up from two to sixteen not to mention the four people he had injured on his earlier spree. It seems that Ronald would tell them how he had done everything considering there seems to be play by play description on who was murdered when and how.

A few weeks prior to the murders it was said that Ronald had his children dig a large ditch that was four feet deep in the backyard alleging it was for an outhouse. Instead this hole was used to hold seven bodies of his family. Then on December 22^nd Ronald shot his forty-six year old wife, Becky and his oldest son, twenty-six year old Gene Jr. He then strangled Gene's three year old daughter, Barbara. It is unclear if left the bodies in the home and moved them later with the others or he moved them while he awaited his other four children to return home. It is also not clear whether the four children all came in together or if they came home separately. Either he told each child that he had a gift for them and wanted to give it to them each one alone. He would take the children, seventeen year old Loretta, fourteen year old Eddy, eleven year old Marianne and eight year old Becky, one by one, out the back door. He began by strangling them and would then hold their heads under water in a rain barrel. Presumably he would then place that child's body in the ditch they had dug and go in to get the next child. After he had murdered his children he went back into the house and got the bodies of his wife, son and granddaughter and placed them in the ditch with his four youngest children.

For the next four days it seemed to be “business as usual” for Ronald until the 26^th when the rest of his family was coming over for after Christmas celebrations. First to arrive was twenty-two year old William Henry “Billy” II, his twenty-one year old wife, Renata, and their twenty month old son, William Henry “Trae” III. Ronald shot both Billy and Renata and strangled the young boy. Next to come was twenty-four year old Sheila, her thirty-three year old husband, Dennis McNulty, six year old Sylvia, who Ronald had fathered with Sheila, and the couple's twenty-one month old son, Michael. Just as he had done with Billy and Renata, Ronald shot both Sylvia and Ronald and then strangled the children. He took the bodies of all of the adults and six year old Sylvia and placed them in the front room. They were covered with coats, save Sylvia who was covered with a table cloth. He then took the bodies of his two young grandson, Trae and Michael and after wrapping them in plastic, placed them in the trunks of two abandoned cars on the property.

Ronald then left the house and went to a bar for a while. He then returned home and seemingly unbothered with the five bodies in his front room, sat down drinking beer and watching television. Then two days later he woke up, did his last (although the first known) killing spree and turned himself into authorities. Before he would be taken to trial he was sent to the Arkansas State Mental Hospital for evaluation. The doctors there claimed he was sane and capable to stand trial.

Ronald's first trial would occur in May of 1988. He was tried for the murders of Kathy Kendrick and Jim Chaffin, the two people he had murdered in his spree on the last day. It was said that his motive for Kathy's murder was that she had dismissed him when he attempted to make advances towards her. It is unclear whether Kathy was married at the time of her murder but she did have at least one young son. According to findagrave.com her son would have been about three at the time of her death. Her son, Ronald Jr. (yes, I realize there are a lot of Ronald's here) would die in 2017 and his father, Ronald had died in 2016. By the way if you like this sort of thing you should go to findagrave and check out Ronald and Ronald Jr's headstones. They are amazing!! At any rate when Ronald Sr. died Kathy was not listed as having preceded him in death which indicates that they were not married when she was murdered. At the time of his death he had two son, one being Ronald Jr., and a daughter but I am unsure if the other two children were Kathy's as I could not find her obituary.

On May 12, 1988 Ronald Simmons was convicted on two counts of murder and two days later he was given a sentence of death, times two plus one hundred and forty-seven years. I can only assume that the more than one hundred years stemmed from other charges from the spree on that day. It is unclear what kind of a defense was presented at all in this trial, or in the trial that would follow as by all accounts Ronald welcomed the death penalty.

Ronald's second trial began in February of 1989. Again, I cannot tell you what the defense presented but I can say that the prosecutors alleged (and it seems the defense would agree to reporters later) that the motive behind the murders of his family had to do with the fact that Becky was planning to leave him. It was said that shortly before the murders she had wrote to one of her son's, “I don't want to live the rest of my life with Dad. I am a prisoner here, and the kids, too. Every time I think of freedom, I want out as soon as possible.” It was not clear where this letter was found but it is possible it was found with another one in a bank safe. The second letter was something that Ronald had written to Sheila. It stated, “You have destroyed me, and you have destroyed my trust in you. I will see you in hell.” It is unclear if this was written around the time the of the sexual abuse allegations or possibly after she decided to move out of the home and get married. The fact that it was found where it was does indicate that someone, likely Becky, was collecting things to help her obtain a divorce and maybe have charges brought against Ronald. There was no word of anything else of such being found. But, when the prosecutor, John Bynum read the letter Ronald had written to Sheila in court, Ronald lost it. Somehow he made his way to the prosecutors table and punched Bynum in the face. He then attempted to get the firearm carried by the guard in the courtroom. He failed and he was removed from the court in chains. On February 10, 1989 he was found guilty and given fourteen more death sentences. At the end of the trial he stated, “In my particular case, anything short of death would be cruel and unusual punishment.”

Ronald's defense attorney's would tell reporters that it was his opinion that Ronald felt his family was going to kill him so he “got to them first.” He also said if New Mexico had followed through on the sexual abuse charges in 1981 against Sheila this likely would not have happened.

Ronald refused to appeal his cases and that caused a whole new set of problems for him. First, the courts had him evaluated again to see if he was considered “sane” to make this choice on his own. Once again doctors agreed that he was sane. The second problem this caused Ronald is that even on death row he had to be isolated from the other inmates. His life was continually threatened. One would think that his life was threatened because of the fact of the young children he murdered, but that was not the case. The other inmates on death row felt that by not appealing his case he was putting all of their cases in jeopardy. Most in there were not only arguing to get their sentences reduced but the largest argument on every death row is that the death penalty is unconstitutional. In fact, despite the fact that he refused to appeal his case, two people attempted to do so on his behalf.

The first to appeal Ronald's case was a Catholic priest that worked with the inmates named Louis Fraz. He was the first to attempt to use what is called “next friend” allowing him to appeal on Ronald's behalf. The purpose however of “next friend” is so that someone can file motions and other court things for people who are disabled in some way or unable to file for themselves. In general that person is the next of kin to the person. It is not clear but it kind of appears that Fraz's petition and one filed by Jonas Whitmore, a death row inmate, were filed around the same time. Fraz's petition was denied first but it was the decision in Whitmore that was published. In the meantime, the then Governor, and future President, Bill Clinton had signed Ronald's death warrant. It was said Ronald was even eating what he thought was his last meal when the order came down from the court issuing a stay so that Whitmore's petition could be looked at. On April 24, 1990 the courts denied Whitmore's petition. The long and the short of it was that Ronald was not disabled, he had been deemed sane, and Whitmore had no standing in petitioning the court for him.

Ronald Gene Simmons was executed by lethal injection at the age of forty-nine on June 25, 1990. It was stated that no one claimed his body. I was left to wonder if there was anyone left alive to even do so.