Ronald Gene Simmons

Simmons was sentenced to death sixteen times, and after refusing to appeal his sentence, was executed in Arkansas on June 25, 1990. His refusal to appeal was the subject of a 1990 Supreme Court Case, Whitmore v. Arkansas.

On May 31, Arkansas governor (later President) Bill Clinton signed Simmons' execution warrant, and on June 25, 1990, he died by the method he had chosen, lethal injection in the Cummins Unit. None of his surviving relatives would claim the body, and he was buried in a potter's field in Lincoln County, Arkansas.

He next went on trial for the murders of his 14 family members, and was found guilty on February 10, 1989, again being sentenced to death by lethal injection. As to motive, a family friend told investigators that Simmons' wife had been saving up money to divorce Simmons when the killings happened. Also, during the trial, Simmons had to be removed from the courtroom after the prosecutor, John Bynum, was punched by Simmons, and Simmons tried to grab a deputy's handgun, when Bynum introduced a letter between Simmons and his daughter, Sheila, where Simmons expressed anger that Sheila had revealed that he was the father of her child, and that he would see her in Hell. 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." The trial court conducted a hearing concerning Simmons' competence to waive further proceedings, and concluded that his decision was knowing and intelligent.

After his arrest, Simmons underwent a psychiatric evaluation where he was found fit to stand trial. He first went on trial for the murders of Kendrick and Chaffin, and was found guilty on May 12, 1988, being sentenced to death. He made an additional statement, under oath, supporting his sentence:

Simmons worked a string of low-paying jobs in the nearby town of Russellville, Arkansas. He quit a position as an accounts receivable clerk at Woodline Motor Freight after numerous reports of inappropriate sexual advances and went to work at a Sinclair Mini Mart for approximately a year and a half before quitting on December 18, 1987. By the time of the killings, the number of people within the home reduced to seven, as two of the older children (Billy and Sheila) moved out, married, and had children of their own.

Shortly before Christmas 1987, Simmons decided to kill all the members of his family. On the morning of December 22, he first killed his wife Rebecca and eldest son Gene by bludgeoning them with a hammer and shooting them with a .22-caliber pistol. He then killed his three-year-old granddaughter Barbara by strangulation. Simmons dumped the bodies in one of the cesspits he had forced his children to dig previously. Simmons then waited for his other children to return from school for Christmas break. Upon their arrival, he told them he had presents for them, but wanted to give them one at a time. He first killed his daughter, 17-year-old Loretta, whom Simmons strangled and held under the water in a rain barrel. The three other children, Eddy, Marianne, and Becky, were then killed in the same way, and subsequently dumped in the cesspit.

On April 3, 1981, Simmons was being investigated by the Cloudcroft, New Mexico Department of Human Services for allegations that he had fathered a child with his 17-year-old daughter, Sheila, whom he had been sexually abusing. Fearing arrest, Simmons fled New Mexico in late 1981 with his family, first to Ward, Arkansas, in Lonoke County, and then to Pope County near Dover, Arkansas in the summer of 1983. The family took up residence on a 13-acre tract of land 6.5 miles north of Dover that they would dub "Mockingbird Hill". The residence was constructed of two older-model mobile homes joined to form one large home, neither of which had a telephone nor indoor plumbing, and was surrounded by a makeshift privacy fence which was as high as 10 feet tall in some places. As a result of the home's lack of plumbing, Simmons ordered his family to dig three cesspits, one of which would eventually be where he disposed of some of their bodies.

On September 15, 1957, Simmons dropped out of school and joined the U.S. Navy, and was first stationed at Naval Station Bremerton in Washington, where he met Bersabe Rebecca "Becky" Ulibarri, whom he married in New Mexico on July 9, 1960. Over the next 18 years, the couple had seven children. In 1963, Simmons left the navy, and approximately two years later joined the U.S. Air Force. During his 20-year military career, Simmons was awarded a Bronze Star Medal, the Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross for his service as an airman, and the Airforce Ribbon for Excellent Marksmanship. Simmons retired from the air force and military service on November 30, 1979, with the rank of master sergeant.

Ronald Gene Simmons Sr. (July 15, 1940 – June 25, 1990) was an American mass murderer and spree killer who killed 16 people over a week-long period in Arkansas in 1987. A retired military serviceman, Simmons murdered fourteen members of his family, including a daughter he had sexually abused and the child he had fathered with her, as well as a former co-worker, and a stranger; he also wounded four others. He is the most prolific mass murderer in Arkansas history.

Ronald Gene Simmons was born on July 15, 1940, in Chicago, Illinois, to Loretta and William Simmons. On January 31, 1943, William Simmons died of a stroke and within a year, Simmons's mother had remarried, this time to William D. Griffen, a civil engineer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In 1946, the corps moved Griffen to Little Rock, Arkansas, the first of several transfers that would take the family across central Arkansas over the next decade.