The Man Who Killed 14 Family Members During Christmas

In Arkansas in 1987, Ronald Gene Simmons Sr., an American mass murderer and serial killer, killed 16 people over the course of a week.

Ronald Gene Simmons was born on July 15, 1940, in Chicago, Illinois. He dropped out of school on September 15, 1957, to join the U.S. Navy. He was initially based at Naval Station Bremerton in Washington, where he met Bersabe Rebecca "Becky" Ulibarri, whom he later married on July 9, 1960, in New Mexico. Seven children were born to the couple over the next 18 years.

The Cloudcroft, New Mexico, Department of Human Services was looking into Simmons on April 3, 1981, because of claims that he had fathered a child with his daughter Sheila who was 17. Simmons and his family fled New Mexico in late 1981 for Pope County, close to Dover, Arkansas, out of fear of being arrested.

The family took up residence on a 13-acre tract of land. A handmade private fence that reached as high as 10 feet in some areas surrounded the house, which was made of two older-model mobile homes that were connected to create one enormous house. Neither of the residences had indoor plumbing or a phone. Because there was no plumbing in the house, Simmons instructed his family to dig three cesspits.

In 1987, just before Christmas, Simmons made the decision to murder his entire family.

He initially murdered his wife Rebecca and oldest son Gene on December 22  by hitting them with a hammer and shooting them with a.22-caliber revolver. Barbara, his three-year-old granddaughter, was then strangled to death. The bodies were dumped in one of the cesspits he had previously made his kids dig.

Simmons then waited for his other children to return from school for Christmas break. When they arrived, he told them that he had gifts for them but would like to present them one at a time. First, he killed his daughter Loretta, 17, by strangling her and holding her under water in a rain barrel. The three other children were then killed in the same way, and subsequently dumped in the cesspit.

The rest of the family had been invited over for the holidays by Simmons, so they arrived at the house around noon on December 26.

The first to be killed were Simmons' son Billy and his wife Renata, who were both shot dead. Then he drowned and strangled Trae, their 20-month-old son. Simmons also shot and killed his oldest daughter, Sheila (whom he had sexually abused), and her husband, Dennis McNulty. Simmons then strangled his child by Sheila, seven-year-old Sylvia Gail, and finally his 21-month-old grandson Michael.

That night, he went for a drink at a local bar before returning to the home where he spent the rest of the evening and the following day drinking beer and watching television.

The morning of December 28, Simmons took a car to a Walmart in Russellville and bought a second gun to use in the attack he was planning. His first stop was a legal office where he had previously met Kathy Cribbins Kendrick, the secretary. Kendrick had captured Simmons' attention, but she had rejected him. He entered the office and then shot Kendrick to death. He then went to an oil company headquarters with the intention of killing Russell "Rusty" Taylor, the boss.

Taylor was also the owner of a Mini Mart from which Simmons had recently resigned. He shot and wounded Taylor before killing another man in the building.

He then ordered someone at gunpoint to call the police. When they arrived, he surrendered without any resistance.

Sentencing and Execution

Simmons was determined to be competent to stand trial following a psychiatric examination he had after being arrested. He was given the death sentence, and it appeared he liked it as he refused to appeal the sentence. He said;

I, Ronald Gene Simmons, Sr., want it to be known that it is my wish and my desire that absolutely no action by anybody be taken to appeal or in any way change this sentence. It is further respectfully requested that this sentence be carried out expeditiously.

On June 25, 1990, he was executed by lethal injection.