Ronald Gene Simmons Sr. (July 15, 1940 – June 25, 1990) was an American spree mass murderer and former military serviceman who perpetrated an attack that killed 16 people, including 14 members of his own family, over a week in December 1987 in Arkansas. The killings, centered at his home near Dover and later at several public locations, remain the deadliest familicide in United States history, and the second deadliest mass murder in Arkansas history, after the Elaine massacre of 1919. Simmons, a retired U.S. Navy and Air Force veteran, was convicted in two trials, sentenced to death, waived all appeals, and was executed by lethal injection in 1990 — the first person executed by that method in Arkansas. His refusal to appeal led to the U.S. Supreme Court case Whitmore v. Arkansas.
Personal life and military career Ronald Gene Simmons was born on July 15, 1940, in Chicago, Illinois, the second of three children born to Loretta and William Simmons. After his father died of a stroke in 1943, his mother married William D. Griffen, a civil engineer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The family relocated frequently due to Griffen's work, living in Pope County near Hector from 1946 to 1950, then in the Little Rock area, Albuquerque, and later California.
Relatives later described Simmons as violent and domineering from an early age. By the time he was 10 years old, he was reportedly bullying his younger sister and half-brother; family members said this behavior continued into adulthood, with his own children. Accounts from relatives portrayed him as quick-tempered, manipulative, and abusive toward both people and animals. His parents attempted to address the behavior by sending him to stay with family friends during the summers and later enrolling him in a Catholic boarding school near Searcy, but the problems persisted.
On September 5, 1957, Simmons dropped out of school and enlisted in the United States Navy. While stationed in Guam, he earned his GED, and in 1959 he was assigned as a yeoman at Naval Hospital Bremerton in Washington. During that period, he met Bersabe Rebecca "Becky" Ulibarri at a USO dance. The two married on July 9, 1960, in Raton, New Mexico, and eventually had seven children over the next 18 years.
Simmons left the Navy in 1962. He was briefly employed by Bank of America in San Francisco, then joined the U.S. Air Force in January 1963. Over the next two decades, he served as an administrative specialist on assignments in Virginia, California, England, Vietnam, and New Mexico. While stationed at Langley Air Force Base, Simmons' first child, Sheila, was born in 1963.
Simmons later transferred into the Air Force Office of Special Investigations; he was promoted to staff sergeant in 1966. After reenlisting, Simmons volunteered for duty in Vietnam in exchange for an AFOSI assignment in Saigon. He arrived in Vietnam in August 1967, and remained there through part of the Tet Offensive in early 1968.
During his 22-year military career, Simmons received several decorations, including the Bronze Star, the Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross, and the Air Force Small Arms Expert Marksmanship Ribbon. He retired from the Air Force on November 30, 1979, with the rank of master sergeant. Despite later revelations about his personal life, military evaluations consistently described his performance as exemplary, and his service record remained officially spotless throughout his career.
Dominance and control Becky told her sister that Simmons' mother had warned her about his temper and his tendency to dominate those close to him. "She was always trying to tell me what Gene was like," Becky told her sister. "But I didn't listen."
At Simmons' insistence, Becky stopped wearing makeup and kept her hair tied back. He handled all outside household responsibilities, such as paying bills and buying groceries, while forbidding her from obtaining a driver's license or using a phone. She could only write to her family, but later, he denied her stamps, forcing her to ask others to mail her letters secretly. Simmons used distant post office boxes to censor the family's mail and required Becky to wear long dresses. Becky's sister, Viola O'Shields, noted, "Becky was not stupid by any means, but she was insecure. Ronald had made her believe that things were her fault, that she deserved what she got." "He cut her off from all of us, and now he's gone crazy... He wouldn't let her have a telephone, and he'd stand there if she ever made any calls from somewhere else."
Another sister, Edith Nesby, said the cruelty he employed often was more mental than physical. "He used to tell her she was dumb," Nesby said. "He'd tell Becky to say 'linoleum,' and when she'd mispronounce it, he'd laugh. He always had a mean streak."
Just before Simmons was executed in June 1990, Becky's brother, Manual Ulibarri, described him as an evil man who demanded complete control of his family.
New Mexico From 1976 to 1981, the family lived on a property in Wills Canyon near the small town of Cloudcroft, New Mexico.
In April 1976, after a four-year stint in the UK stationed at RAF Alconbury, Simmons was assigned to the Space and Missile Systems Organization (SAMSO) observatory in the Sacramento Mountains east of Alamogordo. The SAMSO Electro-Optical Research Facility focused its telescopes on Air Force communications satellites and detectors on high-flying aircraft. Located thirty-two miles from Holloman AFB, the observatory was a semiautonomous post with a personnel roster of one officer and seven enlisted personnel, with Simmons being the senior enlisted man. All had top secret security clearances.
In November 1976, the Air Force announced that it would place the observatory on "caretaker status" as soon as possible. As the site staff decreased, Simmons took on more responsibilities and was ultimately the last person to "turn out the lights" when the observatory was deactivated in June 1978. After this, Simmons was transferred to the 6585th Test Group at Holloman Air Force Base near Alamogordo.
On November 30, 1979, Simmons, who had over 20 years of service, retired from the Air Force when faced with the possibility of a promotion to Senior Master Sergeant (E-8) that would require extending his service obligation and a transfer to Turkey.
On May 5, 1981, Simmons began working as a GS-4 civil service employee at Holloman AFB.
Allegations, investigation, and charges In 1981, Simmons was investigated for allegations of child sex abuse and for allegedly impregnating his 17-year-old daughter, Sheila. Social Services had been alerted anonymously on April 17, 1981. The district attorney at the time, Steven Sanders, stated that Simmons' son, R. Gene Simmons Jr., revealed to him that he was the informant. The son called two more times in the next three days, again anonymously. Additionally, authorities learned of the allegations through Sheila's friends, who had been told about the situation, and from school officials. One friend, Sheila Hiller, discovered that her friend was pregnant. "She wouldn't talk about it," Ms. Hiller said. "But I knew what had happened."
On April 20, a caseworker went to Cloudcroft to investigate rumors. In a private meeting, Sheila confirmed suspicions that she was pregnant with her father's child.
An assistant Otero County prosecutor was notified on April 21. Under threat of prosecution, Simmons eventually agreed to a program of psychological counseling for the whole family.
According to authorities, the initial incest had occurred in July 1980, in a hotel room in Phoenix when Simmons and Sheila were on their way from New Mexico to California for a coin show. While Simmons loved coin collecting, Sheila only pretended to enjoy it to please him.
According to social workers' investigations, at least two more instances occurred in September 1980. In March 1981, Sheila recognized she was pregnant and told her father. She gave birth to a daughter, Sylvia, on June 17, 1981.
A 1981 New Mexico Social Services report says that social workers tried to get legal custody of Simmons' four daughters after he insisted the family would raise the child he fathered with the eldest daughter. The report, dated June 8, 1981, asked District Attorney Sanders to seek a court order for custody of the children. Sanders later claimed an assistant district attorney never relayed the request to him.
Simmons and his family attended counseling for five weeks in 1981, but they stopped in June after their lawyer informed Simmons that anything he disclosed to social workers could be used against him in court. Once the counseling sessions ended, a criminal investigation began. On June 19, the District Attorney's office referred the case to the sheriff for further investigation.
Deputy Jeff Farmer drove to the Simmons property on June 20, 1981, where he met Sheila Simmons and her mother, Becky. Sheila refused to make any statement or comment. On July 6, school principal Everett Banister, who lived near the Simmons family, told Farmer that he had taken Sheila's homework assignments home and arranged her final exams.
Banister said he did not discuss the allegations with the family because social workers were handling the case. He said he took classwork to the Simmons home so she could graduate at the end of May and that the mother and her children were friendly, but Simmons was strange. He could not recall ever talking to Simmons, but did remember seeing him and his daughter Sheila riding down the road once. "She was sitting so close to him, like boyfriend-girlfriend instead of father-daughter." Others made similar observations.
Farmer's investigation ended July 11, 1981, after Farmer met with Simmons. Farmer said the younger Simmons would not talk about the incest allegation because his sister and mother asked him not to, but that the family was "well-satisfied" with its counseling session.
Sanders said Sheila Simmons ignored a grand jury subpoena and refused to discuss the incest with investigators until Sanders threatened her with contempt of court. Sheila reluctantly appeared on August 10 and testified against her father, telling the jurors that her father had intimate relations with her three times. Sanders said, "She testified for two hours. She broke down and cried. She said she didn't want her father to go to prison." Sheila's statements eventually led to a criminal charge and an arrest warrant.There are inconsistencies in reporting on when the grand jury was convened and whether the incest charges were from a grand jury indictment.
On August 11, 1981, in Otero County, New Mexico, two months after Sheila gave birth to a daughter, Simmons was charged in New Mexico's 12th Judicial District with engaging in incest three times in September 1980 and could have faced up to nine years in prison if convicted. Sheriff's deputies planning to arrest Simmons arrived at the home 20 miles outside of Cloudcroft on August 11 to find the family had packed and moved away.
Abe DeLeon, Otero County manager for the New Mexico Human Services Department, said he received an anonymous tip that the Simmons family had gone to the Little Rock area. DeLeon then sent a "protective Service alert" about Simmons and the three incest charges filed against him to the Arkansas Human Service Department on March 17, 1982. Walt Patterson, deputy director of the Arkansas Human Services Department, said on December 31, 1987, that he couldn't find the letter that New Mexico said had been sent, and there was no reason for the department to act on an alert from New Mexico. The proper way to handle that would have been through law enforcement agencies, who might have traced Simmons through his military pension payments. Patterson said, "If we had been contacted by the Simmons family, we would have taken action on the New Mexico alert."