Hold My Sweet Tea

Ep 87-Family Christmas Massacre: Ronald Gene Simmons

• Pearl & Holly • Season 1 • Episode 87

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The days around Christmas aren’t supposed to feel like this. We open the door on Arkansas, 1987, and walk through the controlled world of Ronald Gene Simmons—a decorated veteran, a father of seven, and the architect of a family compound where isolation and fear did the heavy lifting long before the violence began. We talk candidly about how coercive control works in plain sight, from cutting off phones and neighbors to turning everyday chores into instruments of obedience.

From the first shots on December 22 to the calculated strangulations of the youngest children, the timeline reveals intent, planning, and a chilling calm that carried through the holiday weekend. Then the violence spills into town: a law office, an oil company, a minimart, a freight terminal. Some victims were connected to old grudges; others were simply in the path of a man who believed he was settling scores. Along the way, we connect the dots between the DHS investigation, a teacher’s report, the daughter forced into secrecy, and a wife saving money to leave. None of it happened in a vacuum.

We also push past shock to talk prevention. Isolation is a tactic, not a personality quirk. When someone says they feel like a prisoner, believe them. Notice the red flags: sudden relocations, surveillance over money, removing communication, and grievance spirals centered on weapons and perceived slights. The courts found Simmons sane; the record shows he was deliberate. That matters for how we read similar situations now—at home, at work, in our communities.

If you care about true crime beyond headlines and want a clearer lens on coercive control, family annihilation, and workplace violence, press play. Then share this episode with someone who needs the language to name what they’re seeing. Subscribe, leave a review, and tell us: which warning sign stood out to you most?

Source Material:

Daily News, December 13, 2008, The father from hell-New York Daily News, https://www.nydailynews.com/2008/12/13/the-father-from-hell/

Roberts, Adam, December 22, 2022, Ronald Gene Simmons, Arkansas' worst mass murderer, killed 16 people, https://www.4029tv.com/article/ronald-gene-simmons-murders-arkansas/42308596

Holt, Tony, November 6, 2023, The devil of Pope County: America's Worst family massacre, https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2023/nov/06/trailer-i-the-devil-of-pope-county-americas-worst-family-massacre/

SPEAKER_00:

Come with us to Arkansas 1987 as we tell you about a sixteen-person killing spree. This is Hold My Sweet Tea.

SPEAKER_01:

Jingle jingle. That sounds kind of dirty, I guess. Right. Look, we're still rolling in the the holiday spirit.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Not spirits.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, maybe.

SPEAKER_00:

But um probably should be. At least then we'd have an excuse for how silly we are. Right, right.

SPEAKER_01:

It's good to sometimes have a rant session before we record because it gets our our juices flowing. I was about to say.

SPEAKER_00:

Makes my face red, my blood's bumping. Yep. Yeah. Ready to talk about somebody else's misfortune. There we go. There we go. We had to get ours out first, and then we're like, let's go. Roll right into someone else's bad time.

SPEAKER_01:

We're in the first week of creepsness. Yeah. Yeah. Talking about creeps. All the creeps. Yeah. You you're I am I am intrigued about your creep because you told me a little tiny snippet, and I'm like, oh, what? Yeah. You have so many questions. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So many. Yeah. I have so many questions. I'm the one doing this. But yeah, so we're gonna uh talk about a guy who killed 16 people. It was several days that hugged Christmas. Okay, that hugged Christmas. Yes. Several days that hugged Christmas. So it starts a little bit before and runs after. Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

So he spent his whole holiday vacation slaying away.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Yeah. I don't think he dressed up in a Santa Claus suit or Krampus. Right. But he's scary enough on his own, apparently. So we're gonna chit-chat a little about Mr. Ronald Gene Simmons.

SPEAKER_01:

Not Gene Simmons from KISS.

SPEAKER_00:

No. We'll just call him Simmons. Simmons. We're not going to talk about the good Gene Simmons. Right. Talk about the bad one. So he's born in 1940 in Chicago. His dad would die of a stroke like three years later. And his mom would get remarried to a man named William Griffin, who was part of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. So in 1957, when Simmons decides he's dropping out of school, he joins the Navy.

unknown:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

Probably at the behest of his stepdad. Probably. Probably like, if you're not going to finish school, you need to join the military. He gets stationed in Washington, and this is where he meets his wife. And we're just going to call her Becky. Her name was Rebecca, but we're going to call her Becky. Does she have good hair? Becky with the good hair? She's Becky with the okay hair.

unknown:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

They get married in 1960 in New Mexico. Well, they're just well, military. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. He leaves the Navy a few years after his marriage and joins the Air Force. Okay. Like, what are we doing? I don't want to be on a boat. I'd rather be in the air. There we go. I guess. Which is funny because, you know, they use naval ships. Yep. They land Air Force airplanes. It's fun times. But over the next 18 years, Simmons and Becky have seven kids. Seven kids. It's a lot of kids. Yeah, it's a lot of kids. I'm like, yikes. So Simmons actually retires in 1979. And he had several awards that he had won while during his service. He had a bronze star medal, the Republic of Vietnam gallantry cross, and the Air Force ribbon for excellent markmanship. So he was well decorated. But they weren't that big, happy family you like to talk about all the time. Right. The big family. Right. There wasn't any signs that they were normal in the least. There were some allegations that came about in uh 1981 that Simmons had been sexually abusing his 17-year-old daughter. There was even a bigger rumor that he fathered a child with this daughter. That's disgusting. Which, by the way, wasn't a rumor.

SPEAKER_01:

It was true. I hate hearing about stuff like that. It's just why.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. So the Department of Human Services in New Mexico starts investigating this. And when that all happens, he decides we move in. Oh.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, let's get out of here so I don't get arrested.

SPEAKER_00:

Mm-hmm. So they end up getting a big piece of land. And they call it Mockingbird Hill in Dover, Arkansas.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

It was very isolated, desolate, like really rough land. Isolated is probably not even really a great word because they didn't have any phone. There's no plumbing. And the whole place is surrounded by this like hodgepodgey fence. Ah, so a compound. Basically. Okay. The final thing his children do before Christmas is dig a four foot deep ditch in the yard because he said they needed it for an outhouse.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm thinking it's not for an outhouse.

SPEAKER_00:

It's not for an outhouse. It is not at all for an outhouse. Okay. So for whatever reason, Simmons decides right before Christmas that I think I'm going to kill my whole family.

unknown:

Wow.

SPEAKER_00:

There are speculations that say that they think that the reason he did this was because obviously his daughter with the kid that he fathered. Not to mention that he, I think he was starting to hear things like that his wife was gonna divorce him and leave him. And I'm gonna say something that I think is the grossest thing ever because my grandma used to do it and I hated it. Wives would call their husbands dad, like refer to him as dad. I guess because he's dad to their kids. Right. I don't understand it. It's not like daddy now. Right. Right. No, this is not what that was. Right. So there's reports that say his wife had actually said, I don't want to live the rest of my life with dad. I'm a prisoner here, and the kids are too.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I guess it's because in that situation, it's like he becomes her dad because he's like telling her what to do, and she has no freedoms to do anything.

SPEAKER_00:

So this was like reportedly something she wrote to her son. Yeah. Um, because the older kids had moved away from him during all this. So there were four young ones that were still living with him. Those are the ones that dug the ditch. Oh gosh. She further said, Every time I think of freedom, I want out as soon as possible. But obviously she was stuck.

SPEAKER_01:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

Now, Sheila is the daughter that he's accused of having a baby with. Sheila does get married. So Sheila has a husband who adopts her daughter, and he knows who the real daddy is. Yep. So this man took this woman on with this, like with the truth, y'all. Yeah. You know, for all you women who are scared to tell people about your baby daddies. Yeah. Her baby daddy daddies. Her baby daddy is also her baby grandpa. Right. So yeah, it can't be that bad, girl. Just tell them. Right. He, I think Simmons was like not just like messing with his kid. I think like there were women in the workplace, like when he was working in a warehouse somewhere that he like kept hitting on. Like people just he was just a dirty old guy. Yeah. So y'all don't think he was good just because he went to the military. When you said military, I was like, oh.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. This usually ends up bad.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. And the fact that he's a marksman was not helpful. Right. So on the morning of December 22nd, this is where it all begins. All right. Christmas E V. He shoots his wife and his oldest son using a 22 caliber pistol. He then strangles other children.

SPEAKER_01:

The other children. So he didn't want to shoot them. So he he went ahead and strangled them, which takes a little while to kill from strangulation. So wow, piece of garbage.

SPEAKER_00:

So he strangles the four kids, all four kids that are living there. And he uses the guise of a hey, I got presents for you, early presents, early presents. And then attacks them. And I'm just going, why did these other children not run? Right. Like you can't strangle four kids at once. Right. Why didn't you not run? They were probably frozen in fear. Like, what is he doing? Yeah. And then he didn't just strangle them, he held them underwater in a rain barrel to, I guess, make sure they were really dead. His oldest son and his three-year-old granddaughter come. He shoots the son and he strangles the three-year-old. So this is his thing, is he's shooting the bigger people, strangling, strangling the little ones.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_00:

Because they can't fight back. Right. So on December 26th, he has his remaining children and their some of them have brought their spouses and their children, you know, their children because they're they do their annual Christmas visit, staggered as far as time of arrival goes. He's making sure they don't all come at once.

SPEAKER_01:

So he can do the deed and get rid of the bodies.

SPEAKER_00:

Then he strangles their 20-month-old son.

SPEAKER_01:

This man's disgusting.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. He did the exact same thing to his oldest daughter, Sheila, and her husband and their child. His child. Yeah. His child. His granddaughter daughter.

SPEAKER_01:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

His last victim of the family was the 21-month-old grandson Michael. Seven of his family members he dumped in the backyard, but he left the rest of them in the house, covering their corpses with coats. So he just like drapes some stuff over. Right. One of them he leaves on the table, dining room table, and puts it, puts their body underneath the tablecloth. Wow, he's a little a lot cuckoo. He is a lot cuckoo. So two of the children, the all the little kids that he strangled that were not the kids that belonged to him in the house, the itty biddies that came his grandchildren. He put the last one, the 20-month-old one, in a trunk of one abandoned car down the street. He put the other two in a different car. In the trunks of these rando abandoned cars. What the heck?

SPEAKER_01:

Instead of just burying them all. Maybe that the was the hole full at this point or something?

SPEAKER_00:

I don't know. I mean, he did toss a bunch of them out there, so. Wow. He then gets in his own car and drives to Russellville to pick up Christmas gifts that he had ordered at Sears. These are gifts that did not arrive on Christmas because this is the day after Christmas. They didn't arrive in time for him to have them. And I'm sitting here, why are you picking this shit up? You just killed everybody. Right. Who are you giving it to? I don't know. He's cuckoo. He then drives to like a tavern type situation, gets him a drink, but then he goes home and he watches TV and drinks some more beer for like the remainder of the weekend. So these dead bodies just hanging out. Hanging out. And so is he. Yeah. Just hanging out. Drinking, watching TV. Like they're not even there. Yeah. So on December 28th, which is now a Monday, he drives his son's car into back into town, into Russellville, and he buys a gun at Walmart. Brand new gun. Don't want to use the one I just killed everybody with. Right. Let me get a new one. He goes to a law firm where he shoots and kills the receptionist. Her name's Kathy Kendrick. Is this somebody that maybe was maybe it's somebody who put him off?

SPEAKER_01:

Aff or after him about the incest? Maybe so. Oh who knows?

SPEAKER_00:

We'll see if it's in here. I can't remember. Can't remember.

SPEAKER_01:

That was just my thought process. I'm like, was it just a rando or yeah?

SPEAKER_00:

He then goes to Taylor Oil Company, where he shoots two people. Oh, okay. So randos. Russell Taylor, the owner of the Sinclair Minimart where he had worked. He ended up just being like wounded. And then there was a fireman and truck driver, JD Chaffin, who was actually killed. He then goes to the Minimart itself where he shoots and wounds two other people. He's just on a spree at this point. Okay. Then he drives to a woodline motor freight company and he shoots his former supervisor in the head and the chest. She lives. Oh wow. He then holds one of the workers at gunpoint and tells her to call the police. He said he tells her, I've come to do what I wanted to do. It's all over now. I've gotten everybody who wanted to hurt me. So the your theory of the receptionists at the law may be true.

SPEAKER_01:

So the your children wanted to hurt you, the babies wanted to hurt you. Right. What? What is right? Yeah. Yeah. Like where? So you just eliminated an entire generation. Yeah. And then got revenge on other people that you didn't like. Correct. Wow.

SPEAKER_00:

So after they arrest him and they go investigate at the house, and they find 14 bodies. A massacre, yeah. 14 bodies at home. They send him to the Arkansas State Hospital in Little Rock. Where they say he's absolutely sane. Mm-hmm. Oh yeah. Take him back. They also find out during that whole investigation that a friend of his wife said she wasn't indeed saving money to divorce him and almost had enough. When the killings happened. The freight company supervisor that he shot in the head in the chest that lived, she told them that she had an altercation with him in the past where he had yelled at her about pay. So they argued over his price. There was a safe deposit box that a letter between Simmons and his daughter Sheila was found in. Yeah, and the whole like during court proceedings, they've like talked about this letter. Yeah. And when they did, Simmons got up and punched the prosecutor in the face and tried to take the handgun from the deputy that was in there. Oh so he had to be removed from the courtroom.

SPEAKER_01:

So it was a touchy subject for him. Fuck you, dude. Right. Right.

SPEAKER_00:

I was like, what? Yeah. He does obviously get convicted of 14 counts of capital murder and he's sentenced to death. He uh waived all his appeals and was executed via lethal injection on June 25th, 1990. Now he did say, and I think it's effed up, to those who oppose the death penalty in my particular case, anything short of death would be cruel and unusual punishment. No, it's probably exactly what I needed. Yeah. Probably exactly what I needed.

SPEAKER_01:

Exactly. Don't take the easy way out. Right. Why? It's just straight ridiculous. Yeah. The whole thing.

SPEAKER_00:

All of it. All of it, y'all. So overall he did kill 16 people though.

SPEAKER_01:

That's crazy.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

That man cuckoo, but not cuckoo, because he like planned it all. He knew what he was doing. There he can't.

SPEAKER_00:

And obviously, yeah. It was building for years and years and years. Like, I I honestly probably think he got pissed that she moved out and got married. Yeah. Now the daughter he was molesting is gone. Right.

SPEAKER_01:

So, and then he like moved the rest of the family off grid so he could control them. Control them and keep them, you know, away from other people so they wouldn't talk. And he probably planned on doing it to another daughter or had been. Yeah. Because it doesn't stop at one in that situation.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And I guess the sexual assault of his daughter Sheila started when she was 15.

unknown:

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_00:

So it was about the same time, like it was near his retirement, like he didn't have anything else to do. Let me go fill up my kid. And of course, he calls her little princess.

SPEAKER_01:

Gross. I hate men.

SPEAKER_00:

It was actually one of right. It was actually one of her teachers in New Mexico that had suspected what was going on and told the police. Yeah. And she's the I think she's the first person who knew that Sheila was actually pregnant. Right.

SPEAKER_01:

And let me clarify, not all men, just men who are like that, because there's no there's no need for that at all. Yeah. Like it's just really ridiculous. Well, at least her teacher, you know, said something, and that's probably why he got angry and moved them all to Arkansas.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Because he didn't want to get arrested then just for that. So he's like, if I'm gonna go out, I'm gonna go out with a a bang. Right.

SPEAKER_00:

He actually even got sentenced to death twice. Because you know, the other two. Right. Um, that trial was in May of 1988. And he literally tells the court, I want no action that will delay, deny, defer, or denounce this very correct and proper death sentence. I only ask for what I deserve.

SPEAKER_01:

You deserve to be put in a sack and beaten with torture torture for years.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. This is what you deserved. He uh he actually had like put out, like I said, he waived all his rights to appeals and stuff like that because he didn't want to appeal it. He wanted to die. And there was a Catholic priest who tried to get his sentence overturned. So he literally sat for like two more years waiting because of this holdup. There was a delay. Right.

SPEAKER_01:

He's like, I'm gonna delay this.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and then um, like they said he like literally spoke to no one, like grew big long beard, looked even crazier than he did when he came in, and finally the Arkansas governor at the time signed his death proclamation, so that's why it finally happened on June 25th, 1990. I don't think he lived long enough. Yeah, no one claimed his body, so he was buried in a pauper's grave. Well, he killed his whole family, so nobody could nobody could, but there were people that still were alive that were related to him, unfortunately. Yeah, but they were like, no. It's very unfortunate that we're related, but nah. Nah, I don't want it. So yeah. 16 people at least they didn't boil heads, right? Or eat ribs.

SPEAKER_01:

That was for Thanksgiving. This is Christmas proper.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. It would be more like deck the halls with intestines. Right. Ew.

SPEAKER_01:

But yeah. Bloody enough. Bloody enough. Well, that was gross.

SPEAKER_00:

My thing is like those poor kids, what what reasoning? Right. I mean, did you just go, oh well, I don't want to leave them alive because their parents are dead now. Somebody could have taken care of them. Jeez. But yikes. Poor babies.

SPEAKER_01:

I know.

SPEAKER_00:

And poor kids who dug a whole ash trench for their own bodies to be thrown in. Redonk. Yeah. Crazy man. Well, apparently, sane man. Yeah, sane man, but yeah. Outraged. And um, what is that? Like he's got that twisted way of thinking, and there's a word for that. And I did, I mean, he's not, it's not the word crazy because he's not irrational. Irrational, yeah. Irrational.

SPEAKER_01:

Not on the schizophrenia side, irrational. Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

There we are. Spit it out. Yeah. I know someone who's very rational and likes to give daily affirmations on social media. I do too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Patty Salzetta.

SPEAKER_00:

That's right. And she made our theme music.

SPEAKER_01:

Yep. She's very rational. She's probably like shaking her head every time she hears the end of one of these and how we she's like, I gotta listen for my name. Oh, there it is. There it is. Segway and uh her.

SPEAKER_00:

It's the best. Oh, it's funny. Yeah. But yeah. If you guys heard anything about this and want to discuss it a little bit, we're up for discussion. Yeah, you can always email us at hold my sweet tea podcast at gmail.com. And we're available on social media. That's right. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube. Help our YouTube grow. Yes. We're still sitting at 92, y'all.

SPEAKER_01:

Yep.

SPEAKER_00:

Still there. Get your granny on YouTube.

SPEAKER_01:

Granny, subscribe. What am I subscribing to? Nothing. Just subscribe. Don't worry about it. Just subscribe, Granny. But we um, you know, I have more Christmas stuff coming and hold my sweet tea as always is the Drunken Bee Production. And you guys stay safe out there. Watch out for those Christmas parties. And just because we're different, doesn't mean you can't keep different.