Shownotes Transcript
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Okay, you guys, with the summer heat in full swing, literally 90 degrees today, I know we're all worrying about our deodorant holding up. That's why I've got to tell you about Lume. They have whole body deodorant, Lume whole body deodorant, and it's the only deodorant that I will use. Lume is formulated for all those spots that tend to get extra sweaty and stinky in the heat, like your pits, Garrett's butt crack, and even your feet. Oh my God, look.
Lume was created by an OBGYN, so it's totally safe for all your sensitive areas. And the best part, it's baking soda free, paraben free and pH balanced. So it's gentle on your skin while keeping you fresh. You guys, I have been using Lume and let me tell you something. They are anti chafing. So you can put them on your thighs. You can put it under your boobs, your
Literally, it's great. Ready to try it? New customers get 15% off all Lume products with our exclusive code. Just use code MWMH at LumeDeodorant.com. That's L-U-M-E-D-E-O-D-O-R-A-N-T.com. And don't forget to use code MWMH for 15% off your first purchase. Hey everybody, welcome back to our podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Peyton Moreland. And I'm Gerard.
And he's the husband. I'm the husband. You know what, Garrett? The one common theme since we have started Murder With My Husband has been we need more episodes. Is this true? Listeners always asking for more episodes.
So we heard you, we listened, and we're doing it. We are bringing another true crime show for you guys to binge. And guess what? It's called Binged. Binged is another true crime podcast that has a very interesting theme that we are super excited to talk about. So we'll let Peyton talk about this real quick.
So every other week, Binged will be dropping multiple episodes, different cases, but all at once so that you guys can binge those. And I'll tell you right now, if you are listening to Murder With My Husband, you are going to love our new show, Binged.
It's just going to be me coming to you guys every other week with multiple episodes dropping at the same time so you can literally binge the show. Each episode will be your straightforward true crime case, but those episodes that are dropped together will all have a common theme. We have been working on this for a while. We are really excited. Even though it's just Peyton, it is going to be...
It's amazing. She's recorded a bunch of them and a bunch of some of them, and we've edited them, and it's going to be so good. So if you like Murder With My Husband, you're absolutely going to love Binged.
It's going to be somewhere in the description below or wherever you're listening. It'll be somewhere. Please go and check it out. Please go and leave a review so Peyton can continue doing it. And it's just more True Crime content. Our first group of episodes are dropping January 11th. But like Garrett said, you can go check it out now. Subscribe. Get your notifications on so when those first group do drop, you are ready to binge binged.
I feel like we've been waiting so long to announce this and now that it's finally here, I just, I know you guys are going to love it. So I'm really excited, but that's all we're going to say about Binged for now. Garrett, go ahead and jump into your 10 seconds. Honestly, we've just been super busy working on the new show.
Just kind of everything that goes along with it. I hope that by the time you were listening to this, I have my truck back because I currently don't have a car. Also pretty random, but I think I have learned a new pet peeve of mine is when my clothes shrink when I'm washing them.
You know, I just can't stand it. Like you get your favorite t-shirt. You love it. You love the way it fits. It looks good. You wash it. Boom. Ruined forever. You have to throw it away. You can never wear it again. I feel like this was a secret job at me. Was it? No, it was not. You do my laundry. Well, I do your laundry. Yeah, but you're perfect at it and there's no issues there. Oh, so you just have an imaginary pet peeve of your laundry being shrunk. No, it's not your fault. It's the washer's fault, you know?
I feel like this is user error and I'm the user. No, it's really not your fault. You're not doing anything wrong. It's that I think it's just a washer error. You know what I'm saying? Because it really isn't anything you're doing wrong. But no matter, I mean, it's happened to me growing up, like my entire life. I always get my favorite shirt. I mean, I feel like this is normal, right? You get your favorite shirt, jeans, whatever it may be. You throw it in the washer and then it comes out and it's just not the same. You've never had this happen to you? Mm-mm.
But, again, I'm not as picky about my clothing. Like, I don't even think I noticed if my shirt shrunk a little bit. Maybe it's a guy thing then, you know? So all the guys listening out there, I hope everyone has my back. And it's not just a me thing. Otherwise, it's...
We're going to have another issue. So that is my 10 seconds. Peyton did give a little sneak peek last week of what this would be. Again, go check out Binge Below and let's hop into this case. Our case sources are Overkill, Rampage, Zero at the Bone, YouTube, Encyclopedia, Murderpedia, Newspapers.com, and Wikipedia.
So as you guys know, in our last episode, I told you the story of Matt and Lisa Solomon and how Christmastime 1987 for this couple and their families was the worst time of their lives. And that was thanks to the murderous rage and selfish actions of a young newlywed husband. But
But the scale of today's story, which happened that same Christmas season in 1987, is far, far bigger, even though it takes place in a much smaller town.
It was Monday, December 28th, 1987, the day after Christmas following a long three-day holiday weekend. Everyone was shuffling back into work that gloomy gray winter morning in Russellville, Arkansas, which is a small town about an hour away from Little Rock.
Now, among those returning to work was 24-year-old Kathy Kendrick, who had just recently started a new secretary job for the law firm of Peel, Eddy, and Gibbons. At 10.16 a.m. that morning, as Secretary Kathy sat behind her desk, an older man in a straw cowboy hat entered the law office and approached her while she was talking to a client standing next to her. Now, without looking up at the man, she asked him, can I help you?
The older man responded by pulling a handgun from the pocket of his leather jacket, aiming it at Kathy's head and firing five .22 caliber hollow point bullets into her. Okay. We are jumping right into this. Yes, we are. The first shot missed, but the next four didn't. They entered Kathy's head at point-blank range.
As she slumped to the ground, the man calmly turned around and walked right back out through the same front doors he had just entered, all the while without saying a word. The client, who'd been talking to Kathy only a moment before, stood by and watched in horror as this all just suddenly happened right before her eyes. It was horrific.
Holy crap. Yeah.
The police were called right away, and as they made their way out to the law office, the older man drove down Main Street, passing the Carve local news van as it sped towards the law offices. This older man, the shooter, then parked outside Taylor Oil a mile and a half down the road at the same time that Carve went live with a news brief.
Carve has learned that there's been a shooting at the Pilonetti Law Offices on Glenwood in Russellville. Police are hurrying to the scene at this time and will keep you informed as details come in. Now those details, in that moment, were still being written. As the older man, our shooter, down the road, pulled open the front door at Taylor Oil. Standing inside the building, the older man looked around and saw business owner Rusty Taylor inside of his office sitting at his desk.
This shooter then fired two shots through the door directly at Rusty, both of them which hit him in the left side of his chest. Rusty fell to the floor and crawled for cover beneath his desk. Rusty's customer, a man named Craig Bailey, sat just out of the gunman's view in stunned silence.
Craig didn't know if he should be laughing or not. This was so surreal. He thought it had to be a joke. This man just walked in and started firing, but it wasn't. As the shooter began making his exit from the building, another man approached the entrance, unaware of what was unfolding on the other side of the door. That man was a 34-year-old firefighter named Jim Chafin, also a part-time Taylor Oil employee who drove a bulk truck delivering oil when he wasn't on the clock at the fire department.
Jim had just returned from a fire call that morning when he turned the knob, pulled the door open, and crossed paths with the older man, who, without a word or even a pause, fired one round into Jim Chafin's brain through his right eye, killing him instantly while walking out of the store. That is horrible. So this man has just now hit two businesses, walked in, killed people, walked out.
No rhyme, no reason as of yet. As Jim Chafin fell to the ground, the older man in his cowboy hat and cowboy boots heard a rustling behind him. As if on instinct, he turned around and fired one round at the 35-year-old bookkeeper, Julie Money, who had just walked out of the restroom. The last thing Julie saw before filling the bullet was the blinding white of the man's cold, twisted grin as he fired his gun at her.
Julie felt the warmth and speed of the bullet against her head as it flew past her, just narrowly missing her head. Believing she'd been shot, though, she dropped to the ground and rolled herself behind a stack of boxes as the older man, who also believed the bullet had hit her, turned back around, strode past the dead body of Jim Chafin and got back into his car. I'm so curious. Like, are these calculated? Like, what is going on?
As he drove away, emergency dispatch got another phone call, this one from Julie Money. Suddenly, local authorities in this normally sleepy town were overwhelmed by emergency calls. There was a rampaging killer on the loose. He had hit two businesses already, and he wasn't done. His next stop was a convenience store on the opposite end of Main Street, the Sinclair Mini Mart. Now,
Now, Sinclair Mini Mart, like Taylor Oil, was also owned by Rusty Taylor. And as the older man, armed with two .22 caliber pistols, walked into the convenience store, he saw store clerk Roberta Woolery standing at the window, watching as patrol cars sped past that building, racing to the Taylor Oil offices and to the law firm. So as cops are speeding to the other two businesses that have been hit... He's walking somewhere else. He's walking into another one. So you would think, like...
I don't know. I guess it's hard. Well, it's all happening so fast. Yeah. Do you know the time? Like how many minutes like is going by during all this? It's been roughly 20 minutes since he first walked into the first business that day. Oh, well, see, that's a long time. I thought you were going to say maybe like five minutes. Well, he killed someone, walked out, got in his car, drove down the road a little bit, got back out. I mean, that does take time. But I guess it makes me think where where's everybody?
Driving to the other businesses. So Roberta had no idea that the two other buildings nearby had already been hit by the active shooter who was now walking into her building. The time was now about 1040 a.m. Mini Mart manager David Saylor was in the back of the store drinking coffee with his friend, 71-year-old Tony Carta. When he happened to catch out of the corner of his eye, the older man raised his pistol and pointed his way.
David ducked down just as the gun was fired and the bullet crashed into a video display case behind him. Now, both David and Roberta recognized the gunman as a former store employee named R. Jean, who had quit his cashier job there only a week earlier, complaining that he was underpaid and overworked.
Confused by what had just happened, David turned to his friend Tony and asked, "Is this for real? Is this ex-employee, Arjean, literally trying to kill them right now?" The clerk on duty, Roberta, recognized also that it was Arjean. She grabbed the telephone while Tony and David ducked under a table. Arjean, who was standing in front of the door blocking the exit, then fired two shots at Roberta, striking her in the chin and in her shoulder.
Holy crap. Yeah.
Arjean fired a shot that ricocheted off the chair and into David's head. David flung the chair at Arjean before toppling over to the floor in a growing stream of blood. Seeing this, Tony Carta, who's 71, mind you, positioned himself near an arsenal of Coca-Cola six-packs. One by one, Tony grabbed cans from the pile and flung them at the gunman before then hurling a whole six-pack and nearly hitting his armed assailant in the head. This is not real.
- Arjean kept firing rather blindly at this point as he was trying to duck the bombardment of cans flying in his direction. The elderly man yelled, "Get out of here!" And Arjean, realizing the growing level of risk, turned around and did just that. The other two businesses he had hit, no one had attacked him, but this one, it was now becoming harder. He got back into his car and continued on down the road. Roberta, wounded but still conscious, was able to connect with emergency dispatch.
Please hurry, she told them. Our blood is dripping everywhere. Meanwhile, Arjean, not yet satisfied that he'd wounded and killed enough people, had one more stop to make.
The offices of Woodland Motor Freight, which, like the Sinclair Mini Mart, was another former workplace of his. He put his .22 into a paper bag and carried it into the administrative offices, where he used the office's vibrantly decorated Christmas tree as a hunting blind. From behind the tree, he kept an eye out for Joyce Butts. This is the woman who had been his supervisor when he worked there.
When he finally caught sight of Joyce sitting at her desk, Arjean stepped out from behind the tree with his hands in his pockets and approached her desk, pulled out his gun and shot her in the head and chest all the while laughing. Arjean is laughing as he shot her.
The other seven employees in the office hit the floor as Arjean walked into the computer room. Inside of the computer room, Woodline employee Vicki Jackson turned around and saw Arjean, her former coworker, with the gun in his hand, raising it to her head. She dropped to the floor, expecting the worst. Jean, she pleaded. Please don't shoot me, Jean. Please don't shoot me. Suddenly, Arjean spoke. This would be the first time since that morning spree began. This is the fourth time.
business he has gone into vicky he said to his former co-worker get up i'm not going to hurt you vicky looked up at arjean her mouth hanging open he lowered his gun he then took the second gun out of his paper bag and laid it down on her desk why haven't you come down to sinclair's to see me arjean asked vicky sinclair's is where he's now working or where he was working a week ago
"'I have,' she told him, but you weren't there.' "'Well, you know I work on weekends,' the armed man replied. Arjean could hear the tremble in Vicky's voice, and he saw her hands shaking. "'Do you need your cigarettes?' he asked. He picked up Vicky's cigarettes and also the gun he laid down. Handing both to her, she told him to put the gun down back on the desk. She wanted nothing to do with it, even though the thought of picking it up and shooting Arjean did briefly cross her mind.'
R. Jean then instructed Vicky to call the police and an ambulance for Joyce. I'm going to turn myself in, he told her, because you've never done anything to me. I came here to do what I had to do. I wanted to kill Joyce. Everything's been taken care of now. Okay, you guys, shifting my wardrobe from summer to fall can be a challenge, but I'm telling you right now,
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This might be the craziest episode I've heard.
Since we started the podcast. It's definitely a lot right out of the gate. And I'm just going to warn you now, it gets worse. We just jumped right into it. So Vicky lets them know that Arjean had handed his pistols over to her and that he didn't want the police to come barging in. By this time, officers from Arkansas State Troopers, County Sheriff's Office, and Russellville Police had already begun to surround the building along with armed civilians.
Through Vicki, Arjean relayed to dispatch that he wanted to know what the police chief would be wearing so he could surrender himself directly to the chief. The dispatcher told her the chief, this is Chief Herb Johnston, was wearing a blue sweater and had silver hair. Meanwhile, one of the troopers had a gun trained directly at Arjean's head ready to fire at him through the plexiglass.
But Chief Johnston stepped in front of the gun and told the trooper, get out of here. As the chief, who had the boldness enough at this point to remove his firearm, then entered the building and made his way toward the computer room, R. Jean emerged from it with his second gun still at his side. Give me the gun, Chief Johnston told him. R. Jean removed the gun from his side and handed it over to the chief of police. That's when the troopers rushed into the building and put the handcuffs on R. Jean. And at this point,
No one yet had any idea who Arjean was besides the few coworkers and managers who he had come in contact with that morning. Who are you? The chief asked him, what's your name? Arjean replied in a tone so quiet it almost couldn't be heard, James Johnson.
As they brought Arjean to the station, businesses in town remained on high alert with their doors bolted shut and shades drawn as words of the arrest hadn't yet gotten out. So all these businesses are thinking, oh my gosh, we could be hit next. Someone's walking into businesses and killing people. We could be hit next. Everyone in town till mid-afternoon still believed that there was a mass shooter on a rampage.
And while post-Christmas retail was booming everywhere else in the country, all the shops in Russellville that morning were losing money. Once at the Russellville police station, the officer sat Arjean down, determined to find out what had motivated this spree. But Arjean said nothing.
He sat in total silence, deflecting all the questions that were asked of him. Outside of their interrogation efforts, investigators first order of business was finding out who this man was. James Johnson sounded fake as crap to them. They were like, this is not his real name.
They ran the plates on his car, which they had now impounded, and that's when they came back to Ronald Gene Simmons, known to his coworkers as R. Gene or Just Gene. Why would he lie about it at this point? Right, because his coworkers knew. There were people who lived. Vicky herself knew who he was. Well, it's not like he was hiding anything. Like, they know he did it. Or trying to escape. That's weird.
Arjean Simmons was a 47-year-old retired Air Force sergeant who had retired from a 20-year career in the military eight years earlier in 1979. Simmons had served in Vietnam and by the time he retired had attained the rank of Master Sergeant. Wow. During his two-decade service, he had earned a Bronze Star Medal, a Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross, and an Air Force Markmanship Ribbon, among other accolades.
It was in the year or two after his retirement that his life began to completely unravel. And while I was researching this case, it was so hard to believe or just imagine that someone who had been so successful in the military had died.
served his country had gotten to the point where he would walk into four businesses and shoot up people. Yeah, it doesn't make sense. And although you know what you know about R.G. now, I can't tell you how much of a monster he really was. You already know about his awful acts, that he's a murderer, but murder was only the last chapter of a brutal and evil down spiral that R.G. was about to embark on after leaving the military.
Up to that point, Simmons had lived in New Mexico with his very large immediate family, which included his wife Becky, whom he had met in 1957 when she was 16 and he was 17 and serving in the Navy, which he then left to join the Air Force, moving to New Mexico and marrying Becky in 1960.
And over the next 19 years, until his retirement, he and his wife had seven children, three sons and four daughters. But after he retired, he began drinking heavily from morning until night.
Friends of his seven children who came over to the house never saw Arjean without a beer in his hand. He'd sit on the couch and watch TV all day or otherwise spend his time by himself in a creepy, dark, foul-smelling room that no one but him was allowed to go into. And he often slept there alone. So basically this was a man cave and Arjean had turned into a deadbeat father and husband.
People in Cloudcroft, New Mexico, the town where they lived, were afraid of Arjean. He was reclusive, unfriendly, and was the type of guy who would respond to casual greetings with a cold, silent glare. And this had all kind of come about since he retired.
But Arjean wasn't just a lousy father. He had forced his children into a traumatic and awful home life. His home was a very dangerous place to be. And there was a family secret, one that would soon cause Arjean to pick up his entire family and move them to Arkansas in the middle of the night, where we know he would then later go on to commit this rampage.
In 1981, R. Jean's eldest child, his then 19-year-old son, Ronald Jean Jr., whom everybody called L. Jean, which was short for Little Jean, reported his father to social services in Cloudcroft.
He reported that Arjean had been for years sexually abusing his younger sister. Dang it. This is Arjean's 16-year-old daughter, Sheila. Okay. And others outside of the home began reporting this as well. It soon started to become apparent that 16-year-old Sheila was pregnant. No way. And in June of 1981, she gave birth to a baby girl who she named Sylvia. Yeah.
And around this time, Sheila admitted to her high school guidance counselor that the child had been fathered by her father, Arjean. Poor girl. That is horrible. So there was now a baby out of incest in the family. So a criminal investigation was launched and they began trying to build a case against Arjean. But Sheila was refusing to cooperate, the 16-year-old daughter. And this is horrible.
Perfectly normal. This is perfectly normal for a 16-year-old daughter who has been physically abused by her own father to be scared or to not think anything is wrong with what's going on in the house. She's 16. She doesn't understand it's been happening for years. So that was kind of putting a wrench in the efforts to charge him, though, because if she's not willing to cooperate, it was hard to make a case. Couldn't you just... I don't know. I guess I just don't know enough. Couldn't you...
It's obviously rape. There's so much behind it. There's so many charges that are behind it, it seems like. Yes, but it's going to take time. Yeah. But when Sheila was threatened with contempt of court, she did finally agree to cooperate. And that's when she testified against her father. So they did finally force her. But again, you're forcing a victim to...
To, you know, enter trauma that they weren't willingly wanting to enter. But it's so hard. It's just a complicated thing. Charges were then filed against him. Three counts of incest. Now, once Arjean became aware of all of this, he packed everything up, took the family and abandoned their house in the middle of the night, fleeing the state of New Mexico. He's now on the run, a wanted criminal. So question real quick.
What's the wife doing? Where is she in all this? She's okay with all this happening? She's not okay with it, but there is other abuse happening in the home. So she, it's an unsafe environment. She probably just felt like she, and again, we are talking about very complicated things here.
but it's a very unsafe environment because she was being beaten every single day. She was fighting for her life as well. Oh my gosh, this is a mess. So when the cops show up at Arjean's home to arrest him for the incest charges, he was already gone. The house was vacant. The whole entire family is gone. They have seven children. All of them are gone.
And at the time, in 1981, R. Gene Simmons moved his family to Arkansas to a city called Ward. He forced his wife, who by this point desperately wanted to leave him, and she refused to be intimate with him on account of him impregnating their daughter, to stay with him and help raise the incestuous child that he'd fathered. So he told his wife, you have to stay here and help raise this child.
And it was at this time that he began distancing his wife from her extended family, secluding her. He prohibited her from going out by herself and forbidden her from driving. He took away her keys. He wouldn't let her call anyone. So, I mean, he's basically taking his own wife prisoner. And it was also at this point that the reason why he was so angry was because he was so angry that he was going to kill her.
relationship that he had with Sheila, his daughter began to take a downward turn as well. His feelings that he had once had for her had kind of turned to rage because he felt like Sheila had betrayed him by testifying against him going to police. Although she did it against her will, he still felt like it was betrayal. What a scumbag. Yeah. Like I don't even have words to describe somebody like this. And all of this with
The added knowledge that you know of what he was going to go on and do that we learned about at the beginning of the episode. Like the absolute most bottom of the barrel human being you can ever meet in your entire life. Just a monster. Yeah. So things were going downhill fast as R. Gene took his own wife and children prisoner in their own home in Arkansas.
R. Jean got a job working as a file clerk at the VA Medical Center in Little Rock, but it didn't pay enough. So he then went to work for a recruiting office, but he still wasn't making ends meet, which considering his stable 20-year career in the military,
was a new situation for him. These are vastly different things. He had a successful career in the military for 20 years. The second it was over, things took a downward turn. He still owed thousands of dollars on the mortgage for the house he'd abandoned in New Mexico, and he had seven mouths to feed now in Arkansas. And in 1983, Sheila became pregnant again. Doesn't it seem like they would want to extradite him back to New Mexico? They don't know where he is.
He's on the run. No one knows where he is. They've stopped talking to family. No family members know. He literally packed up his children and his wife, moved them out into the middle of nowhere in Arkansas and
and is keeping them prisoner basically. And he's now impregnated Sheila again, his 16 year old daughter. So obviously the sexual abuse continued on even after they moved from New Mexico. And this time, despite being staunchly anti-abortion, our gene quietly took his daughter to have the pregnancy aborted. Um,
And despite the fact that Arjean had assaulted and victimized his own daughter for years, she was trying to get out right now. Later that same year, Sheila, who was now 19, enrolled in the Drawn School of Business in Little Rock. And it was there that she met a young man named Dennis McNulty and they started dating.
She eventually opened up to Dennis about her home life and about her father's sexual abuse. So Dennis moved her out of the house immediately, taking her baby along with her, and she and Dennis got married. So she runs away. Wow. She runs away with this man. Good for her. She was finally able to escape this monster of a father who, of course, now hated her for abandoning him and taking his granddaughter slash...
he viewed this as the ultimate betrayal. Meanwhile, Arjean was keeping an eye out for an affordable plot of land he could buy, and later that year in 1983, he found one in the small town of Dover, Arkansas, which was on the fringes of Russellville. There, he bought a 13-acre plot of land, which he would come to call Mockingbird Hill.
And on that hill, R. Jean constructed a residence out of two vintage mobile homes joined together, and he moved the family there. The family now consisting of himself, his wife, his oldest son, L. Jean, who still lived at home, and his five youngest children, three daughters and two sons.
Now, these conjoined mobile homes lacked phone service, running water, indoor plumbing. The prison that was Arjean's home was now growing worse as he literally took them in the middle of nowhere with nothing. Arjean was essentially forcing his family to live off grid and behind the walls of a 10-foot high privacy fence that he had constructed out of brick.
He pretty much kept his wife and children prisoner, this sort of compound without running water where the family was forced to use an outhouse that they had to go to the bathroom. He kept barrels of water around the house for washing up, bathing, and doing laundry. This is crazy. He regularly beat his wife, who almost always had bruises on her face, and when Elgin tried to intervene, his father nearly killed him. His other kids he would keep in line by wielding a hammer.
And Arjean was beginning to develop a sexual interest in his now teenage daughter, Loretta. But she had a personality that was less docile than Sheila's, and so she was kind of able to keep Arjean from touching her. All the while, Arjean's anger towards Sheila for leaving just kept stewing. And then his son, Billy, who was now 19 years old, also moved out of the house and got married.
So now R. Jean prohibited the family who still lived in the house with him from having any contact with their siblings who'd moved, Billy and Sheila. Next, L. Jean, his oldest, he had moved out and had a kid, but he ended up moving home with the kid, a baby daughter named Barbara. Why did he move back?
It's really sometimes hard to understand victims, Stockholm syndrome, whatever you want to call it. But when these kids have been raised in this home, raised with a father who impregnated your sister, who beat your mother daily, who beat you, who cut you off from the outside world, you can't even really understand the behavior. You can't understand why Billy or Elgin come back. You know what I mean? Yeah, because it makes no sense why you would come back, right? But...
But they did. But they did. And over the next few years, Arjean worked only a slew of low-paying jobs, none of which he kept for very long. A records clerk, a waivers clerk, a grocery clerk, and a pickle factory worker. Which, up until now, I didn't even know a pickle factory.
Pickle factory worker was a thing, but Arjean was a pickle factory worker. All the while life remained miserable for Arjean's family living on their secluded compound. Arjean was someone who required absolute control over everything and everyone around him, which life in the military had provided him for 20 years. The military gave him that structure, that order, the security, and most importantly, the authority that he needed and,
And once everything began falling apart after his retirement and he had to flee New Mexico, he began to view his family members as traitors. And he was working these low-end jobs, answering to authority rather than being the authority himself that he was used to in the military.
This is when he really began exerting absolute control, manipulation and abuse over his family at home. He intercepted and censored his family's mail, much the way prisoners have their mail screened. No one in the household was permitted to socialize with strangers outside of the house. No one was allowed to use the phone. They weren't even allowed to leave the house without him or without his permission. It's a wonder that his kids were allowed to attend public school, but they did because he thought that the structure was necessary.
But he wouldn't let them even walk to and from the school bus stop unaccompanied. He would insist on driving them every day to the bus stop and back. And he pretty much treated his children like military subordinates, forcing them to do work around the house and the property, hauling rocks up the steep hill on which they lived. Whenever they weren't at school, they were working at home.
In 1985, Arjean took a job at Woodline Motor Freight Company, and that's where he met Kathy Kendrick, a young coworker there, and he became infatuated with her. But Kathy rebuffed Arjean's advances. He was more than twice her age. He had a family, seven children, and she was also married with a child of her own.
And aside from all that, she wasn't interested in Arjean. She wasn't attracted to him. She was nice about it at first, reminding Arjean that she was a married woman, but he just wouldn't take no for an answer. He then started showing up with flowers and leaving her cards and following her around, forcing Kathy to become more forceful with him, eventually telling him to just go away. How do people like this get away with this stuff for so long? Sometimes I wonder...
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There was at least one time where Arjean showed up to Kathy's home and stood on her front porch refusing to leave after she asked him to. Their supervisor at Woodland, Joyce Butts, began intervening and Joyce insisted to Arjean that he should leave Kathy alone. But Arjean deeply resented this, not simply Joyce intervening, but the fact of having Joyce, a woman, as a supervisor. And he was vocal about it. Okay.
Okay.
R. Gene eventually quit his job at Woodline out of frustration, but as we know, he would return to Woodline to shoot it up. But at the time, he'd also had a second job working part-time as a cashier at Sinclair Mini Mart, which he also would return to shoot up.
Meanwhile, his wife, unbeknownst to Arjean, had begun socking away money and counting the days before she'd have enough to file for divorce and leave him taking the children with her. So she's plotting her escape plan, but she didn't know what she would do once she left. She hadn't had a job since before getting married. She couldn't imagine who would hire her. And Arjean, it's believed, was becoming aware of his wife's intention to leave him. So he was kind of catching on to things at home.
In early 1987, Arjean, feeling like he was losing control of his family, convened a family meeting, which included his daughter, Sheila, and her husband, Dennis. So he asked Sheila and Dennis to come back to the family compound so they could have a family meeting. And in this family meeting, Arjean tried to reconcile things. He tried to...
explain himself and his sexual issues but none of the family members were receptive in fact sheila and her husband mock applauded him before getting up and leaving the house for arjean this last ditch effort to regain the love and respect or really the compliance of his family failed why was he trying to do this because he needs control he needs to be in charge he needs to be the patriarch
That's why he survived in the military because he was, he had the authority, but now he feels like he's lost it, which makes him feel like a failure. It's all a mental game to him.
With two of his children out of the house, his wife planning to leave him with his inability to hold down a job and make anything beyond a low wage, with garbage piling up inside the house and junk cars strewn across the lawn, Arjean, a man with a pathological need for control, was losing control. Sometime that year, he wrote a note to his now estranged daughter, Sheila, saying,
And though the first line was, I want to start by saying, honey, I love you. The rest of the note was full of anger. I think this note,
proves that Arjean thought him and Sheila were in love. His 16 year old daughter. Like, I think that this is what this note is about to prove. He went on to write, you have destroyed me. You have destroyed my trust in you. You have left me with no hope. You were my sunshine. Now you have taken that sunshine away. You have caused me a great deal of pain, suffering, sorrow, and loneliness. What a weirdo. I mean, I don't even know like what word to describe someone like this because this is like the craziest thing I've ever heard.
- And what's even crazier is the situation you're explaining, I am aware that this happens like all the time. Like this is not a one-off thing. It's a one-off thing because he went and killed a bunch of people at Bizda, all these businesses. - Right. - But this sexual abuse and this home life happens
more often than we probably know, which is just so sad. - This father who's supposed to be your father manipulating his daughter and claiming that they're in love. And now he's turning around saying you ruined my life. - Yeah. - No, you ruined her life. Like how can you even, how could it be so twisted?
He goes on to say, you claim Dennis won't let you talk to me alone. Well, he's going to regret that and so are you. Time has proven you don't care. You chose to work against me instead of with me. I told you, united we stand, divided we fall. You were my best friend, my confidant. You have given me the best years of my life, but you have also given me the worst. You are my biggest disappointment in life. You want me out of your life. I will be out of your life. I will see you in hell. That's what he wrote to his daughter.
but he never gave the note to his daughter. He ends the note in the final paragraph saying, I love you very, very deeply.
This man was a warped, broken creature who didn't know what love was. And finally, he concluded with saying, goodbye, my precious sweetheart. Goodbye, my love. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. Oh, that's just disgusting. But he never shared this note with anyone. Instead, he put it into a safe deposit box at his bank. Along with a brief addendum, Kathy Michael Kendrick was a contributing factor. I think you want to throw up. Kathy is the employee that he was in love with at work.
Yeah. On December 18th, 1987, Arjun quit his job at Sinclair Minimar only to show up a week later to shoot up the place.
in the midst of that multi-location 40-minute shooting spree that claimed two lives. So yeah, amazingly, everyone else who was shot that morning, his former boss, Rusty Taylor, Mini Mart co-workers David Saylor and Roberta Woolery and Joyce Butts survived their gunshot deaths. Yeah, I don't understand how they all survived. Once Arjean was in custody, police delved into his background and learned everything I just told you. They learned more about his very large family, his wife, his seven children, his three grandchildren, and
And that's when they realized the chore that lay ahead of them. So that morning it's right after Christmas, he's gone in, he shot up these four businesses. He's killed two people. Now he's in police custody. What are next steps? It seems like to me, it would just be open and shut case. It is, but I'm,
I'm talking literally what our next steps. Police are thinking we've got to get in touch with his family members and inform him of, inform them of what he had just done. They thought maybe if they were able to talk to our jeans family, they could learn a little bit more about why he had done this. Like why the need to go and rampage and kill all of these people. Um,
When investigator Jim Hardy of the Pope County Sheriff's Office arrived at the home on Broomfield Lane, the one dubbed Mockingbird Hill, he found the property quiet with a bunch of cars on the property out front, some of them broken down. He knocked on the front door and waited for someone to answer, but he got no response. He checked around the property calling out, is anyone home?
All that greeted his question was silence. The doors of the house were all locked and the curtains were drawn. Investigator Hardy then tried prying open the sliding glass door, but it wouldn't budge. And that's when he noticed a broomstick had been placed on the door's track to prevent it from opening. It seemed that if anyone had left the house, they'd had to have crawled through a window, which is very bizarre.
And despite the freezing temperature, there was no evidence of firewood or smoke from the home's chimney, which as I told you, there's no electricity at this home. So there could only be heating their home through a fireplace. And through a crack in the curtains behind the sliding glass door,
he could vaguely see something on the floor covered with a blanket. So at this point, Hardy returned to town and contacted the teachers at the schools that Simmons' children attended. And he learned that none of the Simmons' children had returned to school after Christmas break. So he either killed them all or they ran away. I hope it's that they've run away, but... Well, at this point...
After realizing that the kids never returned to school, police pay a visit to Simmons, who's still in his jail cell. And when they asked him for permission to search his home without a search warrant, he shook his head no. And when they asked him about his missing family members, Simmons' lip began quivering and his eyes glossed over, but he still said nothing.
That's when they knew that they really needed to enter the home as soon as possible. And being that the magistrates who could issue a search warrant were all on their holiday break, the local authorities were given the green light by the prosecutor's office to go ahead and enter the property.
When the team arrived at the property around 2.30 that afternoon, they had to climb the long hill up to the residence, which was still quiet and exactly as Investigator Hardy had left it earlier that afternoon. As they moved around the house, they found that all the windows were locked, except for one on the south side of the home.
Sheriff Jim Bolin worked the window up, pulled the curtain, and peered inside. He saw a brightly decorated Christmas tree with presents neatly arranged beneath it. Okay. And right nearby, lying at the foot of the Christmas tree, he saw the body of a young woman covered with a blue coat.
Sheila. Yeah.
and remove the broomstick from the sliding glass door track, allowing the rest of the team to enter the property. So I just... How did Sheila get there? Right. Well, if you haven't figured out what this means yet, the daunting realization is that he didn't just go to four businesses that day and murder people. There's obviously more to this story, which as police officers, can you even imagine fathoming that? Yeah. Like it is absolutely crazy. Inside, they found...
the bodies of four adults, each of whom had been shot to death and covered up. Sheila Simmons had been shot six times in the face. Her husband, Dennis, lying just inside the sliding glass door, had been shot once in the face and covered with a brown comforter. Lying on the floor in the kitchen, also covered in blankets, were Arjean's 22-year-old son, Billy, shot twice in the head and covered with a white blanket, and his wife, 21-year-old Renata, who'd been shot seven times in the head and neck. She was shot twice in the head and covered with a white blanket.
Oh my gosh. It's weird that he shot some people once and then shot others like multiple times. In one of the back bedrooms, they found the body of a little girl lying face down on the bed. That child was seven-year-old Sylvia, the granddaughter Arjean fathered with his daughter. So his daughter, but I guess his granddaughter too. She had been strangled to death.
From what investigators were able to determine over the course of their investigation, these seven members of Arjean's extended family had been invited to have a holiday dinner at home on December 26th, and they all showed up only to be ambushed upon arrival. But still unaccounted for were Arjean's two interviewees.
infant grandchildren and the other seven members of his immediate family. So his wife is missing, his eldest son, Ronald Jean Jr., his 14-year-old son Eddie, his daughter, 17-year-old Loretta, 11-year-old Marianne, and 8-year-old Rebecca, and his three-year-old granddaughter Barbara. So all of these people are still unaccounted for. In one of the bedrooms, blood was found on the bed pillows, and in another bedroom, investigators found blood all over the walls and ceiling.
So there was an ominous sign that there were probably more dead people. But where were they? They looked around the house. They couldn't find them. Imagine this scene. Police drive out to Arjean's compound to inform his wife about the brutal rampage her husband had done earlier that morning. When they were finally able to get inside the off-grid mobile homes, bodies of his extended family are found dead inside. And now the house is covered in blood. It appears a bloody frenzy had taken place.
But seven people are still missing. The kids, not at school. His wife, nowhere to be found. I can't even imagine. By this time, it had gotten dark. The sun set early in Arkansas this time of year. And so police removed the bodies from the home, giving up on trying to find the other people. They returned the next day and began searching the property more thoroughly. Remember, this property is covered in stuff, so it's hard to get all the way through it. It's not just one sweep of the eyes here. During the night,
During the search, two of the deputies noticed a plot of loose dirt in the backyard, which had been covered with sheets of, like, tin, basically. When they lifted the metal, they saw what looked like a hole that had recently been filled with fresh dirt, rocks, and barbed wire. They began removing the rocks and barbed wire, and they found moss growing beneath the dirt, which indicated to them this was a freshly dug hole, a hole from which the smell of kerosene had begun to emerge.
As they continued further, they hit another layer of rock and barbed wire. Once they got those out of the way, they found their first body. And beneath that, another body. And then another. That's so crazy. So he has killed every single person in his family.
In his life. In his life. And trembling, police kept removing bodies till there were no more. By which time they had recovered seven. All seven members of the Simmons household. I'm mind blown. They were stacked one on top of the other in their own backyard in a hole.
Apparently, Arjean had poured kerosene in the grave to disguise the smell and ward off scavenging predators. Searchers continued looking for Arjean's two infant grandsons. Those are the only two people who are missing. On the front lawn, they pried up the trunks of two cars and discovered in each garbage bags tightly taped shut.
They ripped the bags open and inside found the remains of the two grandsons, Trey and Michael, each a few months shy of two years old. Does it seem weird that he went through all this trouble, trouble of hiding all of them if he knew he was just going to turn himself in? Like, did he really think he was going to get away with all this? Yeah. Like, why bury them? Yeah. I mean, it's kind of a weird question, but at the same time, not really.
And during all of this, Arjean is still sitting in custody, not talking. So police are having to piece all of this together on their own. They were literally unraveling the terror of Arjean and it had all started back on December 22nd. On the morning of December 22nd, when Arjean had gone to Walmart and purchased a .22 caliber handgun, returning to his house and shooting his wife in the head. So he murders his family before the rampage day
days before the rampage. He then shot his 26-year-old son, Elgin, multiple times in the head and chest, but it failed to stop the young man from fighting with his father, who had overestimated the power of a .22. Elgin then took a steel pipe and bludgeoned his son to death with it, so the shots weren't enough. I don't want to go into detail of how the rest of the children were murdered, but I'll just go through the murders. He then went in
to the bedroom of his three-year-old granddaughter, Barbara, and killed her. He then moved all three bodies to the hole in the backyard, a hole that he'd made his own children dig only a few weeks earlier, telling them it was a cesspit for the outhouse so they wouldn't suspect anything.
They were literally digging their own grave. Oh, so he'd been planning this for a while. And after he dumped those bodies in the hole, he tore the cabinet doors off their hinges for reasons one can only guess. It doesn't make sense. Maybe he was trying to stage the scene to make it look like a home invasion. Whatever the case, he then sat in the house for the next several hours waiting for his four younger children, 8, 11, 14, and 17, to return home from school on the school bus.
That afternoon, he drove to the bus stop and picked up his children, and it's believed he then told them he had a surprise Christmas gift for them, but he wanted to give it to them one by one. It's believed he then made the three youngest children wait inside a station wagon in the front and turned Christmas carols on in the car radio, leading 17-year-old Loretta inside the home, where she would have been immediately struck by its silence because her mother, brother, and niece were always in the home, but as we know, they were murdered already.
Her father then led her into his bedroom and killed her. This is just crazy. It's brutal. This is brutal. After this, he then went back outside to repeat this very detailed process that I didn't go into detail of with the other three children who were waiting in the car for what they believed was a Christmas surprise. It is just... I don't even know how we'd like sit here and talk about this. I don't... It's just devastating.
And once he was finished and all seven members of his household were down, it seems he sat down in front of the TV to decompress and drink alcohol. And at some point afterward, he moved the remaining bodies of his four children into the backyard grave that they had dug themselves, joining their mother, older brother, and niece. And then after this, he waited. This was on the 22nd. As we know, the Christmas party that the rest of the adults come to as estranged children doesn't happen until the 26th.
So he sat around and he waited. He watched television. He drank liquor. This is how he spent Christmas. And then the day after Christmas, on December 26th, the rest of his family arrived for what they thought would be a holiday family gathering only to meet the same fate. He first shot and killed his son, Billy, and then Billy's wife. He then killed their 20-month-old son. And once his oldest daughter, Sheila, arrived with her husband, Dennis, he shot and killed them as well and then killed Billy.
There's no way this is a person. Like, there's no way there's... How many people can you kill? Like, there's... He obviously... I don't even know. Like, he obviously doesn't feel anything. Right? Like, how can you kill this many people and just be like, like, nothing is happening? And also, this is why he is called the most prolific family annihilator. Like, and on top of that, he is also a mass shooter, like a public mass shooter. It...
I don't even, it's just, you can't even fathom it. It might be one of the worst serial killers ever. Like this is so crazy. After this, he then murdered his two grandsons. And then Arjean drove to Sears to pick up the Christmas gifts that he'd already ordered for his now dead family, which he neatly wrapped and arranged under the tree once he returned to the house. Okay. Which is just details like this that I have to include because seriously,
for what yeah that night he went drinking at a bar and then all day sunday he sat at home with four dead bodies lying around him probably watching tv and drinking beer so he continued living in the house with all of those dead bodies around him early monday morning he drove to walmart in russellville and bought yet another 22 caliber gun and proceeded to go on his rampage around town that we discussed earlier in the story
All of his attacks were targeted except for the firefighter that he killed, Jim Chafin. He was a total stranger to our gene guy who simply showed up at the wrong place at the wrong time. Yes.
He had shot Kathy Kendrick probably as revenge for rejecting him, and then he went after Joyce Butts for interfering in his pursuit of Kathy. Joyce survived the shooting, but not without requiring open heart surgery and being left with brain damage. With Arjean in custody and not talking, he seemed catatonic at times, like he was disassociating. He would lie in his jailhouse cot and just stare at the wall. Because of this, he was transported to the local hospital for a psychiatric evaluation to determine if he was fit to stand trial, and it was concluded that he was.
In May of 1988, he was found guilty in the murders of Kathy Kendrick and Jim Chafin, and he was sentenced to die by lethal injection. After his sentence, he made this statement. Okay.
Simmons went on trial again for the 14 murders of his family members during the trial. When Simmons letter to his daughter, Sheila, the one that promised to see her in hell, but he never gave to her that he put in his safe deposit box. When that letter was introduced as evidence and ruled admissible by the judge, Simmons leapt out of his chair and punched the prosecutor in the face before reaching for the deputy's gun. Wow. He was restrained fortunately, and led out of the courtroom that day in chains and placed in a holding cell at
At the trial's conclusion in February of 1989, he was found guilty on all counts and again sentenced to death, plus 147 years. Afterward, he refused to appeal his death sentence in a statement echoing the one from his first trial to those who opposed the death penalty. In my particular case, anything short of death would be cruel and unusual punishment.
This triggered a competency hearing to discuss whether or not Simmons was in his right mind enough to waive his right to an appeal. And the hearing ruled that he was and that the appeal was waived just as he had requested. During his time on death row, Simmons was mostly kept in isolation as other prisoners were threatening his life on a consistent basis. I was just going to say, I kind of hope he doesn't go like the death penalty doesn't go through.
And he ends up just being with everyone else. You know what I'm saying? They couldn't. They couldn't let him because so many people in prison wanted to kill him. Oh, yeah. He's got to let him.
I mean, I don't know. It's brutal. I think this case just really like I hit my limit. He killed 14 family members, 16 people altogether, injured way more. And of those 14 family members he killed, many were children, multiple under the age of three. Why? Yeah. Why not just throw them with everybody else? It's so crazy. This case is beyond belief. Ronald Gene Simmons was...
That's a really fast execution, but he didn't go through any appeals. His execution warrant had been signed by then governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton. Wow.
None of our Gene Simmons surviving relatives claimed his body, so he was buried in a pauper's grave. And that is the story of Ronald Gene Simmons, who the week of Christmas went on a murdering rampage around town and also killed 14 members of his family, his entire family pretty much, in what remains to date the worst family annihilation in U.S. history, which I, for one, is a record I hope is never broken.
That was probably one of the most brutal episodes that you've ever told me. Because it's just the definition of a rampage. I don't even know if I would call it. I mean, yeah, I guess it's a rampage. But he did sound like it was on one day. Like he did it over like five days. Right. So it's like he obviously had time to sit there and decompress. He just did not. He was...
I don't even know, disassociated from everything. He was just gone. So you guys, I don't know if you caught on, but the format that we just did our last two cases is the exact format I will be doing on my new show, Binged. We will be covering cases that have a similar theme, but are completely different cases. So if you enjoyed it, again, Binged is dropping January 11th, and we really hope you love it. For now, peace.
We will see you next week with another episode of Murder With My Husband. I love it. And I hate it. Goodbye.