The worst mass murder in Arkansas history was committed on December 22, 1987 by Ronald Gene Simmons. His spree began and ended on December 28, 1987. Ronald killed fourteen members of his family, two other in Russellville, and wounded many others. Ronald Gene Simmons was born on July 15, 1940, in Chicago Illinois. His parents are Loretta and William Simmons. William Simmons died of a stroke on January 31, 1943. His mother soon married again to a man named William D. Griffen, who worked for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as a civil engineer. Griffen was moved by the corps to Little Rock in 1946, this was the first of many moves across central Arkansas for the next decade. Simmons dropped out of school on September 15, 1957 and joined …show more content…
He fled to Ward(Lonoke County) in late 1981 then to Dover(Pope County) in the summer of 1983. His home was constructed of two older mobile homes to make one large home that was surrounded by a makeshift privacy fence. The house didn’t have indoor plumbing or a telephone. Simmons worked many low paying jobs in the nearby town of Russellville (Pope County). He quit his job as an accounts receivable clerk at Woodline Motor Freight after many reports of inappropriate sexual advances. He worked at a Sinclair Mini Mart for approximately a year and a half before quitting on December 18, …show more content…
They think the children (ages seventeen, fourteen, eleven,and eight) were separated and killed individually, either by strangulation or drowning in a rain barrel. There bodies were also found in the pit for the outhouse. Simmons invited the older children to his house on December 26, 1987, for an after-Christmas dinner. The first to arrive was twenty-three-year-old William H. Simmons II, his twenty-one-year-old wife, Renata May Simmons, and their twenty-month-old son, all of Fordyce (Dallas County). Renata and William were shot, and their bodies were left by the dining room table Simmons covered their bodies with their own coats and other bedding. Renata and William’s son was killed and place in the trunk of a car behind the Simmon’s home. That same day Simmons drove to Russellville, he stopped at Sears and picked up Christmas gifts that had been ordered but didn’t make it in by Christmas. He then went to a private club in Russellville. He then went home and waited out the