There was a bizarre story in Russellville, Arkansas today. A man who reportedly quit his job over low pay went on a shooting spree with two handguns. Peter Vanzan reports that a man armed with two pistols this morning went on a shooting spree in two Arkansas towns, killing seven people and wounding four others. Police say the suspect, Jean Simmons, had just quit his job this morning at a local convenience store in Russellville, Arkansas and then began hunting down his victims. “It looks like he knew or at least had contact with these people at various times,” police stated. Julie Money narrowly escaped death when the suspect started firing in her office building. “The door flew open and the man shot him just point blank in the face and then he turned and I screamed and he turned and he shot at me and it just went just past my hair. I felt the heat from it and I just dove and he took off,” she recounted. Officials say Simmons barricaded himself for a time at a freight company but then surrendered without firing on police. Several of the wounded remain hospitalized tonight, one with a gunshot to the head. Police say they haven’t been able to establish a motive for the shootings, but they believe Simmons was targeting former employers. Tonight, police say Simmons is refusing to speak. Peter Vanzan, CBS News, Atlanta.
Shock and horror mounted today as the death toll climbed following the murderous rampage of an Ozark Mountain community. Officials counted 16 people dead, 14 of them members of the suspect’s family. One of the victims was a young woman who reportedly spurned the alleged killer’s advances. Peter Vanzan now with today’s developments: their worst fears came true. Searchers in the tiny Arkansas town of Dover this morning found the bodies of nine missing members of the Jean Simmons family. Seven bodies were pulled from a freshly dug grave near the family house; two babies were found in garbage sacks in the trunks of these cars. But there’s more: last night, the bodies of five other family members who came home for the holidays were discovered throughout the house, making this killing ground the worst mass murder in Arkansas history. “We’re talking about 14 – five in the house that we found, I believe we’ve got seven in the grave up here and two here in the cars,” an official stated. The man suspected of killing all these people, Jean Simmons, is the same man who yesterday allegedly killed two more people and wounded four others in nearby Russellville, Arkansas. This morning, Simmons, who has refused to speak to police, was formally charged with two counts of murder. “I asked the judge to send him to the state hospital for psychiatric examination, which the judge did, and the judge didn’t set a bond. He’s done nothing in his cell other than lie on the bunk with his face to the wall, just lie there,” a police spokesperson reported.
Very little is known about Jean Simmons. Police say he didn’t have a criminal record. Local residents describe him as a loner, a man who wouldn’t allow his family to socialize with the outside world. “Never seen anyone like him, you know. I’ve met, I know about everybody in Pope County and I ain’t never seen no one weird as he is. You never didn’t know them, you know, you couldn’t get to know them. They wouldn’t, they was quiet people, quiet, withdrawn,” a neighbor said. Words used to describe many of Simmons’ seven children, pictured here in their school yearbooks. Investigators believe Simmons murdered half of his family shortly before Christmas, killing the others as they entered his home for a holiday visit. Unopened presents were found in the house, as were the bloody signs of struggle. Tonight, shocked investigators have one major unanswered question: why? Jean Simmons may be the only man with the answer, and tonight he’s not talking. Peter Vanzan, CBS News, Dover, Arkansas.
And still to come on the CBS Evening News, Bruce reports nine more bodies found this morning in Dover; the victims may be the wife, children, and grandchildren of the gunman. The toll now stands at 16 dead in an Arkansas murder case. And now Arkansas’s own Eyewitness News at 6 with Roy Mitchell, Carolyn Long, Tom Bonner’s weather, and Dave Woodman Sports, and the entire Eyewitness News Team. What happened in Pope County has stunned Arkansas and has rocked the nation – a mass murder of almost unbelievable proportions: 16 dead, including 14 who may be members of the same family. It all started yesterday with a shooting spree in Russellville that left two people dead and four people wounded. Then last night, police discovered five bodies inside a home in Dover, and today the grisly recovery of nine more bodies. We begin our coverage tonight with Stacy Allison in Dover.
Police lines went up just after daybreak this morning as deputies prepared to search for more bodies. They found nothing in the pond, but just a few feet away, someone spotted what looks like a grave, and two feet below the ground, a body – not one body but seven, stacked one on top of the other. Police brought them out in body bags. They believe they are Simmons’s wife Becky, his son Jean Simmons Jr. of El Paso, a grandchild, and four of Simmons’s younger children still living at home: 17-year-old Loretta, 15-year-old Eddie, 10-year-old Maryanne, and 8-year-old Becky. The Sheriff was visibly shaken emotionally. “Fells, you never get used to it, you never get used to it, and I have a job to do and I try to hold up and do that job,” he said. Police believe those in the grave were killed first, possibly Wednesday or Thursday; then the five in the house arrived from out of town. Police say they were probably killed immediately, and along with them, two grandchildren, each about 2 years old, found later today in the separate trunks of two cars at the house.
Few in this community knew what went on inside of this wall. Neighbors say Jean Simmons and his family lived here in virtual seclusion, so many are not surprised that 14 people could be murdered here Christmas week in secret. But the killings didn’t stop here at the secluded house. Jim Chaen and Kathy Kendrick were murdered publicly in Russellville on Monday morning, bringing the total number of bodies to 16. Julie Money says she missed Simmons’s bullet during a Monday morning shooting spree. “I said when he looked at me with that gun and pointed that gun on me, he had this just horrid grin on his face and he just, he looked mad, he just looked mad and like a mad dog would look at you – a mad dog, a weirdo, and a nice guy, all descriptions of this man so far,” she described. Jean has said nothing to police, showed no emotion except at the mention of family. “When they would mention where his family was at, how we could contact his family and this kind of thing, the investigator said the only thing then that he saw was his bottom lip would quiver,” an official noted. And the community is quivering too. Those who knew the family feel fear when they think of 16 murders in their small community and no motive is right next door, just a couple houses down. “It was late before I got in bed and I just laid there. I could see those kids’ faces, that scary,” said Stacy Allison, Channel 4 Eyewitness News.
The Supreme Court has ruled that states may execute death row inmates who don’t want to appeal their sentences. That decision means Ronald Jean Simmons can be put to death for killing 14 relatives and two acquaintances during a 1987 rampage in Arkansas, but the Court’s action does little to end the debate over the death penalty. “Their impatience now leads them to prefer finality of a death sentence to the point of an execution rather than appropriate safeguards and constitutional standards,” a commentator noted. “I’m pleased with the decision. I think it’s important in the instance that it doesn’t open the door for anyone who has opposed the death penalty to challenge any death case just to delay or try to deny the process,” another added. The court ruled that outsiders have no right to block an execution if the condemned person wants to die without an appeal.
December 22nd, 1987, Ronald Jean Simmons began a massacre that became known as the worst family murder case in Arkansas history and the worst crime involving one family in the history of the country. His rampage finally came to a halt December 28th, 1987, with 14 of his immediate family members and two former co-workers dead and four others wounded. Just days before Christmas 1987, after the little ones were off to school, Simmons drove into town and bought a .22 caliber handgun at the local Walmart. He came back home and shot his oldest son, Jean Jr., then his wife Becky; after that, he strangled Jean Jr.’s three-year-old daughter, Barbara. He left the bodies in the room and sat down to watch TV and to wait for the four youngest to arrive home from school. By 4:00, Simmons could see his children coming up the hill. He greeted them outside with a smile and told them he had a surprise for each of them. He began with his oldest, Loretta. Simmons made the other three wait in the car outside listening to Christmas carols. Simmons lured Loretta into his bedroom and locked the door behind her. He wrapped a nylon cord around her neck and held it tight until her body went limp. Next were Eddie, then Maryanne, then little Becky; all were killed the same way. Afterwards, Simmons dumped all the bodies into the privy pit.
“One of the deputies, he’s a lieutenant at the time, Dillard Bradley, found a spot there that had been – it was obvious it had been freshly dug. It had been covered up with some scrap iron and he moved that and found that that had been freshly dug. We cordoned that area off and began digging. There was some barbed wire and there were some rocks and things like that on it and so we had to kind of sort through that and of course we thought very possibly it was a grave because we knew there were family members missing. Once we started digging down, then we found, of course, found the first – hate to call it rows, but I guess you’d call it rows – the whole grave was probably, I’m going to say probably, I’m sure, trying to go by memory now, but I’m going to say it was around 5 feet deep probably and the bodies were just, had been thrown in just on top of each other,” a deputy recounted.
The older Simmons children came home on December 26th for the Christmas dinner he had promised with the extended family. This was the first time ever that all of the family was going to be together, and some felt there was a concern that some of the family might be leaving after this gathering. Simmons was waiting on them. The first to arrive home would be 23-year-old Billy, his 21-year-old wife Retta, and their 20-month-old son Trey. Simmons met them at the door with his .22 pistol, shooting Billy and Retta, then strangling Trey. Simmons covered their bodies with their own jackets and placed them on the dining room floor. The last to arrive was 24-year-old Sheila, her husband 33-year-old Dennis McNolty, as well as 7-year-old Sylvia Gale, the daughter of Sheila and Simmons, and 21-month-old Michael, the son of Sheila and Dennis. One by one, he killed them in the same manner as he did the others. He laid Sheila’s body on the dining room table, then covered her with a tablecloth. He wrapped the two babies in trash bags and placed them in the trunks of two old cars.
He had shot some people in Russellville; some had died, most had just been injured. He used two .22 pistols. He first drove to the Peele and Eddie Law Firm where he shot and killed his former coworker, 24-year-old Kathy Kendrick. Next, Simmons continued to Taylor Oil Company where he killed 33-year-old J.D. Chaffin and wounded another worker. After that, his next stop was at a Sinclair Mini Mart where Simmons quit his job just two days prior; there he shot and wounded two others. Simmons’ last stop would be Woodline Motor Freight where he would give himself up. “Whatever happened, happened at the house and then it just sort of appeared like, well, you know, he’s done all of this and he knew probably he would go to prison and so he might as well just take care of any other issues that he had and basically that’s what he said when he was arrested was he was through, ‘I’m done,'” an officer recalled. Simmons was taken into custody and later charged with 16 counts of murder and sentenced to death.
“Well, you know, we was here at the sheriff’s office and we got called, you know, a shooting. First shooting was down at the attorney’s office where a secretary was killed and then from there we had a shooting over here at service station which was right down here from the Sheriff’s Office where lady was shot in the neck and another guy was shot at and then from there we had another call back on the west side of out of town, out at Taylor’s oil distributor where an ex-fireman was – well, he wasn’t ex-fireman, he was a fireman, was working in there off duty and got shot and killed and then Mr. Taylor was shot and then his officers were spawning out there. There was going back across town and then the last time he was out here at a trucking company where he shot a lady out there and that’s where he was taken into custody,” a sheriff’s deputy explained. “After Simmons was taken into custody, you know, welfare check for his family because nobody had heard from him, you know, in a few days and that’s when we proceeded out to his residence which was out on Morgan Gold out there. So when all the shooting was going on though, y’all didn’t have a clue who was doing it or what was happening, y’all were just boom boom? We didn’t at that time, you know, we didn’t know who, you know, who had done it involved in a shooting, but you know, we was getting calls that he was going from this side of town to the other side of town and like I said after he was taken into custody with, you know, we went to the residence to do a welfare check.”
“When we got to the residence, you know, there was vehicles parked in front of the, in front of the yard and the house was locked up, had a big sliding door, you couldn’t get in it, the curtains pulled. We found a window that was unlocked there at the kitchen and that’s where we was able to look in. We looked in, we see, you know, bodies laying on the ground, on the floor that had been covered up. We made entry into the house for welfare check where we found his daughter – she was there in front of the Christmas tree on the floor with a blanket over her. Her husband, his son-in-law, was at the front door, he was laying there dead and had a blanket over him. In the kitchen dining room area there at the table, his daughter-in-law, she was laying against the wall on the floor, she was covered up with a blanket and his son was laying by her on the floor with a blanket covered him. Their small baby, at that time we didn’t know where it was. And then his daughter by his daughter, because he molested his daughter in Arizona and she had a baby by him, and when we proceeded down the hallway in places, we found her in a bed covered up; she had a yellow fish stringer around her neck where she had been strangled to death,” the deputy continued.
“When we proceeded on down the hallway into the, you know, narrow hallway when the bedroom, which was the master bedroom, there was blood all over the pillows and the sheets and stuff there in the bedroom, which was him and his wife’s bedroom; she was nowhere to be found. And then across the hallway, which was a narrow, real narrow hallway, there was another bedroom and there was blood all over the bedding and stuff and there was also blood splattered on the walls and ceiling in that bedroom. We proceeded to, you know, check things out, which, you know, we had two infant babies missing at that time plus his wife, his son who was visiting from Arizona, and his other four children that was in school. During the process of searching, you know, we were searching the pond and all the wooded areas around it. I believe it was Lieutenant Bradley at that time found a bunch of tin that was over the ground out there and rocks on top of it and so we proceed to pull it back; you could tell it was fresh dug dirt and we proceeded to dig into the pit and we’d run into barbed wire and rocks and dirt ‘cause he’d laid it with rocks and barbed wire all the way down and when we finally got down deep enough, you know, we discovered one of the bodies in the pit, which was one of his children,” he elaborated.
“And he had poured some kind of a – either – I don’t know whether it was – wasn’t gasoline or diesel, it was something, you know, along that line – kerosene, I believe it was – that he had poured in on top of the bodies in the grave before he covered them up, but we ended up down in the grave pulling his wife and his oldest son from Arizona plus his other four children out of the grave there where he’d put them. We recovered those bodies and from what we could figure out during the crime scene and working it, he had sent his children – four off to school – and his wife and his son from Arizona was there at the house and from what we could figure, he’d walked back and his wife was still in bed and he shot her in the side of the head and that – like I said, right across the hallway was where his other son was from Arizona and he shot him, but evidently it did not kill him, you know, right off the bat because there was a fight that occurred, you know, after he was shot. Wow, and there was, you know, marks on his head where he had been beaten, gashes, but there was blood, you know, from the fight that was splashed up on the ceiling and on the walls in the bedroom. From what we could determine, after he’d killed both of them, he had took them out and put them in the pit out there, the hole that they had dug,” the deputy detailed.
“And he waited on his children to come in from school and he brought them in evidently one at a time and strangled them there. I mean, he used neckties and fish stringers and different things like that and he strangled each one of his children and then he’d put them in the pit out there and covered them up. He had waited at the house and I don’t know whether a day or what, but his daughter, daughter-in-law, and son arrived with their small infant child and they were sitting at the kitchen table where she was shot. I think she was shot like seven times and then his son was also shot there. They was laying, like I said, on the floor in the kitchen dining room area against the wall and he had covered them up with blankets and their small infant child – he strangled the baby and he had five-gallon – well, there’s more than five gallons, there’s big trash cans full of water in the house and from what we found out that he had submerged the babies after he had strangled them down in the big tubs full of water,” he continued.
“And at that time, they was the first one that we, you know, that was killed like that and then his daughter and his daughter by his daughter, which he had molested his daughter while he was in Arizona and she had a baby by him, and their infant and his son-in-law came and he shot his daughter there by the Christmas tree and when she fell right by the Christmas tree in the living room, evidently he went over to the door and his son-in-law come running in the door and he shot him in the side of the head and he fell right at the door there at the house. Then he strangled his granddaughter there, his daughter by his daughter at that time, and then he also strangled the infant baby and also submerged it. At that time, we had everybody accounted for except the two infant babies and we had searched and we went up out in behind the house and some old cars out there and then we opened up the trunk and inside the trunk we found a black trash bag; it had been taped and pulled around and opened it up and there was one of the infant babies inside a trash bag with the, you know, signature around its neck where it had been strangled and we opened up another car next to it and inside the trunk of that car we also found trash bags that had wrapped up and we opened it up, it was also the other infant baby there at the house,” he recounted.
“Now when y’all arrested him and made contact with him, did he tell you any of this information or y’all just went on there on a hunch on a welfare check? He never said – he never said a thing about the murder even up till the day he was executed. Y’all had no idea what you were walking into at the house and how did y’all deduce who got killed in what order and all that good stuff? Well, from what we could put together, you know, you take, okay, if his daughter and son-in-law would have been at the door, his son and daughter wouldn’t come in the house and set at the table and, you know, we knew the children came home from school and, you know, so we knew that happened and it was a couple days later when his daughter and son and families came in, so you know, you pretty well put a timeline together on the accounts that happened through what we was able to find out and no, did he use the same weapon throughout? .22, .22 pistol, just kept reloading and how many shots total did y’all ever come up with an amount? Well, I think his daughter, daughter-in-law, she was shot like about seven times ‘cause you could tell she was against the wall and fighting as she was being shot because she was – blood was being slung everywhere and she had it all over where she was rubbing her face and stuff where she had been shot,” the deputy explained.
“And then her, his son there, I think he was shot two or three times, you know what I mean, so and then his daughter, I think she – I don’t remember exactly how many times she wasn’t shot, but a couple times, but his son-in-law, I think he was shot one time in the side of the head. It’s crazy, the fact that he shot the older people and then strangled the – I mean, strangling somebody’s so personal and to strangle a little baby – my goodness, you take, you know, he strangled his own daughter by his daughter and then these two grand-grandchildren, you know, little, and then his own other kids, you know, he strangled them. Now, was there anything left in the house that kind of led up to why he did it or a note or anything? The only thing that we was able to determine – her sister, she was his wife’s sister – no, his wife’s sister, yes, she lived over in – I don’t remember, over in the eastern part of the United States and from what we was able to find out, she was fixing to leave – it was abusive, you know, relationship kind of, and I think she was going to take the children and go over there, so could be he found out, yes, according to a letter, you know, that we received, you know, that was sent to his, you know, to her sister, but he never did admit to nothing, you know,” he continued.
“So once he killed all of them, he just decided, well, I’m headed to town to right some wrongs that went on my jobs? He stayed there for a couple days at the house after he killed everybody with them in the floor and all of that – he was there a couple days before he come to Russellville and done this? Yeah, that’s just crazy, man. So when he came to Russellville, was that still the same gun? Oh yeah, yeah, so he had ammo and everything on him? Yeah, that was the same – well, yeah, I assume ‘cause he had more than one gun, but you know, .22 was what was used here in town and also a .22 was what was used up there and he just surrendered, right? Well, at first, after he shot them, he kind of barricaded himself in out there at the trucking place and finally, you know, he gave up. There was so many officers out there at the time because, you know, like I said, it’s going back across town ‘cause we was getting a call, you know, the first shooting down there by the forestry service at the lawyer’s office, you know, where the secretary was killed and then the next shooting was, you know, right out here past the Sheriff’s Office on West or East Main and then the next shooting was all the way back on the west side of town at Taylor’s oil deal and then the next shooting was all the way back out here on the east side of town, so he was driving back across town, you know, when officers was going one way, he was going the other way,” he detailed.
“So what was with the secretary at the lawyer? What was his beef with her? I don’t know exactly what the beef was; it was something over papers or something. He was kind of infatuated with some of the women that, you know, but that was the Kendrick woman, right? He made advances to her or something at one point, huh? Yeah, that is just a strange case. So when y’all went out there and – I mean, when you take a body to the coroner, they’ve got a lot to do, but when you got that many bodies, did y’all have coroners come in from other areas or was that coroner just -? No, no, they was taking over everything, all the coroner – only, you know, our coroner here and then they was all transported to, you know, to Little Rock State Crime where, you know, autopsies and everything was done at Little Rock. But at the time, it may have changed now, but at the time when this happened, there was the worst family massacre in the nation’s history. I think it still is, yeah, it’s a good chance it probably still is,” he noted.
“So other agencies, I’m assuming, came in and helped and -? Well, mostly it was just the Sheriff’s Office; the State Police helped on it, you know, State Police was up there helping us on it, the investigator that was here, but, you know, the city – you know, the city – all of these shootings took place inside the Russellville city limits, so we, you know, the city worked that part of it as far as the shootings because we concentrated on the, you know, crime scene and everything that we had out in the county, yeah, and so the city of Russellville, their detectives and that worked the, you know, shootings and the murders inside the city. So he, once he got arrested, now he just waived all of his rights, right? He just wanted to be executed immediately kind of thing, didn’t want -? He wanted, he wanted that, but several other inmates on death row down there filed appeals on his behalf with, you know, he didn’t want it; he wanted to be executed immediately, but they filed appeals down there to try to stop his execution because they was on death row, so they figure, you know, I mean, if you’ve done all that and you just want to immediately get out, why not just kill yourself? Why not suicide by cop, you know? I just, it’s strange that he did all that and then he wanted to be arrested, he wanted to go to jail, and he wanted to be executed,” he reflected.
“You know, that really surprised me because I figured, you know, he’d want to be, yeah, just, you know, killed – this is why I did this and now I’m killing myself and blah blah, but, you know, he never did it; he never did admit anything. So how long was he in jail before he got executed? What, like two years? I think it’s like two years he was on death row before he was executed, something like that. Now, when the court stuff all went on, were they calling you back as a witness? Did they, did they have to do all that or -? No, when, once we had a trial – see, they had to change a venue on the trial; they didn’t try it here in Pope County; the trial was held in Johnson County. Interesting, yeah, they had a change of venue and a trial was held at the, like I said, at Johnson County Courthouse is where the trial was held. Is that because the Pope County affiliation, they just thought -? Well, yeah, see, Pope – you know, Johnson, Pope, Johnson, and Franklin counties all in the same district, so the change of venue went to Johnson County because they figured it’d be so prejudiced in Pope County for what he done because inside the city and then out of the county, you know, that they couldn’t get a, you know, a fair jury because of everything that happened, so that’s the reason they had a change of venue; it went to Johnson County,” he explained.
“So what happened after, like, the house? So once everything was done, I mean, did you guys board up the house? No, we, after we took all of our evidence and, you know, and stuff from the, you know, house, all of that, of course, his attorneys that he had then, they got everything it was up there was worth anything for his, for his fees, for his fees and stuff and then finally, you know, over the years after it happened, you know, there was nobody there and kids was going up there and going in the house and it finally ended up, you know, they – it finally ended up burnt up. Probably best, oh yes, yeah. So that was 35 years ago, man, and you’re still getting asked questions about it. I mean, how did it affect you? Was – well, because you were the guy that walked in the door, right? The – I mean, weren’t you filming it? Your CID had somebody else filming it and you were narrating? I was narrating it, doing through the crime scene, so I mean, that’s got to be seeing the dead kids and the children, children and -? In my 39 years of working in law enforcement, the children always bothered me more than anything else because I mean, you cannot see – cold-hearted, but let me tell you, if you are working law enforcement and you take that stuff home with you, you will go crazy. You have to, when you walk out of the office, you try to go do something, get it out of your mind; that’s reason some, many officers end up drinking and all of that stuff, but me, I just went home, went to work, just get it off your mind because if you don’t, it’ll drive you crazy,” he shared.
“Do you think it’s ever going to go away for you? I mean, people are always having you do interviews and asking you questions and stuff and -? In 39 years, I don’t know how many murder cases and stuff that I worked. You know, had one case when I started in 1970 – in ‘71, we had three little girls here, they come up missing. I worked on that case for probably 35, 36 years before we ended up solving it, wow, and found two of the skeleton remains and was able to identify two of them; the other one – anyway, the guy, he finally confessed to us after 30-something – well, it’s like 20-something years, nearly 30, and anyway, he’s doing life and three life sentences in penitentiary plus one out of Missouri. Oh my goodness, I worked on that case for years too. I mean, there’s a lot of cases, murder cases and stuff that I worked on – well, worked everything because I was head of the criminal investigation division for 30-something years. Nothing like this one though, huh? I don’t know, this – this – this – this – this one was something else,” he reflected.
“Well, that’s it. I appreciate you telling – I mean, I’ve heard about it. I mean, I was – I just graduated high school when it happened, so I was just a kid and I don’t even, you know, when you’re a kid, you just don’t think about stuff like that, but just over the years, it kept, you know, you kept seeing stuff and seeing stuff and seeing stuff and I thought, man, I would love to get to know the guy that was actually there that walked through the door and, you know, was on scene ‘cause everybody hears about, you know, the guy and the kids and everything else, but nobody ever really kind of got your perspective or in detail. Well, I done a – I guess this about 6 years ago, I guess it was – I done a documentary, hour-long documentary with the Oxygen Channel on it and they, about every Christmas, they air it ‘cause they do all their murders at Christmas Day, you know, Christmas homicides, so it’s probably – now, I don’t know, often – now, Christmas, that one back, that’s been about 5 years ago the last one I’ve done. Yeah, this is the 35-year anniversary, man, it’s just – don’t seem like it’s been that long. I was going to ask you, does it seem like it’s been 35 years? No, it don’t seem like it’s been that long,” he concluded.
“Well, Ray, I appreciate you sitting down with me and talking with me and all that good stuff. I appreciate you coming in and getting your perspective on everything. December 28th, 1987 was a long Christmas weekend. I want to illustrate something to you about what happened that day on Monday. It started out like any other Monday; it was the day after the holiday, it was kind of gloomy, gray day, everybody’s trying to get back to work because Christmas, I believe, was on Friday, so they had the week – had the long, long holiday and Monday, just like any other day for us. Something we hadn’t had was we got a shots fired call. We had a shooting at a law office in Russellville. The first call we got was at the Peele Law Firm, which was set right here. When we got there originally, we knew that there had been a shooting; we really didn’t know what because the call had come in from the law firm – a receptionist sitting at the front desk, Kathy Kendrick; she was our first homicide for that day in Russellville,” a detective began.
“Kathy was the receptionist at the desk. Arjeene walked into that office, shot her point-blank behind her desk, and left. Ironic at that time, there was an attorney in that law office, but he was in court. I think if he had been there that day, things would have changed a little bit. He’s now our prosecutor; he was a partner, his name was David Gibbons. David was a US military – he was a medic and he was also an attorney and he was with Peele in that law firm. At that time, David’s office was in the back and probably, had he been there, he could have probably stopped Arjeene then. David carried a 1911 .45 in his desk. David was in court, so he wasn’t able to do anything. When we got the call, we were trying to figure out who this suspect was, what they were driving; it was real sketchy that he saw him walk back outside and he left – described as an old male wearing a hat, really nothing else,” he continued.
“I roll up to this scene; at that time, head of tech, he was Lloyd Harson; he was a sergeant. He said he would take that crime scene. When he pulled up there, we got a second call of a second shooting and this was way out on West Main – you know where that’s at, there’s a Sonic and a PDQ and there used to be a little Change Loop place right behind it was the Taylor Oil Company. The oil company was right off – he took off and went down West Main Street. At that time, after the second shooting that we had, we got a physical description of the car. I’m doing 90 to nothing, but I was in an unmarked car; as a detective, I had an unmarked car, but I had a police package, but I had an unmarked car. I’m going that way looking for, as they tried to describe to me, a small vehicle; looked like a little station wagon; they described basically the same guy. We couldn’t figure out how he got from here to here. What we determined later through our investigation is he went down Glenwood so he could not be detected, went down Glenwood, went over to Englewood, 12th Street; he took 12th Street, went west, continued west to Englewood Street, which makes a curve and comes around and connects back out on Main Street,” he detailed.
“He makes this long journey around and comes here to the bulk plant. The reason why he went to the back – one of the people who wronged him in his, in this whole situation. The guy that was shot here – one of them here; there was two people shot; one of them was a fatal. There was a third person shot at this bulk plant; had a dock on it. Arjeene went into that bulk plant and shot Rusty Taylor. Rusty was the owner of the Taylor Oil Company; he was also owner of a convenience store that was out here on East Main. He went inside the office; Rusty was behind his desk talking to another customer, Craig Bailey – good friend of Rusty, but he was there visiting with him. Arjeene walked into the front office; he had to go into a second office; a little office was kind of squared off; the bulk plant was over here on this side and what they had over there – barrels of oil. He walked in the door; Rusty was behind his desk talking to Craig, basically in this angle like me facing the instructor here. Mr. Harris, Arjeene steps in with his .22; he fires at Rusty. Rusty gets hit; he drops under his desk. He does not see Craig B sitting over against the wall. Craig was just sitting against the wall in a chair talking to Rusty as Arjeene was turning around to walk out,” he recounted.
“We had a second fatality – J.D. Chaffin was a firefighter for the Russellville Police Department. J.D., who I knew very well and a close friend – that was his day off; firefighters have a 24 on, 48 off. He worked for Taylor driving a bulk truck delivering gas. J.D. had just returned from a fire call; he got a call to respond to a fire – I don’t remember where the fire was at. He come back; when he walked into the office from out on the bulk side of it, out in the warehouse, he grabbed the door handle and J.D. grabbed the doorknob and he pulled the door open, met Arjeene Simmons. Arjeene just turned around and fired one round; .22 round went right here by J.D.’s nose below his eye, stopped him. When J.D. fell backwards, his hand was still – because of the motor reflex, his hand – and this is something you’ll learn sometimes when you do these crime scenes – his hand was in the motion; the last thing he done before he died, he grabbed that doorknob, was going to step in the office. He had no clue what was going on, but when he opened up that door, Arjeene just turned around, shot him, and then he went out the door through the warehouse and was going off the dock to leave,” he continued.
“The clerk, she was in a bathroom on the far side of the warehouse and had just come out of the bathroom; he saw her, she saw him; he fired rounds at her; she got behind the barrels of oil and then he took off. She was the closest thing we had at that time to a real good witness of what happened. I responded to this crime scene; we had – and for that day, guys, I think for about a 2-hour period, it was nothing but the sound of sirens – sirens everywhere. We were flying by the seat of our pants; we’d had two shootings right here inside town. Everybody – guys from the sheriff’s office, when they heard the call, everybody was going anywhere they needed to be, try to help. We had a little bit of chaos. I picked up this witness, taking her to the office so we could get her interviewed. As I was getting back to the office, no sooner than I pulled up to the office to drop her off, I was going to do a formal interview with her and try to get some more information about my suspect and what he looked like. Just as I was dropping her off at the PD, got her out the front door, she was going in, we had a third shooting,” he detailed.
“The third shooting occurred at Sailor’s convenience store. Think of a landmark now on East Main Street; there’s a Dollar General and a Watson Morgan used car lot across from Walmart; approximately in between those two, that’s where the convenience store was at. The reason Arjeene went to that convenience store is that’s where he used to work as a nighttime clerk. He went inside there and was going to shoot the day clerk. The day clerk picked up a chair and tried to throw it at Arjeene. Arjeene then picked up – started picking up cans of something off the shelf – beans, whatever – started chunking them at him. We still – he had the chair; he fired a round and the chair deflected the bullet. One hit Sailor; he was injured; they were not life-threatening, but they had been shot by a .22. If you’ve ever been shot by a .22, it don’t care how big a bullet it is, it hurts because it’s hot, and where he got shot at, it’s enough to make you think you’re going to die. At that time, we had two active crime scenes going on over here; we had ambulances running all different directions to try to pick up the one; we had a fatal over here, but we had another shot at was Taylor, who was the guy who owned this service station here,” he recounted.
“As we’re coming to this crime scene now that I’m – I’m headed back to here because we’ve got an officer, Alan Bradley, was taking care of this crime scene. I started heading to the convenience store; no sooner I got there, Jay Wertz – Jay was the administrator for the jail at that time before he became Sheriff, but Jay took over that crime scene for me and the reason why, no sooner than Jay got there to take care of it – Firestone, right behind Firestone back here off Bernard Way is a trucking firm, Woodline Motor Freight. Arjeene Simmons used to work at Woodline Motor Freight. Problem with Arjeene at that time, what we learned later, he had a female for a supervisor. In his life of control, females were not to be boss of him; he couldn’t stand it that this lady, Miss Butts, was his supervisor. He didn’t get along well; he was a very controlling person. He did it with his family – y’all read some of the stuff, I’m sure, and probably heard a few stories,” he explained.
“I’d just like to tell you that some of the stuff you read on Facebook or when you’re trying to look it up on Google, use a lot of that stuff with a grain of salt because a lot of it – there was a book written about all this called ‘Zero to the Bone.’ I’m standing here telling – I would not recommend that book; you can get it and read it, but it’s a fairy tale. Those guys wrote that book to get it out right quick because of Arjeene Simmons being captured; wrote about what it was in his mind and why he did some of the things he did. Guys, I’m here to tell you, when myself and Captain Caswell, when we had the opportunity to be around Arjeene Simmons, he wasn’t going to tell us anything about who, what, or where or what he done with his family, and we were working to try to figure this out,” he continued.
“After over here, this ended up being my crime scene working – it was at Woodline Motor Freight. He had shot Miss Butts, who was his supervisor, shot her there at her desk and then went into the back where there was a lady who was back in the back, going on the phone and called her office. Back then, we dispatched our officers from the PD; Sheriff’s Office dispatched their own, so we had two dispatch centers, but Arjeene Simmons went in that back room and told her to call the Russellville Police Department; he was going to turn himself in and he had his .22 pistol with him or revolver that he had with him. When we arrived on the crime scene here off the back dock, we went in there – myself, Chief Johnson, and there was a trooper at the time, Jerry Roberts. Jerry was just about ready to shoot Arjeene Simmons through a plexiglass; he saw Jean in a back room; he had the girl on the phone and he had the gun pointed at her and our thought in mind was he’s going to do something. He was wanting to give up, but we’ve got that relayed to us about what he was trying to do then,” he recounted.
“Before he would give up, he wanted to know what the chief was wearing, so that’s when he turned himself in to. Luckily, the radio operator working that day, Donna, she knew what the chief wore that day. Our police chief described him – gray hair, a white-haired gentleman wearing a blue sweater. I can remember that blue sweater and a white shirt. He turned himself in to Arjeene to the chief, handed him the gun. We took him into custody, took him to the PD. He wouldn’t – he gave us a bogus name; we couldn’t find him in the system back then. He wouldn’t say nothing more. When we ran the tag on his little station wagon – it was parked there at the Woodline Motor Freight – we then found it would return to Ronald Jean Simmons in Dover and address in Mockingbird Lane, I think, up off of – thank you,” he detailed.
“So now we’ve got a – we got a fatal here, we have a fatal here, we’ve got a near fatal here; we wasn’t sure that Miss Butts was going to make it. She survived, died – she died here just a few years ago ‘cause she had brain damage ‘cause he shot her in the head. We found that he was shooting – he was finding that a .22 just wasn’t quite doing what he thought it was supposed to with the rounds and the way he was firing. The autopsies that were done describe each individual here about how many times Arjeene had to shoot them. He had two .22s he was using; he had made a mention that he just – it wasn’t what he thought it was going to do and some people he shot more than once; some people he shot five or six times,” he explained.
“After all this, we’ve got Arjeene Simmons back at the RPD; we’re trying to find out who he is. He wouldn’t talk to us; he wouldn’t tell us nothing. We interviewed him at great length, trying to get something from him to find out what was going on, trying to figure out why all these particular people. Later on, we understood why and what I was telling – what we learned from the shooting, why these particular people were pointed out by him. We gave him over to the Sheriff’s Office then, the process, and tried to further interview, and it was there then that we discovered we might need to go up to his home and do and check on his family because this was Monday now; school was back open and we had noticed too that the kids did not come back to school; that was a little concerning. I then, after we left here, I went then with another detective, myself; we went with the Sheriff’s Office ‘cause we went over – we went over to the Sheriff’s Office with them to figure out what was going on and this guy and why and what and where. After that, this when we discovered we want to go up to his home place and kind of check on his family,” he continued.
“I’m Captain Caswell; I started law enforcement in 1970; I retired in 2009, so that tells you about how long I was in law enforcement. At the time that this occurred, I was a lieutenant, the head of the criminal investigation division with Pope Sheriff’s Office. As Scotty said, we was running like a bunch of bees in a beehive all over the city of Russellville at that time. After he was taken into custody and we determined through talking to the school that his children hadn’t come to school, so we went to the residence for a welfare check. When we got to the residence off Broomfield Road, the house setting up on a hill on the north side, we got to the house; nobody answered. Vehicles all over the yard; we got to running license plate numbers of the vehicles, trying to find out who was there. There was a window open on the south side leading into the living room; raised the window up that was unlocked, pulled the curtain back; we could see bodies in the house,” he recounted.
“We went into the residence to check it; there was a male laying just inside the living room or in the living room just inside the door – sliding door – and he put a broom handle inside the door so it couldn’t be opened. There was a white female laying at a Christmas tree; had blankets over her. There was a white female in the kitchen, laid up against the wall with a blanket over her. There was a white male in the kitchen, laid up in the floor with a blanket on it, and it was a small child in a bedroom covered up with a blanket who had a ligature of fishing cord tied around her neck where she had been strangled. We’d done a crime scene search of the whole thing; from what we could determine on this, they had came in for Christmas. We still had nine people unaccounted for – his four children that had been to school, his son, his wife, plus two small babies, plus another little boy that was his son, his grandson,” he detailed.
“So during the process of doing the investigation, there was holes knocked in the wall; there was cabinets torn off inside the house where it was tore up. From what we can determine, that his daughter or his son-in-law and his daughter came there and as they came into the house, they had a small child, a little baby; they was in the kitchen area. He shot them; he shot his daughter, daughter-in-law, I think eight times in the face; she was against the wall and she was fighting; there was blood all over her hands and her face and her clothes and everything where she was fighting, trying to stay alive. He shot his son there three times, I think, or two in the head and the chest; they was laying there; he covered them up. They had a small baby; he strangled the baby and put it – they had trash cans inside the house full of water; he submerged the babies in the water and drowned them. Okay, I think the baby was like 20 months old, 21-something like that, 22 months old,” he continued.
“He stayed there at the house; well, his daughter, his son-in-law, their small baby, which was 20 or 21 months old, plus his daughter by his daughter because he had sexually molested his daughter and had a daughter by her – this happened in Arizona and the Child Welfare had got after him and was doing a case, so they moved from there to keep him from being arrested, so they moved to here. So when they came into the house, his son-in-law was still outside; he shot his daughter in the face at the Christmas tree; she fell right in front of the Christmas tree. His son-in-law come running into the door and when he did, he had stepped behind the door; when he come in, he shot him right in the side of the head and killed him; he hit the floor. He then strangled his daughter by his daughter and then her small baby; they drowned – he drowned him or her, I don’t remember, I think it’s him. We accounted for these people that said we still had nine people we was unaccounted for,” he recounted.
“So we had to come back; we obtained a search warrant, went back to the residence; we didn’t know where they was, where they was – in a pond? We had teams that was searching the fields and stuff around there, teams that was dragging the pond and there. So as we were searching for the area there outside, inside the house down the hallway there, the master bedroom where Arjeene and his wife had stayed, across from it was another bedroom; well, in this bedroom, in the bed, there was blood all over the bed and in the bedroom on the south side, there was blood and blood splatters all over the wall, the ceiling, and all over the room. But what we come to find out, he had walked down the hallway that morning after his children had went to school; he had killed his wife, shot her in the head; he turned around and shot his son that was in the other room; then he turned around – his son, he didn’t kill him instantly; he started fighting him; he beat him with a piece of pipe there and that’s the reason the blood splatters was all over the wall and the ceiling and everything and it was all over the room,” he detailed.
“After he killed him, he then strangled his small grandson by his son there; he took them out – there was a hole dug in the ground out there that we found during the crime scene search there that that’s where he ended up putting them down. He stayed in the house then – now, you got to remember, this happened before he killed his two grandchildren, his daughter, and his son-in-law and all them at Christmas; this happened prior. He waited on his children to come in from school; he kept them outside; he called them in one at a time into the room and he strangled with ligature; he used cords, necktie, and different things; strangled each one of them there. He called one of them in and he’d strangle them; he killed all four of them then. After he killed them, he took them out to this hole that was in the ground that they had dug; he threw them in the hole; he poured kerosene in on top of them; he put dirt, rocks, barbed wire, more dirt, rocks, and barbed wire all through this and then the top, he took – put tin over the top of it,” he continued.
“Well, during a crime scene search of this place, we discovered the grave. Lieutenant Bradley, at that time – which he was a captain or major when he retired from Sheriff’s Office – he found it; he contacted us and we went outside, started through the grave. As we dug down into it, you could tell it was a fresh grave ‘cause about 2 feet down inside the hole, there was moss growing on the side of the dirt, which the moss is not going to be growing two foot under the ground like that, so we knew it was a fresh grave and you can smell the kerosene. We had to use a winch on the truck to pull the barbed wire and stuff out so we could get to it. We got down into the hole and this is where the bodies was laying in there; all of them was laying on top of them. We still had two children that we did not account for – the two small babies. Then we went to searching; there was some old cars down there and I said we need to search the old cars. We end up having to punch the trunks; well, when we punched the trunks of the cars, raised the trunk up and inside the back of the car, there was garbage bags there. I took and cut open the garbage bag ‘cause it was taped up and there was one of the small infants inside it. We popped the trunk on the other one; same thing – inside a black garbage bag wrapped up, taped, was this other small child in there,” he recounted.
“So at that time, he, from the start of it, he had killed his son, his wife, and his grandson at home that morning; he took them out and threw them in the ground. Then when his children come in from school, he killed them, threw them in a hole, covered them up. He sat there at the house for a couple days until his daughter-in-law and son came; then he killed them and then when his daughter, son-in-law, daughter by him, and the other grandbaby came, he killed them. He stayed there a couple more days and that’s when he come to Russellville and started his shooting spree in Russellville. So he had stayed there and from what we can determine from things, he was very dominant. I’m telling you, you just – you don’t know. The Christmas presents was still in the house in the closet, stuff like that,” he detailed.
“Through the letter, his wife was going to leave him, from what we, through what we read and letters and stuff, and he could not stand that. He loved his daughter, you know, to the point, and he could not see any of them leaving. He went ballistic when she got married ‘cause he wanted to marry her and keep her there for his second wife, so he could not stand this and that’s, I think, that’s what really touched him off – when his wife was going to leave him and I think it’s when he went on a killing spree. He wasn’t going to let them leave or nothing else and he decided to kill all of them and that was – that was pretty well the synopsis. Y’all have read or looked at it and that, that’s pretty well what happened through the whole thing. He wanted to die and then stayed on death row two years before he finally died,” he concluded.
“If the kids hadn’t showed up for school, you know, a couple days, they would probably been doing a welfare check; they would have been contacting somebody – what’s going on – and they would have been somebody going to the house. They did have a detective who went up to the house first time to try to see if he’d get a hold of anybody; he could get no answers there, but talked about all the different vehicles that were in the yard that were not related to there. The daughter, the incestuous daughter he had the relationship and child by, she was married and now living down in South Arkansas; that car was there, a couple other vehicles there, but they weren’t tied to the house, so that raised a little question, but we couldn’t get anybody – like I said, couldn’t get anybody to come to the door; there was no answer,” he explained.
“So that’s the other thing kind of started is that one, they didn’t show up for school – those four kids – and the teachers were concerned that they hadn’t been to school; that would have given us his information, so we developed that plus what had happened in town and not being able to contact anybody and we didn’t have the luxury that you kids have now; everybody’s got a cell phone. We didn’t have cell phones; you ever heard of a pay phone? That’s about what we had – pay phone on every corner; you go to the phone and call somebody; you didn’t have the instantaneous contact that we have now and by the kids not coming to school, we called the home number – they actually had home phones – you know, the number at home; couldn’t get a hold of no one. She was working; mother was trying to get a job; like I said, Arjeene was very controlling; he controlled that family and everything they did,” he continued.
“This next oldest daughter that lived there that was still going to school, she was a spitting image of her mother, but we – I think in some of the things we saw in the letters, the next one he was going to probably try to have some kind of relationship with was going to be her. She was a junior, I think – junior at school at Dover – pretty girl, just like her mother, and of course, Arjeene had a – he had a controlling thing over his wife and she tried to protect the kids. She, in fact, even wrote a letter, like Captain referred to; there was a letter we found where she talked about she’s getting ready to leave; she had wrote that to her sister, but I mean, they – he was so dominant, I mean, they couldn’t do anything. I mean, you got to understand that, I mean, it was – it was just strictly he had his thumb on and that’s the reason he couldn’t stand the thought of them – they was going to leave and that’s the reason, I think, what set him off on that and after he’d done that and stayed there a couple days after he killed his entire family, he decided to go to Russellville and take revenge on the people who’d done wrong at Russellville,” he detailed.
“The Kathy Kendrick, who I knew personally – I grew up with her; she was a part of my family when we moved here in Russellville back in 1963; her father and mother and her brother, her sisters lived with us. I personally knew Kathy; knew that she grew up and then now was working; she had a child. Kathy was working at a place where Arjeene had seen her; he had an infatuation with her; he had his eyes on Kathy. We had got a couple calls where he showed up where she was living in the University Estates; he would leave flowers on her doorstep; she’d come up, open the door, go to work, and there’s these flowers laying there; he’d leave her cards. You got to worry; he was just constantly after Kathy. She spurned him; didn’t want to have anything to do with him; that upset him – he had no control over her; that was another thing he was losing control and when Kathy spurned him, she called us a couple times; we had complaints on Arjeene where he would come to her house; she’d come out the door and he’d be standing there; if he wasn’t leaving flowers, he was standing there bothering her. He tracked her down to figure out where she was now working and she had just started at the law firm as a receptionist at the front desk; that was the first person he went after – the one that had spurned him,” he recounted.
“Of course, like Captain said, he stayed up there with those bodies and his family for those couple of days in that house and you could see some of the rage when I went inside there. We boosted up the sheriff and put him in the window of that house to go look and open up that door so we can get inside. When we got inside there, you could tell he – he was kind of doing a little survivalist; when he’d eat a meal, he’d put it in a bread bag, tighten a knot, and leave it; he was doing that so the critters got inside the house – they wouldn’t smell it, smell things, and start trying to get in there. One window was open; we was able to get into, but the rest of it, he beat the cabinet doors off the kitchen; he punched holes in the ceiling – wherever it was, crowbar – you could tell he was thinking about things as the time was going on and stayed there in that house; no heat of any kind; it was kind of rugged. Had big old blue 55-gallon barrels that they had scattered through the house for water – that’s what they did for water,” he detailed.
“He made those kids – because they did not have running water; they had an outhouse, as we call it – look that up; it’s called an outside – they had no inside plumbing; they would have to go out there. He made those kids dig a little trench and it was going to set the house on top of that was the thought that they were doing this work for; when they got home from school, they didn’t have a cell phone to get on and Google or do anything; they had their homework to do and then he had an assignment; they was out there digging that little trench. They’d dug it about 4 feet deep; those kids were out there picking and shoveling, digging their own grave and they didn’t realize it, you know. He stayed there for three days at least from the time that he killed his family and then he waited on the rest of his family before he killed them and then he stayed there another day or two before he came to Russellville,” he continued.
“During all this time, you know, he’s at this house, so, you know, who knows what’s going through his mind, you know. When he went to trial, he wanted the death penalty; he wanted to die, you know. I mean, that was his goal; he wanted to die. Really, I think he wanted to be shot, but I think he’s had to give himself up and then, but the .22 – when you do look at the autopsy reports, you’re going to find some of them that he shot five and six times; I think the one he may have shot eight times. I know his son, he shot him – or son-in-law, shot him once in the head ‘cause he dropped this as he come through the door; the daughter, I think he shot her two or three times and then the son-in-law two or three times, but all the other children and stuff, as far as his children that he strangled – all with that – and like I told you earlier, the people in Russellville, the only one that had nothing to do with Arjeene Simmons at all and his problems was that fireman, J.D. Chaffin, was collateral damage – wrong place, wrong time,” he recounted.
“J.D. walked in that door after Arjeene shot Rusty Taylor in his office and when Chaffin grabbed that doorknob to step inside, he had no idea what he was walking into. When he opened up that door, that was a threat to him, so he shot J.D. J.D. had nothing to do with Arjeene and all his other problems. He shot Rusty because that was his boss where he worked as a clerk at that little convenience store in town. He shot Joyce Butts because when he worked there at Woodline Motor Freight, he was an exemplary employee, but he could not stand – he was a sergeant, Master Sergeant in the Air Force; he was used to being in a little bit of control. Once he got in the civilian world, he lost that and the only way he could be in control was through his family and when he worked with Joyce Butts, she was over him and he had issues with Joyce; that’s why he shot her,” he explained.
“The guy at the convenience store, that was the guy that was working the shift that Arjeene really wanted, but he didn’t get it; this guy had took it out on him. Like I said, the only one of those four there in Russellville, the only one that had nothing to do with this whole thing was the fireman; he just happened to be at the right place at the wrong time and to that day, he’s buried in a pauper’s grave in Lincoln County right across the penitentiary. If you’re driving down Highway 65 by the penitentiary, before you get to the penitentiary, right there on the right, below – I cannot think the name of the little cemetery, but it’s there in Lincoln County; that’s where they bury the paupers,” he detailed.
“In Russellville, you know, I was at the office working, like I said, in the criminal investigation and me and my investigator and, you know, we got the call – well, the first call come in on shooting. Well, it doesn’t matter where it’s in the city, the county, or what, you know, we all went to respond. Well, we started responding; the next thing, another one; the next thing, another one; and the next thing, another. We end up four shootings, you know, in Russellville and, you know, officers going every direction and then, like I said, then it leads up to what we had up at the time – and it still may be – this was the worst family massacre in the nation’s history and it may still be a single, yeah,” he recounted.
“We had every news media you could think of across the United States, the world; every – from here was worst mass murder. A suggestion too for y’all to get on Amazon; there’s a book written by a good friend of mine, Jim Moore. Jim used to work for one of the radio stations here back years ago, but Jim wrote a book called ‘Rampage.’ You get an opportunity to find it on Amazon; look it up. Jim took Sheriff’s Office case files; he took the RPD case files that we had and he wrote a book about that – is the closest to reality about what happened. It’s only like a 260-page book; good book to read,” he recommended.
“I worked law enforcement, like I said, from 1970 till 2009. I don’t know how many homicide cases – you never get used to it; it didn’t bother me as bad with adults, but when you go to seeing small children – I worked a lot of cases where small children was murdered, you know; that bothers you more than anything; it did me, you know. Had small daughter at home and that bothered me more than anything when you go to a crime scene or just like this and you got small babies of 20, 20-month-old – the kids that was in school, their life was just starting; they never had a chance to enjoy anything in life,” he reflected.
“I don’t know how you feel and if you look at it, guns is not the problem in this country; you can lay any gun in the world down right there on that floor or on that table; that gun’s not going to hurt a person; it’s the person who picks it up. It’s society is the problem with this country now – society; people have no value for life anymore and it’s not going to get any better until things change. Anyway, if you decide to get in law enforcement, you’re not doing it for the money, no; I guarantee you that; you’re not going to get – you have to have a will to want to do this job. I enjoyed going to work every day; I mean, I enjoyed it; I enjoyed the challenge, you know; you go in and you’re working cases, you know. I mean, don’t get me wrong, we dealt with a lot of good people; I’m telling you, I mean, we dealt with a lot of good – he was in the county and I was in the city; there was no barrier there; if he needed help, I’d help him regardless of where it was at; he’d do the same thing. All I’d have to do is if he heard, ‘You want me to help you?’ I’d never turned down to help; we helped one another and that’s the way we did back then. We still do to a degree; it’s changed a little bit, but there was no barrier with him being a sheriff’s deputy and I was a city officer at the time,” he continued.
“I was there; I was inside that home; I saw the carnage inside that house; knew the things that happened around there; we saw what we had here. We, together as a group, went together up there to see if we could help them, offer assistance. We had to go do the trials on Arjeene Simmons – change of venue; they couldn’t do it in Pope County because this is where all the homicides happened and they’re afraid that Arjeene couldn’t get a good chance of getting a fair trial, so we moved it to Franklin County – Clarksville and Franklin, yeah. We had Clarksville; they moved another one in Franklin County, but the cases were moved to those courtrooms to try Simmons,” he detailed.
“Demeanor, like, in jail, he was quiet, you know; he let his beard grow, his hair grow; he never said a word; you could get him out and try to talk to him – nothing; he was just, I mean, like a knot on the log, more or less. He hurt the people he wanted to hurt, yeah, and that was it. I mean, he never – he never, to my knowledge, expressed a reason why he done – the only way we was determined why he done it was from interviewing witnesses and stuff and running backgrounds, you know, and things that we had heard and then even through school, the letters that we got that he had sent – his wife had sent her sister and things like that; that’s how we was able to put a lot of the stuff together because he wouldn’t tell us nothing – nothing,” he recounted.
“There was a journalist on Channel 11, Ann Jansen; he was infatuated with her. He was down in the penitentiary; he was allowed to have color TV, cable; he was in death row in their single cell; he would see her on TV and he got a message to her; he wanted to talk to her. Everybody was excited because here Arjeene Simmons was going to tell her everything and he even mentioned that he was infatuated with her; he watched her on TV and he was infatuated and warned her there. Well, a lot of people thought that, okay, Ann’s going to get the scoop; this will be the ultimate thing as a journalist – I’m going to get to talk to the mass murderer and find out what was going on – and it never happened; he never told a story, period; he kept it to himself,” he continued.
“We had a trooper that was just getting ready to bear down on him and shoot him because he was in that back room with that girl back there, kind of holding her hostage and making her make the phone call. That trooper, to this day – God rest his soul – and I knew Jerry for a long, long time; he was going to drop Arjeene; he would have dropped him – we’d been – our chief – and I can say this now because he’s long gone, but I’m still around – Chief stepped right in front of Jerry. Jerry was going to shoot through a plexiglass and drop Arjeene and the chief stepped in front of him to go in there to get the gun from him and he said a few – back then, we had a chief that was kind of to the point and didn’t mince words and reached up there and took it from him. If he would have had, if he had a say, a .357 or .45, something like that, a bigger caliber gun, he probably would have killed himself, I mean, you know, good chance, because, like I said, he knew he’d been shooting people and they hadn’t died with the .22 and how many times he had shot his own daughter and them and they lived with a .22. I think that’s the reason he strangled – didn’t want to hurt himself, suffer, be a vegetable or whatever, and I think that’s the reason – and he didn’t want that; he was not in control,” he detailed.
“I enjoyed this job and the reason why – I wake up every day not knowing what my day is going to be; I never know from one day to next what I’m going to – I can have 8 hours of nothing but boredom, but I can have 15 seconds of an adrenaline rush that you just can’t describe, okay, and when I do this job – I’ve done this job; it’s – I don’t know anything else and I’m here not because of the money, but I enjoy my job. We’ve taken a lot of y’all’s time, but it was enjoyable to be able to stand here and talk to y’all because not often do we get to talk about something like this and I think it would be, if I was in your shoes, to be able to see someone who was still around to talk about something like this. I don’t get to talk about it much; this is a good opportunity for me,” he concluded.
The Day, New London, Connecticut, July 28, 1934
