Crimehub: A True Crime Podcast · Crimehub Studios

The Pope County Christmas Massacre | Ronald “Gene” Simmons

·55 min·5 clips

Gene Simmons wakes early on December 28, 1987. On Mockingbird Hill, the remote Arkansas farm he shared with his family, he walks to a shallow grave and finds the bodies of his wife, his granddaughter, and five of his seven children, doused in kerosene, laced with barbed wire, and killed by gunfire, blows, and strangulation three days before Christmas. He does not flinch. He returns to the house, steps over seven more dead family members, and thinks about the bottle of sweet wine waiting for him at home as the episode moves into the history that made the scene possible. The narration backs into Gene's household. It treats the farm as a sealed world, quiet and isolated, with Gene ruling the home through intimidation and certainty. His children grow older. Some marry into steadier lives, pull away from him, and begin to see what kind of man their father really was. Becky starts to piece together the truth. She learns that Gene is involved in an incestuous relationship with Sheila, his daughter, and that Sheila is pregnant with his child. The fear in the house is practical. Gene warns Becky and Sheila to stay silent, insisting that exposure would destroy them all, take the children, and leave Becky stranded. Little Gene eventually hears enough. Now 20 and away at college, he wants nothing to do with his father but still feels a duty to his mother and siblings, so he tells a friend and then calls the New Mexico Department of Social Services. The state responds. A caseworker travels to Cloudcroft, confirms that the rumors have been circulating at school, and meets Sheila privately at the principal's office. Sheila talks. She admits the incest, says she is carrying Gene's baby, and does not hide the fact that she intends to continue the pregnancy. Gene is then confronted. He owns up to it matter-of-factly, and the episode uses that admission to trace a man who abused his family, kept everyone on a tight leash, and believed he had been wronged by his own household.

As heard by us

A sober account of a family massacre shaped by abuse, secrecy, and fear.

Set on a remote Arkansas farm called Mockingbird Hill, this piece begins with the shallow grave behind the house and then works backward through the abuse, secrecy, and fear that made the killings possible.

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Why you'd press play

A grim family-history case that starts at the grave and keeps widening.

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