Do you ever stumble across facts from history that feel like we shouldn't know them?

Like they're just too dark to even be real.

That is what today's episode feels like.

Welcome back to our favorite true crime episodes of the year.

This whole month, we've been giving up our feed to some of the best storytellers in true crime,

talking about cases that stuck

with us long after listening to them. This week, we're featuring an episode from Crime Hub,

a show that delivers the kind of chilling, atmospheric storytelling we know you love. The case is the

deadliest act of familicide in U.S. history, carried out by Ronald Simmons in Arkansas in 1987.

It's a horrifying story of control, abuse, and hidden violence.

Enjoy today's listen, and I'll see you again on Monday for the final act in our special takeover series.

Music in our special takeover series. Dear Ma, sometimes you reap many more times what you sow. You have given so much to this family.

This is just a little token of our appreciation. Keep it in remembrance of us. Love, Jean, and family.

Ronald Jean Simmons woke early on December 28, 1987.

The bearded Vietnam vet from Pope County, Arkansas, had slept on his couch the night before with two pistols within arm's reach.

He lived with his family on a 14-acre farm they called Mockingbird Hill.

Despite being a quarter mile from Arkansas Highway 7, the Simmons home

was remote, quiet, and eerily still. That morning, Jean walked the property for what

was likely the final time. His stroll brought him to a shallow grave in the woods behind

the house. Inside were the bodies of his wife, his granddaughter,

and five of his seven children. They were doused in kerosene and laced with barbed wire.

They'd been shot, beaten, and strangled to death three days before Christmas. And yet, despite

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