From December 22 to December 27, 1987, a man named Ronald Gene Simmons killed sixteen people in a series of ambush attacks, fourteen of the sixteen being his relatives.   He was living in Arkansas at the time, and was executed by the state of Arkansas on June 25, 1990.  It is the worst family murder in American history.   There have been hundreds of cases of people killing their entire family, but this was the highest body count.

                Reading a book about Simmons (Zero at the Bone, by Bryce Marshall and Paul Williams), I was struck to note that Simmons’ time line fits perfectly for him to have been San Francisco’s Zodiac murderer.    You all know the case of the Zodiac, right?   Probably the most interesting unsolved serial murder case in American history; San Francisco, 1968-1970, and the subject of a very good movie about four years ago. 

                I should stress up front:  I am not arguing that Simmons was the Zodiac.   It is extremely unlikely that Simmons was the Zodiac.    There is probably a 99% chance that, if we knew more about Simmons’, we might be able to exclude the possibility that he was the Zodiac murderer.   But based on my very limited knowledge of Gene Simmons, combined with my fairly extensive knowledge of the Zodiac case, I cannot rule out the possibility that Simmons was the Zodiac, and this seemed to me to be worth mentioning. 

                To start with a loose thread. . .there was a murder in Riverside, California, in 1966, which was linked by many people to the Zodiac, and which is commonly listed among the Zodiac’s crimes.   Simmons was probably in Virginia at the time of that murder .  However, as I tried to explain in Popular Crime, it is clear to me that the Zodiac did not, in fact, commit that crime.     He was linked to the crime by shoddy investigative work, but the handwriting is entirely different, the preparation of the letters to the editor in the two cases is 100% different, the sentence structure and vocabulary are radically inconsistent—and there is nothing at all that links the Zodiac to this crime, other than that the police made a link and the Zodiac then claimed credit for the murder, as obviously he would, since this would send the police roaring down blind alleys trying to identify him.    The crime itself is very different from the Zodiac’s crimes, and the case is separated from the Zodiac crimes by two years and 450 miles, which wouldn’t be a problem if there was some actual connection between the two events.       

                At the conclusion of his tour of duty in Viet Nam, Gene Simmons reported to Travis Air Force Base northeast of San Francisco on July 26, 1968, and began work in San Francisco in early August, 1968.    The first Zodiac murders occurred a little less than five months later, on December 20, 1968.   The first Zodiac murders were committed on Lake Herman Road in Benicia, California.    Simmons was at that time living in a trailer park in Vacaville.   From Vacaville to the scene of the murders is 25 miles—essentially 25 miles of open road with fairly sparse population.

                The second set of Zodiac murders occurred in Vallejo, Simmons still living in Vacaville.  From Vacaville to Vallejo, according to google maps, is 24.8 miles.   Simmons, living in Vacaville but working in San Francisco, took a bus through Vallejo every working day.     It was a 55-mile bus ride—25 miles Vacaville to Vallejo, 30 miles Vallejo to San Francisco.   (Simmons had a car, but it was far less expensive to take the bus than to drive and park in San Francisco.)

                The third set of Zodiac murders occurred at Lake Berryessa.   Vacaville is the nearest town of any size to Berryessa.    From Vacaville to Berryessa is about 20 miles at the nearest point.  

                The last murder definitely linked to the Zodiac, the murder of Paul Stine, occurred in San Francisco on October 11, 1969.    Simmons worked in San Francisco, in the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI).   I do not know where exactly in San Francisco the OSI office was at that time. 

                The murders were mostly committed north east of San Francisco, but the letters from the Zodiac were almost all post marked San Francisco.   Simmons lived north and east of San Francisco, in the heart of the area where most of the murders occurred, but was in San Francisco every working day.    

                After the last murder definitely committed by the Zodiac, he continued to send letters to the newspapers and to individuals in San Francisco for about a year.   There are numerous Zodiac letters sent more than a year after the murders, but these, in my opinion, are for the most part bogus; in some cases they could be legitimate, or are at least good fakes.    The series of letters breaks down into an indistinguishable mix of bad fakes, good fakes, and possibly one or two legitimate Zodiac communications.    Simmons left the Bay area for a post in England in February, 1973. 

                In addition to the connection in time and place, I note the following "matches" between Simmons and the Zodiac: 

                1)  The Zodiac (based on eyewitness descriptions) had a crew cut.     Simmons was on active duty in the Air Force, and wore his hair cut very short as all military personnel did in that era. 

                2)  For several reasons, the Zodiac was believed to have had military experience.   Among the reasons for this are a shoe print found at the scene of the Berryessa murders, which was from a military-type shoe, the haircut, and language used in some of the Zodiac’s communications, which has suggested the possibility that the Zodiac had been in the navy.

This is from Graysmith’s Zodiac:   "Over one million of these shoes were manufactured as part of a government contract.   103,700 pairs of "Wing Walkers" had been shipped to Ogden, Utah, and distributed to Air Force and Navy installations on the West Coast."  Simmons had been in the Navy for several years, and was, as mentioned, on active duty in the Air Force at the time of the murders.  

                3)  The composite drawing of the Zodiac which can be seen below shows a man with close-cut hair receding sharply at the temples, and tracing a circular pattern across a high forehead.    This was Simmons hairline exactly—receding at the temples, high forehead, hairline forming a half-circle across the top of his head.  

(Unable to find a 1970-era photo of Simmons on line.   All of the photos of him online show him in the late 1980s, when he was bald and had a bushy beard.) 

                Simmons’ ears, jaw, and lips are also entirely consistent with this drawing, which means little, since the same could be said of a great many persons.    But you certainly can’t look at photos taken of Simmons in that era and say with any confidence that it’s not him. 

                4)   This is a description of the murderer, given by a survivor of the attack in Vallejo (Michael Majeau), quoted from Robert Graysmith’s Zodiac:   The man appeared to have a large face and was not wearing glasses.  He seemed to be between twenty-six and thirty years old and had short, curly, light-brown hair worn in a military-style haircut.   The man’s build was ‘beefy, heavyset without being blubbery fat,’ perhaps 195 to 200 pounds.   Mike estimated that he was one head higher than Diane’s Corvair, about five feet eight inches tall.  His pants had pleats but Mike could see that he had a slight potbelly."

                To the best of my knowledge, this appears to be a description of Simmons in every detail.   Simmons was at that time 28 years old; the attacker was estimated at twenty-six to thirty.   This is a description of Simmons in 1976, from Zero at the Bone:   The years and Becky’s cooking had been less than kind to Gene’s figure.   Deskbound at his job and fond of beer and snacks, Gene had gained fifty pounds in the years since his marriage and bloused at the middle.   Back that up a few years and the fifty pounds are probably 25 pounds, which seems consistent with Majeau’s description. 

                5)  The Zodiac had some familiarity with codes, and sent coded messages to newspapers.    Simmons’ job, which was mostly a paperwork job, was Air Force OSI—Office of Special Investigations.   A person in that job might reasonably be expected to have some familiarity with codes. 

                6)  According to Zero at the Bone, "Gene at this time was also beginning to take an interest in guns.   His experience during Tet had shaped many imaginary battles and firefights in Gene’s fancy, and he liked the feel of a loaded weapon in his hand.   He went to the firing range, shot "expert" with the M-16 rifle, and bought himself two guns, a long-barrel Ruger .22 revolver and a Winchester .243 rifle. . ..Gene was never a hunter."    The "this time" referred to in the quote is his time in San Francisco, just after he had returned from Viet Nam.   Multiple weapons were used in the Zodiac attacks.  However, the specific weapons mentioned here do not match the weapons used in the Zodiac attacks. 

                I would like to compare Simmons’ handwriting with the Zodiac’s well-documented printing style, copies of which are widely available on the internet.   However, Simmons, who was an extremely good typist, rarely wrote long-hand, and insisted that his wife destroy all of his letters home as soon as she had read them.    No samples of his handwriting are given in the book Zero at the Bone, and I would suspect that few samples survive.  

                Graysmith writes about—and greatly exaggerates the evidence for—the Zodiac’s intelligence.    There is no evidence of exceptional intelligence in the Zodiac. 

                Simmons was a capable man.   He was a very good military NCO (non-commissioned officer); he won a Bronze Star in Viet Nam, and his superiors wrote glowing things about him.  In uniform and on the job, he got along well enough with people, and performed his duties—which were not simpleton’s duties—in a highly professional manner.

                But out of uniform, Simmons was a dreadful pig—hateful, spiteful, arrogant, paranoid, vicious and petty.   He bullied his younger brother, threatened his step-father, beat his wife, raped his daughter, and threw tantrums at social workers, co-workers, and others.   He kept his family isolated behind high cinder-block walls, refused to allow his wife to have a driver’s license (even though he was often away on military duty for a year at a time), and refused to allow anyone in his house to have a telephone.   He completely dominated his family, forcing his children to do endless hours of yard work, and prohibiting them from bringing friends to the house.    This pattern of behavior began when he a teenager, and worsened over the years.   He roiled with anger, and he hated and distrusted everyone.   

                This is not inconsistent with his having committed a series of murders to vent his anger and express his contempt for humanity, but neither is it a clear match for the Zodiac.   The Zodiac displayed some interest in the music of Gilbert and Sullivan.   Simmons is not known to have had a substantial interest in any music.   The Zodiac presented himself as collecting slaves for the afterlife, rather than killing people because he hated them or because he was acting out some fantasy military adventure.    While Simmons actively disliked religion, he was outwardly moralistic and self-righteous, and is not known to have advocated Satanic beliefs such as the collecting of slaves for the afterlife.

                Simmons was an obsessive collector, a man who trolled neighboring villages and brought home every conceivable manner of useless yard junk.    His defining characteristic was his need to dominate and control those near to him.    He killed his family because he knew that he was losing control of them.   A person who has a very extreme need to dominate might plausibly be a person who tries to collect slaves for the afterlife.   Compulsively organized, Simmons collected files of information clipped from newspapers and magazines on hundreds of different subjects.   Apparently some of these files survive.   It would be very interesting to know whether there were files on satanic beliefs included in this material.  

                To the best of my knowledge, no one else has ever suggested that Simmons could have been the Zodiac.  I don’t want to get ahead of myself; I stress again that I am not advocating the position that Simmons was the Zodiac; merely that he could have been, based on what little I know.   He was the right age, the right physical description, in precisely the right place at exactly the right time, and he was entirely capable of killing a bunch of people just for the hell of it.   I thought this was worth pointing out.

                (The book Zero at the Bone is neither particularly good nor especially bad.   If any of you decide to buy the book, however, I will warn you that there are numerous crime books using the title Zero at the Bone.    It would be easy to buy the wrong book.)