Ronald Gene Simmons Sr. was an American spree mass murderer and former military serviceman who perpetrated an attack that killed 16 people, including 14 members of his own family, over a week in December 1987 in Arkansas. The killings, centered at his home near Dover and later at several public locations, remain the deadliest familicide in United States history, and the second deadliest mass murder in Arkansas history, after the Elaine massacre of 1919. Simmons, a retired U.S. Navy and Air Force veteran, was convicted in two trials, sentenced to death, waived all appeals, and was executed by lethal injection in 1990 — the first person executed by that method in Arkansas. His refusal to appeal led to the U.S. Supreme Court case Whitmore v. Arkansas.