Welcome back to the Pathway Chili. I'm Robin, I'm Jules.
And I'm Ashley. Let's dive right into this week's case.
October fifteenth, nineteen seventy four, Overland Park, Kansas, thirty two year old businessman Gary Simmons leaves his office in order to purchase a horse from a man named Tom Dixon. Later that day, Gary provides authorization for Dixon to cash a thirty thousand dollars check, but he has never heard from again, and Dixon also disappears after collecting the money. Seventeen years later, gary skeletal remains are discovered inside a cave and it turns out that he's been shot in
the head. Will Dixon is believed to be involved in Gary's murder, He's never tracked down, and investigator suspect that the whole thing was orchestrated by an unknown third party.
After that, the path went Chiley. So today we're going to be covering a very bizarre case which was once featured on Unsolved Mysteries, the nineteen seventy four murder of Gary Simmons. This story is essentially two mysteries rolled into one, as not only does it involve an unsolved murder, but an individual who is suspected of being responsible has not
been seen in over fifty years. Gary Simmons was a prominent businessman who lived in Orbitland Park, Kansas, before he vanished without a trace, and his skeletal remains would be discovered across the state line seventeen years later inside a
cave in Independence, Missouri. On the day of his disappearance, Gary had met up with a man named Tom Dixon to supposedly purchase a horse from him, but it's been theorized that the whole thing was a setup in order to scan Gary out of thirty thousand dollars before he was murdered. But what really complicates this case is that Tom Dixon also vanished without a trace, and there have been no confirmed sightings of him at all since nineteen
seventy four. While the most logical explanation is that Dixon took the thirty thousand dollars and disappeared to start a new life, this story's a lot more complicated than it looks on the surface. There's a lot about this case which does not make any sense, and one theory is that Dixon was just a cog and an elaborate murder plot orchestrated by an unknown third party who subsequently got
rid of Dixon after he outlived his usefulness. Indeed, the original Unsolved Mystery segment left out some key details about this story, some of which provide more confusion. So we're going to perform our own in depth exploration on today's episode.
This is fascinating. I used to live actually right outside of Overland Park, Kansas. It's not too far from Kansas City, Kansas, in Kansas City, Missouri, so I know over in part quite well. And when you look at this case, you have thirty thousand dollars that's being exchanged, and that doesn't sound like a lot, but this was nineteen seventy four, so today that would be somewhere between like one hundred and ninety and two hundred thousand dollars. So that's a
significant amount of money. Is it enough money to completely vanish and disappear and create a new life in nineteen seventy four, I mean maybe. So you got to keep in mind, could Dixon have actually fled and gone somewhere like Mexico or even over to Europe because you didn't have to really leave a trail back in nineteen seventy four to travel or to get to other places. So with two hundred thousand dollars in his pocket, basically you would think, hey, I mean, he really could have taken
off on his own. And there's also a second possibility, which investigators actually believe that maybe he was actually set up to do the execution and then himself got killed as well.
Yeah, you're absolutely correct that in today's money, thirty thousand dollars is a lot like between one hundred and ninety and two hundred thousand dollars, And that adds an extra element of confusion because, as we're going to talk about, the cover story is that Gary was going to use that money to buy a horse. But his family would say, yeah, that's very out of the ordinary for him to spend
that amount of money just to buy a horse. So some people have wondered if there's more to the story and if he was planning to pay Dixon for other reasons.
Ashley, did you just know off the top of your head that it was about two hundred thousand or did you look that up?
I looked it up. I'm smart, but I'm not that smart.
I was like, damn that is so impressive. But you looked it up quickly. I'm impressed by that.
Yes, I wouldn't You said thirty thousand and seventy four. I'm like, could that be enough for him to go on the run? And then I looked it up. I'm like, I mean two hundred thousand dollars to flee and start over. It could gets you pretty.
Far, especially somewhere like Mexico.
Yes, that's very true.
Our story begins in nineteen seventy four in Overland Park, Kansas, which is located in Johnson County right next to the Missouri state line and is one of the suburbs of the Kansas City metropolitan area. Our central figure is thirty two year old Gary Simmons, who lives with his wife, Nancy, and their son and daughter on a large ranch in
a rural area just outside Overland Park. Gary is the president and owner of the Simmons Petroleum Corporation, which operates a chain of independent gas stations in Kansas City, and he has a reputation in the community for being a hard working, self made man. Gary's biggest hobby is horse trading, as he owns and raises twenty three horses on his ranch and is a member of numerous local horse clubs.
On the morning of October fifteenth, Gary went to his office in Overland Park and had a meeting with forty two year old man named Tom Dixon, who he'd spoken to on the phone the previous day. Dixon lived with his family in a rural home in the un incorporated community of Stillwell and was known for working various jobs
such as a painter, contractor, and carnival operator. He claimed that he was acting as an agent for a man who was selling a pure bread apple Lucia horse for thirty thousand dollars and Gary was interested in purchasing it. At ten fifteen am, Gary told his secretary, Jody Miller, that he would be back within an hour or so before he and Dixon left the office together. Gary never told Jody where he was going, but fifteen minutes after
he left, Jody received a phone call from him. Gary instructed her to make out a thirty thousand dollars check to Tom Dixon, which he would be picking up shortly. Sure enough, Dixon returned to the office a half hour later in order to receive the check and told Jody that he would be meeting up with Gary again in order to get his signature on it.
All right, question for you, do we know if there was already a signature on it? So if I leave a check for let's say rebel to pay somebody coming to paint, right, I'll write out the person it's too, or even leave that blank, and I'll always sign my name and write who it's for in the memo line. So does Jody remember if it was actually signed and if it would make sense for Dixon to need to meet up with Gary again.
I don't. I'm guessing I thought it wasn't signed, because otherwise Dixon never would have said that that I'm specifically meeting up with Gary again to get a signature on it. I mean, a lot of mysterious things would happen, but there would be confirmation that for the next couple hours, Gary was confirmed to be alive, So it doesn't seem that far fetched he would send Dixon back to pick up the check that was unsigned, and then go back to get him to sign it after the transaction is completed.
I mean, obviously, if you just picked up this sign check, then Dixon could very well just go cash it and then not go up with meet up with Gary again to complete the transaction. So I think they were under the assumption that they were going to meet up together again and that once the transaction was completed, he would finally sign it.
Okay, so he's not basically leaving a check for him to grab. He's actually making him go grab something so they can complete a transaction together.
That's what it seems like.
Okay, well that makes more sense. I was like, why do we need to go get another signature? He left a check for you, But okay. Another thing that's really interesting here is that when you look at Dixon, Dixon doesn't sound like he would be brokering a deal for a two hundred thousand dollars horse. He's somebody who does odd jobs and doesn't seem like somebody who fits the bill.
He's a carnival operator. So when you think about is it true that he's actually brokering a deal, or you know, is he somebody who's being used as, like you said, a cog in the wheel to get Gary executed. It seems much more likely that he's that role, that he's been hired as somebody who's kind of a throwaway person in the system and he's going to be used to kill him because he's kind of this, like, I don't know,
just more disposable person. Right when you're talking about buying a two hundred thousand dollars horse and today's money, that's a big deal. You would think this was a very esteemed person. This is someone who's in the horse field and in you know, actually in that kind of lifestyle, and he is anything but that.
Do we remember the horse Syndicate.
Oh yes, yeah, we talked about that on previous episodes, about like this mafia organization that operated in Chicago in the fifties and sixties and used horse racing as their cover for money laundering and murdered a lot of people.
The horses can go for millions upon millions of dollars, it's insane. So that whole competition and the way people will you know, kill horses for insurance and for revenge and steal things from each other. It's a it's a mess.
And don't we think it's a bit wild that if Dixon's plan was to secure this thirty thousand dollars from Gary and then at the behest of somebody else to kill him, that there's this major paper trail. There's people that have met d there's Jody, the assistant, and then you also have checks. There's people at the banks who've seen him. Wouldn't it be better if your objective was to run away with the money, to just leave with the money and not deliver on the horse.
Yes, absolutely, And you would also think that you would have Gary bring you a check that you can go deposit or something, or cash like, hey man, you know my guy doesn't work in check You're gonna have to bring cash to me. But you're right, they end up I'm assuming going to a bank.
Yep. That's what we're going to talk about right now.
Wow.
So around the same time he phoned his secretary, Gary placed another call to J. Thomas Bircham, the president of the Santa Fe Trail Bank in the suburb of Merriam. Gary was scheduled to have a meeting there at ten thirty with representative from the McKee Oil Company, who had
made a business deal with the Simmons Petroleum Corporation. Gary would receive a payment of over one hundred thousand dollars for the deal, but he asked Bertram if they could postpone the meeting until one PM and the McKee represented agreed to this. Shortly before noon, Bertram received another phone call from Gary, who informed him that a man named Tom Dixon would be arriving shortly with a thirty thousand dollars check he had received for the purchase of a horse.
Gary said he would not be present, but he wanted to grant his approval for Dixon to cash the check. Since Bertram was a personal friend who considered Gary to be one of the bank's top customers, he had no issues with this. Bertram would later say that he recognized Gary's voice on the phone and did not detect anything
unusual from him. It wasn't long before Dixon showed up at the bank with a signed thirty thousand dollars check, and since Bertram had seen Gary's signature on several previous occasions, he had no reason to believe it wasn't legitimate. Bertram asked Dixon if he would be interested in opening up an account with them, but Dixon declined, claiming that he
needed the money to pay off some debts. Since the bank did not have the entire thirty thousand dollars in cash, Berchram gave Dixon five thousand dollars in one hundred dollars bills and the rest of the balance in the form of a cashier's check. Dixon subsequently took the check to the Commercial National Bank of Kansas City and received the remaining twenty five thousand dollars in one hundred dollars bills.
So now this is two banks that he's actually gone to and had to be physically present to get access to the complete thirty thousand dollars. So Jeles, you're right. Not only is Jody the one who's interacted with him, but now you have two bankers, one who really knows Gary and another bank who's fulfilling the rest of the obligation. But it's a lot of individuals putting eyes on Dixon if he was going to be this hit man for hire, And.
You're going to be pretty memorable when it's thirty thousand dollars that you're getting like two hundred thousand dollars in today's money, everyone is going to remember you.
Yeah, And that's why it makes sense to me that this whole deal could have been orchestrated by a third party and was having Dixon do all the leg work and be seen by all the people, so that if he was killed later on, this criminal mass mind who orchestrated the whole thing could say, well, nobody's seen in my face, so there's no evidence that I'm involved.
At twelve forty five pm, Bircham's secretary received a phone call from Gary, who told her that he would be a little late for his one pm meeting with the McKee oil representative. However, Gary did not show up for the meeting at all and was never heard from again. He also did not return to his office, and when he failed to come home by the following morning, his wife, Nancy, contacted the Overland Park Police Department and reported Gary missing.
At the time of his disappearance, Gary had been driving his silver Linking Continental Mark four, but the vehicle could also not be found. While Gary's phone call to Birchram's secretary was the last time he was confirmed to be alive, the last reported eyewitness sighting of Gary was from the owner of a truck stop located ten miles from Gary's office.
The sighting occurred at eleven thirty am on the morning of October fifteenth, just over an hour before his final phone call, and the truck stop owner claimed that Gary was pacing back and forth between the counter and the window, and he appeared to be waiting for someone.
Well, remember he had actually called and had postponed that meeting till one o'clock, and then he ends up calling the bank what around twelve thirty or a little bit afternoon, to say, hey, this guy's coming in with a check. And we know for a fact that he called his secretary at twelve forty five, but he doesn't show up
for that one o'clock meeting. So really there's this fifteen minute window that something could have happened, and it's almost as if he's delaying that meeting because he knows there's something else he needs to do before he sits down with those individuals. So if one of the things is securing that thirty thousand dollars check, is he then waiting
for someone for quote the horse he's getting? Is he, you know, pacing back and forth because the people keep being late and delayed, which is why his whole day has been put off. What's happening? Who is that quote third party? And is it directly tied to Dixon?
What's so weird about the whole thing is that this was a pretty important meeting where Gary would have been receiving one hundred thousand dollars from the McKee Oil company representative. And you're thinking to yourself, even though Gary really loves horses, would he really be willing to delay this meeting and potentially not make this money just to buy a horse.
So that's what makes no sense about this whole thing, is that he just suddenly decides, on this particular morning, I have to pay thirty thousand dollars to get this horse, even though I have a big business deal coming up. And that's why people have speculated that there's a lot more to this story and that he wasn't just buying a horse. Police spoke to Tom Dixon's wife, Shirley, but they learned he had also not returned home on the evening of October the fifteenth, and no one knew where
he was. It turned out that earlier that morning, during the time period, he met with Gary Dixon and May plans to meet up at the owners of Bob's salvage yard in Independence, Missouri, as they happened to be friends of his. According to one of the owners, Bob Williams, Dixon told him that he had recently purchased some junked cars in Waverley, and they were planning to go pick them up in order to bring them to the salvage yard.
Dixon finally arrived at the yard between five and five thirty PM, and after apologizing for not showing up that morning, he spent the next several hours hanging around there and helping out the employees. At around eleven PM, Dixon told Williams that he was going to use the phone to call home, but they never saw him again, as he
presumably left without telling them. Dixon's abandoned pickup truck would soon be discovered at the Quality Oil Company truck stop on US Route sixty nine with the keys in the ignition.
Well, remember, his wife is saying that, hey, he didn't come home that night, and no one knew where he was. He tells the guys at the salvage yard at eleven o'clock, Hey, maybe I should check in. Was it normal that eleven o'clock wouldn't have been an alarm in and of itself for his wife that Hey, you've been gone all day, You're hanging out at the salvage yard, and by a eleven PM I still haven't heard from you. Was that odd in his wife's viewpoint.
I'm not entirely sure. I don't know if it was standard practice for him to be out late, but she did later tell the police that, no, he never did call me at eleven pms, So it seems like maybe he was just using this as an excuse to leave, or maybe he got intercepted or something before he got the chance to call his wife. But she just thought it was very out of the ordinary that he would just not show up at all.
Police eventually spoke to a friend of Dixon's named Tom Callahan, who claimed that on the morning of October sixteenth, Dixon called him at home and to ask for assistance because his pickup truck had broken down at a Quality Oil company truck stop. When Callahan drove there to pick him up, Dixon asked if he could borrow Callahan's own pickup truck for a few hours in order to conduct some quote
personal business. Callahan agreed to the request, and after he was dropped off at his home, Dixon left in Callahan's truck and returned about two hours later. Dixon told Callahan that he'd just been hired to be the driver of a cross country rig and asked for a ride to the Heart of America Truck Plaza, located near Interstate thirty five in the suburb of Oleitha. Callahan said that he drove Dixon to the truck Plaza and dropped him off at around one thirty PM, but this was the last
time anyone ever saw him. However, Shirley Dixon claimed that she received a call from her husband at around three pm that same afternoon. By this point, Nancy Simmons had already reported Gary missing, and the police had asked Shirley about her husband's potential involvement. When Shirley asked Tom who Gary Simmons was, he confirmed that he did meet up with him, but he had not seen Gary since the
previous day. Before he ended the call, Dixon told his wife that he was calling from Arkansas and would return home that evening, but he never did, and this would turn out to be the last time he was confirmed to be alive.
This is a little confusing to me. Help me break this down. So we know that Dixon is borrowing his friend Tom Callahan's truck. Do we know if Tom's truck was nicer like a newer nicer model.
I have no idea. It's just I think he's just saying that I need to borrow it just because my other truck broke down and was having problems.
Okay, I call a lie. Possibly it could be one of two things. He's remember going to broke her a two hundred thousand dollars deal in today's money. So if he's driving up in some credit truck, right, does that raise alarm bells? And or could he also be trying to move a body with blood and he doesn't want to get that blood in his truck because it would
be directly tied to him. That's my first thought. Next, when you look at the fact that Dixon's going to the truck plaza, isn't that where people saw him saw Gary pacing back and forth.
This is actually the day after his meeting with Gary. So Gary was seen the previous day, and Dixon wasn't boring to truck to see Gary because once again, this is the day after. So I mean, your theory about him using it to move a body, that would make sense, But I think we can discount the idea that he just wanted a nicer truck to make a better impression. For making a horse deal.
I think he was moving a body. Then that's his quote personal business. I'm sorry I misunderstood that it was the next day. Yeah, I think his personal business was making sure that forensic evidence was in his friend Tom's truck and not his.
I like that theory. That sounds accurate, That makes sense.
And to clarify the timeline, he didn't come home the previous evening and failed to call his wife, and he did call her till three pm the day after, on October the sixteenth, which was, of course, the last time he was confirmed to be alive. So it sounds like that was very out of the ordinary. So it makes you wonder where was Dixon during the night. Was he disposing of a body or something, or was he hiding out. There's just nothing about his actions that make any sense.
So the investigation revealed that Gary and Tom Dixon were both members of the Heart of America Horse Association, but there was no indication the two men knew each other before they met at Gary's office on the morning of October fifteenth. Garys secretary Jody Miller, also said that she overheard part of the conversation where Gary told Dixon quote
I don't remember you. Even though Gary owned twenty three horses, most of them were inexpensive Appalooza brood mares, and he had never paid a price as high as thirty thousand dollars. Nancy found it odd that her husband would have agreed to such a large purchase without consulting her first, and she claimed to have no idea who Tom Dixon was. Gary had also written to check at Dixon on a rarely used general business account. He added a bank which
contained exactly thirty thousand dollars. As for Dixon, he was in serious debt at the time of his disappearance, as two houses he had been constructing around finished and the firms holding the mortgages on them were granted judgments totaling about one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in foreclosure proceedings which would force Dixon family to move out of their home.
On April twenty second, nineteen seventy five, six months after Gary's disappearance, the Least Summit underwater Recovery unit arrived at Lebanite Park in the suburb of Sugar Creek after a confidential tip was phoned in about a Cadillac that had recently been dumped in the Missouri River. While searching the water, the recovery unit wound up discovering a submerged Lincoln Continental,
which turned out to be Gary Simmons missing vehicle. It was found about one hundred yards from a boat ramp, and it appeared that someone placed a rock on the accelerator to intentionally drive the car into the river. The aforementioned Cadillac was also found, but it turned out to have no connection to this case, and it was just an odd coincidence that had happened to be in the
water so close to Gary's Lincoln Continental. Even though Gary had gone missing from Kansas, the discovery of the car over the state line in Missouri technically made it a
federal case, so the FBI became involved in the investigation. However, they add no success turning up any trace of Gary or Tom Dixon, and after officially being missing for seven years, Gary was legally declared dead in October of nineteen eighty one, but one decade later the investigation would be rejuvenated in a most unexpected fashion.
That's wild. We know for a fact that clearly he didn't drive, or I mean, he wasn't in the vehicle when he drove it in, because there was a rock put on the accelerator. I'm assuming people who found it said, well, you know, if Gary wanted to disappear, he could have put his own car in that area. We know later we're going to find out that that likely is not the case. But oh man, you would think that. You look at this, and Dixon has a reason to be
desperate for money. I just don't understand why Gary has that like urgent desperation as well, because he's even coming into one hundred thousand dollars later that afternoon. So while it makes sense that Dixon would basically do anything if he was promised money, why Gary.
Yeah, that is the big mystery of this case. And later on in the episode, we're going to talk about the fact that his chain of gas stations were having financial problems because of the oil embargo during the nineteen seventies. But like you just said, he was scheduled to receive one hundred thousand dollars payment at the bank that day, and he flat out decided to postpone the meeting just so he could make this horse deal for thirty thousand dollars.
And it just makes you wonder why was it so important to potentially jeopardize a business deal that's pretty much going to save your company.
And it's odd that he didn't tell his wife too. I mean, it's a pretty large purchase, Like Ashley said, it's around two hundred thousand dollars in today's money, and I guess what he would be receiving would be like around seven or seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And
it doesn't mean the same thing. If your gas stations are in financial they're having financial difficulties, you would maybe want to be pumping some of that money back into the gas station than not buying a horse that's worth
like two hundred thousand dollars. It seems very strange. On October sixteenth, nineteen ninety one, one day after the seventeen year anniversary of Gary's disappearance, a school bus driver named Tyrone Rawlins was working at his company's bus yard in Independence, Missouri. Tyrone claimed he'd always had an eerie feeling about the rocky outcroppings located behind the bus yard, and on this particular day, he decided to climb them and go exploring.
After being overcome with what he described as a weird premonition. When Tyrone reached the north side of the hill, he noticed a hidden cave and went inside it with a flashlight. To his shock, he soon discovered a pair of cowboy boots alongside a human skeleton which was clad in decaying clothing. After the police were summoned to the scene, they found
Gary Simmons driver's license in the victim's pants pocket. Dental records would eventually be used to positively identify him, and it turned out that he'd been shot once in the head. Since the Countess cloth was discovered inside the cave, this seemed to indicate that Gary had been murdered elsewhere before his body was placed there. This type of cloth was commonly used by painters, which had been one of Tom
Dixon's jobs before he disappeared. So that was another piece of evidence which seemed to point towards Dixon being the perpetrator.
So you're saying there was basically like a painter's tarp almost that was found with him.
Yeah, that he was wrapped up in. So that's what they probably moved to move the That's what they probably used to move the body.
Yep, that makes sense, and therefore it doesn't really matter the rest of it. No one's going to complete suicide by wrapping themselves in a tarp and then attempting to shoot themselves. So that's so bizarre. And you look at Tyrone, he says, Hey, I just had this kind of Inklan that something's not right. I'm going to go explore. I believe that people have that ability, or that you have this gut kind of premonition once in a while where I don't think you would ever anticipate finding a human
body wrapped up in a tarp. But it's always so crazy to me when something like what Tyrone had happened actually occurs. Clearly, this man doesn't have anything to do with it, but your first thought would be like, well, how would he know. I just think it's one of those kind of sixth sense kind of things. It's really fascinating to me.
It's true, like some people hear this part of the story and they get suspicious of Tyron and think that he might be involved with the murder. But he was in his early to mid twenties at the time, meaning that he would have been like six or seven years old by the time that Gary went missing, So He's obviously not involved in what happened, so it could just be one of those things where he just had this weird premonition and lo and behold that actually paid off and he did find someone.
And I think we've all been to places where the vibes are off. You can just feel it in the air. There's something ominous or nefarious about the place that you're in and you just want to get out. You hear people talk about that when they go to the catacombs in Paris, for example. Right, it's like oppressed, absolutely, And
so this doesn't surprise me. I think if you've got these rocky oat croppings close by, if there's some kind of energy imprinted that could have been from the murder or the disposal of the body, the fact that human beings could pick up on it, I don't think is so far fetched, and I do believe that human beings all have that ability to different degrees.
The whole situation compelled Tyrone Rawlins to send a letter to Unsolved Mysteries requesting them to feature Gary's case on their show. They decided to cover this story on an episode which aired on April the eighth, nineteen ninety two. But while they were filming this segment, a local rancher named Roy Hilton came forward and shared some surprising new information. For years, the authorities assumed that dixon so called horse deal was bogus and used as a ruse to scam
Gary out of thirty thousand dollars before he was murdered. However, Hilton knew both men personally and claimed that he saw Gary at the Whispering Downs Horse ranch on the same day he went missing. Hilton said that Gary personally showed him the horse he was planning to buy, and he also witnessed Gary make two phone calls from the ranch, the call to his secretary asking her to make out a thirty thousand dollars check for Dixon, and his call
to the bank authorizing Dixon to cash it. In addition to Hilton's new information, investigators were taken by surprise when they decided to reinterview Bob Williams, the co owner of Bob's Salvagyard, who revised his original story about his interactions with Tom Dixon that day. Williams now claimed that Dixon arrived at the salvage yard in the Lincoln Continental and inquired about the possibility of using the yard's car crusher
to get rid of it. Williams said this would attract a lot of attention and advised Dixon that the easiest way to make the car disappear would be to put a brick on the accelerator and drive it off a boat ramp into the Missouri River. Well, sure enough, the spot where Gary's Lincoln Continental was found in the river six months later was only five miles from the salvage yard.
As a result of William's new story, police He's were able to issue a new arrest warrant charging Dixon with auto theft, though they lack the evidence to charge him with murder.
I'm gonna have to give props to Bob Williams. Clearly he's a CD individual who has no problem being like, oh wait a minute, let me help you get rid of that vehicle a different way, right. But he does eventually tell the truth, and without that we kind of would have lost track of what happened with Dixon. He arrives in what we would allude to is Gary's Lincoln, and then that same Lincoln is found with exactly what Bob told him to do, put a brick on the
accelerator and put it down into the Missouri River. And that's exactly what he did. I mean, he did eventually come forward, so props to Bob Williams.
But I do think it's weird that he didn't put two and two together at the time, because Gary's disappearance made the news back in nineteen seventy four, and I'm guessing maybe Williams didn't read about the discovery of the Lincoln Continental in the river six months later, because otherwise he should have put two and two together and realized, Hey, that's the same car that Dixon told me to dispose of.
But who knows, maybe he forgot about it. And then when he read about the discovery of Gary's body in nineteen ninety one, just a light bulb went off over his head.
Or did he not say something because it was like, holy crap, I'm now part of a murder, you know? At first? Was he too worried about being caught in the middle of it?
Might be. I mean, obviously he's a shady person if he's telling people to like run cars off into the river, which is not just average advice you give to a customer. But yeah, it's kind of weird these people coming forward because Roy Hilton's story about seeing Gary at the Horse Ranch. I keep thinking, why didn't he come forward with this with his back in nineteen seventy four, or did he just not realize the significance at the time.
For years, an alternate theory presented for Gary's disappearance was that he'd been murdered over black market gasoline. In October nineteen seventy three, the United States and several other nations were hit with an oil crisis when members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries proclaimed in oil embargo.
By the time the embargo ended five months later, the price of oil had increased by nearly three hundred percent, which had serious financial impact on many people in the business. This included the Simmons Petroleum Corporation, as the embargo caused Gary's regular suppliers to be cut off and he was forced to buy gasoline from other suppliers that inflated prices.
At the time, Gary had been operating a chain of sixteen gas stations, but was unable to purchase enough fuel to keep them all supplied, forcing him to close many of the stations. Indeed, the oil crisis forced a number of independent operators to purchase gasoline from legal vendors at
inflated prices in order to keep their businesses afloat. At one point, Gary's family hired a private investigator who uncovered information which made him suspect that Gary was killed because he was scheduled to testify as part of a federal US Department of Energy investigation into black marke gasoline fails. Gary could have purchased gasoline from a source from a source without knowing it was black market, but once he found out and spoke out about it, his life was
put in danger. However, investigators never found any evidence to suggest that Gary was involved in anything illegal, and his family did not believe that he ever would have purchased black market gasoline. Even though Gary had experienced economic hardship, business had started picking up for him again in nineteen seventy four. He was able to reopen some of his gas stations, and at the time he went missing, ten
of them were in operation. One theory which investigators did believe was that Tom Dixon was not the sole mastermind behind Gary's disappearance, as he did not think that he had the smarts to orchestrate an elaborate murder plot on his own. They suspected that Dixon might have been hired by an unknown third party who subsequently double crossed Dixon and killed him as well before disposing of his body,
though it was never conclusively proven. If Dixon is alive or dead, there's been no paper trail for him since nineteen seventy four. He's technically still a wanted fugitive for the auto theft charges, and if Dixon is still alive today, he would currently be ninety three years old. But until Tom Dixon or any other evidence can be found, the murder of Gary Simmons will continue to remain unsolved.
So I guess you could say the path went chili.
I have to completely agree. I don't think that Dixon. Remember, he's somebody who struggles to keep a job. He has odd jobs, he works carnivals. He just doesn't seem like the person. Like I said earlier, they would even be involved in the horse industry at the level of trading and buying and selling, but also who would be able to orchestrate an entire murder plot to steal money with the cover of the horse farm. But a question if
Gary was truly at the horse farm. Is it possible that the man telling him, hey, I saw him, Could he oh more than he's saying? Could he be like part of the plot, or could it be someone at the horse firm.
I don't think so, because I know that Roy Hilton was interviewed on Unsolved Mysteries after he came forward because they were in the middle of filming the segment in the town, and that he learned about it in the newspaper and says, oh, by the way, I have this new information and I'm going to come forward and share it on National TV. And I'd like to think that if he knew something, or if he was involved in the whole thing, he probably would have kept his mouth
shut and not gone on National TV. So, like I mentioned in the intro, I was only familiar with the case from Unsolved Mysteries, but once I started researching it, it wound up being a lot more convoluted than I was expecting. The original Unsolved Mystery segment is structured in an odd way, as the first few minutes focus on Tyrone Rollins's so called premonition, which led to him discovering
Gary Simmonson's skeleton, inside a cave. You initially get the impression that it's going to be some sort of paranormal theme segment about people's alleged psychic ability, But then the entire side story about Tyrone Rollins is dropped and the segment morphs into a pretty compelling story about an unsolved murder. But the section with Tyrone is still pretty bizarre, because, seemingly on a whim, he just decided to explore a hidden cave and stumbled upon the remains of a person
who had been missing for seventeen years. I can see how that might come across as suspicious, but given that Tyrone would have been a young kid at the time Gary was murdered, there's no reason to believe he was involved, though I'm sure it still must have been awkward for
him to explain the situation to the police. However, when I read the original newspaper articles about Tyrone's discovery, they reported that exploring random caves was one of his hobbies, and this is why he just happened to find the skeleton. Given that Tyrone was the one who brought this case to the attention of unsolved mysteries in the first place
by writing them a letter. You have to wonder if he might have decided to exaggerate this premonition stuff to help ensure the case would be featured on the pro and he would get interviewed on national television. But Unsolved Mysteries was not the only media outlet to attempted to sensationalize this part of the story. If you do a search online, you'll find an article about this case in the January fourteenth, nineteen ninety two edition of the infamous
tabloid The Weekly World News. They mentioned that when Gary originally went missing, a psychic apparently said that he would be found in a quote unquote cold dark place, and well, he was found in a cold dark place. However, I might have to question the credibility of this story considering that the main headline of this particular edition of The Weekly World News was Lockness Monster captured and well, as far as I can tell, the lock Nest Monster has
not been captured. So from now on, I think we could move away from the psychic premonition angle of this case and start focusing on the actual crime.
Yeah. Absolutely, And think about this a cold dark place that's not that specific. It could be a crawl space it could be a cave, it could be a million different things right a basement somewhere. I mean, I don't know. That doesn't really shock me. Now, I will say Tyrone's experience. I think even things like the Holy Spirit, I think there's influences of like spiritual force and where you can
feel energies and things like that. But I know, I mean in my own life, it's happened to me where I see something that is gonna happen or I woke up about I don't know about six months ago and I knew in my gut my store was on fire downtown. And I woke Rebel up and I was like, Rebel, did you blow the candles out at the store? And he's like, yeah, I'm ninety eight percent sure that I blew them out. And I was so mad, and I was like, ninety eight percent is not gonna cut it
right if our store's on fire. I got in my car, drove downtown and as I pulled around the corner, there's flames in front of my store. Someone had put their cigarettes out in my planner and it was on fire but crawling up the front of my store. Legit. I woke up out of a dead sleep. My store was on fire. Something happened right there, do you know what
I mean? We're like you see and know something. So I think Tyrone very well could have been like something's wrong in that cave, I'm going up there, or something's wrong in that area, I'm going up there.
I think you're just like so connected to your store and everything in it that you've like imprinted on it. There's this quantum entanglement that like it is part of you, so that you can feel when something bad is happening. And I just think that maybe you're more perceptive to that, and I've had similar experiences, but I think some people will get a feeling like that, but then they'll just be like the logical part of their brain will say, oh no, that can't be real, Like I'm not a psychic.
And I think that Tyrone said a very vague thing, like I had a premonition, Like maybe you were just called towards that area because you thought that there was just really strange vibes there, and so you thought that you'd explore the caves. But like premonition, he doesn't go into what that premonition is.
Oh yeah, And another thing that makes you. I know some people have wondered, well, maybe if he wasn't personally involved in the murder, that maybe he knew someone who was or somebody told them something. But let's not forget that this is an independence Missouri and Gary originally went
missing in Overland Park, Kansas, across the state line. So Tyrone I don't think would have had any connection to this case or anyone that he knew, and it probably was just a coincidence and a genuine premonition that he happened to find Gary's remains.
And he was a child, right, I mean he was a child when Gary went missing.
Yeah, that's correct, So that's why he was ruled out as a suspect. Though I always wonder though, if he was around the age where he would have been an adult at the time Gary went missing. I wonder if you would have been more hesitant to go to the police, thinking, well, they're gonna blame me for this because I'm the one who led them to the body.
Well, I think that always is one of the first thoughts, Right, it's either someone they know or the person that found them. We've seen so many cases where people put themselves into the case when the last thing they should be doing is drawing attention to themselves. But not every criminal is smart, and hey, I'm really interested in the longness month being captured.
Yeah, that's what Part two is going to be about. We're just going to focus on that angle.
We're so excited.
So I think that about brings an end to part one of our series. Join us next week as we present part two of our series on the murder of Gary Simmons.
Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit about the Trail Went Cold Patreon?
Yes, The Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up with us on Patreon. If you join our five dollars tier Tier two, we also offer monthly bonus episodes in which I talk about cases which are not featured on the Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon, and if you join our highest tier tier three, the
ten dollars tier. One of the features we offer is a audio commentary track over classic episodes of UNSAWD Mysteries, where you can download an audio file and then boot up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very first episode that I did a commentary track over was
the episode featuring this case. So if you want to download a commentary track in which I make more smart ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join Tier three.
So I want to let you know a little bit about the Jeueles and Nashty patreons. So there's early ad free episodes of The Path Went Chili. We've got our Pathwent Chili mini's, which are always over an hour, so they're not very mini, but they're just too short to turn into a series, and we're really enjoying doing those. So we hope you'll check out those patreons.
We'll link them in the show notes.
So I want to thank you all for listening, and any chance you have to share us on social media with a friend or to rate and review is greatly appreciate it. You can email us at The Pathwentchili at gmail dot com. You can reach us on Twitter at the pathwin. So until next time, be sure to bundle up because cold trails and chili pass call for warm clothing.
Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy