COLD BLOODED-Anita Paddock

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The book that we're featuring this evening is Cold Blooded, a chilling truth tale of terror, rape and murder in the Arkansas River Bottoms, with my special guests, author Anita Paddock. Welcome to the program and thank you so much for this interview. Anita Patock.

she attended in Lamar, Arkansas. And Lamar's not very much bigger than Flat Rock, Arkansas. But Johanna had always wanted to be a nurse, and so she and her husband married right after high school, and they moved to Fort Smith, Arkansas, where there's a community college there with a nursing program. So she started that nursing program there and her husband got a job at Baldoor Electric and they just were

real happy together. And they lived in a real nice little apartment that was close to the campus so she could walk, and it was owned by this fellow named

Holly Gentry. He was a really nice guy and they just hit it off his friends and so Larry Price as you want to manage these apartments, and Holly Gentry father owned this really nice big a It was a big mall in western western Fort Smith called Phoenix Village and uh and so during the during the Christmas vacations, they asked Hollie if she they asked Joanna if she would like to work part time, how she's out of school and be like a secretary there farm at Phoenix Village,

and she said yes she would. So on this morning, Monday morning, the door, she heard a knock on the door and she answered the door and there was this guy standing outside and he said he wanted to look about this car that was being for sale, and the car belonged to Holly Gentry, but Larry was selling it for him a friend. So she said, Johanna said, we'll just wait here and I'll get my husband. He still

he's still a sleep. So she got her husband and they came out and they took a test drive with his car, and when she was getting ready to leave to go to work, they got back and her husband said, well, this is mister Simmons and he wants to buy the car. And so she said, well great. So it was time for her to leave for work, and Larry walked her out to his out to her car like he usually did. It was real. He was a real sweet, good kind husband and walked her out. And so she left to

go to work at Phoenix Village. And before she left, she and Larry decided that they would have lunch together and go eat lunch at a Mexican restaurant and he had picked her up at noon at the Phoenix Village. So she went on. She went on to work, and when it came time for lunch, she went out and

waited for Larry and he didn't come. And he didn't come, and that was really unlike him, and so she went back in and she told her the people she worked for that her husband hadn't, you know, wasn't there to pick her up, and that was strange, and so Holly Gentry said, well, why don't you call Larry's work at Baldore that was an electric company, a big electric company, and see if he's at work, And so she did, and the lady who answered the phone there the secretaries,

said no, but he called in said he was wouldn't be there today. Well, that really scared her, so then she called his parents, and she called her parents to see if perhaps Larry had gone down there for some reason, and no, they hadn't heard from him. So Holly Gentry insisted that they go and make a report about Larry being gone, also gone with the and this car was

gone also the car that was in for sale. So they went to the police station and they told they gave all the particulars and they talked to these two police officers. One was named Poncho and the other one was named ray Tate, and they took all the particulars and said, why don't you all go on. You and Holly gone back to the to the apartment, and we will we will follow him and come back and get all the information about the car that has been no

longer around. So they did. They went back to the apartment, and she was of course really concerned about her husband where was he? And Holly Gentry was concerned about his

friend and where was his car? And they got into the to the apartment, and there they were met by this Simmons guy who had come to look at the car to begin with, and he he he took ray Hate's gun, and he took his handcuffed, and he handcuffed him and Joanna and Holly had already been tied up with some real heavy twine that he found in their house.

And so there there was the guy who looked at the car that morning, and whose name was miss And then there was Holly Gentry, and there was Joanna, and then there was ray Hay and the fellow named Pancho Pancho Davis. He had to go to a meeting and so he he couldn't go with ray Hay, but he was going to come later. And so they were here. They were in this apartment. It was on January the fifth,

nineteen eighty one. It was real, real cold, and Joanna was crying and she didn't know where her husband was. And Holly Gentry was he was a real he was a real real Christian fellow and was always always talking about Jesus and wanting people to get right with the Lord. And so Holly was given this same fill to this mister Simmons. And Ray Hay was just thinking that any minute now, Pancho's going to be there. And Pancho got held up at his meeting or he would have been there.

So here we have we have a man. We have a husband, Larry Price, missing and the car that he was selling is also missing. And then we have Joanna who is crime and hysterical because she doesn't know where her husband is and she's scared to death. And then we have Holly Gentry, and we have Ray and rach Hay was the kind of policeman who always said he could talk his way out of anything, and that was his that was his persona that he could he could always talk and he could talk his way out of

any kind of trouble. And he told his fellow police officers sad and so anyway, Ray Tate and Holly Gentry and little Joanna. When I say little Joanna, Joanna was about five set tall and weighed probably about ninety five pounds. She was a real tiny little girl. Anyway, mister Simmons decided that he would take all three of them and put them in ray Tate's vehicle, his police car, and

they would all leave. And so they headed down. They had mister Simmons, his name was Thomas Simmons, and they called him Tommy or Tom and his He had Joannas in the front seat with him, and he had the tape and Holly Gentry lie down on top of each other and the backs forboard and ray Tate thought he would be able to get the ropes untied around Holly Gentry's arms and legs and then he could give them

untied around his. But that didn't happen anyway. They ended up down in the Kbler Bottoms, and so Simmons took them down there in the police car and he shot them. He shot all three of them and raped Joanna and then they were He put their bodies down in this kind of like a little trash heap that was on a farm belonging to mister McClure and mister mcluar. The

next day is who found the bodies of them. So they had to leave the bodies there at the crime scene until the State Police was able to send a team there to take the bodies out and do all that they have to do. I'd like to read you a little bit about that crime scene. And while people are waiting, okay, yes night night had fallen. By the time the crime scene was roped off with yellow tape. A cold wind whined across the Arkansas River, which was

just south of the murder scene. Men huddled in groups of four or five, quietly talking, shaking their heads and wondering most ang who and why. The Arkansas State Medical Examiner's office in Little Rock had already been called, and nothing could be done until they arrived. Nothing but wait. The minutes dragged by into three hours, the time it took for the medical examiners to travel to the scene.

The Kettler Fire Department drove the fire truck over the shine light on the murder scene, and later the Sebastian County Red Cross brought over a generator to supplement the power. A farmer delivered an empty barrel and a load of firewood in the back of his pickup so fire could be built to warm those who waited. The news media was there also newspaper and television reporters shocking for positions where the lawmen tried their best to keep them at bay.

Some of the locals who had farmed in this community for generations arrived with the feeling that their farmland was somehow desecrated. What has happened in our peaceful little community, folks asked, we all look out for each other, go to church, support our schools, try to raise our kids right. And now this It was a scene few of them

would ever forget. As they stood in there, ensuated overalls and camouflage hunting coach, the flames in the barrel cast eerie shadows on their faces while they hunkered over the fire, holding their hands palmed down, stamping their feet to get circulation moving, cursing the person or persons who would try to conceal bloody bodies inside a tractor tire. When the bodies were removed, everybody expected there to be four bodies because they needed Larry was missing, But there were only

three bodies. It was Johanna and Holly Gentry and Ray Tate. And so then that left one other person and where was he? Where was he? Uh? And so they had a man hunt for the for Larry. And finally the next day or two, uh, they got they got a message from somebody who had been on a drunken tout out and uh out close to the river bottom in this Clear Creek park where people could go duck hunting. There was a uh you could set your your boat out and come in and out, and that was a

good place for duck hunting. But anyway, they they got this tip before this body was and that was where Larry was. And so then they figured out that Larry, that this Simmons guy had stolen the car and taken Larry out to this Clear Creek park and he had

shot him. And the strange thing, this guy Simmons, he went he had stolen a check out of a check book at the apartment and he wrote himself a check for three hundred dollars, signed it forged the Dame by Larry Price, and stopped on his way from killing Larry Price. He stopped at the bank and deposited this check and it was three hundred dollars, and then he asked for

fifty dollars in cash. And so then he left. Well, he took he was doing all sorts of back and forth, back and forth, taking a taxi cab here, taking a taxi there, putting this car here, putting his own personal car there and he was just all over the place. I doubt that he could have done any of this by himself, but he was arrested because he was when

the next day, I'm getting ahead of myself. The next day, after these murders, and even before Larry Price was even found, they knew that all these people had been killed, and that Larry Christ has been they were looking for him. And this Simmons guy, he very foolishly went back to the bank and said that he had deposited a check the day before and he found out that it wasn't any good and he wanted to get that check packed.

And so the lady who was waiting on him said, just a minute, I'll have to I'll have to check on that. And by chance, her boss at this branch bank was the wife of the chief of police, the assistant chief of police, and so she of course had been hearing about everything from her husband, and so she, you know, she got the license number of this car, and she called her husband and he said, honey, you may have solved a car the crime of the century here.

And so that's how they found this Thomas Simmons. He had a job and they have his the license number and knew where he worked, and so they went to his place of employment and picked him up and took him to jail and arrested him.

So now we go back to Now we go back to Thomas and we talk about him being paroled and his sister Leona Powell tell us about the clim that he was on parole for and then tell us about the details and the idea that his original plan was. He says later that was his original plan for this car.

He had that guy get in the back seat of his car and lie on the floorboard, and off they went, and he ended up by He thought he killed this fellow out in the country outside of Little Rock, and he tried to kill him. He tried. First of all, he tried to tried to stab him to death, and that boy didn't die. Then he tried to slit his throat, and that boy didn't die. So finally he just buried him under some leaves and thought that he had left the boy that he was dead or going to die well.

The boy he was like eighteen, and he was strong and healthy, and he was able to drag himself to a nearby farmhouse and they called the police and the hospital, and so this Simmons guy was identified and was arrested, and he was sent to prison for forty five years for kidnapping and a robbery and kidnapping and attempted murderer. But he got out in eight years for good behavior.

So he had to find a place to stay. So he had assists who lived down in Arkansas in Kibler Bottoms, and so he asked her if he could come and live with her while he was on parole. And she was an unwed mother had five children. In fact, the youngest child actually belonged to Thomas Simmons, but she had adopted this little girl because Thomas Simmons was such a terrible person. Anyway, she had these five girls and she was trying her best to give them a good start,

and she did. The girls, the girls, the pale girls, all were very capable young women and were One girl was already going to school at the University of Arkansas in Feddale, the other girl other two girls were in going to West Dark Community College. And then there was another. The other girl was very popular in high school. She was very uh, she was head of the annual staff

and put out the newspaper. Anyway, they were nice family and they got an old Simmons came to live with them, and he thought that he he thought that he could maybe redeem himself from his criminal ways. And he had gone to when he was in Levenworth Prison. He had gone to some classes and did very well in computers classes.

So he wanted to he tried to go. He wanted to go to the Community College west Ark in Fort Smith, and he got accepted as a matter of fact, but he didn't have any money to pay the tuition or buy his books. And so I think that when he when he saw his car for sale, he thought he would steal that car, sell it to somebody he knew from prison days who would buy it, and then he would have the money and he could start his college education.

That's that's that was what that was what the rumors sort of was.

the Grapes of Wrath. He knew all these American authors and Warren Peace, and I mean he was he was. He was not dumb, but he was lived a life of crime and there was no way he was gonna get out of it, no way whatsoever. So when they found Larry Price's body and that that accounted for all the four people, and those those were all sent down to for autopsies down in the little rock, and there there was a this was a really sad thing. Will Jawanna's face while she was buried in that tire pit.

There were some dogs down in there who had had puppies, and her little face was eaten off by those dogs.

did some drinking together. And so everybody the community, the Kibbler community, when this happened, they all thought that Squib was behind it because he knew that they were friends. And and uh, but Squib was at he was in Missississippi, Mississippi, on a on the duck hunting thing with four or five men from around there. And so Squib could not have done it unless those four or five men just made it, you know, been an alibi for him. I don't know, Uh, but.

and then it really hadn't been. And so one of missus Powell, the sister's daughters, said that that Squeb had given her mother a gun because there were some prowlers around there. And so then her mother said, no, no, no, that didn't happen. Squeeve said, you know, he said no, he'd never given her gun. But you know, certainly the gun was available for Thomas Simmons to have used. They found all sorts of things in Oh, this is one interesting thing, you know. Thomas Simmons took everybody out to

Tibbler Bottoms in Tate's police car and he left. He left the police car at this filling station at truck stop, and so a Van Buren policeman was patrolling the area and he saw this, he saw Tate's police car. Of course, there was all sorts of bulletins out to be looking for all these various cars, and so they looked under the They looked under the acids chassis of the car and saw all this dirt and saw all this these

kind of weeds and mud and sand. They knew they knew this had come from the bottoms, but they didn't know if it was the bottoms on the Van Buren, the Kibler side of the river, or on the Oklahoma side of the river. The Arkansas River divided Arkansas from Oklahoma right there at that particular area. So they were having they were looking all over the place. They had police cars patrolling, they had airplanes up patrolling seeing if

they could see anything. So it was it was quite a man hunt and quite a quite a quite a thing to have happened in Van Buren. However, as it turned out, it was the third crime that had happened in a nine month period of time in Van Buren, and had I had written about the other two crimes and it wasn't I didn't realize that there had been that many crimes in one time, But when I started working on it, I realized that, hey, this all happened in a nine month period of time in sleepy little

dam Brea in Arkansas. Population then it was about eight thousand, right.

idea about what happened. Despite you mentioning that it looked like to anybody that looked at this and anybody had heard about this crime, that there certainly was the possibility that Thomas Simmons had a partner.

by herself. She was always scared. And her friends who were in nursing school with her, they would study together, and she would all always ask the friends to walk home with her and go into the apartment with her. And while she looked in the closet and looked under the bed, and so this little girl she had, she had some kind of premonition that something was bad gonna happen to her. You know, you can imagine how scared

she was. She didn't know where her husband was. The police, the police found in the in the police car, in Tate's police car, they found some match books. Uh, and they found some cigarette packages. It was a Vantage cigarettes. I don't even remember advantage anymore. This is, you know, back in nineteen eighty one. And then some matchbooks that said good value on the matchbook covers, and those were found in Thomas's Thomas Simmons trunk of his little car.

He had this little orange, little orange little Toyota. And uh, those that was found in there, those match books and the cigarettes. They never found any bloody clothes to tie Thomas Simmons in, but his if his sister, if his sister had washed his clothes as she normally did, because he worked at a sand and gravel company and got you know, every day when he came home, he was covered with you know, sand and stuff and so and

she always did that, or so she said. She always said that she might have been lying for him, she might have been scared of him. I had a.

go with the kidnapper. And they had this strangely cryptic conversation. And the thing is that the detective Tate was another person that wouldn't have went without a fight, wouldn't have stopped right to the very end to be able to escape. And then you write as well that Juanna was the last to die, and so you talk about her personality, So imagine the horror and as you write in the book too, he rapes her and that as you write, and I want to talk about this a little bit.

She is not only she's raped anally and vaginally. Let's talk about this John Dickerson, because you you zero in on this person as this person that was willing to be an accomplice in terms of this stolen car of Larry Price. Tell us what you want happened.

He couldn't he himself couldn't be driving around with this car when he was wanting to go to college and had already signed up and I already gotten admitted, and so I just thought, well, there has to be somebody who's helping him along. And there was. There was one man who Earlier in the book, he is interviewed by some police because he claims that he he claims that he saw Simmons escort these three people out to get

in the car, he said. He claimed that he was there taking care of someone's apartment while they were gone, and he claims that he was walking out there and saw it all. But not much. Nobody really believed him all that much because he actually was a schizophrenic and had been in and out of mental hospitals, and so they sort of the prosecuting attorneys, they claimed that he didn't you know that his memory could not have been that perfect. I don't know. I don't know about that, fellaw.

I do know that just a few months ago, I visited with Holly Gentry's sister, and I had gotten all of the Gentry information from the brother Mark, who told me everything that I knew about the Gentries. Anyway, his sister, his little sister, had she wanted to meet me. She and her husband live up in Missouri, and so she told me that she'd like to meet me, and so I met her. It's been a month ago, I guess.

I met her at a book store and she told me that after all this happened, that the vanbur And police had found up in a vacant house up on Highway fifty nine. They had found Holly Gentry's wedding ring and the Holly Gentry's wallet and takes wallet up in this house, up in this house that was for sale and was taken. And so somebody connected with Simmons was

in that house. And that further and makes me think I was correct and thinking that some excuse me, somebody staying in that house and you know, helping out Simmons because serious and again said, hey, was chilling killing people left and right.

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a very good job and uh. And then the prosecuting attorney, Rob Field, he uh, he interviewed all these people who had had seen Simmons and come and look at the call and had seen Simmons at uh, hanging out around West Are, had seen Simmons hanging out at the Osco drug store and the shopping center where he was going. Hearing yonder from with from a taxi cab. He interviewed, He interviewed lots of people. And they were he he in the really the ones who were really the most interesting,

I thought. And I had the court, I had the court try. I had the transcript of the trial. So I was, I was, I was. I had a really good treasure chest of notes to use. Uh, and so I had all the transcript of all the questions that were answered. And uh, Simmons did not take the sand this this is an interesting aside from that, they fouled the force all sorts of appeals that are automatically filed. And then Simmons he wrapped himself up in a blanket

and slit his throat and committed suicide. Now, I don't know why in the world you would wrap yourself up in a blanket. And I don't see how in the world you could slit your own throat. I think he might have. Now have you heard of the Dixie Mafia.

just bad folks. And and now Simmons was in prison so many years obviously with somebody who was probably I mean, it was standard reason that he might know somebody in the Dixie mafia. And so it could be that this whoever he was going to uh sell the car to, was part of the Dixie Mafia. I don't know, but I could just you know, toss that out from a thinking. And so it also could be that Simmons took the rap for killing everybody and instead of it really being

some Dixie Mafia people. Now that's another thing to toss out. And he was he Simmons was a cell mate of this fella who I wrote about in my second book who had killed these people who he had robbed at jewelry store, and he had killed a man who owned the store and his daughter. And supposedly that fella killed those people was part of the Dixie Mafia. And so if he was, if he was a you know, if he was a cell mate of this Simmons guy, who might have you know, gonna you completed that they You know,

he took the fall for these other guys. You know, he could have killed him, He could have wrapped him up and just let his throat. I don't know.

questions as to that as well. Ironically, if you were to commit suicide this way by slitting his own throat, it's very similar to what he tried to do with the young boy. Unfortunately didn't care kill that by slitting his throat. You talk about the trial itself capital punishment.

The prosecutor did an admirable job. John Settled. The defense attorney basically said that all they could really prove that he had forged a check, that that initial check, that his gold on that blank check, but you say very much that that was his undoing and that trial, along with the circumstantial evidence and the witnesses that placed him in various places, that he did receive that capital punishment and then once seeing his appeals were exhausted, that's when

you say that this slitting of the roast, slitting of the throat suicide occurred.

I don't know, you know. After Now, I'm from around here, and so I mean I grew up I was I was born in Crawford County. My daddy had a store and all of his customers were farmers and kibler and so I know a lot of people around here, and which is sort of made it easy for me to be able to write these books about time to have been committed here because I don't know people whom I can talk to and they'll tell me things, and so I, uh, I don't I don't know, I really you know, I

just I really don't know how. I really don't know if if Ron feels the prosecuting attorney, if he knew some things, but he just you know, he might have just not want to God have gone through it all and just said, oh, this guy did it and be done with it, because he was he was taking care of some other there was a trial that was coming on after him after this was completed. With the Uh, I don't know.

Now the other person to car thief. The car thief, as you're right, really didn't have any other record other

than car theft. But the other thing that I see over and over again is that the prosecutor does not want to introduce a possible other person to throw again the prosecution, or they'll give the witness an opportunity, pardon me, the defense an opportunity to say, well, how about this other person, and to cast the focus off of their own client and any social confusing manner, because you only need one person to hang a jury. So very much so I think that what this is they have a

clear prosecutorial focus. This is the person, we have the evidence against him. He certainly did do it, and we're going to deal with that person. And they can always and they do have the opportunity to charge somebody further if they gain more information. Especially I think that would be the case when they're dealing with making sure that this guy, unlike the very first time when he got forty five years, that this person was going to not exit jail anytime period.

sister's house? And why did this happen? And and the scleeve was, uh, he had all these fish fries all the time for people county of fish shows, and and uh maybe you know, there was all sorts of like how come he how come this guy really got to go to his sister's house. And this is one more thing. The sister every time she was sub pointed to testify, she didn't show up. She said that she was sick. She said that she had fallen down. And so they

just forgot, They just forgot. They just said, well, we just won't leaders won't testify against her. But now and they had somebody cross examined her pretty well, they might have found something out.

And you write in the book that all of them were likely, if not for certainly begging for their life, asking if they would be killed, and he would assure them that no, I'm not going to kill you. Of course I wouldn't kill you. I'm not going to kill you. And it was a cold blooded.

might know some more later on, you know. Uh uh it's like I've found out from the sister that uh, they had found his wedding ring and his wallet and mm hmm.

Blooded a very interesting time. And yeah, the history of this little area.

write another true crime. And then you know, they kept a parent and a pearing and I'm working. I'm working on this. I've got another one that I'm working on right now that that actually it takes place over Fort Smith too far not too far now.

But I want to thank you so much and Anita Paddock for coming on and talking about the cold Blooded and I would I would recommend people go and look at your Amazon page for closing time and for blind Rage as well. Thank you so much, Anita, thank