ZERO AT THE BONE.

Hardback, 1st US edn. On December 22, 1987, ex-staff sergeant Ronald Gene Simmons herded his 4 youngest children up Mockingbird Hill to a ramshackle house in the Ozarks, promising them a "Christmas surprise." Leading each of them in separately, he garroted them with a nylon rope. Earlier that day, with a .22 calibre pistol, he had executed his wife, son and granddaughter. Lastly he would kill Sheila, the daughter he loved obsessively, who, at 18, had given birth to his child. When Sheila had escaped her sexually abusive father by marrying another man, Simmons - debt-ridden and unable to hold a job - had gone into total decline. The author details the horrifying events that led to one of the worst homicidal rampages in American history, culminating in the murder of 14 family members. Illus. 302pp. 8vo. h/back. With neat name insc. to fpd, o/w Nr. F. in Vg+ dw.