On the morning of December 22, 1987, everything took a turn for the worse. He bludgeoned and shot his son, Gene and Becky. Then he strangled his 3-year old granddaughter, Barbara. He sat down and drank a beer all before dumping their bodies into a cesspit he had made the children dig. He sat back and waited, knowing the rest of the family would soon return. When they arrived, he told them he had presents for them, but wanted to give them to them one at a time. Loretta was first to receive her gift. Ronald strangled her and held her under the water in a rain barrel. Eddy, Marianne and Rebecca were all killed in a similar manner. Midday on December 26, the rest of the family arrived for their Christmas visit. Ronald’s son, William and daughter-in-law, Renata were both shot dead. Then his grandson Trae, 1, was strangled and drowned. Sheila and her husband Dennis were shot, and his daughter/granddaughter, Sylvia Gail, 6, was strangled. Last, his 20-month old grandson Michael, too, was strangled. All their corpses were covered with coats, with the exception of Sheila, who was laid and covered by Becky’s best tablecloth. The two grandsons, Trae and Michael, were wrapped in plastic sheeting and placed in abandoned cars at the end of the lane. He left and went out, to the local bar for a beer before returning home and spending the next two nights and Sunday drinking beer and watching TV, with his dead family all around him. But he wasn’t done killing yet.
