Things I Want To Know

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This episode examines Ronald Gene Simmons, tracing his rigid rise through the military, the incest allegation that triggered a sudden move, and the slow construction of an isolated household on Mockingbird Hill. As control began to slip, children leaving, jobs unraveling, pension delays stacking up, Simmons’ fixation hardened into a plan that unfolded over several days during Christmas 1987.

Fourteen members of his family were killed, including children and grandchildren. Afterward, Simmons drove to Russellville and opened fire on former coworkers and supervisors, telling police he had “gotten everybody who wanted to hurt” him before surrendering without resistance.

We walk through the timeline and the psychology behind the violence. How coercive control, isolation, and a self-imposed hierarchy can turn a family into a sealed system. We compare Simmons to other killers shaped by abusive environments and note where those patterns fall apart. The evidence points less to a reactive trauma script and more to a man who weaponized order, then tried to erase anyone who threatened it.

The episode also examines the legal aftermath: crimes spanning jurisdictions, competency findings, an unusually fast jury process, and a defendant who refused all appeals. Simmons’ final statement, calling his actions “justifiable homicide,” raises uncomfortable questions about speed, certainty, and justice in capital punishment cases.

Along the way, we center the aftermath. How holidays change forever for survivors. How a community absorbs a crime of this scale. And why verification matters when even a killer’s childhood becomes distorted through repetition and rumor.

This is a conversation about control, domestic isolation, and the legal edges of the death penalty. It avoids gore, rejects mythmaking, and insists on clarity where silence once lived.

 “Thank you for listening to Things I Want to Know.
You want these stories, and we want to bring them to you — so hit the support link and keep this circus, and the mics, alive.
Then do us a favor and rate and subscribe; it helps the show find more people like you — the ones who like their mysteries real and their storytellers unfiltered.
And if you want to wear a little of this madness, grab some Andrea-approved gear at paulgnewton.com.
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Things I Want To Know
If you enjoy the show, or you just like supporting people who refuse to shut up, grab some merch at PaulGNewton.com. It keeps the lights on and the caffeine flowing.

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Most true crime podcasts lie politely. We don’t.
 So we decided to explain why.

After getting pushback for “disrespecting” a victim, Andrea and I laid out exactly how Things I Want to Know works. This episode is our playbook. How we research. Why we focus on underreported Arkansas cases. And why respecting victims does not mean turning them into saints or pretending uncomfortable facts don’t exist.

We start with primary sources. State missing-persons lists, archived newspapers, and public records. Wikipedia is never a single source. If we can’t double-check a claim, it doesn’t make the cut. FOIA requests help sometimes. Often they don’t. When information is thin, locked down, or too risky to publish responsibly, we shelve the case. That’s not fear. That’s restraint.

Victimology gets the hardest scrutiny. We don’t do saintly clichés and we don’t do cheap cruelty. Routine, relationships, place, and risk shape opportunity, but labels don’t define a person. When families or firsthand sources correct us, we update the record. And we don’t force famous killers into unrelated cases just to make a cleaner narrative. Method matters more than myth.

Along the way, we reference system failures that sharpen how we think. Hawaii’s false nuclear missile alert that sat unretracted for 38 minutes. The MOVE bombing in Philadelphia. Different stories, same lesson: small decisions spiral, and accuracy matters when real people are involved.

This episode is about balancing truth, empathy, and clarity without sanding off reality. If you’ve got documents, corrections, memories, or you just want to tell us why were wrong, email me, Paul G.
 [email protected]

You can find the show, the merch, and everything else we’re building at paulgnewton.com.

Subscribe. Share it with someone who’s tired of copy-paste true crime. And if there’s a case you think deserves real attention, tell me about it.

 “Thank you for listening to Things I Want to Know.
You want these stories, and we want to bring them to you — so hit the support link and keep this circus, and the mics, alive.
Then do us a favor and rate and subscribe; it helps the show find more people like you — the ones who like their mysteries real and their storytellers unfiltered.
And if you want to wear a little of this madness, grab some Andrea-approved gear at paulgnewton.com.
We make t

Support the show

Things I Want To Know
If you enjoy the show, or you just like supporting people who refuse to shut up, grab some merch at PaulGNewton.com. It keeps the lights on and the caffeine flowing.

Send us Fan Mail

Things I Want To Know

Don’t Boil the Water | Charleston, West Virginia

A sweet smell coming out of the tap should never turn into a guessing game.

In this episode, we dig into the 2014 Charleston, West Virginia chemical spill that sent crude MCHM from a neglected storage tank straight toward a municipal water intake, forcing 300,000 people to stop using their water overnight. Not limit it. Not boil it. Stop.

We talk about how a century-old piece of infrastructure ended up sitting upstream from a city’s drinking water, why oversight failed, and how “safe enough” became the most dangerous phrase in the room. Residents reported rashes, nausea, burning eyes, and headaches, while officials tried to reassure the public with toxicology data that barely existed.

Accountability did come, eventually. Guilty pleas. Home confinement. Bankruptcy. But trust is harder to flush out of a system than a chemical you can smell.

We also zoom out, because Charleston isn’t an anomaly. From storage tanks to rail lines to aging intakes, this is what happens when convenience and complacency quietly stack risk in places no one is watching.

This isn’t panic radio. It’s a conversation about vigilance. What smells matter. Why boiling water can make some chemical exposures worse. What actually helps at the household level, and what fixes need to happen upstream where the real control lives.

Because the most unsettling part isn’t that something went wrong.
 It’s how normal the day felt before anyone knew.

 “Thank you for listening to Things I Want to Know.
You want these stories, and we want to bring them to you — so hit the support link and keep this circus, and the mics, alive.
Then do us a favor and rate and subscribe; it helps the show find more people like you — the ones who like their mysteries real and their storytellers unfiltered.
And if you want to wear a little of this madness, grab some Andrea-approved gear at paulgnewton.com.
We make t

Support the show

Things I Want To Know
If you enjoy the show, or you just like supporting people who refuse to shut up, grab some merch at PaulGNewton.com. It keeps the lights on and the caffeine flowing.

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Two women vanish in Arkansas, sixteen years apart, and the details still don’t sit right.

In this episode, we examine the disappearance of 18-year-old Cleashindra Hall in Pine Bluff in 1994 and art teacher Mary “Jimmie” Bobo Shinn in Magnolia in 1978. Two very different lives. Two very different towns. The same outcome: unanswered questions and investigations that lost traction early.

We walk through what went wrong and why it mattered. What happens when the last known location is someone else’s home? When the only narrative comes from the people who controlled the space, and that space gets cleaned, rearranged, or repainted before police ever look? How does a routine house showing end with a dumped purse, cash untouched, and tennis shoes jammed beneath the pedals of an abandoned car?

We talk plainly about investigative blind spots: delayed entry to critical scenes, chain-of-custody failures that destroy potential forensic evidence, witness canvasses that never quite lock in, and the damaging assumption that adults simply “left.” We also place both cases in their time. Pine Bluff in the 1990s. Magnolia in the late 1970s. How race, social standing, and small-town dynamics shaped urgency, attention, and follow-through.

We also cut through the noise. Psychics. Private investigator versus police friction. Sketches so generic they could be half the state. Theories that don’t match the evidence don’t help anyone.

This episode is about what can still be done. Retesting with modern DNA methods. Re-entering prints and materials into national databases. Re-canvassing with the benefit of time and honesty. And talking openly about common-sense safety practices that didn’t exist when these women disappeared.

Cold cases don’t close themselves. People close them.

If these stories matter to you, help keep them alive.
 Share the episode. Leave a review. And if you have information or resources, reach out.

To support the show and keep this work going, visit PaulGNewton.com for official Things I Want to Know merch and other projects.

And if you want more long-form storytelling beyond true crime, listen to Paul G’s Corner, where history, near-miss disasters, and forgotten moments get the same straight-talk treatment.

 “Thank you for listening to Things I Want to Know.
You want these stories, and we want to bring them to you — so hit the support link and keep this circus, and the mics, alive.
Then do us a favor and rate and subscribe; it helps the show find more people like you — the ones who like their mysteries real and their storytellers unfiltered.
And if you want to wear a little of this madness, grab some Andrea-approved gear at paulgnewton.com.
We make t

Support the show

Things I Want To Know
If you enjoy the show, or you just like supporting people who refuse to shut up, grab some merch at PaulGNewton.com. It keeps the lights on and the caffeine flowing.

Send us Fan Mail

Paul G and Andrea trace the violent trail of James “Red” Hall across wartime Arkansas, where a hellfire upbringing and a childhood head injury twisted a drifter into a man who turned small moments into real-life dead ends. A .38 revolver ties the bodies together. The chaos of World War II gives him cover. And Arkansas rushes him from confession to Old Sparky before most people even know who he is.

They follow the disappearance of Faye after a night out in Little Rock, the motorists who picked up the wrong hitchhiker, and the ballistics that stitched Hall’s spree together. From Stuttgart’s glider base to the thin police records of the 1940s, Paul and Andrea break down how a man like this drifted through the state unseen until his execution and the eerie death mask that lingered for decades.

It’s the kind of story Arkansas forgets — until someone finally tells it.

Grab a shirt at PaulGNewton.com.
 And if you’re the mystery super-listener in Iowa… drop us a line. We might ship you the Walmart shirt.

 “Thank you for listening to Things I Want to Know.
You want these stories, and we want to bring them to you — so hit the support link and keep this circus, and the mics, alive.
Then do us a favor and rate and subscribe; it helps the show find more people like you — the ones who like their mysteries real and their storytellers unfiltered.
And if you want to wear a little of this madness, grab some Andrea-approved gear at paulgnewton.com.
We make t

Support the show

Things I Want To Know
If you enjoy the show, or you just like supporting people who refuse to shut up, grab some merch at PaulGNewton.com. It keeps the lights on and the caffeine flowing.

Send us Fan Mail

In 1992, seventeen year old Kelly Wilson vanished in Gilmer, Texas. A short walk from a video store to her car became one of the most debated missing person cases in Texas history. What should have been a focused, evidence driven investigation was quickly consumed by the national Satanic Panic that overtook the early nineties. Gilmer followed the same pattern seen in McMartin, Kern County, and the West Memphis Three. Fear replaced facts. Rumor replaced procedure. And Kelly’s case fell into the same trap that swallowed so many investigations during the Satanic Panic era.

In this episode we retrace Kelly Wilson’s last known steps, the slashed tire, the missing keys, and the early suspects who should have remained at the center of the case. We examine how the entire investigation veered into claims of ritual abuse when the Kerr family CPS probe began producing pressured child testimony that expanded only after repeated, leading interviews. These accusations mirrored every hallmark of the Satanic Panic movement. No physical evidence. No forensic support. No verified ritual activity. Only fear, group reinforcement, and stories that grew bigger every time a child was pushed for more.

Using criminal profiling, forensic standards, and lessons taken from documented Satanic Panic cases, we outline the scenario that best fits the facts. The Texas Attorney General later confirmed what the FBI had been saying for years. Real ritual crime leaves clear signatures. Gilmer had none. What it had were misidentified bones, contaminated interviews, and a case that lost its direction the moment panic replaced logic.

If you follow true crime, Satanic Panic history, missing person investigations, or the impact of moral hysteria on criminal justice, this episode brings clarity to one of the most misunderstood cases of the early nineties.

For links, case notes, and official show merch, visit paulgnewton.com

 “Thank you for listening to Things I Want to Know.
You want these stories, and we want to bring them to you — so hit the support link and keep this circus, and the mics, alive.
Then do us a favor and rate and subscribe; it helps the show find more people like you — the ones who like their mysteries real and their storytellers unfiltered.
And if you want to wear a little of this madness, grab some Andrea-approved gear at paulgnewton.com.
We make t

Support the show

Things I Want To Know
If you enjoy the show, or you just like supporting people who refuse to shut up, grab some merch at PaulGNewton.com. It keeps the lights on and the caffeine flowing.

Send us Fan Mail

In this Episode we dive into the case of Michael Ronning, a convicted murderer who spent years bragging about killings no court ever proved. His life stretched from Michigan to Arkansas to Florida, and everywhere he went the same pattern followed: a missing girl, an unexplained death, and a story he couldn’t resist inserting himself into.

Was Ronning a forgotten serial killer, or a drifter who loved the attention that came with pretending to be one? Andrea and Paul sift through the timeline, the victims, the confessions, and the contradictions he left behind. Some of his claims line up a little too well. Others fall apart the second you touch them.

This episode pulls apart the myth of Michael Ronning and the messy truth underneath it.

“Some killers stay silent. Ronning couldn’t shut up long enough to hide anything.”

“Every place he bragged about had a real victim. That is not a coincidence.”

“He confessed to murders he couldn’t possibly have committed. The question is why he wanted the credit.”

“The courts only proved one killing, but the geography tells another story.”

“Was he a serial killer, or just a man who enjoyed the spotlight a little too much?”

“This is the problem with Ronning’s case. The truth and the lies sound exactly the same coming out of his mouth.”

A drifter who loved headlines. A murder tied to a $700 lockbox. A string of claims that crumble under basic scrutiny. We dive into the volatile life and crimes of Michael Ronning, exploring the one confirmed homicide and the many cold cases he tried to claim from Michigan to Arkansas to Florida. Our goal isn’t to glorify him—it’s to separate what really happened from what he wanted people to believe.

We walk through Dana Lynn Hanley’s case step by step: the short construction job, the glimpse of cash, the abduction, the eyewitness who remembered his face, and the conviction that followed. From there, we map the suspected cases Ronning attached himself to, including the Rebecca Sue Hill connection, and ask a hard question: are we seeing a serial predator with a ritual, or a chaotic opportunist who killed when it was easy and bragged when it was useful? Using our AI-assisted profiler “Cade Mercer,” we test the behavioral evidence and the lack of consistent signature—finding rage, proximity, and impulse instead of ritual, planning, and control.

We also zoom out to the limits of 1980s forensics—decomposition in swamps, missing biological material, inconsistent evidence handling—and look at how modern tools like CODIS, touch DNA, and forensic genealogy could still help. If Ronning’s DNA is in the system, could renewed testing answer lingering questions or clear false trails? Along the way, we challenge the habit of pinning unsolved cases on notorious names and talk about what responsible true crime work looks like: careful distinctions, transparent uncertainty, and respect for victims and families.

If you’re into true crime that values evidence over myth, hit play, subscribe, and share this episode with a friend. And if you learned something, leave a quick review—it helps more curious listeners find the show.

 “Thank you for listening to Things I Want to Know.
You want these stories, and we want to bring them to you — so hit the support link and keep this circus, and the mics, alive.
Then do us a favor and rate and subscribe; it helps the show find more people like you — the ones who like their mysteries real and their storytellers unfiltered.
And if you want to wear a little of this madness, grab some Andrea-approved gear at paulgnewton.com.
We make t

Support the show

Things I Want To Know
If you enjoy the show, or you just like supporting people who refuse to shut up, grab some merch at PaulGNewton.com. It keeps the lights on and the caffeine flowing.

Send us Fan Mail

Springdale Police Lt. Karl Martens turns the key, presses the brake, and his truck erupts. He survives. The case nearly disappears.

On February 24, 1972, someone tried to kill a police lieutenant in Springdale, Arkansas, with a bomb planted beneath his vehicle. More than fifty years later, no one has ever been convicted.

We set out to understand what happened, why the bombing received so little lasting attention, and what the surviving records can still tell us. Along the way, the story opens into a very different Northwest Arkansas, a rural region on the edge of enormous change, where Walmart and Tyson were still rising, Sundays went quiet, and a hard-edged drug trade was beginning to take hold.

Read the full investigation, including law-enforcement records, newspaper coverage, photographs, and additional details from the Karl Martens case:

https://www.paulgnewton.com/blog/1972-springdale-arkansas-police-bombing-karl-martens

We examine the bomb itself, including DuPont gelatin dynamite, electric blasting caps, and evidence suggesting a brake-triggered device. We also follow the investigative trail as the ATF, FBI, and local law enforcement tried to determine where the explosives came from and who had the knowledge, access, and motive to use them.

The names begin to matter. Investigators encountered a farmhand with access to explosives and repeatedly crossed paths with Dennis Eugene Cortis, a man with an extensive criminal history whose name continued to surface in connection with drugs, violence, and the people surrounding the investigation. Witnesses described loose talk, strange remarks, old grudges, and connections that were difficult to ignore but even harder to turn into a prosecutable case.

The surviving records do not offer a tidy answer. FOIA requests produced investigative reports, lab material, interviews, newspaper accounts, and fragments of a case that once involved multiple agencies. Leads were pursued. Evidence was collected. Suspects were questioned. Yet somewhere between what investigators believed and what prosecutors could prove, the case lost momentum.

Then the story takes another turn. Years later, Cortis escaped from the Washington County Jail after receiving help that included tools used to get him out. His mother became part of that chapter, and the escape added another bizarre episode to the life of a man whose name had already become entangled with the Martens investigation.

What remains is not a solved case, and this episode does not pretend otherwise. It is a reconstruction of what the surviving evidence, contemporary reporting, public records, and people familiar with the investigation can still tell us.

This is Arkansas true crime without the clean ending: a police bombing, explosives, meth networks, ATF records, jail escapes, old newspaper clippings, missing pieces, competing accounts, and one stubborn question that has survived for more than half a century.

Who tried to kill Lt. Karl Martens, and why did the case never reach a courtroom?

Listen to the episode, then read the full investigation and decide what the evidence tells you.

 “Thank you for listening to Things I Want to Know.
You want these stories, and we want to bring them to you — so hit the support link and keep this circus, and the mics, alive.
Then do us a favor and rate and subscribe; it helps the show find more people like you — the ones who like their mysteries real and their storytellers unfiltered.
And if you want to wear a little of this madness, grab some Andrea-approved gear at paulgnewton.com.
We make t

Support the show

Things I Want To Know
If you enjoy the show, or you just like supporting people who refuse to shut up, grab some merch at PaulGNewton.com. It keeps the lights on and the caffeine flowing.

Send us Fan Mail

A nameless girl lay in a Florida forest for decades, filed under Judy Doe and lost to a noisy era of serial predators and thin evidence. Forty years later, genetic genealogy restores her identity—Rebecca Sue Hill, a teenager from Arkansas—and forces us to confront how a single misidentification can bury a case and mute a family’s questions for a generation.

We walk through the case from both ends: an Arkansas disappearance in the early 80s and a body found near Lake Dorr in 1984. The environmental realities—Florida heat, rapid decomposition—shrunk the evidence window, while a misstep in Little Rock prematurely closed Rebecca’s missing status. That mistake separated two investigations that needed each other. Add in a crowded field of suspects and confessors—Christopher Wilder’s east coast rampage, Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole’s performative admissions—and it becomes clearer why the truth stalled. The most compelling person of interest, Michael Roaning, is documented in Lake County the day before the remains were found and later tied to an Arkansas murder. He traded information in other cases yet stayed quiet here, raising the hard question: is silence strategy or distance from the crime?

We also unpack the science that put a name back on the headstone. Investigators leveraged genealogical matches and family mitochondrial lines to verify identity, proving how modern DNA can correct the record even when it can’t deliver a conviction. From there, we examine offender profiles that fit the facts: a traveling, organized killer moving along interstate routes, focused on control over chaos. And we face the collateral damage of the earlier mistake—the Arkansas woman once buried under Rebecca’s name is nameless again and needs exhumation and testing to get her identity back.

If you care about true crime that values accuracy over easy answers, this story matters. Come for the forensic insights and case mapping; stay for the hard truths about how systems fail, and how science, persistence, and community can still make things right. Subscribe, share this episode with a friend who loves investigative storytelling, and leave a review to help others find the show. Your feedback and tips can move cases like this forward.

 “Thank you for listening to Things I Want to Know.
You want these stories, and we want to bring them to you — so hit the support link and keep this circus, and the mics, alive.
Then do us a favor and rate and subscribe; it helps the show find more people like you — the ones who like their mysteries real and their storytellers unfiltered.
And if you want to wear a little of this madness, grab some Andrea-approved gear at paulgnewton.com.
We make t

Support the show

Things I Want To Know
If you enjoy the show, or you just like supporting people who refuse to shut up, grab some merch at PaulGNewton.com. It keeps the lights on and the caffeine flowing.

Send us Fan Mail

The story starts on a quiet May evening in 1991 and never really stops echoing. A nine-year-old sets out to sell costume jewelry in a tiny Arkansas town where people wave from porches and the fields hold the day’s last light. By week’s end, she’s found in a ditch four miles away, and everything residents believe about safety, trust, and “being home before dark” begins to crack.

We walk you through what happened and what didn’t: kids who saw a light-blue car and a man with long hair; a grocery stop that raised more questions than it answered; and a case that leaned on one hair in a suspect’s car—then fell apart when the wrong hairs were sent to the FBI. The ex-wife who first pointed to him never made it to the stand, and without cross-examination, her statement vanished. With no solid DNA and water erasing traces, the courtroom math never added up. Along the way, we unpack how small agencies in 1991 worked without homicide units, how early DNA limits changed everything, and why eyewitness memory—especially from children—can both illuminate and mislead.

This isn’t a tidy true-crime tale. It’s a study in the limits of process, the cost of a single forensic error, and the burden families carry when “closure” is an empty word. We talk candidly about motive theories—from robbery gone cruel to a witness silenced—and why each sits on uncertain ground. We also explore how modern tools, offender registries, and renewed records searches might open doors that stayed shut for decades. If you lived in or around Hickory Ridge back then, your detail—an unfamiliar car, a sudden move, a changed routine—could matter more than you think.

If this episode moves you, share it with someone who grew up in the Delta, hit follow so you don’t miss future deep dives, and leave a review to help others find the show. And if you know something—anything—about that night, call the Arkansas State Police. Let’s try again to turn an open question into an answer.

 “Thank you for listening to Things I Want to Know.
You want these stories, and we want to bring them to you — so hit the support link and keep this circus, and the mics, alive.
Then do us a favor and rate and subscribe; it helps the show find more people like you — the ones who like their mysteries real and their storytellers unfiltered.
And if you want to wear a little of this madness, grab some Andrea-approved gear at paulgnewton.com.
We make t

Support the show

Things I Want To Know
If you enjoy the show, or you just like supporting people who refuse to shut up, grab some merch at PaulGNewton.com. It keeps the lights on and the caffeine flowing.