Beoria Simmons was convicted in 1985 of the murders of three women in Louisville, Kentucky, killed between 1981 and 1983. The jury in Jefferson County also convicted him of four counts of kidnapping, with other charges, and he received six death sentences. He was caught on June 11, 1983, after a fourth woman he tried to abduct got away and helped police identify him.
He spent 25 years on Kentucky's death row. In December 2009 a federal judge ruled that he could look into whether Jefferson County prosecutors had kept minority jurors off the panel at his 1985 trial. About three months later, in early March 2010, prosecutors and his lawyers settled the case. His death sentences were changed to six life sentences without the possibility of parole. In return he gave up every appeal, and prosecutors gave up their effort to execute him. Under the agreement he was to stay in a single cell at the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville.
The killings took place in Louisville and Jefferson County over a little more than two years. The Associated Press, reporting on the 2010 hearing, summarized the case as authorities described it: Simmons abducted three women and killed each of them. The convictions cover all three women.
Little is known about Simmons himself before his arrest. The Associated Press described him in 2010 as a Black man, 55 years old, and noted his race in describing his last appeal. His occupation, schooling and family background went unreported when the case returned to the news in 2010.
Robin Barnes was the first of the three women. Her cousin, who spoke for the family in 2010, told WAVE News that she was shot. WAVE published a photograph of Robin with the story and credited it to her cousin.
Accounts disagree about the date. WAVE gave the date of her death as May 18, 1981. The Associated Press, in its 2010 report, gave the date of her abduction as March 18, 1981. Neither report explains the difference.
In 2010 her cousin said the killing had changed her own life. She told the station that the police needed two more years to find the man responsible. Robin, she said, was his first victim but not his last.
Shannon House was killed on March 25, 1982. The Associated Press listed the date as the day she was abducted, and WAVE listed it as the day she was killed. Both outlets reported that she was taken against her will and killed in Louisville. When the case returned to the news in 2010, nothing was said of her age, her life, her family or her work.
Nancy Bettman was killed on March 11, 1983, almost a year after Shannon House. WAVE and the Associated Press both gave that date. She was the third woman in the case and the last to die. Her age, and much else about who she was, went unreported in 2010.
The three killings were separate events, spread across three calendar years. By the time Nancy Bettman died, the search for the man responsible had gone on for nearly two years without an arrest, according to Robin Barnes's cousin.
On June 11, 1983, Simmons tried to abduct a fourth woman. She escaped, and she later identified him, the Associated Press reported. WAVE said that after getting away she helped police catch him. The arrest came the same day, June 11, 1983, according to WAVE.
The Associated Press described the June 1983 attack as an attempted abduction that failed. Simmons was later convicted of four counts of kidnapping in all.
Simmons was tried in 1985 in Jefferson County. The jury convicted him of murder for each of the three women and of four kidnappings, along with other charges. He was sentenced to death, and the sentence was made up of six separate death sentences, the Associated Press reported.
At trial his lawyers compared him to Ted Bundy, the serial killer, and asked the jury to spare his life. They told the jurors that they had studied what drove him to attack the women, according to the Associated Press. The jurors returned death sentences.
WAVE reported that he was sentenced to death in 1985 and had been appealing ever since. The appeals went on for a quarter of a century.
Simmons is Black. His last appeal turned on how his jury had been chosen. He argued that Jefferson County prosecutors had systematically excluded minority jurors, the Associated Press reported.
Jury selection in the same court had already drawn national attention. In April 1986, the year after Simmons's trial, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Batson v. Kentucky, a case that came from the Jefferson Circuit Court in Kentucky. Before Batson, under the court's earlier decision in Swain v. Alabama, a Black defendant who believed prosecutors were striking Black jurors because of their race had to show that the system of peremptory challenges was being misused across many cases, not just his own. Kentucky's courts had also required proof of systematic exclusion. In Batson the Supreme Court changed that rule. It held that the Equal Protection Clause forbids a prosecutor from striking jurors because of their race and allowed a defendant to make an initial showing from the strikes at his own trial, after which the prosecution must give a race-neutral reason.
Simmons's claim, as the Associated Press described it, was about a pattern: whether prosecutors in Jefferson County had removed minority jurors as a matter of practice. The Kentucky Supreme Court had ruled that he had not shown enough to justify a hearing on the claim.
In December 2009, U.S. District Judge Charles Simpson ruled that Simmons could investigate how and why Jefferson County prosecutors had removed minority jurors from his trial panel. The judge found that the Kentucky Supreme Court had erred when it did not conclude that there was enough evidence to justify a hearing, and he wrote that the state court's ruling "defies logic," the Associated Press reported.
The ruling meant that the case would move into discovery. Prosecutors faced the prospect of producing large amounts of material about the county's jury selection practices and of sitting for depositions, according to the Associated Press. If the claim succeeded, Simmons could win a new trial.
On March 1, 2010, WAVE News reported that Simmons, then 55, was set to appear in court the next day, March 2, at 2 p.m., and that he was expected to accept a deal. Robin Barnes's cousin told the station what prosecutors had explained to the families: a new trial could cause problems in a case that was by then 29 years old. Many of the original detectives and witnesses might no longer be available. "Half of them are dead now," she said. The Commonwealth's Attorney's office declined to comment before the hearing.
Jefferson Circuit Judge Mary Shaw approved the agreement in court, the Associated Press reported. The terms, as the agency described them, were these:
Simmons's six death sentences were changed to six life sentences without the possibility of parole.
He dropped all of his appeals.
Prosecutors ended their efforts to execute him.
He would be allowed to stay in a single cell at the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville, and he could not be moved from that prison.
The agreement also spared prosecutors from producing the jury selection material and from giving depositions about Jefferson County's practices, the Associated Press reported.
Prosecutors told WAVE that the agreement was the best way to keep Simmons in prison. The problems with jury selection at his original trial, they said, could otherwise have led to a new trial.
His lawyer, public defender David Barron, said continued litigation would most likely have reached the same result. "We believe that continuing litigation would eventually result in the outcome that has been achieved today," he said.
Simmons spoke to the families of the three women at the hearing. "I just want to say I'm sorry for all the grief and pain I've caused throughout the years," he said, according to WAVE.
Members of his own family filled part of Judge Shaw's courtroom. They were pleased and relieved that he no longer faced execution, the Associated Press reported.
Robin Barnes's cousin opposed the agreement before the hearing and did not change her mind after it. Before the hearing she told WAVE that the deal was something no one convicted of three murders should be allowed to make. "It's not good enough for me," she said. She said she understood the prosecutors' reasoning but still considered the result unfair. She had wanted Simmons to be put to death by lethal injection and had wanted to be present. "I want to be there when he dies," she said.
After the hearing she told WAVE that a life sentence did not seem like the justice her cousin deserved.
No comment from the families of Shannon House or Nancy Bettman, or from the woman who escaped, was reported in 2010.
Simmons spent 25 years on death row before the 2010 agreement, the Associated Press reported. Under the agreement he was to remain at the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville, in a single cell, and he could not be moved to another prison. In March 2010 the Associated Press reported that he would stay there, serving six life sentences without parole.
Simmons stands convicted, with the convictions final, of three counts of murder, with other charges, including four counts of kidnapping, in Jefferson County, Kentucky. His six death sentences were replaced in 2010 by six sentences of life without parole. By the terms of the agreement he dropped all appeals, so the convictions and the life sentences were no longer under challenge.
The date of Robin Barnes's death or abduction differs between the two main reports. WAVE gave May 18, 1981, as the date of her death. The Associated Press gave March 18, 1981, as the date of her abduction. The Associated Press dates for Shannon House and Nancy Bettman are dates of abduction; WAVE gives the same dates as the dates of their deaths.
The exact date on which Judge Shaw approved the agreement is uncertain. WAVE reported on March 1, 2010, that the hearing was set for March 2, and its report on the outcome was first published shortly after midnight on March 3. The Associated Press said the judge acted on a Tuesday.
1981: Robin Barnes is abducted and killed in Louisville. The Associated Press gives March 18, 1981, as the date of her abduction; WAVE gives May 18, 1981, as the date of her death.
March 25, 1982: Shannon House is abducted and killed.
March 11, 1983: Nancy Bettman is abducted and killed.
June 11, 1983: A fourth woman escapes an abduction attempt and helps police identify Simmons. He is arrested the same day.
1985: Jefferson County jury convicts Simmons of three murders, with other charges, including four counts of kidnapping. He receives six death sentences.
April 30, 1986: The Supreme Court of the United States decides Batson v. Kentucky, a case from the Jefferson Circuit Court, on race and jury selection.
December 2009: U.S. District Judge Charles Simpson rules that Simmons may investigate whether Jefferson County prosecutors removed minority jurors from his trial panel, calling the Kentucky Supreme Court's contrary ruling one that "defies logic."
March 1, 2010: WAVE reports that Simmons is due in court on March 2 to accept an agreement.
March 2010: Jefferson Circuit Judge Mary Shaw approves the agreement. The six death sentences become six life sentences without parole; Simmons drops all appeals and is to remain in a single cell at the Kentucky State Penitentiary, Eddyville.