On December 22, 1987 ex-staff sergeant Ronald Gene Simmons herded his four youngest children up Mockingbird hill to a ram-shackle 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 caliber 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 a total decline. 'Zero at the Bone' details the horrifying events that led to one of the worst homicidal rampages in American History. From Simmons troubled youth to his murder of 14 family members and his explosive trial, this chilling account takes you inside the mind of a man who violated the darkest taboos of our society.