Bus driver and amateur spelunker Tyrone Rollins got far more than he bargained for when he entered a cave near the bus garage where he worked in Kansas City’s Leeds Industrial District on October 16, 1991.  Lying in the frigid grotto was a skeleton clad in cowboy boots and decaying clothing. The remains were determined to be of a male who had been killed by a single bullet to his head.

Tyrone had discovered the unfortunate fate of man who had been missing for seventeen years.  A driver’s license identified the deceased as Gary Simmons, a thirty-two-year-old businessman who had been missing since October 15, 1974. Dental records confirmed his identity.

The discovery of Gary Simmons’ remains in the cold cave meant a missing person’s cold case had now become a murder case. That investigation is now an even colder case.

Authorities have two theories and a suspect in the murder of Gary Simmons, but they are still lacking any concrete answers.

Gary Simmons

Gary Simmons was described as smart and hard driven. Prior to his disappearance, he was a successful entrepreneur who owned a chain of independent gas stations in the Kansas City area. He and his wife Nancy had two small children.

Gary had recently taken up horse-trading as a hobby; he and his family lived on a ranch in rural Overland Park where he and Nancy owned twenty-three horses.

On October 14, 1974, a friend told Gary of a prized purebred for sale. The horse could be purchased for the right price, and Gary was instantly intrigued.

Business Owner and Horse Enthusiast  

The following morning, Tom Dixon arrived at Gary’s office in Overland Park, the most populous Kansas City suburb. Dixon, a forty-two-year-old painter and contractor, lived in Stillwell, part of metropolitan Kansas City.

Dixon presented himself as the agent of the horse’s owner to Gary’s secretary, Jody Miller. Both men were members of the Heart of America Appaloosa Horse Association, but this is believed to be the first time they had met.  Jody heard Gary say to Dixon, “I don’t remember you.”

Newspaper articles from the time and subsequent articles contradict at what time the events occurred over the following two days. The times are approximate.

Around 10:15 a.m., Gary left his office with Dixon, telling Jody he would return within the hour. He did not say where he was going. Fifteen minutes later, Gary phoned Jody and instructed her to make out a check on a seldom-used business account for $30,000 to Dixon. Gary also phoned Thomas Burcham, President of the Santa Fe Trail State Bank in Merriam, also part of metropolitan Kansas City. A business deal had recently been completed between Gary and the McKee Oil Company of Phoenix, in which Gary was to receive $100,000. He was to meet with a company representative at the bank at 10:30 that morning, but he asked that the meeting be postponed until 1:00. The oil representative agreed.

Approximately half-an-hour later, at 11:00 a.m., Dixon returned, alone, to Gary’s office to pick up the check, which required Gary’s’ signature in order to be cashed.

At 11:30 a.m., Gary was seen at a Kansas City truck stop ten miles from his office. The owner of the restaurant recalled seeing him repeatedly walking between the counter and looking out the window as if he were expecting to meet someone there.

Roughly half-an-hour later, Thomas Burcham received a second phone call from Gary. He said he was going to purchase a horse and that Dixon would soon be arriving at the bank to cash the $30,000 check. Burcham, who knew Gary and considered him one of the bank’s most trusted customers, did not detect anything that would raise his suspicion.

Half-an-hour later, at approximately 12:30 p.m., Dixon arrived at the Santa Fe Trail State Bank with the check bearing Gary Simmons’ signature. It is not known where the men had met for the check to be signed. Dixon told Burcham the horse Gary was purchasing was a two-year-old Quarter Horse and Thoroughbred that he had raised since he was a colt.

Dixon cashed the check at the bank; he requested the full $30,000 in $100 bills, but the bank did have that many $100 bills on hand. He instead took $5,000 in $100 bills and a $25,000 cashier’s check. Dixon said he needed the money to pay off debts.

Burcham told Dixon he could try to cash the cashier’s check at the Commercial National Bank in Kansas City, Kansas. Approximately ten-to-fifteen minutes after he left the Santa Fe Trail bank, Burcham received a call from the Commercial National Bank inquiring about the cashier’s check. Burcham gave his approval, and Dixon received the remaining $25,000 in $100 bills.

                                Gary Simmons                       Tom Dixon

Fifteen minutes later, at 12:45 p.m., Burcham’s secretary received a phone call from Gary, saying he would be a few minutes late for the 1:00 meeting with the oil representative. The secretary, as well, did not detect anything unusual. Gary, however, did not arrive for the meeting and was never heard from again.

In searching Gary’s office, investigators found the names of two horses written on a notepad. Because one horse had been dead for six years, authorities believed Gary was attempting to trace the horse’s ancestry. The location of the other horse was not determined.

Last Sighting of Gary

Tom Dixon and his friend, Tom Callahan, were seen paying bills in cash in the hours after the last contact from Gary Simmons. Callahan was also a member of the Heart of America Appaloosa Horse Association.

In the late afternoon, approximately five hours after cashing the check, Dixon, driving Gary Simmons’ Lincoln Continental, arrived at Bob’s Salvage Yard in Independence, Missouri, ten miles east of Kansas City. He asked co-owner Bob Williams if he could crush the car. Bob replied that the authorities were wary of that type of activity and suggested that the best place to dispose of the vehicle would be in the Missouri River.

During the morning of the following day, October 16, Dixon called Callahan, saying his truck had broken down at the Quality Oil Company truck stop along United States Highway 69 near his hometown of Stillwell. Callahan said he picked up Dixon at the truck stop shortly before 11:00 a.m., drove him to his home, and agreed to let Dixon use his truck to run errands for a couple of hours. At 1:30 p.m., Dixon again phoned Callahan, asking him to drive him to a truck plaza along Interstate 35 in Olathe, roughly nine miles south of Gary Simmons’ office. Dixon said he was planning to travel across the country in a big rig.

At 3:00, Dixon called his wife, Shirley, telling her he was in Arkansas but would be home that evening. Shirley told him she had been contacted by police investigating the disappearance of Gary Simmons. Dixon told his wife he had not seen Gary since the previous day.

This was the last time Tom Dixon was heard from; he did not come home that night nor did he return to Bob’s Salvage Yard as scheduled that day with some junk cars he had recently purchased in Waverly, fifty miles east of Independence.

Dixon’s pickup was still at the Quality Oil Company truck stop. The keys were in the ignition and the truck was fine for operating.

Last Sighting of Dixon

Six months later, on April 25, 1975, Gary Simmons’ Lincoln Continental was pulled from the Missouri River, near the Kansas City suburb of Sugar Creek, less than six miles from Bob’s Salvage Yard where Dixon had tried to dispose of it.

Although Gary’s body was not found in his car or in the river, police theorized he had been murdered over of a bogus horse deal. They believed that Dixon, either acting alone or with a partner, took Gary’s money and killed him. Police theorized there had likely had never been a prized horse.

Without a body, however, it would be hard to make a murder case. A warrant was issued for Tom Dixon’s arrest but only on a charge of auto theft.

Gary’s Disposed Car

Seventeen years later Gary Simmons’ remains were found wrapped in a canvas cloth commonly used by painters, such as Tom Dixon.

The discovery seemed to confirm police suspicions that the missing businessman had been killed over a bogus horse deal.

Map from The Kanas City Star

Shortly after the remains were found, however, Roy Hilton, an associate of both Gary Simmons and Tom Dixon, offered a new theory for why the businessman was murdered.

Roy owned the Whispering Down’s Ranch in Lenexa, also part of metropolitan Kansas City. He says he heard Gary making telephone calls from his ranch to his office and to the bank on the afternoon of October 15, 1974, the day he disappeared. Roy also says there was in fact a bona fide horse which Gary intended to buy and that he showed it to him.

Roy believes that Gary’s murder was not related to a prized horse, but was instead over black-market gasoline.

Roy Hilton

Like all American oil and gas businessmen of the time, Gary Simmons was feeling the effect of the 1973 Arab-Oil embargo. His company, Simmons Petroleum Corp., was thriving prior to the embargo, but he was now having trouble finding fuel and had been forced to close six of his sixteen gas stations due to the fuel shortage.

Gary’s brother Jerry said his brother was involved in buying gas on the spot market, in which it was purchased for immediate delivery. Spot market gasoline was often labeled as black market gasoline because it was beyond government control. It was, however, a legal business and one in which most oil companies of the time engaged. Jerry contends his brother was involved in only spot market gasoline, not in black market gasoline.

Gary Compton, a private investigator hired by the Simmons family, says Gary Simmons was to testify in a federal investigation about black-market gasoline sales and he believed that was the reason he was killed.

Authorities, however, still believe Gary Simmons’ murder was related to a phony horse sale. Gary’s widow, Nancy, disagrees, saying her business-savvy husband would not have purchased a $30,000 horse on a whim without consulting with her and without the horse being examined by a trainer and/or veterinarian.

Could Gary’s Murder Be Related to His Business?

One thing investigators and Gary Simmons’ family agree is that Tom Dixon could provide the answers. His whereabouts, however, remain unknown after nearly fifty years.

Dixon had been truthful in what he had told Bank President Thomas Burcham; he was in heavy financial debt at the time and his home was about to be foreclosed. He may have conned Gary Simmons into a bogus horse sale; if that is the case however, it only would have made a dent in his debts. Gary had a check made out to Dixon for $30,000 but he was upwards of $150,000 in debt.

Instead of being the killer of Gary Simmons, some investigators believe Dixon also may be a murder victim, killed by an unknown third party who also orchestrated Gary’s murder. Many involved in the investigation do not believe Dixon would have been able to swindle the savvy businessman on his own. Ronald Jackson, the Overland Park police investigator in charge of the investigation into Gary Simmons’ murder, said Dixon “did not have the smarts” to commit murder and remain hidden for so long. A search of the cave where Gary’s body was found located no other remains.

When he was last seen in 1974, Tom Dixon was five-feet-eight–inches tall with brownish-graying hair and green eyes. He may have continued working as a house painter or general contractor. He would today be eighty-nine-years-old.

I could not find a picture of Dixon’s friend, Tom Callahan, who died in 1982.

Computer-Aged image of Tom Dixon

Approximate Age of Sixty-Two

If you have any information on the murder of Gary Simmons or on the whereabouts of Tom Dixon, please contact the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department’s Homicide Division at 816-234-5043.

A Kansas City Cold Case

The Lee’s Summit Underwater Recovery Unit had been called to the Missouri River on April 25, 1975, after police received a report of a 1968 Cadillac being dumped in the river. The Cadillac was not related to the disappearance of Gary Simmons.

A vehicle, presumably the Cadillac, was located and raised from the water. It was soon discovered, however, that the car was instead a Lincoln Continental, which was ultimately identified as Gary’s. The river was further searched and the Cadillac in question was lifted from it forty-five minutes later. From the amount of silt in the cars, it was clear that Gary Simmons’ Lincoln Continental had been in the water longer than the Cadillac.

If the Cadillac had been found first, Gary Simmons’ Lincoln Continental may still be sitting in the Missouri River.

A Fortuitous Find

Bus driver Tyrone Rollins said that for years he had an eerie feeling about the cave where he found Gary Simmons’ remains.

The discovery turned one of Kansas City’s long missing person’s case into one of the city’s longest unsolved murder cases.

Bus Driver Tyrone Rollins, Who Found the Remains of Gary Simmons

 

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/91341165/gary-ross-simmons

SOURCES:

• Carthage (Missouri) Press
• Hutchinson News
• Kansas City Star
• Kansas City Times
• Lawrence Journal-World
• Olathe Daily News
• Unsolved Mysteries