Gary Simmons Pt. Two

Wednesday Jun 30, 2021The Trail Went Cold - Episode 232 - Gary Simmons







October 15, 1974. Overland Park, Kansas. 32-year old businessman Gary Simmons leaves his office in order to purchase a horse from a man named Tom Dixon. Later that day, Gary provides authorization for Dixon to cash a $30,000 cheque he paid him, but Gary is never heard from again and Dixon also disappears after collecting the money. Seventeen years later, Gary’s skeletal remains are discovered inside a cave and it turns out he has been shot in the head. While Dixon is believed to be involved, he is never tracked down and investigators suspect that Gary may have been the victim of an elaborate murder plot orchestrated by an unknown third party. Could this person have also killed Tom Dixon? If so, what was the motive for this crime? On this week’s episode of “The Path Went Chilly”, we explore the baffling and convoluted unsolved murder of Gary Simmons.

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Additional Reading:

https://unsolved.com/gallery/tom-dixon/

https://unsolvedmysteries.fandom.com/wiki/Gary_Simmons

https://apnews.com/article/cf426a208f5d0da2af630c490f93e17ehttp://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1991-10-20/news/9110200207_1_simmons-skeleton-gary-comptonThe Nevada Daily Mail (October 20, 1991)

https://www.newspapers.com/image/676554618/

https://www.newspapers.com/image/676554882/

https://www.newspapers.com/image/681960576/https://www.newspapers.com/image/681960638/

https://www.newspapers.com/image/682154238/

https://www.newspapers.com/image/676745192/https://www.newspapers.com/image/676745195/

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:28):
Welcome back to the Pathwind, Chile for part two of
our series on the unsolved murder of Gary Simmons. Robin,
do you want to catch everyone up on what we
talked about in our previous episode.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Well, this case took place in Oberland Park, Kansas, in
October of nineteen seventy four. The victim was a thirty
two year old businessman named Gary Simmons who ran a
petroleum corporation and he operated a series of gas stations.
One morning, Gary showed up for work and he had
a meeting with a forty two year old man named
Tom Dixon, who also lived with his family in the area,

(01:00):
in what was supposed to be a transaction where he
was going to be purchasing a horse for thirty thousand dollars.
So Gary gave instructions to his secretary to make out
a thirty thousand dollars check for Dixon, and then later
that morning he instructed the manager of a bank to
cash the check. But Gary himself never actually showed up.
He just made a couple of phone calls from an

(01:20):
unknown location. He might have been at a horse ranch
looking at the animal he was planning to buy. But
even though he was supposed to show up for a
meeting with an oil company at representative for a one
hundred thousand dollars deal that afternoon at the bank. He
never did and was never heard from again. Tom Dixon
also after he cashed the check and got thirty thousand

(01:41):
dollars in cash, he never returned home. He was seen
at an auto salvage yard getting rid of Gary's car,
but he vanished the following day, and his pickup truck
would be found abandoned at a truck stop with the
keys in the ignition. Police began to suspect that this
might have been some sort of elaborate setup to scam
thirty thousand dollar dollars out of Gary, and six months

(02:02):
after he went missing, he discovered his car in a
river with a rock on the accelerators, so it had
been intentionally run in there, but no trace of Gary
or Tom Dixon could be found. Finally, in nineteen ninety one,
seventeen years after Gary went missing, a local bus driver
named Tyrone Rollins had what he described as a premonition
of a series of caves next to his bus yard,

(02:23):
and sure enough, when he started searching in there, he
found Gary Skelt's remains, and it turned out he had
been shot in the head, so it seemed likely that
Gary was murdered for his thirty thousand dollars, but Tom
Dixon could still not be found, so investigators have suspected
that he was just a cog in the wheel, that
some unknown third party had hired Dixon to perpetuate this scam,

(02:45):
but after the mastermind got the money, he also killed
Dixon and disposed of his body. Because there's been no
paper trail for him at all, and he has not
contacted his family in fifty years, so the cave continues
to remain unsolved and no one knows who who was
behind it all, what happened to Tom Dixon. And there's
also been suspicion about the fact that Gary was planning

(03:06):
to spend this thirty thousand dollars to purchase a horse,
because even though he loved horses, his wife said he
never would have spent that kind of money without consulting
her first, So there's been speculation that perhaps the money
was for something else, and that Gary might have been
involved in something illegal like black market Ghastly, but it
still remains a mystery to this day.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
So we mentioned in our last episode that the story's
technically two mysteries rolled into one, since the murder of
Gary Simmons is still unsolved and Tom Dixon, the person
suspected of killing him, has not been seen at all
since nineteen seventy four. However, since there was no evidence
to conclusively prove that Dixon committed murder, all the authorities

(03:47):
could do was charge him with the auto theft for
allegedly stealing and disposing of Gary's car. Looking back, it
seems a bit odd that the Unsolved Mystery segment provided
so little information about Dixon's background, as all they really
did was showcased an old black and white photograph of
Dixon and a's viewers to contact the authorities that they
saw him. This almost gives off the impression that Dixon

(04:09):
was some mysterious, enigmatic figure who was just passing through
the area to perform an elaborate con job slash murder
before he disappeared with thirty thousand dollars. In fact, you're
left wondering if Tom Dixon was even his real name.
But when Robin researched this case, it took him by
complete surprise to learn that Dixon was an established figure

(04:30):
in the community who had a wife and kids and
lived in Johnson County, only six miles from Gary's ranch.
The fact that Dixon broke off all contact with his
own family would seem to lend credence to the theory
that he was killed a short time after Gary was.
As far as I can tell, Dixon's family have not
spoken much to the media since he originally went missing,

(04:52):
and they were not interviewed during the Unsolved Mystery segment,
but it sounds like they have no idea what happened
to him. The impression that Dixon was just an ordinary
blue collar worker who worked a number of different jobs
in order to support his family, and I haven't heard
anything about him having a criminal history prior to these events.
The authorities do not believe that Dixon was sophisticated enough

(05:15):
to dream up an elaborate murder plot, but it sounds
like he was in serious dead at the time you
went missing. So if he was desperate for money, I
could see Dixon being roped into something illegal by a
third party before this person subsequently got rid of him.
But who could have been the mastermind behind this whole thing,
and what was their motive.

Speaker 3 (05:35):
Well, first, let's look at Dixon. When you see the
idea that he's desperate for money. I believe his homes
were being foreclosed on and all kinds of things. I
do believe he was desperate. And he also might not
have a criminal record or not that we know of,
but he definitely had access to people completing criminal activities
because he knew exactly where to go to ask his

(05:57):
friend how to crush a car that was likely stolen,
or you know, come to find out involved in a murder.
And so I just feel like he definitely was involved
with CD character. So would it be that far of
a stretch to think someone would turn to them and say, Hey,
I need someone to do this killing for me for
thirty thousand dollars or you know, for part of that money.

(06:21):
And then you also think about who could it be.
Could it be someone who's in competition with him for
business because there is a black market going on in
the oil industry and so at the time, could there
have been someone else who was involved in the black
market and is competing against Dixon.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
Well, we're going to talk about that later in the episode.
There is a compelling suspect who could have been the
mastermind behind the whole thing. But like you said in
our last episode, Dixon is the one like putting himself
out there who's being seen by Gary secretary being seen
by all these bank managers. And I'm sure like if
he thought about it logically saying, hey, I'm taking all

(06:59):
the risk here, I'm going to become the prime suspect
when Gary turns missing, but he probably just never thought
to himself that whoever is hiring me to do this
is using me and is going to double cross me
and likely kill me afterwards. Well, I am definitely inclined
to believe that there's more to this story than Gary
simply being scammed out of thirty thousand dollars through a
bogus horse deal. I know Gary's friends and family always

(07:21):
portrayed him as an honest, hard working, self made businessman
who earned everything he attained, and that might very well
be true, but I think there's just something off about
how the events on the day of his disappearance played out,
and the timeline doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
After he went missing, Gary's loved one said that he
once told them he had the specific fear about being

(07:42):
kidnapped and forced to write checks against his will. Those
sound like the words of a person who would be
overly cautious about being manipulated and scammed by other people,
Yet it also seems to be at odds with Gary's
actions before he went missing. One key piece of information
not mentioned on Unsolved Mysteries was that Geary he had
a meeting plan with a representative from the McKee Oil

(08:03):
company that morning. He was said to be paid over
one hundred thousand dollars for a business deal they had made,
and according to Gary's wife Nancy, he seemed to be
in a pretty good mood over this when she last
saw him leave their house. The meeting was originally scheduled
for ten thirty am, a short time after Tom Dixon
showed up in Gary's office, and Gary would soon request

(08:24):
that the meeting be postponed until one pm. Now, from
what I've read about him, this sort of thing was
very uncharacteristic for Gary, as he was known for being
a very punctual and organized person, and if he ever
scheduled an appointment with someone, they could always rely on
him to show up on time. Yet when Tom Dixon
made his first appearance, Gary seemed to rearrange his entire

(08:45):
schedule to accommodate him, postponing a meeting where he was
set to receive one hundred thousand dollars in order to
pay thirty thousand dollars for a horse. Was there a
reason that Gary could not hold off on this until
after his transaction with the mkey O representative was completed.

Speaker 3 (09:02):
Yeah, and remember that he ends up going to the
bank and all around twelve thirty or calling to say
that the check would be brought in around twelve thirty.
So why couldn't he have just done the original meeting
at ten thirty and then followed up and done the
check and the bank transaction and everything afterwards, because that
timeline would have worked for him.

Speaker 2 (09:21):
Yeah, it just seems bizarre, as if maybe this was
an illegal deal or something like that, or maybe he
was forced to demand the check being made out to
Dixon under dress. But I mean, I know that Jody Miller,
Gary secretary, said that she didn't notice anything suspicious when
Dixon showed up at their office. There was nothing to
indicate he was being forced to leave against his will.

(09:43):
But like I just said, it just seems very out
of character for Dixon to show up at ten, and
then Gary suddenly decided, well, I've got a meeting in
half an hour, but I'm going to just postpone that
just so I can look at a horse.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
Question for you both. I talked about this a little
bit in part one, and we said, it seems so
extreme to kill Gary if your motive was to run
away with the money. But we have potentially an unknown
third party, and I think we can all agree that's
a likely scenario. What would be their motivation if nobody
knows who they are, their face, their name, or anything.

(10:16):
Gary's not tied to this person, why would you need
to kill Gary? Like I can understand why you would
kill Dixon, but not Gary, because if Dixon just disappears,
then Dixon's absconded with his money, not this third party.

Speaker 2 (10:30):
Yeah, that does make sense, because Dixon can become this
wanted fugitive and take all the heat, and if you've
disposed of his body, you can ensure that he's never
found and that Dixon will take all the blame himself
and Gary can just go on conducting his business. So
unless the whole motive for this crime is that the
mastermind had a personal grudge against Gary. Maybe it had

(10:50):
to do with this petroleum company being a competitor or
something like that, But it seems like Gary was the
primary motive and Dixon was the fall guy. But for whatever,
whoever did this felt that killing Gary was a necessary
part of the plan.

Speaker 3 (11:05):
Yeah, that's very true. It wouldn't make much sense to say, hey,
we're gonna have two murders to cover up or at least,
you know, to bring attention to us. But man, oh man,
who and what could Gary have been involved in? The
oil industry could have been incredibly dirty back then. We
know that the horse industry can be incredibly rough. But

(11:25):
it doesn't seem like he was integrated in either of
those scenes to a point where he would be in
a life or death situation.

Speaker 1 (11:34):
Well, Gary loved purchasing and raising horses. It sounds like
none of the ones he owned costs nearly as much
as thirty thousand dollars, which is like Ashley had astutely
pointed out earlier, around one hundred and ninety five thousand
dollars in today's money. An Nancy said it was very
out of character for Gary to make such a large
purchase without speaking to her about it first. The money

(11:56):
was also withdrawn from a rarely used account which contained
exact exactly thirty thousand dollars, so you almost get the
impression that Gary was keeping it there for a specific purpose.
The story provided by Gary's secretary is that the two
men left the office together at ten fifteen am, and
it was about fifteen minutes later when Gary phoned her

(12:16):
and asked her to draw up a thirty thousand dollars
check for Dixon. This is definitely a major red flag
for me, because it seems pretty odd that Gary would
travel to another location, look at a horse, and then
agree to purchase it within ISPAM only fifteen minutes. I mean,
I've personally never gotten through the process of purchasing or
selling a horse, but I've heard it's standard practice to

(12:38):
have a better trainer examine the animal in order to
make sure that it's in good condition before you decide
to plant down a large amount of money for it. So,
as far as I know, Gary had not seen Dixon's
horse before that day, and you'd expect an intelligent, experienced
businessman like him to perform a lot more due diligence
before agreeing to hand over thirty thousand dollars, so you

(13:00):
can understand why there's been speculation that this so called
horse deal was a bogus cover story, and Gary was
paying all that money to Dixon for an entirely different reason.

Speaker 3 (13:11):
I'll just have to tell you this. If my husband
wrote a check for thirty thousand dollars today, he'd be
in massive trouble, much less if it was nineteen seventy
four and this was two hundred and some of that,
you know, two hundred thousand dollars. So the fact that
the wife knew nothing about it, the fact that it
was pretty sudden, and we aren't one hundred percent sure
that he really actually showed up to the horse farm,

(13:33):
it's fascinating to me to think, Okay, is it actually
about a horse? If you believe the person who says
he was actually at the horse farm making phone calls
back about hey, I saw the horse write the check
for me, this is how it's going to go down.
I'm more likely to believe the horse scheme was used
to lure him out and to get the check, But

(13:55):
it can't truly be about the horse. I don't think, yeah,
I heard that.

Speaker 2 (14:00):
Sometimes I'm off to see a man or going to
see a man about a horse is sometimes like a
code word that organized crime figures use when they're doing
something like purchasing drugs. I know, sometimes horse is kind
of used as a euphemism for like heroin or something
like that, and that's just speculation. I mean, there's been
no evidence found that Gary was involved in the drug trade,

(14:21):
but that has a theory I've seen presented online that
maybe horse was a euphemism for drugs.

Speaker 1 (14:27):
I mean, it's not unreasonable to think that he could
have been involved in something untoward. He was going through
really difficult financial times prior to this, and he had
to close a bunch of his gas station locations. I mean,
at the time he went missing, I think ten of
sixteen were operational, but there was a time when there
was even less that were operational. So desperate times sometimes

(14:48):
call for desperate measures. When you have a lifestyle to
uphold and you've got a family to support, and it
seems like this industry could be a little bit dirty
at the time, and there was all this legal gas
and it seemed like there was authorities looking into it,
So it is possible that somebody could be extorting money
from him or could be related to something illegal, you know, and.

Speaker 3 (15:10):
Also you think about things like, oh, there's the horse
in your bed or a horse head or what all
that means? So I mean, is it mob related, because
if he's in the oil industry, could it be something
like that, who knows? Drug related? Mob related? Or is
it someone who has a personal vendetta against Gary and says,
I've got to take him out. He's competition for me,
he's crossed me. There's just so many explanations and without

(15:33):
having any any lead. It's almost like you could come
up with fifty thousand different routes that could be contributing
to his death.

Speaker 1 (15:42):
And Robin, was it just a rumor that he was
going to be testifying.

Speaker 2 (15:46):
Yes, they never found anything to confirm that. This is
like a rumor that I think that came out in
nineteen ninety one after his body was discovered. But you
would think that if he had gone missing that and
he was like a witness and an important like federal
and beststigation, that someone would have said something at that
time and mentioned some urgency. So it just sounds like
that was a rumor and it was never conclusively confirmed. However,

(16:09):
what really complicates this situation is the story provided by
Roy Hilton, who claimed he saw Gary at the Whispering
Downs Horse ranch that morning. He even said that Gary
personally showed him the horse he was planning to buy.
I don't know much about Hilton's background, but I can
see how there might be skepticism about his story since
he did not come forward until seventeen years after the fact,

(16:30):
when he found out that Unsolved Mysteries was producing a segment.
This case got a lot of coverage in the local
media back in nineteen seventy four, so why wouldn't of
Hilton have shared this information back then? But if Hilton
was telling the truth, that opens up a lot more
unanswered questions and really muddles the timeline. The details are
a bit murky, but it sounds like Gary had spoken

(16:52):
to Dixon on the phone before their initial meeting, and
Dixon told them he was acting as an agent for
the horse's original owner and was planning to sell it
on their behalf. Even though Gary and Dixon remembers of
the same horse association and Dixon had owned some horses,
he does not strike me as someone who would have
been wealthy enough to own a thirty thousand dollars thoroughbred Roy.

(17:14):
Hilton claimed that Gary showed him the horse he was
planning to purchase, but who did it actually belong to?
Was Dixon really acting as an agent for the horse's owner,
or did Dixon bring Gary to the Whispering Downs Horse
Ranch and show him some other person's thoroughbred in order
to trick him into handing over thirty thousand dollars. I
initially assumed that when Gary phoned his secretary and asked

(17:35):
her to drop a thirty thousand dollars check for Dixon
and then phone the Santa Fe Trail Bank to authorize
Dixon to cash the check, he was making both of
those calls under duress while someone was holding him hostage. Yet,
Hilton claimed that he witnessed Gary make the calls on
his own accord from a phone at the horse ranch,
and the bank president, Jay Thomas Bircham, also maintained that

(17:57):
he did not notice anything unusual about Gary's voice when
he spoke to him on the phone about Dixon cashing
the check. So this does suggests that Gary genuinely believed
the horse deal was legitimate, and.

Speaker 3 (18:10):
Because he had such a good relationship with the bank president.
I feel like he could have done a lot of
things to draw attention to the fact that this is
something that's being done under duress, Like he could have
written something in the memo that was like, that's bizarre, right,
His signature could have been completely opposite from what it
normally is. And because you know, the bank president knew him,

(18:31):
had done transactions with him, is going to be, you know,
taking in one hundred thousand dollars for him very shortly
later that day. He knows Gary and likely knows the
behaviors that he has financially, and so it would be
pretty indicative when you're sitting there talking about I'm going
to send a client to you to get thirty thousand
dollars with my check, that there would be a way

(18:53):
for him to communicate that this is against my will
if that was truly the case. So I'm with you.
I think he absolutely believed this was real and or
he knew what the real purpose was behind it. So
if horse was code for something, Gary was very much
aware of what he thought he was getting himself into.

Speaker 1 (19:11):
And couldn't both things be true? Couldn't it also be
about a horse, but be about something else as well?
Maybe you're way over valuing the horse, but it is
about something illegal or about money owed, and like say,
the horse is worth two thousand dollars.

Speaker 3 (19:26):
Yeah, cover right, that the horse is something where it's like,
this is a legitimate transaction. I'm buying a horse that
I'm looking at. But like you said, what if the
horse is only worth two five ten thousand dollars and
that twenty thousand dollars is for something very different.

Speaker 1 (19:41):
That would make sense. Why you wouldn't have a vet
come and check the horse if it was really not
about the horse.

Speaker 2 (19:47):
And it gives him a plausible cover story that he
can use for the secretary and the bank president, Roy Hilton,
so he doesn't look suspicious going to see this horse,
even though he's secretly working on something else at the
same time.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
But if Gary wasn't being held against as well, I
still find it odd that he wouldn't have accompanied Dixon
back to his office when he picked up the check,
since it required Gary's signature. Furthermore, why didn't Gary accompany
Dixon to the bank when he cashed the check, particularly
since his meeting with the McKee oil representative was supposed
to take place there right after the transaction was completed,

(20:23):
dad even more confusion, there's also the eyewitness sighting from
the truck stop owner, who said that he saw Gary
there at around eleven thirty am, where he appeared to
be waiting for someone. Looking at the timeline, Gary's call
to his secretary took place at around ten thirty and
the call to the bank occurred shortly before noon. If
both of these calls were made from the horse ranch,

(20:45):
what would Gary be doing at a truck stop at
eleven thirty. If Gary really was meeting someone there, then
this might explain why he did not accompany Dixon to
his office and the bank. But of course, the alternate
explanation is that the truck stop owner was simply mistaken.
He could have seen an entirely different man who looked
like Gary, or saw Gary there on a previous occasion

(21:07):
prior to October fifteenth, and just got the dates mixed up.
We do know that the last confirmed communication with Gary
was his phone call to Bertram's secretary at the bank,
but where he asked her to inform the McKee Oil
representative that he was going to be a bit late
for their one pm meeting, which he never showed up.
For so, assuming that Gary didn't make the phone call

(21:28):
under duress, this seems to indicate that he was planning
to make the meeting, but something happened to him shortly
after the call ended, and he eventually wound up inside
the cave across the state line with a gunshot wound
to the head.

Speaker 3 (21:41):
Y'all will clarify for me when we look at the timeline,
isn't it twelve thirty twelve forty five when Dixon is
going in to cash the check?

Speaker 1 (21:50):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (21:50):
Yeah, let me just double check here, it's around noon,
so it's some time between noon and one pm. And
Gary's final phone phone call takes place at twelve forty
five pm, and he was scheduled to meet the McKee
oil representative of a one pm but something obviously happened
to him for him not to show up.

Speaker 3 (22:09):
Okay, So this is interesting because it's almost like Dixon
and Gary are operating in a parallel format here, because
Gary's actively waiting for somebody and saying he's going to
be late to a meeting. But you also have remember
Dixon's transaction at the bank is not super smooth and quick.
He's getting thousands upon thousands of dollars counted out to him,

(22:31):
but he can only get five thousand from the first bank.
Then he has to drive to another bank and get
twenty five thousand dollars and one hundred dollar bills. That
doesn't come out of the teller sitting right there. I
don't think counting out, you know, twenty five thousand dollars,
that would probably be someone going back getting the money,
counting it out on the counter for you and all
of that. So is it possible that Dixon is actually

(22:54):
preventing him from getting to this one o'clock one fifteen,
one point thirty arrival that he had planned. Whereas Dixon
preoccupied now cashing the check and he's kind of done
with Gary.

Speaker 2 (23:05):
Well, I know that Gary's phone call took place after
Dixon already left the bank, and presumably he went to
the other bank to finish getting the rest of the cash.
But I can't be one hundred percent certain he was
actually in that bank when Gary made the phone call.
But yeah, if he's that's obviously going to take a
long time to count out all that money. So if
Dixon has an alibi placing him in a bank like

(23:27):
sometime between twelve forty five and one pm. Then that
could indicate that someone else personally killed Gary, and maybe
Dixon got rid of his body at a later time.
After leaving the bank, sometime between noon and one pm,
Dixon was next seen at Bob's salvage yard in Gary's
Lincoln Continental about five hours later. Dixon's whereabouts strained that

(23:49):
window of time have never been accounted for, and while
you could assume that's when Gary's murder took place, the
circumstances of how or where it happened are still unclear.
It would be nearly twenty four hours before Dixon himself
went missing, but the problem is that the eyewitnesses who
interacted with them during that time period do not seem
particularly reliable or trustworthy. One section of the Unsolved Mystery

(24:13):
segment which always used to crack me up was the
reenactment where Dixon drives Gary's card to the salvage yard
and asks the owner about getting rid of it, and
he just casually replies, quote, put a brick on the
accelerator and drive it into the Missouri River. Wow. That's
some really stellar customer service there, giving people advice on
how to cover up a potential crime. However, the situation

(24:34):
made a lot more sense to me once I learned
that Dixon was actually good friends with the salvage yard
owner Bob Williams, and it was apparently not uncommon for
Dixon to bring them junked cars to destroy. However, the
big issue is that Williams completely changed his original story
seventeen years after the fact. He always acknowledged that Dixon
showed up at the salvage yard that day and spent

(24:55):
several hours there hanging around and helping out with odd jobs.
But it wasn't until after Gary's body was discovered when
Williams decided to tell the authorities that Dixon had driven
there in a Lincoln Continental and asked for advice on
how to get rid of it. Like I just mentioned,
it wasn't uncommon for Dixon to deliver cars to the
salvage yard, so I can see why this might not

(25:16):
have raised Williams's eyebrows at first, but it was pretty
big news in the area when Gary's Lincoln Continental turned
up in the Missouri River six months later. If Williams
really did advise Dixon to do this, you'd think he
would have put two and two together and said something
much earlier. I guess it's possible that Williams initially stayed
silent in order to avoid incriminating himself, but once it

(25:37):
was officially confirmed that Gary was a murder victim, he
decided to come clean. William said that Dixon left the
salvage yard at around eleven PM that night after saying
he was going to call home, but his wife, Shirley
said he never did come home. We still don't know
what Dixon's whereabouts were that night, but it's reasonable to
assume he spent some of that time dumping the cotton

(25:58):
neentel in the river, possibly disposing of Gary's body. Surely
did confirm that she spoke with her husband on the
phone the following afternoon, and he gave off the impression
that he was planning to return home that night. But
he has never been heard from again. So was Dixon
murdered shortly after he made that call.

Speaker 3 (26:16):
I think it's very possible. You also have to think
about the guy who on the salvage yard. Yes, he
was associated with Dixon, and maybe at the time they
were friends. But did it cross the line when he
found out it was a murder? Is it something where
he said, well, Dixon's gone. Man, I haven't seen him
in forever, So I'm just gonna come clean and say
I've seen that car. I know what happened to it.
I actually advised him to put it in there. Does

(26:38):
he kind of either not care if he upsets Dixon
because he knows he's dead, that he hasn't seen him
in so long it doesn't matter, or that he really
does want to provide information. I don't know's that's part
of the scenario here. It's also interesting that when he
does call his wife. When Dixon checks in with his wife,

(26:58):
doesn't he say he's in Arkansaw and he'll be home soon.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
Yeah, Because he apparently told his friend Tom Callahan that
he had gotten a new job driving a rig, like
driving a truck, and that's why he needed a ride
to the truck stop. And apparently part of his route
was that he was going to go to Arkansas. But
he never found any evidence to indicate that he had
gotten this truck driving job. And I don't know if
he ever made a trip to Arkansas, so it is

(27:23):
kind of bizarre. Maybe he was just using that as
a cover story to explain to his wife why he'd
been out all night and never bothered to call her.
But it does seem obvious that he was spending that time,
probably covering something up, if he was going to stay
out of contact with his wife the entire time.

Speaker 1 (27:40):
Well, now we have to talk about one of the
most interesting wild cards in the case, and that's Dixon's
friend Tom Callahan. Even though he'd been seen in the
Lincoln Continental, Dixon ordinarily drove a pickup truck which was
found abandoned a Quality oil company truck stop, and Callahan
claimed that Dixon asked him to pick him up there
after the truck broke down. As you recall, Callahan said

(28:03):
that Dixon asked to borrow his pickup truck to go
off and take care of some business for a few hours,
and afterward, Callahan drove Dixon to the Heart of America
Truck Plaza and dropped him off. But the problem is
that investigators could not find any witnesses who were called
seeing Dixon at the truck Plaza that day, and we
technically only have Callahan's word that these events unfolded this way.

(28:26):
During the original stages of the investigation, the authorities did
not have any reason to be suspicious of Callahan, but
he would subsequently become uncooperative. Following the discovery of Gary's remains,
seventeen years later, investigators announced that they had since uncovered
new information about Callahan. So it turned out that in
the hours following Gary's disappearance, both Dixon and Callahan had

(28:49):
paid off some bills in cash, and Callahan was also
apparently seen spending sizeable amounts of money days after Dixon
went missing. However, by the time Gary was found, Callahan
could not be reinterviewed since he died in nineteen eighty two. Now,
we don't know anything else about Callahan's background, so I'm
not going to outright accuse him of being involved in

(29:10):
Gary's murder. What is possible that the reason Callahan was
seen spending so much money was because Dixon gave it
to him during their interaction together, and Callahan had no
idea where it came from. But the thirty thousand Dixon
received when he cashed Gary's check was still never accounted for.
I also find it odd that Dixon's pickup truck was

(29:30):
discovered at the truck stop with the keys in the
ignition if it broke down there and Dixon called Callahan
to pick him up. Why would he leave his keys
there instead of taking them with him. This does suggest
that the truck might have been planted there by someone else,
which would mean Callahan is lying.

Speaker 3 (29:46):
Yeah, I absolutely don't think he would just, I don't know,
sit there and walk away with the keys in the ignition.
But then again, remember if he did have thirty thousand
dollars on him, he could have arranged the ability to
just quote disappear. He had been lying to his wife
the whole day. He hadn't reached out to her. He
told her he was in Arkansas. We don't know if

(30:08):
he was. I think Callahan could very well be involved
in ceed things with Dixon. So was he giving him
money for let's say, drugs he owed him. Was he
giving him money to help him chop up and you know,
divide up a car that he stole? I mean, just
because Dixon didn't have a criminal record, Callahan seems like

(30:29):
a shady figure. He's even admitting, hey, man, I know
exactly how to get rid of things you don't want
people to find. So I could see them being involved
in other nefarious things that aren't related to Gary's death.
And then it's still possible that Dixon up and left,
But I also am with you. I think it's possible
that he was set up to have this money on

(30:50):
him and to think that he was benefiting from this
transaction and then all of a sudden he's taken out too.
But it does create so much more difficulty. What if
Dixon's Body's found, when his truck's found, there's more attention there.
So in some ways, aren't you also making it possible
that more heat will come to you by killing Dixon

(31:11):
just as much of a risk as Dixon eventually saying
something And I'm writing you out that way.

Speaker 1 (31:17):
If you wanted to steal all the money, though, it
would be a good move. And also the whole truck
thing to say that Dixon borrowed his truck. What if
he's just trying to set up this alibi in case
police get a warrant for his vehicle and they find
some kind of evidence that is related to they were
indeed disposing of a body. What if it wasn't Dixon

(31:40):
who was disposing of the body, it was Callahan, And
so Callahan's like, well, if they find any DNA or
any kind of evidence related to anything, then maybe they'll
just you know, attribute it to Dixon. Well, not DNA
because it's in the seventies, but you know what I mean,
any kind of blood evidence.

Speaker 2 (31:57):
Oh yeah, and he could just say, well, that wasn't
there when I lent it to Dixon and he went
off for a couple hours, So maybe he was disposing
of a body, but I wasn't there, so I absolved
myself of any responsibility.

Speaker 3 (32:08):
Oh that's a good point too.

Speaker 2 (32:10):
I mean, Callahan does seem like a good candidate to
be a Mastermind, But I think the hole in the
theory is they'd never found any connection between him and
Gary Simmons. I mean, because we know so little about
his background. I don't know if he had any personal
connection to Gary. I don't know if he knew him.
I don't know if he had any involvement in black
market gasoline. So it still makes me wonder. I can
understand him wanting to scam a wealthy man out of

(32:31):
thirty thousand dollars, but I wouldn't know why he would
choose Gary. So, like we previously mentioned, investigators have always
suspected that Gary's death was an elaborate murder plot orchestrated
by an unknown third party, and Dixon was there. Patsy,
I'm not trying to say that Callahan was the mastermind
behind the whole thing, but it is interesting how he
was technically the last person who have seen Dixon alive

(32:53):
and there's nothing to really corroborate his story regardless of
who the mastermind really was. I wonder if they chose
to hire Dixon because he was a member of the
same horse association as Gary, which would have added some
credence to the bogus horse deals story. One reason I
do think it's likely that Dixon was murdered by a
third party is that, unless he had always planned to
disappear and start a new life, he completely cut off

(33:17):
all contact with his family and left them in the lurch.
It's possible that Dixon's debts were the motivation for participating
in this scheme, as he was apparently seen paying off
some bills after he got his hands on thirty thousand
dollars in cash. But when Dixon disappeared, his family was
eventually forced to move out of their home due to foreclosure,
so I obviously didn't take care of all of his bills.

(33:40):
It really doesn't make much sense for Dixon to partially
pay off his debts and then run away, So I
get the impression that someone got to him. Even if
by chance Dixon actually did run away and started a
new life somewhere, I seriously doubt that he's still alive
today at the age of ninety three.

Speaker 3 (33:56):
No, and if you're going to run away, if your
plan is I'm going to disappear, why the heck would
he even bother paying bills off. Like you said, his family
wasn't set up for success before he left, And if
he was going to leave, I need every dime I
can get because I'm going to start from scratch. I
just think he'd up and leave. He wouldn't be going
to paying.

Speaker 2 (34:13):
Bills, right, and if he wanted to ensure his family
was taken care of, he would pay all their bills
before he disappeared so they wouldn't get kicked out of
their house.

Speaker 1 (34:23):
So it's possible this entire crime was financially motivated. But
the alternate fury, which has been pushed forward, is that
Gary was killed because he'd become involved in the purchase
of black market gasolene. Indeed, if Gary was planning to
purchase some fuel on the black market. This might explain
why he went through the whole ruse of telling people
that he was buying a horse and asked his secretary

(34:46):
to draw up a thirty thousand dollars check for Dixon
within fifteen minutes of them leaving the office. If it
wasn't for Roy Hilton sightings of Gary at the horse ranch,
I would have no trouble believing that thirty thousand dollars
payment was for something that he didn't want anyone else
finding out about. But on the other hand, investigators never
found any evidence that Gary was involved in black market gasoline,

(35:09):
and the timing just didn't fit. This was about a
year after the oil embargo originally began, and even though
Gary experienced some financial hardship, he'd since gotten his business
back on track and reopened some of his gas stations,
not to mention that he was set to receive one
hundred thousand dollars payment from m Key Oil that very
same day, So there's no reason for Gary to be

(35:30):
purchasing fuel on the black market at this time. I
know that a private investigator hired by Gary's family expressed
his belief that Gary was killed because he planned to
testify as part of a federal investigation into black market gasoline.
But you'd think that something like that would be easy
to verify. After all, the FBI became involved in the
investigation the following year, and I don't believe they ever

(35:53):
turned up anything to suggest that Gary was involved in
something like this. Besides, Gary was murdered to keep from talking.
Why go through the risky and elaborate ruse of conning
him out of thirty thousand dollars instead of just simply
killing him?

Speaker 3 (36:07):
That's so true, and it's true on a million levels
when you think about why did you do the middle
step that thirty thousand dollars transaction where you know that
Dixon is being seen by so many people, and he's
being tied to Gary so closely that if they can
ever tie Dixon to the mastermind, they're in big trouble.
So what was it about this mastermind who needed the

(36:31):
thirty thousand dollars or who needed a partial amount of
that money that they were willing to make that part
of the ruse? Why not just get rid of Gary?
If the ultimate cause was just to kill him, it
would have left far less evidence and far less of
a trail tying Dixon to Gary, and then Dixon to
whoever the person who hired.

Speaker 2 (36:51):
Him might be. Yeah, I don't know. I just can't
help but feel that there's a big piece of the
puzzle missing here. I certainly don't want to accuse Gary
of anything, since it sounds like he had a very
stellar reputation as both a businessman and a person. But
I have to wonder if there was something going on
in his life that not even as close as friends
or family members knew about. I still have a hard

(37:13):
time imagining that Gary would have authorized the payment of
a thirty thousand dollars check that quickly to purchase a horse,
so I am inclined to believe that it must have
been a cover for something. But on the other hand,
maybe Gary truly was an innocent victim who got conned
and murdered for his money. The key to his mystery
is definitely Tom Dixon, but for all we know, he

(37:33):
may be a skeleton lying undiscovered in another cave right now.
If Dixon was also murdered, there might be someone else
out there who has continued to get away with orchestrating
the whole thing. But since so much time has passed,
I'm not sure if we'll ever learn the full truth.
All that being said, if you happen to have any
information about the murder of Gary Simmons or the unsolved

(37:54):
disappearance of Tom Dixon, please contact the appropriate authorities. Jules
Ashley and final thoughts on this case.

Speaker 3 (38:02):
What's fascinating here is this is in nineteen seventy four.
Had this been in twenty twenty four or twenty twenty five,
it would be such a different case. We'd be able
to process that truck at such a such a different level,
you'd be able to potentially, you know, collect better evidence
at the scene of his body recovery, what could have

(38:23):
been pulled from the car even though it had been
submerged in water. It's just so sad because this is
somebody who, to all external appearances, truly thought he was
doing business transactions that morning, and little do you know
that he's making a trade for his life at some point.
Everyone who knew him said he was in good spirits.

(38:44):
He didn't seem to be under duress. He seemed like
he was very well aware of what was going on
with both the meeting with Dixon and then was in
control of making sure this scheduled meeting with the oil
company was going to occur, just at a different time.
So it's really sad to think about that. Gary thought
that day was going to go incredibly different and then

(39:05):
he literally just disappears. And the next day, the man
who had just picked up a thirty thousand dollars check
out of you know, just a spur of the moment
conversation to buy this horse, also disappears the next day.
And like the authority said, Tom Dixon doesn't scream a mastermind.
So who wanted Gary gone? Did they need the thirty

(39:26):
thousand dollars to fulfill whatever mission they had? And was
Dixon just a cog in the wheel. I don't really
think Callahan was smart enough to be the mastermind either.
I think he was some low level kind of crooked
man who got money anyway he could. But planning a murder,
he doesn't seem like he's as sharp as attack either.
So this is one of those cases, man, I wish

(39:46):
that you know, time was on their side. It's just
so many people are deceased at this point and or
would be in their nineties. Are we ever going to
know information? I don't know, But Gary woke up that
day thinking this was going to be a right day
where he's making transactions, he's closing an oil deal, and
then at some point we know he lost his life.

Speaker 2 (40:06):
It's just sad.

Speaker 1 (40:08):
It's a really sad case. I feel so terribly for
Gary's family, and I also feel bad for Dixon's family
because they didn't do anything wrong, even though it seems
very likely that Dixon got embroiled in this whole situation
because he was in debt. Robin, did they say that
he was in debt because of some construction project. We

(40:29):
talked about this in part one, that it was like
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars was out or something
like that.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
Yeah, he had a bunch of construction projects that were
unfinished at the time because he worked a whole bunch
of different freelance jobs and I think he had some
construction jobs that went haywire. So he was definitely desperate
and like is like we mentioned, his family was kicked
out of their house when it was foreclosed upon after
he went missing.

Speaker 1 (40:52):
Yeah, it just doesn't seem like this is maybe something
that he would have gotten into an if the if
the circumstances didn't dig date you know, the times were
very desperate. I think that he was likely doing whatever
he needed to do to keep his family, like have
a roof over their head, and it's really sad that
they got kicked out of their place. Doesn't obviously justify

(41:13):
like what he did, not justifying what he did in
any way, shape or form. But people sometimes do things
that are outside of their character when they're trying to
protect their family. Maybe initially the idea wasn't going to
be to murder Gary, and the plans change because, like
I said in part one, I'm just so confused by
why Gary was murdered in the first place, because it

(41:35):
just doesn't seem like it was necessary. If there was
a third party who was orchestrating this whole thing, then
why not just killed Dixon and leave Gary in a
lurch where he has no idea where Dixon's gone and
his money is gone. But yet Gary is still alive,
Which makes me think that there is a possibility that
there could have been a completely different underlying motive that

(41:58):
wasn't just financial, because they could have taken the money
and run. The third party, who I do not think
was Callahan. I agree with Ash, I don't think Callahan
was smart enough to do that. He somehow got embroiled
in all of this, but I don't think that he's
responsible for orchestrating everything.

Speaker 2 (42:14):
So I don't know.

Speaker 1 (42:15):
It's just a very confusing case. There's like a lot
of threads to pull out, but like when you do,
there just doesn't seem to be all that much information.

Speaker 2 (42:24):
Yeah, because I remember first learning about it on Unsolved
Mystery several years ago, and a lot of the time
when I researched these cases and learn about information that
was left out of the segments that they produced, I'm like, well, Okay,
this makes sense. This is bringing everything together. I now
see that maybe they left stuff out to try to
add an area of mystery to the whole thing. But

(42:44):
this is one of those right cases where I did
additional research looking through the newspaper archives from the time,
and I was just left even more confused by some
of the additional information I learned because I mentioned that
I used to think that Tom Dixon was just this shadowy,
mysterious figure who passed through town in order to orchestrate
this elaborate scam, and that maybe he did it on
his own. But then I find out that Tom Dixon

(43:07):
was just this ordinary blue collar guy who was living
in the same area, who had a family and was struggling,
and you realize, Okay, there's no way this guy was
clever enough to orchestrate a scheme like that. But then
you ask so many questions about who did and what
was their motive, And then you find out that Gary
not only was he doing a horse deal that morning,
but he had one hundred thousand dollars deal with the

(43:29):
oil company set up that he was willing to postpone
just to buy a horse, which just seems very out
of character for him. So you have to think that
something else is going on here, and that maybe he
was involved in something shady or something illegal that eventually
got him killed. But then you're wondering why did they
have to kill Gary, Like maybe they could have just

(43:49):
scammed money out of him and then us Dixon as
the fall guy and made him disappear and let Gary live.
So it makes you think that whoever orchestrated this wanted
Gary dead for a reason, and maybe it was because
of the oil embargo. Maybe it had something to do
with black Mark at Gasoline. We just don't know, because
this case pretty much faded out of the spotlight for

(44:10):
many years after they found gary submerged car, and it
did get resurrected again on Unsolved Mysteries two decades later,
but then we started getting more information by witnesses like
Roy Hilton, which only confused the whole thing in major
wonder what is actually happening here? And sadly, so much
time has passed that I'm not sure this murder will
ever be solved because I'm sure most of the responsible

(44:32):
parties are now deceased. So it is just a sad
story for two families, not only for Gary Simmons' family,
but Tom Dixon's family because they're still left wondering what
happened to him. Even though he probably committed a criminal act,
he still has a wife and children who miss him
and are wondering what happened to him. And this is
essentially two mysteries rolled into one, but unfortunately they're both

(44:53):
still unsolved.

Speaker 4 (44:55):
Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit
about the Trail Went Cold Patreon?

Speaker 2 (44:59):
Yes, the Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three
years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like
early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers
and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up
with us on Patreon if you join our five dollars
tier Tier two. We also offer monthly bonus episodes in
which I talk about cases which are not featured on

(45:21):
The Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to
Patreon and if you join our highest tier tier three,
the ten dollar tier. One of the features we offer
is a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsaved Mysteries,
where you can download an audio file and then boot
up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or
YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in

(45:45):
the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about
the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very
first episode that I did a commentary track over was
the episode featuring this case. So if you want to
download a commentary track in which I make more smart
ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join
Tier three.

Speaker 4 (46:04):
So I want to let you know a little bit
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they're not very mini, but they're just too short to
turn into a series, and we're really enjoying doing those,
so we hope you'll check out those patreons.

Speaker 1 (46:22):
We'll link them in the show notes.

Speaker 2 (46:24):
So I want to thank you all for listening, and
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Speaker 1 (46:43):
Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy