(Warning: Strong languages, explicit description of gore and sexual references ahead)
I know that these types of stories could only be juicier and juicier as we uncover it deeper and deeper. I know for a fact that from one story to another, there is one similarity: these stories happened at some point and made their own marks in the pages of history. This time, it's a small town who was fed up with the erratic town bully's potentially deadly shenanigans. From petty crimes, statutory rape charges, to intimidation with deadly weapons and attempted murders, the townsfolk retaliated in broad daylight. From that fateful day until this very moment, the killer was never found, and the case went cold.
From the tragic story of the Pan household killings caused by parenting gone wrong in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, we move to a small town in the USA called Skidmore, Missouri. And in this small town, lived a man by the name of Ken Rex McElroy. he was born on the 1st of June 1934 as the 15th child of a 16-children household of migrant tenant-farming couple Tony and Mabel McElroy. By the time he was 15, he dropped out from school in eighth grade, some records even suggested that he is illiterate altogether. He started his criminal career by hunting racoons for fun, not for food. Along the way, he allegedly involved in some petty theft cases of stealing grain, livestock, alcohol, gasoline, and even antiques. And what's even more egregious, is in almost every case, he always got off scot-free, mainly for some factors like the police's response time deemed too slow since the town itself doesn't have a police force of its own, a mafia-caliber lawyer who stood by his side, and despite being totally illiterate, found his way to weasel out of the justice system through the means of intimidation. Remember, during his prime, he was over 182 cm (6 foot) and weighing about 122 kg (270 pounds). It made absolute sense for him to intimidate the townsfolk and even the police officers with that type of frame, accompanied with some form of a weapon, mostly a shotgun. During his lifetime aside from his criminal hustle, he actually held an honest job as a construction worker, but then quit because of an accident where a building material fell onto his head. This incident being the prime source for his life of crime is still debatable to this day.
There are total of 21 indictments aimed towards McElroy, but as I said above, he almost always got acquitted. One of them is statutory rape. To paint this into a context, McElroy was always had some taste for young women. But the disturbing part was those girls that he was interested in were inside the 12 to 15 years range, in short, he was into schoolgirls. He married four times and fathered 10 children, but it was said that his marriages overlapped each other, due to the disturbing facts above. He also abuses them in daily basis, either physically, mentally, or sexually. He met his final wife, Trena McCloud when she was 12 years old, and his way to convince her parents to let him marry her was a typical Ken McElroy intimidation tactic. He repeatedly raped Trena, burning the McCloud house, and even killed the family dog, before the McCloud household relented and both Ken and Trena were married. During this time, he already lived with two other girls, one of them being his third wife, Ashley Woods. When Trena became pregnant when she was 14, she dropped out to live with Ken and Woods. Even with her pregnant condition, she wasn't spared from McElroy's daily beating to the point when her first child was born, she and other girls fled to Trena's mom and stepfather's house. But alas, McElroy managed to track them down and brought them back to his house, not before he burned the house down again and shot the family dog. Based on her story, in June 1973, McElroy was indicted for the charges of arson, assault, and statutory rape for his fling with Trena, and his marriage was actually a plot for him to escape conviction, while divorcing Ashley in the process. He was arrested, booked, arraigned, and released with a US$ 2.500 bail. Trena and her child was put on a foster care in Maryville, Missouri. But this plan also thwarted by McElroy's "trade" of girl-for-girl, as he knew the foster parents' biological daughter's school location and what bus she took.
McElroy was also brandishing his beloved shotgun wherever he goes and didn't hesitate to use it to intimidate others. One of them was a local farmer Romaine Henry, who on the 27th of July 1976, was shot twice by McElroy in Romaine's own property. He was responding to two shotgun blasts fired by McElroy on his property, where he accused the farmer of stalking. After making such bewildered allegation, Henry responded with a bewildered statement of his own. And that was the time when McElroy aimed his shotgun to Henry's stomach and fired two shots. He managed to drive away to safety while his wounds weren’t life-threatening. McElroy then faced another criminal charge, this time with assault with the intent to kill. This time, he had a mafia-caliber lawyer by the name of Richard Gene McFadin of Galatin, Missouri in tow. By the time the court trial was held, Henry and McElroy each brought two witnesses. The defining moment from this trial was when McElroy's two witnesses, which happened to be his racoon-hunting buddies, provided an alibi that put McElroy with them by the time of the shooting. McFadin also managed to seal McElroy's acquittance by forcing Henry to confess to the court that he had concealed his own petty criminal conviction from 30 years ago.
In McFadin's own accounts, he represented McElroy and defended him in three to four felonies a year, describing him as the best client he ever had. Furthermore, he described McElroy as someone who was "punctual, always said he didn't do it, paid in cash and kept coming back". McFadin's tactic for his client's trials was to get each case run as a separate trial and constantly delay the court date and venue, while at the same time, McElroy continued his harassment of his victims and jurors in order to prevent them from testifying against him. During the Trena McCloud trials, McElroy exploited a loophole that would deny him conviction by marrying Trena, something that McFadin actually applauded. When his case with Romaine Henry went to the trial stages, McFadin pushed back dates while McElroy continued his harassment of Henry. He even said that he saw McElroy parking his truck in front of his house approximately 100 times. His tactics were exposed by a writer named Harry MacLean in his book In Broad Daylight, where he detailed every single dirty, but legal tactic McFadin used within the legal boundaries to keep McElroy out of jail. McFadin himself, instead of denying it, quickly embraced the hate, and actually got signed copies of the book from MacLean.
With yet another acquittance, McElroy seemed emboldened to further tighten his grip to the town of Skidmore. But one case inexplicably set up his own downfall and death without him ever noticed it. It started in 1980, when one of McElroy's kids got on an altercation with the grocery store clerk. The store in question was owned by The Bowenkamps, Ernest "Bo" and wife Lois. The altercation happened because the McElroy kid allegedly stole some candy. In a typical Ken McElroy fashion, he began stalking the old Bo Bowenkamp, and eventually threatened the elderly with a shotgun at the back of the store. McElroy then shot Bowenkamp in the neck during the ensuing confrontation. Bowenkamp survived the encounter due to the blast grazed part of his neck, instead of taking the full brute force of the shotgun. He was again arrested and charged with attempted murder. Only this time, McElroy was successfully convicted thanks to the new prosecutor attorney David Baird, who succeeded the previous acting attorney, allegedly bullied by McElroy, but only for second-degree assault, and handed a two-year jail sentence, but freed on bail pending appeal. It is worth noting that despite numerous reports to the police, there were no records of McElroy's crimes. During this time, McElroy, armed with an M1 Garand rifle with a bayonet attached, went to the local bar named D&G Tavern, and proceeded to describe in perfect but disturbing detail, of things he would do to Bo Bowenkamp. From shooting the old man to disembowelment of Bowenkamp. This led to some patrons deciding on legal steps to prevent McElroy to harm everyone else. With yet another delay on McElroy's appeal hearing, the townsfolk met at the Legion Hall on the morning of 10th of July 1981 with Nodaway County Sheriff Dan Estes to discuss how to protect themselves. Around the time of the meeting, Ken and Trena McElroy arrived at the D&G Tavern for some drinks. With the news travelling fast, other patrons were instructed to not engage McElroy directly, but to consider forming a neighborhood watch program. The citizens then travel to the bar en masse, filling up the tavern to its maximum capacity. Sheriff Estes drove back to his station after the meeting. After finishing his drinks, McElroy bought six pack of beer, and walked to his truck with Trena in tow. As he sat down to the driver seat and light his cigarette, he was shot several times from the back with two different weapons, hit twice, and quickly slumped over the steering wheel, already dead with a horrified Trena at his side. There were approximately 46 to 60 potential eyewitnesses by the time of the murder including Trena, yet no one called an ambulance. His official cause of death was blood loss due to multiple gunshot wounds. An ensuing investigation then revealed that the weapons used to end McElroy's life were a n 8mm Mauser rifle, which is a World War I era rife, and a .22-caliber Magnum. It was also revealed that there were two shooters at the time of the crime. Almost every witness, except for Trena weren't able to identify the shooters, despite being present around the scene of crime, which happened in broad daylight. The investigation involved the State and Federal Criminal Investigators lasted for one year, and involving 35 primary leads and 100 interviews, where 60 of them were of the townsfolk. And every single one of them said the same sentence: "I didn't see who shot him". Hell, some of them even had the audacity to say "shooting? What shooting?" Trena however, managed to name one person she believed to be responsible for the death of her husband, named Del Clement, although Clement was never charged, due to the lack of evidence. In 1982, there were no other choice by the investigators but to close the case without any indictments or convictions.
Approximately three years after McElroy's demise, McFadin, on behalf of Trena McElroy filed a US$ 5 Million wrongful death lawsuit against the Town of Skidmore, Nodaway County, Sheriff Estes, and Del Clement. The case was later settled by all parties outside the court for US$ 17.600, with no parties admitting any guilt, fearing if they would proceed with the lawsuit, the legal fees would be proven costly. Trena remarried and relocated to Lebanon, Missouri, where she spent the rest of her days until her death of cancer on her 55th birthday on the 24th of January 2012. In the end, McFadin said it best, that the town of Skidmore, Missouri got away with murder.
This story is, quite frankly a story where a collective bunch banded together to stop a terror from an individual not by trusting the legal system, but to resort to outright killing in the name of revenge. I know some other cases with conspiracy to commit murder, but never, was an entire town who witness the killing and failed to report it. And for the community of Skidmore, Missouri, Ken McElroy simply was a town bully who got his brutal comeuppance after years and years of evading the criminal justice system. And until this day, more than 40 years later, the murderer was never found, and the small town in the state of Missouri never broke its silence. This story alone should belong in the subreddit r/nuclearrevenge, if not r/supernovarevenge or r/blackholerevenge due to the nature it was carried out. I guess when some people are already fed up and upset due to some bully's shenanigans, any acts of revenge, even if said acts use deadly force is justified. And to end this piece, Ken McElroy, rot in hell you deranged cocksucker. Stay safe, get those jabs, mask up if necessary, wash yourselves, and two meters apart always.
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