Speaker 1: If you're going to Send Francisco or Seattle, you should
Speaker 1: come to our live shows.
Speaker 2: That's right, well done, Chuck. We are still selling tickets
Speaker 2: to our live shows on January twenty fourth and twenty
Speaker 2: six On January twenty fourth in Seattle at the Paramount
Speaker 2: Theater and on January twenty sixth in San Francisco at
Speaker 2: Sydney Goldstein Theater. Tickets are still available to come see us.
Speaker 2: Hats off to Portland for selling out our show at
Speaker 2: Revolution Hall already, and sorry to everybody who got shut out.
Speaker 1: That's right. So where can they get tickets at our website?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Stuff youshould do dot com yeah.
Speaker 2: Or linktree slash sysk.
Speaker 1: We'll see everybody then. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
Speaker 1: a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, pushing us around as usual
Speaker 2: for this episode of Stuff you Should.
Speaker 1: Know, our second episode for us of the New Year.
Speaker 1: And why didn't we save like a pretty happy one
Speaker 1: to get going with.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know, Probably because we knew
Speaker 2: we were going to be so bummed out after Jonestown.
Speaker 2: We needed something that was a pick me up. And
Speaker 2: what's crazy is this story actually is a pick me
Speaker 2: up compared to Jonestown.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, that's tough to parse out. So thank you
Speaker 1: Tolivia for diving into this tough story. And also this episode,
Speaker 1: we want to issue a very big trigger warning because
Speaker 1: in it we are going to talk about a very
Speaker 1: bad man and some of the bad things he did,
Speaker 1: which included sexual assault and some of which were with minors.
Speaker 1: So trigger warning. Know that going in. There's no way
Speaker 1: around it.
Speaker 2: There's very few stories that have like a clear cut villain,
Speaker 2: but this is one of them. And the villain who's
Speaker 2: also the center of our story. The person at the
Speaker 2: center of our story is a man named ken Rex McElroy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: which I mean all you need to hear is that name, really,
Speaker 2: I think, and it kind of just puts a weird
Speaker 2: chill down your spine that you can't quite identify yet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a story that you may have heard
Speaker 1: of before. There's no shortage of content about Ken McElroy.
Speaker 1: There was a book written in nineteen eighty eight by
Speaker 1: Harry McLain, a crime writer, called in Broad Daylight, You
Speaker 1: Know What's Coming colon our murder in Skidmore, Missouri. There
Speaker 1: was a documentary just a few years ago in twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen called a documentary series actually called No One Saw
Speaker 1: a Thing, of which I watched at the first episode.
Speaker 2: How is it? I didn't get a chance to yet.
Speaker 1: Well, we'll talk about it. It's okay.
Speaker 2: It's got like a seven plus on IMDb. That's really
Speaker 2: saying something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Chuck gives it a six minus.
Speaker 2: Okay, Still it's not too bad.
Speaker 1: It's okay. I mean, not a ton of light was shed.
Speaker 1: So maybe it's because if I went into it blind
Speaker 1: it might have been a little better.
Speaker 2: Gotcha.
Speaker 1: But there's also a nineteen ninety one TV movie starring
Speaker 1: Brian Denahey and Marcia gay Harden, which I actually I
Speaker 1: watched a very bad YouTube version of it. Mostly I
Speaker 1: scribbed through a little bit of it. But it's actually
Speaker 1: not terrible for a nineteen ninety one TV movie, largely
Speaker 1: because Brian Dennehey is perfectly cast and awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he really is. I don't understand why they changed
Speaker 2: the names. Did Harry MacLean change the names for in
Speaker 2: Broad Daylight?
Speaker 1: I didn't read the book, but I don't know. Sometimes
Speaker 1: they do that with TV movies. Huh, well, regardlessly the innocent.
Speaker 2: You know, I scrubbed ahead to the last probably thirty minutes,
Speaker 2: so all the good stuff.
Speaker 1: That's kind of all you need.
Speaker 2: And you're right. Brian Denney was great and Marcia J.
Speaker 2: Harden did a great job at the really important point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's a tremendous actor, as was Denney. Rip Brian Denney.
Speaker 2: So Ken Rex McElroy. He was from Skidmore, Missouri. That's
Speaker 2: where this story takes place. He was the fifteenth of
Speaker 2: sixteen kids. From what I saw, he was born in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty four. And you can be the wealthiest person
Speaker 2: in your state and have sixteen kids and you're still
Speaker 2: going to be hard scrabble. Sure, his dad wasn't the
Speaker 2: wealthiest person in the state. So the mcelroys grew up
Speaker 2: kind of doing what they could to make their own way.
Speaker 2: And Ken himself, I saw either he made it up
Speaker 2: to age fifteen in school, which is a surprising statistic
Speaker 2: to me after I know a little more about him.
Speaker 2: I also saw that he was illiterate, which I would
Speaker 2: definitely believe more than the fact that he made it
Speaker 2: up to age fifteen in school. Either way, at a
Speaker 2: young age, he he started taking up crime. You get
Speaker 2: the impression not just out of necessity, but also probably
Speaker 2: out of a certain amount of pleasure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this was to frame it. And then nineteen forties.
Speaker 1: He was born in thirty four, so by the time
Speaker 1: he was criming, it was in nineteen forties. One thing
Speaker 1: we should mention is, and I'm glad Livia dug this up,
Speaker 1: and this is no way excusing any of his behaviors,
Speaker 1: but when he was eighteen year years old, he was
Speaker 1: a working construction and there was an accident where some
Speaker 1: very heavy cribbing fell about thirty feet and hit him
Speaker 1: in the head. He had a construction helmet, but it
Speaker 1: cut his scalp, so it clearly, you know, provided minimal protection.
Speaker 1: And he said that he had a steel plate implanted
Speaker 1: and had episodes of blackout episodes and pain throughout the
Speaker 1: rest of his life. And it should be noted that
Speaker 1: one common denominator in many cases of you know, sick
Speaker 1: people who do awful things is head injury when they're younger,
Speaker 1: so that very well may have been the case. Again,
Speaker 1: not excusing anything he did, but we're trying to paint
Speaker 1: a full picture here.
Speaker 2: He was like a modern day Phineas Gage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And like you said, it seemed like he
Speaker 1: enjoyed criming from a young age. He was a pretty
Speaker 1: I mean this is before the accident, even he was
Speaker 1: a pretty disturbed young man.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh, I have to say, yeah, I would say
Speaker 2: I would definitely agree with that. But he did do stuff.
Speaker 2: He wasn't just like a lay about like. He was
Speaker 2: a kind of an industrious criminal. He also trained hunting dogs.
Speaker 2: He was a dealer of antiques, a buyer and seller,
Speaker 2: but more than anything, he was a cattle wrestler. Apparently,
Speaker 2: the year before his death, the county that Skidaways in
Speaker 2: our Skidmores and not a Way county, the cattle thefts
Speaker 2: were six times that of any other place in the state.
Speaker 2: It led the state in cattle thefts, and apparently a
Speaker 2: lot of that was Ken McElroy. He was flush with cash.
Speaker 2: He would buy new cars, he could support. He ended
Speaker 2: up having at least ten kids could support them all.
Speaker 2: He had a lot of money and all of it
Speaker 2: essentially was from crime. Because he had a tiny little
Speaker 2: farm and he wasn't making much of any money off
Speaker 2: of that. He was making it from stealing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and when we say he had a lot of money,
Speaker 1: it's not the kind of it's not wealth. He had
Speaker 1: the kind of money for a criminal in the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties and Skidmore, Missouri.
Speaker 2: He had skid More money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is to say, oh, I hope there's no
Speaker 1: skid Marians. There's a couple hundred of them, well listening
Speaker 1: to us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just assume the whole town listens to us.
Speaker 1: Anyway, they're probably so sick of the story. But he's
Speaker 1: the kind of money guy that like he always had
Speaker 1: like a few grand in his pocket with a big,
Speaker 1: fat money roll, like that kind of dude. He was
Speaker 1: a big guy. He was like six two or sixty three,
Speaker 1: had this sort of here again kind of like Jim
Speaker 1: Jones men of the time, had this jet black hair
Speaker 1: and these huge side burns. He was imposing. But he
Speaker 1: picked on people smaller than him. He picked on women
Speaker 1: and children and young girls and took advantage of all
Speaker 1: these people. And he was arrested and charged at least
Speaker 1: twenty one times without being convicted. And if you're thinking, like,
Speaker 1: how in the world does that happen? When people know
Speaker 1: he's committing crimes, he's getting arrested of these committing these crimes.
Speaker 1: It's because he had a very, I guess good slippery
Speaker 1: attorney named Richard Jean mcfahten who was supposedly a mob
Speaker 1: attorney in Kansas City. And upon their first meeting, he
Speaker 1: was like, you can't afford me, and McElroy said, let
Speaker 1: me be the judge of that, pulled out that big
Speaker 1: fat roll from his pocket, threw it on the desk,
Speaker 1: and McFadden was delighted to have him as a cash
Speaker 1: paying client who listened to him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so McFadden was so was so good at getting
Speaker 2: them off. He well, actually they worked together. McFadden was
Speaker 2: good at getting him off, but it was he probably
Speaker 2: wouldn't have been nearly as successful as Ken McElroy hadn't
Speaker 2: have been also a very active participant in getting himself off.
Speaker 2: So Gene McFadden would get delay after delay, all these
Speaker 2: procedural delays to just really put as much time between
Speaker 2: Ken McElroy's arrest and the actual trial date as possible,
Speaker 2: and then Ken McElroy would get busy intimidating witnesses, and
Speaker 2: if it got closer and closer to trial and in
Speaker 2: a jury wasn't paneled. He would intimidate the jurors. He
Speaker 2: would threaten their lives. He would threaten the lives of
Speaker 2: their families. He would threaten to burn their houses down.
Speaker 2: He would threaten to kill them. He would threaten not
Speaker 2: just with words, he would intimidate them by parking in
Speaker 2: their driveways, by brandishing guns at them, by shooting guns
Speaker 2: in the air, sometimes in the night, outside of their house,
Speaker 2: like just It would take a couple of these for
Speaker 2: the average person to be like, I can't this is
Speaker 2: not what I've signed up for. This guy is scaring
Speaker 2: me to death. Some people lasted longer than others, but
Speaker 2: most of the time, almost in every single time, eventually
Speaker 2: he would intimidate enough of the witnesses that the cases
Speaker 2: would fall apart. And that is how he became what
Speaker 2: Crime Library referred to as this teflon coated hicic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely like he shot a guy in the stomach
Speaker 1: in July of nineteen seventy six, a guy named Romayne Henry.
Speaker 1: And yes, you heard me right, Romaine Farmer spelled exactly
Speaker 1: like the lettuce? Was he named after the lettuce? Because
Speaker 1: was he a lettuce farmer?
Speaker 2: I don't know. Did they farm letus in Missouri.
Speaker 1: They did in you in Arizona, I think just.
Speaker 2: For the sake of this story. Yes, he absolutely was
Speaker 2: a Romaine Lettuce farmer. His parents raised him to be.
Speaker 1: One and named him after that Lettuce. So he was
Speaker 1: shot in the stomach with a shotgun, was not killed,
Speaker 1: and it got away with it, you know. In the documentary,
Speaker 1: like Romaine Henry pulls up his shirt and he's like,
Speaker 1: here's where he shot me, and court witnesses he you know,
Speaker 1: like you said earlier, he was one of his side hustles,
Speaker 1: was raising and training and selling hunting dogs, and he
Speaker 1: was well liked by some people, like the people that
Speaker 1: he dealt with with these hunting dogs. Other crime type
Speaker 1: people liked him. So he had this stable of dudes
Speaker 1: that would go to court and testify on his behalf
Speaker 1: and provide him with alibis and say, like, he didn't
Speaker 1: shoot him in the stomach. He was with us at
Speaker 1: the time of the shooting. So he got away with
Speaker 1: shooting Romayne Henry in the stomach with a shotgun. Even.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and just to make sure that you understand what
Speaker 2: kind of person Kim McElroy was the reason that he
Speaker 2: shot Romayne Henry in the stomach was because Romayne Henry
Speaker 2: approached him and said, hey, will you please not shoot
Speaker 2: pheasants out of season on my land anymore? And Kim
Speaker 2: McElroy responded by shooting him in the stomach because he
Speaker 2: told him basically to stop shooting birds illegally on that
Speaker 2: man's land.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it didn't matter who you were. There was a cop,
Speaker 1: even a highway patrolman named Richard Stratton hashtag hero. Yeah
Speaker 1: who had you know? Plenty of run ends, obviously with
Speaker 1: McElroy because like you said, this is a town of
Speaker 1: you know, a few hundred people at the time. I
Speaker 1: think yep, maybe like four or five hundred again, and
Speaker 1: so everyone knew this guy, including obviously Richard Stratton, and
Speaker 1: he had a bunch of run ins, And so McElroy
Speaker 1: started threatening his home and his family. One day, his wife,
Speaker 1: Margaret was on our way to church. She got in
Speaker 1: the car to go to church and McRoy walks up
Speaker 1: to the car, puts a shotgun in her face. And
Speaker 1: he did that to cops, wives, he did it to judges.
Speaker 1: The county magistrate, Montgomery Wilson, was so fearful that he
Speaker 1: wouldn't take these cases. He would have them move to
Speaker 1: other nearby counties like he was. People called him the
Speaker 1: town bully, but that is the kindest way to describe him,
Speaker 1: because he was also a child molester and rapist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I say we take a break and then come
Speaker 2: back and talk about this, all.
Speaker 1: Right, We'll be right back, all right. So when we
Speaker 1: left off, I leveled a pretty serious allegation, which is
Speaker 1: absolutely true, that Ken McElroy was a child molester and rapist.
Speaker 1: And this is one hundred percent true. The story gets
Speaker 1: very twisted and convoluted here, but it's kind of hard
Speaker 1: to follow along because he was married and then had
Speaker 1: a girlfriend and a wife at the same time, but
Speaker 1: then another one and then another. Wooden would come in
Speaker 1: and they're overlapping, and he's having kids with most of them,
Speaker 1: and it gets very confusing. But like you said, he
Speaker 1: fathered ten kids. A lot of them were with underage girls.
Speaker 1: He got married for the first time in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: two when he was eighteen and his wife, Alita was sixteen,
Speaker 1: and he is not like he calmed down or anything.
Speaker 1: He would pray and stalk in groom girls as young
Speaker 1: as twelve thirteen years old, one of which was a
Speaker 1: fifteen year old name Sharon, and they it was sort
Speaker 1: of a familiar pattern where he would he would groom
Speaker 1: and stalk these young teenage girls. He would abuse them,
Speaker 1: he would rape them and threaten them with death and
Speaker 1: somehow end up with them and not not somehow through
Speaker 1: coercion and threaten intimidation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he would get so he would be married already,
Speaker 2: and like you said, he'd be stalking and raping and
Speaker 2: abusing some other younger girl at the same time. And
Speaker 2: then inevitably, when charges were about to be brought against
Speaker 2: him because of his like rape and abuse and in
Speaker 2: one case shooting of one of the girls, he would
Speaker 2: he would convince them to marry him. He would go
Speaker 2: to his wife and be like, we have to get
Speaker 2: divorced because I got to marry this girl so that
Speaker 2: she won't testify against me. And he would be successful.
Speaker 2: And if they refused at first, he would use those
Speaker 2: same tactics that he used to intimidate witnesses to intimidate
Speaker 2: these girls into marrying him and becoming his wife. And
Speaker 2: then astoundingly, he would go find a younger girl and
Speaker 2: start the whole thing over again. Like this guy got
Speaker 2: married more than once to keep the girl that he
Speaker 2: was raping from testifying against him, because back then a
Speaker 2: wife couldn't testify against her husband.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, I mean, we don't need to get into
Speaker 1: every single one of those details, but suffice it to
Speaker 1: say this was happening over and over and over remarkably sometimes.
Speaker 1: You know. Obviously, these girls parents would put up a
Speaker 1: fight and get involved, and he would intimidate and threaten
Speaker 1: them to the point where at one point he and
Speaker 1: this is the wife he had sort of when the
Speaker 1: final incident went down. Trina McLeod, who he got together with,
Speaker 1: this just so sick. When she was twelve or thirteen
Speaker 1: year years old, was like picking her up from the
Speaker 1: school bus. Yeah, and school officials were like, something's going
Speaker 1: on with this creep. No one ever did anything, got
Speaker 1: her pregnant at fourteen, and moved her into the house
Speaker 1: he shared with the previous young girl that he was with.
Speaker 1: So he had a son with Trina in nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: and a couple of others with this young girl, Alice,
Speaker 1: and went to Trina's parents' house. They obviously are saying like,
Speaker 1: you can't keep our daughter like this, and he held
Speaker 1: them back at gunpoint, brought the girls back, continue to
Speaker 1: abuse them, and then eventually he would burn down the
Speaker 1: house of Trina McLeod's parents and shoot and kill their
Speaker 1: family dog. Yeah, is he a bad enough guy at
Speaker 1: this point? All right, dear listener.
Speaker 2: Apparently he somehow Trina ended up being treated by a
Speaker 2: doctor somewhere or other. The doctor got the story out
Speaker 2: of her, and the doctor was like, wait, can you
Speaker 2: tell me all that one more time? And I guess
Speaker 2: she did. And the doctor called the authorities, and this
Speaker 2: time McElroy was in a lot of trouble and they
Speaker 2: took Trina to child services and took her to a
Speaker 2: family foster, a foster family, and he started stalking the
Speaker 2: foster family and stalking their biological kids and threatening to
Speaker 2: rape and kill them. And that foster family would not
Speaker 2: give in. They were protecting Trina up until the time.
Speaker 2: Trina's like, all right, I forgive you. I'm going back
Speaker 2: to you, and I'm sure that foster family is like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, I can't believe Yeah, I can't believe this,
Speaker 2: Like can you can't make that decision? And she did
Speaker 2: and he got away with it yet again because he
Speaker 2: got her to marry him to keep her from being
Speaker 2: able to even testify against her and Gene McFadden in
Speaker 2: a show of just how sleazy lawyers can be, served
Speaker 2: as the way witness to their wedding. I think she
Speaker 2: was fifteen at the time, and at the end of
Speaker 2: the ceremony got her to sign a document saying all
Speaker 2: the things she told that doctor were lies and they
Speaker 2: lived as husband and wife.
Speaker 1: That's right. So this is this was his final wife,
Speaker 1: young trinam Cloud. He apparently got her parents because you know,
Speaker 1: you needed to have permission to get married at that age,
Speaker 1: and her parents acquiesced because he threatened to burn down
Speaker 1: the new house that they either bought or built. And
Speaker 1: this is where I get to the documentary, like a
Speaker 1: lot of it should be taken with a grain of salt,
Speaker 1: because some of the local townspeople they interview are clearly
Speaker 1: sort of just maybe don't have all the facts straight.
Speaker 1: Because someone in that documentary said that he burned their
Speaker 1: house down again and shot their other new dog, and
Speaker 1: I didn't see anywhere else where that happened. I think
Speaker 1: it was just a threat or whatever.
Speaker 2: He killed a monkey too, right, That's what I heard.
Speaker 1: Deal with the documentary. So this is the this is
Speaker 1: going on. He's terrorizing this town. Everyone knows he's an
Speaker 1: awful guy. He's just can't be overstated what an awful
Speaker 1: creep that he is. And I mean creep isn't even
Speaker 1: that's way too soft to describe a guy like this. Finally,
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty he sort of pushes his luck. As
Speaker 1: Livia would call this section, things have kind of come
Speaker 1: a little bit to a head. They're these local shopkeepers.
Speaker 1: They ran the B and B grocery there in town
Speaker 1: Lois and Earnest bow Bowen Camp and they apparently his
Speaker 1: you know, his kids would go in there and chop
Speaker 1: lifts all the time, his very young kids. And one
Speaker 1: of his young daughters, her name was Tonya or Tanya,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how that was pronounced.
Speaker 2: Na.
Speaker 1: Tanya was like four years old and was stealing candy
Speaker 1: from the store. They confronted this young girl, and of
Speaker 1: course McElroy wouldn't stand for that, so he starts up
Speaker 1: with his usual routine, parking outside their store, staring them down,
Speaker 1: brandishing a shotgun and carrying it around with him. And
Speaker 1: in July of that year, McElroy approached bo Bowen Camp
Speaker 1: the grocery store owner. They had a brief conversation and
Speaker 1: he shot this seventy year old man through the neck again,
Speaker 1: not killing him, but wounding him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so Bo and Lois Bowen Camp were like
Speaker 2: beloved in the town. Oh yeah, this is a big deal.
Speaker 2: He had assaulted and a beloved elderly shopkeeper, grocer who
Speaker 2: fed the town, and even McElroy knew it was a
Speaker 2: big deal. He fled, he tried to get out of
Speaker 2: the state. And you mentioned Richard Stratton, the Missouri Highway
Speaker 2: patrolman who had run ins over and over and over
Speaker 2: again with Ken McElroy. Well, he was out on patrol
Speaker 2: night when that happened or that day, I guess, and
Speaker 2: he got the all points bulletin er to be on
Speaker 2: the lookout for Ken McElroy. And at the time, the
Speaker 2: Sheriff's office, the rest of the Highway patrol they were
Speaker 2: setting up roadblocks, looking on every highway that they could
Speaker 2: for Ken McElroy. But Richard Stratton said, no, I know
Speaker 2: this guy. He's got a police scanner. He knows exactly
Speaker 2: where they are. He's going to take every back road
Speaker 2: he confined to get to Kansas and get out of
Speaker 2: the state and lay low for a while, and Richard
Speaker 2: Stratton said, I know he's going to have to go
Speaker 2: through Fillmore, Missouri to get to Kansas, and I'm going
Speaker 2: to stake that place out. And in short order, Ken
Speaker 2: McElroy came driving through in his Silverado with Trina in
Speaker 2: the seat and he ended up getting busted by Richard Stratton.
Speaker 2: He was caught. And this again even he knew this
Speaker 2: one was a big deal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he finally was taken into custody this time.
Speaker 1: He I don't know if he just had an instinct
Speaker 1: that there was probably no way out of this one,
Speaker 1: but he hired his trusteelawyer again McFadden, who said, all right,
Speaker 1: let's move this thing to Harrison County first of all,
Speaker 1: and here's our plan is. We're going to say that
Speaker 1: this was a dispute with Bowen Camp. This this sort
Speaker 1: of argument you guys had over your daughter's stealing, and
Speaker 1: that he pulled a knife on you and that it
Speaker 1: was self defense and you were you were forced to
Speaker 1: do that. He was still using his you know, typical
Speaker 1: playbook intimidation tactics on the Bowen Camps, but they refused
Speaker 1: to budget, which was great so that was their that
Speaker 1: was their defense. We should also mention while this is
Speaker 1: going on, he continues his reign of terror on the town.
Speaker 1: There's a there was a Christian church whose minister was
Speaker 1: Tim Warren. And if you don't know anything about sort
Speaker 1: of small town actually probably even larger town ministers. Part
Speaker 1: of their job they don't just get up there and
Speaker 1: preach on Sundays, is they have to minister to the
Speaker 1: congregation in their community. So they will do things. Preachers
Speaker 1: and ministers will like come and check in on people
Speaker 1: they're sick. They will visit people in the hospital if
Speaker 1: they're injured or you know, or having some troubles. And
Speaker 1: this is what Tim Warren was doing when he checked
Speaker 1: in on, or had planned to check in on Lois
Speaker 1: Bowen Camp and he got a call saying, don't go
Speaker 1: see old man Bowen Camp. It's gonna be bad news
Speaker 1: for you. He did it under cover by borrowing a
Speaker 1: friend's truck and going in that but got a call
Speaker 1: was like, hey, I knew that that was you there
Speaker 1: within your friend's truck. Nice try and if you do
Speaker 1: this again, I'm going to rape and murder your wife.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the reverend, the local reverend, Reverend Lovejoy is
Speaker 2: just told that his wife is going to be raped
Speaker 2: and murdered.
Speaker 1: Right, that's right.
Speaker 2: I didn't get what the point of that was, did you.
Speaker 2: I didn't see any interpretation of that. I just saw
Speaker 2: it explained or described. I never saw it explained.
Speaker 1: Well, I think just anyone sort of on the Bowen
Speaker 1: Camp side, because who knows, like the reverend could have
Speaker 1: been and called to testify or something.
Speaker 2: He knows, I got you.
Speaker 1: That makes me think he was just trying to shut
Speaker 1: it all down, kind of like with the town marshall.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, so the town marshal nice setup. David Dunbar
Speaker 2: was twenty four at the time, and if you were
Speaker 2: town marshall of Skidmore, you not only had to call
Speaker 2: the sheriff when there was an actual, real, real trouble
Speaker 2: because you weren't really allowed to do anything. You had
Speaker 2: to provide your own gun. The city would pay for
Speaker 2: your ammunition, but you had to provide your own gun.
Speaker 2: And David Dunbar was like, I don't even care about
Speaker 2: this job. I took this job because I wanted to
Speaker 2: win a bet that I had with my buddy for
Speaker 2: a case of beer, right, and so In short order,
Speaker 2: he gets pulled into this whole thing by Ken McElroy,
Speaker 2: who pulls a gun on him, holds him at gunpoint.
Speaker 2: I saw it for like twenty minutes at the Punkin Festival.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not punkin Junkin'.
Speaker 2: No, the Punkin Festival or the Punkin show. That's what
Speaker 2: I saw it as.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they chunked in no punks, yes.
Speaker 2: No, but David Dunbar. David Dunbar did say like, that's
Speaker 2: it for me, man, I really didn't care that much
Speaker 2: about this job anyway. I'm not going to stand up
Speaker 2: to Ken McElroy. You guys need to find yourself another
Speaker 2: marshal and they said, fine, we will, and then they couldn't.
Speaker 2: So the town was without a marshall even for a
Speaker 2: little while.
Speaker 1: They probably didn't need one.
Speaker 2: I mean, it doesn't sound like it was very effective
Speaker 2: as positions go. And also the other thing I said,
Speaker 2: they need to call the sheriff. I saw someone intimate
Speaker 2: that the sheriff may not have either taken Ken McElroy
Speaker 2: and the trouble he caused seriously, or he may have
Speaker 2: been a friend or a sympathetic ally or something to
Speaker 2: Ken McElroy, because apparently he was not super responsive to
Speaker 2: Ken McElroy trouble calls.
Speaker 1: You know, he was interviewed in this documentary. He certainly
Speaker 1: didn't seem sympathetic. He might have been intimidated as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess that's possible. I wouldn't blame him, frankly.
Speaker 1: So this takes more than a year, I'm sorry, close
Speaker 1: to a year to come to trial because of all
Speaker 1: the delays that you know, McFadden, that's his game. Finally
Speaker 1: it does and there's another green. Like almost everyone in
Speaker 1: this story seems like they were like very young at
Speaker 1: the time. Yeah. The prosecutor, his name was David Baird.
Speaker 1: He was a super young attorney. He was the county
Speaker 1: prosecutor so named, just a few months earlier, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, this kid is charged with prosecuting the case.
Speaker 1: He convicted him of second degree assault and sentenced him
Speaker 1: to two years in jail. And this was the very
Speaker 1: first conviction after this year's long reign of terror on
Speaker 1: this town that he faced. Of course, McFadden appealed. The
Speaker 1: judge said you're out on forty thousand dollars bail, and
Speaker 1: Baird said, oh, it sounds fine to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So like after shooting Bo Bo and Camp getting
Speaker 2: caught by the highway patrol, he gets let out on
Speaker 2: forty thousand dollars bond, which he probably paid his bail
Speaker 2: in cash from his pocket, and the town was like,
Speaker 2: you've got to be kidding me, Like you let this
Speaker 2: guy free. Okay, we will will hang in there. We're
Speaker 2: just gonna ride this out. And almost immediately Ken McRoy
Speaker 2: was like, how can I get my bond revoked? I know,
Speaker 2: I'll go show up at the local tavern in Skidmore,
Speaker 2: the DNG Tavern, and I'll bring a M one carbine
Speaker 2: rifle with bayonet on me, and I'll talk about how
Speaker 2: I'm going to use it to finish off Bo Bowen
Speaker 2: Camp in front of everybody in the bar. And that's
Speaker 2: exactly what he did. And there just happened to be
Speaker 2: a couple of brave souls. One of them was Pete Ward,
Speaker 2: I think it was he and his sons who went
Speaker 2: and fo like confronted him about it and then went
Speaker 2: and filed the complaint and said this guy needs his
Speaker 2: bond revoked, And a bond hearing was set up ten
Speaker 2: days from then, and that set up all of the
Speaker 2: machinations that were now going to bring this story to
Speaker 2: its climax? Is it time for ad break? Have we
Speaker 2: had a second one?
Speaker 1: I mean, if that's not a perfect setup for ad breakman,
Speaker 1: we've never had one.
Speaker 2: So I said that Ken McElroy has basically just brandished
Speaker 2: an arm. He's walking around town talking about he's going
Speaker 2: to finish off the guy he's been now convicted of assaulting.
Speaker 2: But he's out on bail, and Pete Ward and his
Speaker 2: sons go file a complaint and a bond hearing to
Speaker 2: see if his bond should be revoked is set up
Speaker 2: for ten days, and those ten days pass, and on
Speaker 2: the tenth day, the day of his bond hearing, a
Speaker 2: group of farmers around town who have just had it
Speaker 2: up to here with Ken McElroy come to the American
Speaker 2: Legion Hall to basically go to court with Pete Ward
Speaker 2: and Bobo and Camp and show solidarity but also show
Speaker 2: that these guys are protected. You better not mess with them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely. By most accounts, it was most of the
Speaker 1: adults in the town were at this American Legion Hall meeting.
Speaker 1: I think there were like a little over one hundred
Speaker 1: adults maybe living there, and it seemed like eighty of
Speaker 1: them were at this American Legion Hall meeting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a lot of people there.
Speaker 1: So they find out there that McFadden had gotten that
Speaker 1: hearing delayed, that bond hearing delayed for ten more days,
Speaker 1: so instead of July tenth, it's going to be July twentieth.
Speaker 1: They called the sheriff Danny EST's in that we talked about,
Speaker 1: and he basically said, you know, there's nothing that we
Speaker 1: can do about it. And this is where I think
Speaker 1: that maybe I don't think he was friendly to McElroy.
Speaker 1: I think he was just a law about biting sheriff
Speaker 1: that was like, you know, what do you want to do,
Speaker 1: like go kill this guy in the street, Like, we
Speaker 1: can't do that. All we can do is keep tabs
Speaker 1: on this guy and you know, stick together. It is
Speaker 1: probably a good idea. So they said, that's a great idea.
Speaker 1: We should form a large group and stalk him, follow
Speaker 1: him around. Their strengthen numbers if we get enough of
Speaker 1: us together, Like what's this guy gonna do? Kill all
Speaker 1: of us? There are some people that were at this
Speaker 1: meeting that was like, you know, no one was talking
Speaker 1: about doing anything more than that. Other people said, yeah,
Speaker 1: there were some people that were so you know, pissed
Speaker 1: off about all this, that were like, we need to
Speaker 1: take matters into our own hands, Vigilanti style. And they
Speaker 1: found out at this meeting that he's back in town
Speaker 1: with his wife. They went to the tavern, the DNG tavern,
Speaker 1: still morning, mind you. They're in there drinking and they
Speaker 1: all go down there. They walk in there as a
Speaker 1: group and fill this tavern about fifty to sixty people,
Speaker 1: and it's clear what's going on. McElroy would not be intimidated.
Speaker 1: He did leave, but he apparently just sort of thumbed
Speaker 1: his nose in their faces, bought a six pack to go,
Speaker 1: and was like, you know, let's get out of here, Trina,
Speaker 1: and walked out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this crowd was like, okay, I kind of
Speaker 2: like this following this guy around, watching his every step thing,
Speaker 2: And they actually walked out of the bar with him,
Speaker 2: and supposedly there was between thirty and sixty people. Some
Speaker 2: people had cleared out. Romayne Henry, who meet shot in
Speaker 2: the stomach before, said that he sensed that this crowd
Speaker 2: was possibly out for blood and he didn't want to
Speaker 2: have anything to do with it, so he laughed. So
Speaker 2: not everybody who was in the VFW Hall or the
Speaker 2: American Legion Hall was in the parking lot of the
Speaker 2: D ANDNG tavern, but a significant number of people were
Speaker 2: and they had Ken McElroy and Trina surrounded in Ken
Speaker 2: McElroy Silverado. Ken McElroy apparent lee had the car turned on,
Speaker 2: still had him park. He pulled out a cigarette and
Speaker 2: I saw that he either had just lit it or
Speaker 2: was about to light it when somebody shot him in
Speaker 2: the head with a high powered hunting rifle and then
Speaker 2: followed that up with a shot to the neck, with
Speaker 2: Trina right next to him, who was suddenly covered in
Speaker 2: his blood.
Speaker 1: Yeah, through the back wind shield of the pickup truck,
Speaker 1: I imagine instantly killed him with that first shot. His
Speaker 1: foot slams on the gas and this thing is revving
Speaker 1: at like full bore. This old truck starts smoking and
Speaker 1: eventually blows the engine and it just goes silent. Trina
Speaker 1: apparently urinated herself, was initially told to stay in the
Speaker 1: car or she would be killed two and then gets
Speaker 1: hustled out of this truck into a nearby bank, and
Speaker 1: a bunch of more shooting happens until the shooting stops.
Speaker 1: It's about twenty seconds worth of shooting. People go up
Speaker 1: peek in this truck. McElroy is hunched over. No one
Speaker 1: helps the guy at all, and in the end they
Speaker 1: figure out he was hit by two different bullet types,
Speaker 1: so two different guns had actually made contact with his body,
Speaker 1: two different bullets. So, you know, in the documentary again
Speaker 1: there were people that were like, you know, five or
Speaker 1: six people shot him, three or four people shot him,
Speaker 1: like everyone sort of got their own story, but as
Speaker 1: far as the you know, autopsy goes, there were two
Speaker 1: different calibers of bullet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because here's the twist to this whole story. We
Speaker 2: don't know at the very least, the law can't say
Speaker 2: who killed Kim McElroy. They were between thirty to sixty
Speaker 2: people who were standing right there when he was killed
Speaker 2: from several feet away, and no no one saw a thing.
Speaker 2: The town circled the wagons and clammed up to this.
Speaker 1: Day, Yeah, the town fully cleared out right after that,
Speaker 1: and like he was just sitting there alone in the
Speaker 1: middle of town, dead in his truck. Apparently they went
Speaker 1: into some local businesses in this One woman in the
Speaker 1: documentary said, we were just sort of hanging out in there,
Speaker 1: and someone came in and said it's over. You can
Speaker 1: sleep tonight. Now just stand behind us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they did, man, I mean they did the
Speaker 2: law I saw. Depending on who you ask, the law
Speaker 2: took this very seriously like any other murder, and investigated
Speaker 2: and tried to prosecute it. Others are like, yeah, the
Speaker 2: local law didn't try that hard because everybody knew that
Speaker 2: this was actually justice, even though it was a grotesque
Speaker 2: form of justice.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Either way, no one was ever prosecuted. No one was
Speaker 2: even ever arrested or charged with the murder of Ken
Speaker 2: mackleroy because not a single witness would crack. There was
Speaker 2: apparently one witness who shortly after said that they saw
Speaker 2: a man named del Clement and another man speed off
Speaker 2: very quickly right after the shooting, and that person apparently said, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I was mistaken. That's the closest the cops
Speaker 2: got to a witness statement about who may have shot
Speaker 2: Ken McElroy. No one would say anything. Some people were
Speaker 2: interviewed five to six times. Yeah, and no one cracked.
Speaker 2: They would not crack. And yet whoever said that they
Speaker 2: saw del Clement speed off was probably telling the truth
Speaker 2: because Trina Ken's wife, who by this time is twenty
Speaker 2: four and looks a lot like somebody who would have
Speaker 2: been friends with Eileen Warnos, it says that she turned
Speaker 2: around right before the shooting started and saw very clearly
Speaker 2: Dell Clement, owner co owner of the DG TAB, taking
Speaker 2: aim and shooting Ken McElroy in the head with his
Speaker 2: deer rifle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was not only the owner of the tavern,
Speaker 1: but he had a livestock that had been pilfered. Apparently
Speaker 1: it was a big hot head, and I get the
Speaker 1: sense took great pleasure in pulling that trigger, as the
Speaker 1: sense I got. There was a lady in the documentary
Speaker 1: and again this is the grain of salt, that said
Speaker 1: that the main gun was thrown in a river. So
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, very interesting. I hadn't heard that
Speaker 1: anywhere else. But she also said right after that she
Speaker 1: heard that they had McElroy's head in a head somewhere
Speaker 1: and a freezer thing. So they couldn't do like more,
Speaker 1: I guess bullet ballistics work or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you couldn't find it because it was stolen by
Speaker 2: a monkey.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think that happened. There was another guy
Speaker 1: in there named Britt Small, and I get the feeling
Speaker 1: they just kind of gathered up whoever was still around
Speaker 1: and was like, you know, talk to me. And Britt
Speaker 1: was a local guy, Vietnam veteran. He was like, you
Speaker 1: know what, the only mistake they made is that they
Speaker 1: let Trina live. I would have killed him in his driveway.
Speaker 1: I would have ambushed them, both, killed her and him
Speaker 1: and burned his house down. That's what I would have done.
Speaker 2: Well, she if you read newspaper accounts, like immediately after,
Speaker 2: the Kansas City Star had a couple of articles like
Speaker 2: the week after like she's scared to death or she
Speaker 2: sounded scared to death that she was going to be next,
Speaker 2: or that her kids were going to be murdered. And
Speaker 2: then of course the townspeople that they interviewed for the
Speaker 2: same article are like, no one wishes her and ill
Speaker 2: will right, you know, she's not in any danger, but
Speaker 2: she swore that she was told to stay out of Skidmore,
Speaker 2: doon't ever come back, or else she was going to
Speaker 2: get it and her kids would be after that. It's
Speaker 2: I don't know. It probably just depends on which town
Speaker 2: person you talk to.
Speaker 1: I mean, both things can be true, they could have
Speaker 1: felt like she was a victim, but also please leave.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And apparently when she was hustled off to
Speaker 2: the bank, whoever did that saved her life because even
Speaker 2: if they hadn't have been aiming for she probably would
Speaker 2: have gotten hip by a straight bullet after that second round.
Speaker 2: But when she was hustled at the bank, there was
Speaker 2: like a crowd, like you said to people there that
Speaker 2: seemed to be just sitting there watching, like people knew
Speaker 2: what was about to happen or what was going down.
Speaker 2: And she said they didn't need to do them like that,
Speaker 2: and someone said they had no choice. So even if
Speaker 2: you didn't agree with that mob, justice that had taken place,
Speaker 2: and you were a Skidmore resident, at the very least
Speaker 2: you weren't about to turn on your fellow townspeople, certainly
Speaker 2: not for the likes of somebody like Ken McElroy or Trina.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And in the end, you know, they couldn't with
Speaker 1: only Trina's word, there was nothing they could do that
Speaker 1: young Prosecutor Baird and the FBI said, you know, this
Speaker 1: is all we've got. We can't move forward. Everyone else
Speaker 1: is saying they don't know what happened. The FBI closed
Speaker 1: their investigation on September two, nineteen eighty two, and I
Speaker 1: believe the share off. I'm sorry. The LEAs chief how
Speaker 1: Riddle was running the investigation, and he said, you know,
Speaker 1: he was really trying to get this case to go
Speaker 1: to trial because he's he is a law enforcement officer.
Speaker 1: And they weren't all like great mob justice, you know,
Speaker 1: they're like, we we should have handled it to begin with,
Speaker 1: but you certainly can't handle it this way. And he
Speaker 1: said it was the most frustrating case of his career
Speaker 1: and basically, like this town got away with murder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and if the local law enforcement didn't work hard enough,
Speaker 2: that was par for the course. Because if there was
Speaker 2: any theme to this aside from this horrible bully, it
Speaker 2: was the local institutions failing the community time after time
Speaker 2: after time after time for any number of reasons because
Speaker 2: they were intimidated, because they were crupt, who knows, but
Speaker 2: that was like the subtext of this whole thing is
Speaker 2: that this community essentially had to take matters into their
Speaker 2: own hands or else this guy was going to eventually
Speaker 2: kill somebody, and they just decided that that was not
Speaker 2: going to happen. They were going to stop before it happened,
Speaker 2: so it's tough to fault them for what they did.
Speaker 2: Even though I don't agree with that. Still I understand
Speaker 2: why they did it well.
Speaker 1: I think you cannot agree with mob justice and also
Speaker 1: say the town of Skidmore in the world was probably
Speaker 1: better off without this child rapist walking around.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, you're right. I like your theories. I'm going
Speaker 2: to subscribe to your newsletter.
Speaker 1: So as for Clement, the supposed one of the supposed shooters,
Speaker 1: he never said a thing about it. He died in
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine. Trina in nineteen eighty five filed
Speaker 1: a wrongful death civil case against the mayor, Clement, and
Speaker 1: the sheriff for five million bucks, settled for seventeen thousand,
Speaker 1: six hundred. The defendants didn't have to admit to any wrongdoing.
Speaker 1: They just wanted it to go away. She got remarried
Speaker 1: and a couple of years before that in nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: so two years after the killing, and she died in
Speaker 1: twenty twelve. And you know, there was no mention of
Speaker 1: that life of hers in her obituary. I think she
Speaker 1: really put it behind her, and I hope at some point,
Speaker 1: you know, there are interviews with her. That's the one
Speaker 1: interesting thing about the doc, Like not too long after
Speaker 1: their interviews with Trina McLeod. I would hope that at
Speaker 1: some point she realized that she was a victim.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I hope so too, and came to on that.
Speaker 2: But who knows, because I mean, you there's a there's
Speaker 2: a certain amount of like grudging admiration you have for
Speaker 2: at the very least. It's like, man, this girl is
Speaker 2: so twisted. She was like a really ardent defendant of
Speaker 2: her husband's reputation and honor and memory and like really
Speaker 2: went would she was really like mad that they had
Speaker 2: killed him.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: One other detail I saw was that she offered a
Speaker 2: five thousand dollar reward for information about who killed them.
Speaker 2: Somebody had come forward, but she didn't have five thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: She was putting it up against the movie rights. She
Speaker 2: presumed she would eventually be paid for. Oh interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 2: so I'm not sure. I don't think anybody would have
Speaker 2: taken the five grand anyway, but certainly not a phantom
Speaker 2: five grand that didn't actually exist yet.
Speaker 1: Yeah. As for the attorney, he was always like he
Speaker 1: was never like, you know, I really regret representing that
Speaker 1: dirt bag. He was pretty proud of his work. He
Speaker 1: had a long career as a lobbyist working in the
Speaker 1: legislature there in Missouri, and apparently would like buy copies
Speaker 1: of McLean's book and have McLean sign them and hand
Speaker 1: them out to all the delegates in the state Senate.
Speaker 1: He died in twenty twelve, Like I said, very proud
Speaker 1: of his work. And Stratton, the highway patrolman that we mentioned,
Speaker 1: was the guy who in an interview said, you know
Speaker 1: they did what they did because we didn't do our job.
Speaker 1: I think he felt forever bad that the law enforcement
Speaker 1: had failed that town.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He also said in that same interview he knew
Speaker 2: for sure who did it, and he was never going.
Speaker 1: To say I think it was Clement, I just don't
Speaker 1: know who the second shooter was. The guy that says
Speaker 1: he would have killed them both and burned their house down,
Speaker 1: claims that he knew the second shooter, but he wouldn't
Speaker 1: say it either.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you got anything else?
Speaker 1: I got nothing else?
Speaker 2: Quite a story, yeah, man, Yeah, thanks and thanks Olivia
Speaker 2: for helping us with it. And since Chuck said good pick,
Speaker 2: that means, of course it's time for a brand new
Speaker 2: listener mail.
Speaker 1: That's right. This is a follow up on our what
Speaker 1: I thought was a really good episode that I enjoyed
Speaker 1: on Kenton Grua and the Grand Canyon River speed Record.
Speaker 1: Great episode on that guys. I read the book a
Speaker 1: few years ago, and to answer a question you had
Speaker 1: about the eleven pm start time, as I recall, you're
Speaker 1: correct in their desire to employ the cover of darkness.
Speaker 1: There was also another, probably more important issue that led
Speaker 1: to that decision. Per my recollection of the book, it
Speaker 1: was the timing of when they would run into the
Speaker 1: rapids where they eventually swamp the boat. It was a
Speaker 1: stretch they'd expected would be the crux of the trip.
Speaker 1: As you pointed out, Kitting and his team were tenured
Speaker 1: river rats who knew all the river like the back
Speaker 1: of their hand. However, the unique dynamics of the unprecedented
Speaker 1: CFS meant that they were uncertain of exactly how fast
Speaker 1: they would be moving. By starting when they did, they
Speaker 1: were able to more or less ensure that section of
Speaker 1: the river where they flipped would be squarely in the
Speaker 1: middle of the day. A good worst case scenario and
Speaker 1: good pre planning. And that's from Noah. That sounds like
Speaker 1: a very reasonable assertion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks a lot, Noah. I'm not going to challenge
Speaker 2: him on it. Heck no, yeah. Okay. Well, if you
Speaker 2: want to be like Noah and be like, hey, I
Speaker 2: got you guys. You have a question, I'm in Noah,
Speaker 2: then get in touch with us. Do it like Noah did,
Speaker 2: Do everything like Noah did. Send us an email to
Speaker 2: podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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