Speaker 1: The murder of Ken McElroy is an example of the
Speaker 1: kind of small town justice so well served that it
Speaker 1: seems like it's gotta be a movie. And it was
Speaker 1: a movie, not a very good one starring Brian Denahey,
Speaker 1: but the actual crime came first and it was true,
Speaker 1: hence its inclusion on this playlist. At any rate, the
Speaker 1: town of Skidmore, Missouri, doesn't play around. If they're pushed
Speaker 1: too far, you can bet on that.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
Speaker 1: Chuck and Jerry's here too, pushing us around as usual
Speaker 1: with this episode of Stuff you Should Know.
Speaker 2: Our second episode for us of the new year, And
Speaker 2: why didn't we save like a pretty happy one to
Speaker 2: get going with.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know, probably because we knew
Speaker 1: we were going to be so bummed out after Jonestown.
Speaker 1: We needed something that was a pick me up. And
Speaker 1: what's crazy is this story actually is a pick me
Speaker 1: up compared to Jonestown.
Speaker 2: Yeh boy, that's tough to parse out. So thank you
Speaker 2: to Olivia for diving into this tough story and also
Speaker 2: this episode we want to issue a very big trigger
Speaker 2: warning because in it we are going to talk about
Speaker 2: a very bad man and some of the bad things
Speaker 2: he did, which included sexual assault, and some of which
Speaker 2: were with minors. So trigger warning. Know that going in.
Speaker 3: There's no way around it.
Speaker 1: There's very few stories that have like a clear cut villain,
Speaker 1: but this is one of them. And the villain who's
Speaker 1: also the center of our story. The person at the
Speaker 1: center of our story is a man named Ken Rex McElroy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which I mean all you need to hear is that name, really,
Speaker 1: I think, and it kind of just puts a weird
Speaker 1: chill down your spine that you can't quite identify yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a story that you may have heard
Speaker 2: of before. There's no shortage of content about Ken McElroy.
Speaker 2: There was a book written in nineteen eighty eight by
Speaker 2: Harry McClain, a crime writer, called in Broad Daylight You
Speaker 2: Know What's Coming colon Our Murder in Skidmore, Missouri. There
Speaker 2: was a documentary just a few years ago in twenty
Speaker 2: nineteen called documentary series actually called No One Saw a Thing.
Speaker 3: Of which I watched at the first episode.
Speaker 1: How is it I didn't get a chance to yet, Well.
Speaker 3: We'll talk about it. It's okay.
Speaker 1: It's got like a seven plus on IMDb. That's really
Speaker 1: saying something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Chuck gives it a six minus.
Speaker 1: Okay, Still it's not too bad.
Speaker 3: It's okay.
Speaker 2: I mean, not a ton of light was shed. So
Speaker 2: maybe it's because if I went into it blind it
Speaker 2: might have been.
Speaker 3: A little better.
Speaker 1: Gotcha.
Speaker 2: But there's also a nineteen ninety one TV movie starring
Speaker 2: Brian Denahey and Marcia gay Harden, which I actually I
Speaker 2: watched a very bad YouTube version of it. Mostly I
Speaker 2: scribbed you a little bit of it. But it's actually
Speaker 2: not terrible for a nineteen ninety one TV movie, largely
Speaker 2: because Brian Dennehey is perfectly cast and awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he really is. I don't understand why they changed
Speaker 1: the names. Did Harry MacLean change the names for in
Speaker 1: Broad Daylight?
Speaker 2: I didn't read the book, but I don't know. Sometimes
Speaker 2: they do that with TV movies, huh.
Speaker 3: Well, regardlessly innocent, you know.
Speaker 1: I scrubbed ahead to the last probably thirty minutes, saw
Speaker 1: the good stuff.
Speaker 3: That's kind of all you need.
Speaker 1: And you're right, Brian Dennehey was great in it, and
Speaker 1: Marcia gay Harden did a great job at the really
Speaker 1: important point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's a tremendous actor, as was Dennehee Rip, Brian Dennhey.
Speaker 1: So Ken Rex McElroy. He was from skid' More in Missouri.
Speaker 1: That's where this story takes place. He was the fifteenth
Speaker 1: of sixteen kids. From what I saw, he was born
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty four. And you can be the wealthiest
Speaker 1: person in your state and have sixteen kids and you're
Speaker 1: still going to be hard scrabble. Sure, his dad wasn't
Speaker 1: the wealthiest person in the state. So the mcilroys grew
Speaker 1: up kind of doing what they could to make their
Speaker 1: own way. And Ken himself, I saw either he made
Speaker 1: it up to age fifteen in school, which is a
Speaker 1: surprising statistic to me after I know a little more
Speaker 1: about him. I also saw that he was illiterate, which
Speaker 1: I would definitely believe more than the fact that he
Speaker 1: made it up to age fifteen in school. Either way,
Speaker 1: at a young age he started taking up crime. You
Speaker 1: get the impression not just out of necessity, but also
Speaker 1: probably out of a certain amount of pleasure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this was to frame it in then nineteen forties.
Speaker 2: He was born in thirty four, so by the time
Speaker 2: he was criming, it was in nineteen forties. One thing
Speaker 2: we should mention is, and I'm glad Livia dug this up,
Speaker 2: and this is no way excusing any of his behaviors,
Speaker 2: but when he was eighteen year years old, he was
Speaker 2: a working construction and there was an accident where some
Speaker 2: very heavy cribbing fell about thirty feet and hit him
Speaker 2: in the head. He had a construction helmet, but it
Speaker 2: cut his scalp, so it clearly, you know, provided minimal protection.
Speaker 2: And he said that he had a steel plate implanted
Speaker 2: and had episodes of like blackout episodes and pain throughout
Speaker 2: the rest of his life. And it should be noted
Speaker 2: that one common denominator in many cases of you know,
Speaker 2: sick people who do awful things is head injury when
Speaker 2: they're younger, So that very well may have been the case. Again,
Speaker 2: not excusing anything he did, but we're trying to paint
Speaker 2: a full picture here.
Speaker 1: He was like a modern day Phineas Gage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, like you said, It seemed like he enjoyed
Speaker 2: criming from a young age.
Speaker 3: He was a pretty i.
Speaker 2: Mean this is before the accident, even he was a
Speaker 2: pretty disturbed young man.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, I have to say, yeah, I would say
Speaker 1: I would definitely agree with that. But he did do stuff.
Speaker 1: He wasn't just like a lay about like. He was
Speaker 1: a kind of an industrious criminal. He also trained hunting dogs.
Speaker 1: He was a dealer of antiques, a buyer and seller.
Speaker 1: But more than anything, he was a cattle wrestler. Apparently,
Speaker 1: the year before his death, the county that skidaways in
Speaker 1: our Skidmores in not Away County, the cattle thefts were
Speaker 1: six times that of any other place in the state.
Speaker 1: It led the state in cattle thefts. And apparently a
Speaker 1: lot of that was Ken Mackle. He was flush with cash.
Speaker 1: He would buy new cars, he could support. He ended
Speaker 1: up having at least ten kids, could support them all.
Speaker 1: He had a lot of money and all of it
Speaker 1: essentially was from crime because he had a tiny little
Speaker 1: farm and he wasn't making much of any money off
Speaker 1: of that. He was making it from stealing.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And when we say he had a lot of money,
Speaker 2: it's not the kind of it's not wealth. He had
Speaker 2: the kind of money for a criminal in the nineteen
Speaker 2: sixties and skid More, Missouri, he.
Speaker 3: Had skid More money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is to say, oh, I hope there's no
Speaker 2: skidded Marians. There's a couple hundred of them well listening
Speaker 2: to us. Yeah, I just assume the whole town listens
Speaker 2: to us anyway.
Speaker 3: They're probably so sick of a story.
Speaker 2: But he's the kind of kind of money guy that
Speaker 2: like he always had like a few grand in his
Speaker 2: pocket with a big, fat money roll, like that kind
Speaker 2: of dude. He was a big guy. He was like
Speaker 2: six two or sixty three, had this sort of here
Speaker 2: again kind of like Jim Jones men of the time,
Speaker 2: had this jet black hair and these huge sideburns. He
Speaker 2: was imposing. But he picked on people smaller than he
Speaker 2: picked on women and children and young girls, and took
Speaker 2: advantage of all these people. And he was arrested and
Speaker 2: charged at least twenty one times without being convicted. And
Speaker 2: if you're thinking, like, how in the world does that
Speaker 2: happen when people know he's committing crimes, he's getting arrested
Speaker 2: of these committing these crimes, it's because he had a
Speaker 2: very I guess good, slippery attorney named Richard Gene McFadden
Speaker 2: who was supposedly a mob attorney in Kansas City, and
Speaker 2: upon their first meeting, he was like, you can't afford me,
Speaker 2: and McElroy said, let me be the judge of that,
Speaker 2: pulled out that big fat role from his pocket. Uh huh,
Speaker 2: threw it on the desk, and McFadden was delighted to
Speaker 2: have him as a cash paying client who listened to him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so McFadden was so was so good at getting
Speaker 1: them off. He well, actually they worked together. McFadden was
Speaker 1: good at getting them off, but it was he probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been nearly as successful if Ken McElroy hadn't
Speaker 1: have been also a very active participant in getting himself off.
Speaker 1: So Gene McFadden would get delay after delay, all these
Speaker 1: procedural delays to just really put as much time between
Speaker 1: Ken McElroy's arrest and the actual trial date as possible,
Speaker 1: and then Ken McElroy would get busy intimidating witnesses, and
Speaker 1: if it got closer and closer to trial and a
Speaker 1: jury wasn't paneled, he would intimidate the jurors. He would
Speaker 1: threaten their lives. He would threaten the lives of their families.
Speaker 1: He would threaten to burn their houses down, he'd threaten
Speaker 1: to kill them. He would threaten, not just with words,
Speaker 1: he would intimidate them by parking in their driveways, by
Speaker 1: brandishing guns at them, by shooting guns in the air,
Speaker 1: sometimes in the night, outside of their house, like just
Speaker 1: it would take a couple of these for the average
Speaker 1: person to be like, I can't this is not what
Speaker 1: I've signed up for. This guy's scaring me to death.
Speaker 1: Some people lasted longer than others, but most of the time,
Speaker 1: almost in every single time, Eventually he would intimidate enough
Speaker 1: of the witnesses that the cases would fall apart. And
Speaker 1: that is how he became what Crime Library referred to
Speaker 1: as this teflon coated hicic.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, like he shot a guy in the stomach in
Speaker 2: July of nineteen seventy six, a guy named Romaine Henry.
Speaker 3: And yes, you heard me right, Romaine Farmer spelled exactly
Speaker 3: like the lettuce. Was he named after the lettuce? Because
Speaker 3: was he a lettuce farmer?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Did they farm let us in Missouri?
Speaker 3: They did in you in Arizona, I think, just.
Speaker 1: For the sake of this story, Yes, he absolutely was
Speaker 1: a Romaine Lettuce. Farmer's parents raised him to.
Speaker 3: Be one and named him after that lettuce.
Speaker 2: So he was shot in the stomach with a shotgun,
Speaker 2: was not killed and got away with it. You know,
Speaker 2: in the documentary, like Romaine Henry pulls up his shirt
Speaker 2: and he's like, here's where he shot me, and court
Speaker 2: witnesses he you know, like you said earlier, he was
Speaker 2: one of his side hustles, was raising and training and
Speaker 2: selling hunting dogs, and he was well liked by some people,
Speaker 2: like the people that he dealt with with these hunting dogs.
Speaker 2: Other crime type people liked him. So he had this
Speaker 2: stable of dudes that would go to court and testify
Speaker 2: on his behalf and provide him with alibis and say, like,
Speaker 2: he didn't shoot him in the stomach. He was with
Speaker 2: us at the time of the shooting, So he got
Speaker 2: away with shooting Romaine Henry in the stomach with a shotgun.
Speaker 1: Even Yeah, and just to make sure that you understand
Speaker 1: what kind of person Kim McElroy was. The reason that
Speaker 1: he shot Romayne Henry in the stomach was because Romayne
Speaker 1: Henry approached him and said, hey, will you please not
Speaker 1: shoot pheasants out of season on my land anymore? And
Speaker 1: Kim McElroy responded by shooting him in the stomach because
Speaker 1: he told him basically to stop shooting birds illegally on
Speaker 1: that man's land.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it did matter who you were. There was a cop,
Speaker 2: even highway patrolman named Richard Stratton hashtag hero. Yeah who
Speaker 2: had you know, plenty of run ins obviously with McElroy
Speaker 2: because like you said, this is a town of you know,
Speaker 2: a few hundred people at the time. I think yep,
Speaker 2: maybe like four or five hundred. Again, so everyone knew
Speaker 2: this guy, including obviously Richard Stratton, and he had a
Speaker 2: bunch of run INDs, and so McElroy started threatening his
Speaker 2: home and his family. One day, his wife, Margaret, was
Speaker 2: on a to church. She got in the car to
Speaker 2: go to church and mclroy walks up to the car,
Speaker 2: puts a shotgun in her face. And he did that
Speaker 2: to cops wives, he did it to judges. The county magistrate,
Speaker 2: Montgomery Wilson, was so fearful that he wouldn't take these cases.
Speaker 2: He would have them move to other nearby counties.
Speaker 3: Like he was.
Speaker 2: People called him the town bully, but that is the
Speaker 2: kindest way to describe him, because he was also a
Speaker 2: child molester and rapist.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I say we take a break and then come
Speaker 1: back and talk about this all.
Speaker 3: Right, we'll be right back, all right.
Speaker 2: So when we left off, I leveled a pretty serious allegation,
Speaker 2: which is absolutely true, that Ken McElroy was a child
Speaker 2: molester and rapist. And this is one hundred percent true.
Speaker 2: The story gets very twisted and convoluted here, but it's
Speaker 2: kind of hard to follow along because he was married
Speaker 2: and then had a girlfriend and the wife at the
Speaker 2: same time, but then another one and then another Wooden
Speaker 2: would come in and they're overlapping, and he's having kids
Speaker 2: with most of them, and it gets very confusing. But
Speaker 2: like you said, he fathered ten kids. A lot of
Speaker 2: them were with underage girls. He got married for the
Speaker 2: first time in nineteen fifty two when he was eighteen
Speaker 2: and his wife, Alita, was sixteen, and he is not
Speaker 2: like he calmed down or anything. He would pray and
Speaker 2: stalk in groom girls as young as twelve and thirteen
Speaker 2: years old, one of which was a fifteen year old
Speaker 2: named Sharon, and they it was sort of a familiar
Speaker 2: pattern where he would he would groom and stalk these
Speaker 2: young teenage girls. He would abuse them, he would rape
Speaker 2: them and threaten them with death and somehow end up
Speaker 2: with them and not not somehow through coercion and threatened intimidation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he would get so he would be married already,
Speaker 1: and like you said, he'd be stalking and raping and
Speaker 1: abusing some other younger girl at the same time. And
Speaker 1: then inevitably, when charges were about to be brought against
Speaker 1: him because of his like rape and abuse and in
Speaker 1: one case shooting of one of the girls, he would
Speaker 1: he would convince them to marry him. He would go
Speaker 1: to his wife and be like, we have to get
Speaker 1: divorced because I got to marry this girl so that
Speaker 1: she won't testify against me, and he would be successful.
Speaker 1: And if if they refused at first, he would use
Speaker 1: those same tactics that he used to intimidate witnesses to
Speaker 1: intimidate these girls into marrying him and becoming and then astoundingly,
Speaker 1: he would go find a younger girl and start the
Speaker 1: whole thing over again. Like this guy got married more
Speaker 1: than once to keep the girl that he was raping
Speaker 1: from testifying against him, because back then a wife couldn't
Speaker 1: testify against her husband.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, I mean, we don't need to get into every
Speaker 2: single one of those details, but suffice it to say
Speaker 2: this was happening over and over and over remarkably sometimes
Speaker 2: you know, obviously, these girls parents would put up a
Speaker 2: fight and get involved, and he would intimidate and threaten
Speaker 2: them to the point where at one point, and this
Speaker 2: is the wife he had sort of when the final
Speaker 2: incident went down, Trina McLeod, who he got together.
Speaker 3: With, this is just so sick.
Speaker 2: When she was twelve or thirteen years old, was like
Speaker 2: picking her up from the school bus. Yeah, and school
Speaker 2: officials were like, something's going on with this creep. No
Speaker 2: one ever did anything, got her pregnant at fourteen, and
Speaker 2: moved her into the house he shared with the previous
Speaker 2: young girl that he was with. So he had a
Speaker 2: son with Trina in nineteen seventy three, and a couple
Speaker 2: of others with this young girl Alice, and went to
Speaker 2: Trina's parents' house. They obviously are saying like, you can't
Speaker 2: keep our daughter like this, and he held them back
Speaker 2: at gunpoint, brought the girls back, continued to abuse them,
Speaker 2: and then eventually he would burn down the house of
Speaker 2: Trina McLeod's parents and shoot and kill their family dog.
Speaker 3: Yeah, is he a bad enough guy at this point?
Speaker 3: All right, dear listener.
Speaker 1: Apparently somehow Trina ended up being treated by a doctor
Speaker 1: somewhere or other, and the doctor got the story out
Speaker 1: of her, and the doctor was like, wait, can you
Speaker 1: tell me all that one more time? And I guess
Speaker 1: she did. And the doctor called the authorities, and this
Speaker 1: time McElroy was in a lot of trouble and they
Speaker 1: took Trina to child Services and took her to a
Speaker 1: family foster, a foster family, and he started stalking the
Speaker 1: foster family and stalking their biological kids and threatening to
Speaker 1: rape and kill them, and that foster family would not
Speaker 1: give in. They were protecting Trina up until the time.
Speaker 1: Trina's like, all right, I forgive you. I'm going back
Speaker 1: to you, and I'm sure that foster family is like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I can't believe Yeah, I can't believe this.
Speaker 1: Can you can't make that decision? And she did and
Speaker 1: he got away with it yet again because he got
Speaker 1: her to marry him, to keep her from being able
Speaker 1: to even testify against her, and Gene McFadden in a
Speaker 1: show of just how sleazy lawyers can be, served as
Speaker 1: the witness to their wedding. I think she was fifteen
Speaker 1: at the time, and at the end of the ceremony,
Speaker 1: got her to sign a document saying all the things
Speaker 1: she told that doctor were lies, and they lived as
Speaker 1: husband and wife.
Speaker 2: Right, So this is this was his final wife, young
Speaker 2: Trinam of Cloud. He apparently got her parents because you know,
Speaker 2: you needed to have permission to get married at that age,
Speaker 2: and her parents acquiesced because he threatened to burn down
Speaker 2: the new house that they either bought or built. And
Speaker 2: this is where I get to the documentary, like a
Speaker 2: lot of it should be taken with a grain of
Speaker 2: salt because some of the local townspeople they interview are
Speaker 2: clearly sort of just maybe don't have all the facts straight.
Speaker 2: Because someone in that documentary said that he burned their
Speaker 2: house down again and shot their other new dog. And
Speaker 2: I didn't see anywhere else where that happened. I think
Speaker 2: it was just a threat or whatever.
Speaker 1: He killed a monkey too, right, That's what I heard.
Speaker 2: Deal with the documentary. So this is this is going on.
Speaker 2: He's terrorizing this town. Everyone knows he's an awful guy.
Speaker 2: He's just it can be overstated, what.
Speaker 3: An awful creep that he is.
Speaker 2: And I mean, and creep isn't even that's way too
Speaker 2: soft to describe a guy like this. Finally, in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty he sort of pushes his luck. As Livia would
Speaker 2: call this section, things have kind of come a little
Speaker 2: bit to a head.
Speaker 3: They're these local shopkeepers.
Speaker 2: They ran the B and B grocery there in town,
Speaker 2: Lois and Earnest bo Bowen Camp, and they apparently his
Speaker 2: you know, his kids would go in there and shoplifts
Speaker 2: all the time, his very young kids. And one of
Speaker 2: his young daughters, her name was Tonia or Tanya, I'm
Speaker 2: not sure how I was pronounced Unia. Tanya was like
Speaker 2: four years old and was stealing candy from the store.
Speaker 2: They confronted this young girl, and of course McElroy wouldn't
Speaker 2: stand for that, so he starts up with his usual routine,
Speaker 2: parking outside their store, staring them down, brandishing a shotgun
Speaker 2: and carrying it around with him. And in July of
Speaker 2: that year, McElroy approached bow Bowen Camp, the grocery store owner.
Speaker 2: They had a brief conversation and he shot this seventy
Speaker 2: year old man through the neck again, not killing him,
Speaker 2: but wounding him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so bow and Lois Bowen Camp were like
Speaker 1: beloved in the town. Oh yeah, this is a big deal.
Speaker 1: He had assaulted and a beloved elderly shopkeeper grocer who
Speaker 1: fed the town, and even McElroy knew it was a
Speaker 1: big deal. He fled, he tried to get out of
Speaker 1: the state. And you mentioned Richard Stratton, the Missouri Highway
Speaker 1: patrolman who had run ins over and over and over
Speaker 1: again with Ken McElroy. Well, he was out on patrol
Speaker 1: that night when that happened. That day, I guess, and
Speaker 1: he got the all points bulltener to be on the
Speaker 1: lookout for Ken McElroy. And at the time the Sheriff's office,
Speaker 1: the rest of the Highway patrol they were setting up roadblocks,
Speaker 1: looking on every highway that they could for Ken McElroy.
Speaker 1: But Richard Stratton said, no, I know this guy. He's
Speaker 1: got a police scanner. He knows exactly where they are.
Speaker 1: He's going to take every back road he confined to
Speaker 1: get to Kansas and get out of the state and
Speaker 1: lay low for a while. And Richard Stratton said, I
Speaker 1: know he's going to have to go through Fillmore, Missouri
Speaker 1: to get to Kansas, and I'm going to stake that
Speaker 1: place out. And in short order, Ken McElroy came driving
Speaker 1: through in his Silverado with Trina in the seat and
Speaker 1: he ended up getting busted by Richard Stratton. He was
Speaker 1: caught and this again even he knew this one was
Speaker 1: a big deal.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, he finally was taken into custody this time.
Speaker 2: He I don't know if he just had it instinct
Speaker 2: that there was probably no way out of this one.
Speaker 2: But he hired his trustee lawyer again McFadden, who said,
Speaker 2: all right, let's move this thing to Harrison County first
Speaker 2: of all, and here's our plan is. We're going to
Speaker 2: say that this was a dispute with Bowen Camp, this
Speaker 2: sort of argument you guys had over your daughter stealing
Speaker 2: and that he pulled a knife on you, and that
Speaker 2: it was self defense and you were you were forced
Speaker 2: to do that. He was still using his you know,
Speaker 2: typical playbook intimidation tactics on the Bowen Camps. But they
Speaker 2: refused to budget, which was great. So that was their
Speaker 2: that was their defense. We should also mention while this
Speaker 2: is going on, he continues his reign of terror on
Speaker 2: the town. There's a there was a Christian church whose
Speaker 2: minister was Tim Warren. And if you don't know anything
Speaker 2: about sort of small town, actually probably even larger town, ministers.
Speaker 2: Part of their job they don't just get up there
Speaker 2: and preach on Sundays, is they have to minister to
Speaker 2: the congregation in their community.
Speaker 3: So they will do things.
Speaker 2: Preachers and ministers will like come and check in on
Speaker 2: people if they're sick. They will visit people in the
Speaker 2: hospital if they're injured or you know, or having some troubles.
Speaker 2: And this is what Tim Warren was doing when he
Speaker 2: checked in on, or had planned to check in on
Speaker 2: Lois Bowen Camp and he got a call saying, don't
Speaker 2: go see old man Bowen Camp. It's gonna be bad
Speaker 2: news for you. He did it under cover by borrowing
Speaker 2: a friends truck and going in that, but got a
Speaker 2: call was like, hey, I knew that that was you
Speaker 2: there within your friend's truck. Nice try and if you
Speaker 2: do this again, I'm going to rape and murder your wife.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the reverend, the local reverend, Reverend Lovejoy is
Speaker 1: just told that his wife is going to be raped
Speaker 1: and murdered.
Speaker 3: Right, that's right.
Speaker 1: I didn't get what the point of that was, did you.
Speaker 1: I didn't see any interpretation of that. I just saw
Speaker 1: it explained or described. I never saw it explained.
Speaker 2: Well, I think just anyone sort of on the Bowen
Speaker 2: camp side, because who knows, like the reverend could have
Speaker 2: been called to testify or something.
Speaker 1: Who knows, I got you.
Speaker 3: That makes I think he was just trying to shut
Speaker 3: it all down, kind of like with the town marshall.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, so the town Marshal nice setup. David Dunbar
Speaker 1: was twenty four at the time, and if you were
Speaker 1: tow Marshall of Skidmore, you not only had to call
Speaker 1: the sheriff when there was an actual, real, real trouble
Speaker 1: because you weren't really allowed to do anything. You had
Speaker 1: to provide your own gun. The city would pay for
Speaker 1: your ammunition, but you had to provide your own gun.
Speaker 1: And David Dunbar was like, I don't even care about
Speaker 1: this job. I took this job because I wanted to
Speaker 1: win a bet that I had with my buddy for
Speaker 1: a case of beer. And so in short order he
Speaker 1: gets pulled into this whole thing by Ken McElroy who
Speaker 1: pulls a gun on him, holds him at gunpoint. I
Speaker 1: saw for like twenty minutes at the Punkin Festival.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not punkin Junkin.
Speaker 1: No, the Punkin Festival or the Punkin show. That's what
Speaker 1: I saw it as.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they chunk in no punks, yes.
Speaker 1: No, but David Dunbar. David Dunbar did say, like that's
Speaker 1: it for me. Man, I really didn't care that much
Speaker 1: about this job anyway. I'm not going to stand up
Speaker 1: to Ken McElroy. You guys need to find yourself another
Speaker 1: marshal and they said, fine, we will, and then they couldn't.
Speaker 1: So the town was without a marshall even for a
Speaker 1: little while.
Speaker 3: They probably didn't need one.
Speaker 1: I mean, it doesn't sound like it was very effective
Speaker 1: as positions go. And also the other thing I said,
Speaker 1: they need to call the sheriff. I saw someone intimate
Speaker 1: that the sheriff may not have either taken Ken McElroy
Speaker 1: and the trouble he caused seriously, or he may have
Speaker 1: been a friend or a sympathetic ally or something to
Speaker 1: Ken McElroy, because apparently he was not super responsive to
Speaker 1: Ken McElroy trouble calls.
Speaker 2: You know, he was interviewed in this documentary. He certainly
Speaker 2: didn't seem sympathetic. He might have been intimidated as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess that's possible. I wouldn't blame him, frankly.
Speaker 2: So this takes more than a year or I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: close to a year to come to trial because of
Speaker 2: all the delays that you know, McFadden, that's his game.
Speaker 2: Finally it does and there's another green. Like almost everyone
Speaker 2: in this story seems like they were like very young
Speaker 2: at the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The prosecutor, his name was David Baird. He was a
Speaker 2: super young attorney. He was the county prosecutor so named,
Speaker 2: just a few months earlier, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: this kid is charged with prosecuting the case. He convicted
Speaker 2: him of second degree assault and sentenced him to two
Speaker 2: years in jail. And this was the very first conviction
Speaker 2: after this years long reign of terror on this town
Speaker 2: that he faced. Of course, McFadden appealed. The judge said
Speaker 2: you're out on forty thousand dollars bail, and Baird said, oh,
Speaker 2: it sounds.
Speaker 3: Fine to me. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So like after shooting Bo Bo and Camp getting caught
Speaker 1: by the highway patrol, he gets let out on forty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars bond, which you probably paid his bail in
Speaker 1: cash from his pocket. And the town was like, you
Speaker 1: got to be kidding me, Like you let this guy free. Okay,
Speaker 1: we will hang in there. We're just gonna ride this out.
Speaker 1: And almost immediately Ken McRoy was like, how can I
Speaker 1: get my bond revoked? I know, I'll go show up
Speaker 1: at the local tavern in Skidmore, the D ANDNG Tavern,
Speaker 1: and I'll bring an M one carbine rifle with bayonet
Speaker 1: on me, and I'll talk about how I'm going to
Speaker 1: use it to finish off bo Bowen Camp in front
Speaker 1: of everybody in the bar. And that's exactly what he did.
Speaker 1: And there just happened to be a couple of brave souls.
Speaker 1: One of them was Pete Ward. I think it was
Speaker 1: he and his sons who went and fought, like confronted
Speaker 1: him about it and then went and filed the complaints,
Speaker 1: said this guy needs his bond revoked, and a bond
Speaker 1: hearing was set up ten days from then, and that
Speaker 1: set up all of the machinations that were now going
Speaker 1: to bring this story to its climax. Is it time
Speaker 1: for ad break? Have we had our second one?
Speaker 2: I mean, if that's not a perfect setup for ad break,
Speaker 2: then we've never had one.
Speaker 1: So I said that Ken McElroy has basically just brandished
Speaker 1: an arm. He's walking around town talking about he's going
Speaker 1: to finish off the guy he's been now convicted of assaulting,
Speaker 1: but he's out on bail, and Pete Ward and his
Speaker 1: sons go file a complaint and a bond hearing to
Speaker 1: see if his bond should be revoked is set up
Speaker 1: for ten days, and those ten days pass, and on
Speaker 1: the tenth day, the day of his bond hearing, a
Speaker 1: group of farmers around town who have just had it
Speaker 1: up to here with Ken McElroy come to the American
Speaker 1: Legion Hall to basically go to court with Pete Ward
Speaker 1: and Bobo and Camp and show solidarity but also show
Speaker 1: that these guys are protected. You better not mess with them.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, By most accounts, it was the adults in the
Speaker 2: town were at this American Legion Hall meeting. I think
Speaker 2: there were like a little over one hundred adults maybe
Speaker 2: living there, and it seemed like eighty of them were
Speaker 2: at this American Legion Hall meeting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a lot of people there.
Speaker 2: So they find out there that McFadden had gotten that
Speaker 2: hearing delayed, that bond hearing delayed for ten more days,
Speaker 2: so instead of July tenth, it's going to be July twentieth.
Speaker 2: They called the sheriff Danny EST's in that we talked
Speaker 2: about and he basically said, you know, there's nothing that
Speaker 2: we can do about it. And this is where I
Speaker 2: think that maybe I don't think he was friendly to McElroy.
Speaker 2: I think he was just a law about biting sheriff
Speaker 2: that was like, you know, what do you want to do,
Speaker 2: like go kill this guy in the street, Like, we
Speaker 2: can't do that. All we can do is keep tabs
Speaker 2: on this guy and you know, stick together. It is
Speaker 2: probably a good idea. So they said, that's a great idea.
Speaker 2: We should form a large group and stalk him, follow
Speaker 2: him around. Their strengthen numbers if we get enough of
Speaker 2: us together, Like what's this guy going to do?
Speaker 3: Kill all of us? There are some people that were
Speaker 3: at this.
Speaker 2: Meeting that was like, you know, no one was talking
Speaker 2: about doing anything more than that.
Speaker 3: Other people said yeah. There were some people that were so.
Speaker 2: You know, pissed off about all this that were like,
Speaker 2: we need to take matters into our own hands, vigilanti style.
Speaker 2: And they found out at this meeting that he's back
Speaker 2: in town with his wife. They went to the tavern,
Speaker 2: the DNG tavern still morning, mind you, they're in there
Speaker 2: drinking and they all go down there. They walk in
Speaker 2: there as a group and fill this tavern about fifty
Speaker 2: to sixty people, and it's clear what's going on. McElroy
Speaker 2: would not be intimidated. He did leave, but he apparently
Speaker 2: just sort of thumbed his nose in their faces, bought
Speaker 2: a six pack to go and was like, you know,
Speaker 2: let's get out of here, Trina and walked out.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So this crowd was like, okay, I kind of
Speaker 1: like this, following this guy around, watching his every step thing,
Speaker 1: and they actually walked out of the bar with him,
Speaker 1: and supposedly there was between thirty and sixty people. Some
Speaker 1: people had cleared out. Romayne Henry, whom he'd shot in
Speaker 1: the stomach before, said that he sensed that this crowd
Speaker 1: was possibly out for blood, and he didn't want to
Speaker 1: have anything to do with it, so he laughed. So
Speaker 1: not everybody who was in the VFW Hall or the
Speaker 1: American Legion Hall was in the parking lot of the
Speaker 1: D ANDNG tavern, but a significant number of people were,
Speaker 1: and they had Ken McElroy and Trina surrounded in Ken
Speaker 1: McElroy's Silverado. Ken McElroy apparently had the car turned on
Speaker 1: still had him park. He pulled out a cigarette and
Speaker 1: I saw that he either had just lit it or
Speaker 1: was about to light it when somebody shot him in
Speaker 1: the head with a high powered hunting rifle and then
Speaker 1: follow that up with a shot to the neck with
Speaker 1: Trina right next to him, who is suddenly covered in
Speaker 1: his blood.
Speaker 2: Yeah, through the back wind shield of the pickup truck,
Speaker 2: I imagine instantly killed him with that first shot. His foot
Speaker 2: slams on the gas and this thing is revving at.
Speaker 3: Like full bore.
Speaker 2: This old truck starts smoking and eventually blows the engine
Speaker 2: and it just goes silent. Trina apparently urinated herself, was
Speaker 2: initially told to stay in the car or she would
Speaker 2: be killed two and then gets hustled out of this
Speaker 2: truck into a nearby bank and a bunch of more
Speaker 2: shooting happens until the shooting stops. It's about twenty seconds
Speaker 2: worth of shooting. People go up peek in this truck.
Speaker 2: Mclaroy is hunched over. No one helps the.
Speaker 3: Guy at all, and in the end they.
Speaker 2: Figure out he was hit by two different bullet types,
Speaker 2: so two different guns had actually made contact with his body,
Speaker 2: two different bullets, So.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: In the documentary again, there were people that were like,
Speaker 2: you know, five or six people shot him, three or
Speaker 2: four people shot him. Like everyone sort of got their
Speaker 2: own story. But as far as the you know, autopsy goes,
Speaker 2: there were two different calibers of bullet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because here's the twist to this whole story. We
Speaker 1: don't know. At the very least, the law can't say
Speaker 1: who killed Kim McElroy. They were between thirty to sixty
Speaker 1: people who were standing right there when he was killed
Speaker 1: from several feet away, and no one saw a thing.
Speaker 1: The town circled the wagons and clammed up to this day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the town fully cleared out right after that, and
Speaker 2: like he was just sitting there alone in the middle
Speaker 2: of town deadness truck. Apparently they went into some local
Speaker 2: businesses in this One woman in the documentary said, we
Speaker 2: were just sort of hanging out in there and someone
Speaker 2: came in and said it's over. You can sleep tonight,
Speaker 2: now just stand behind us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And they did. Man, I mean they did the
Speaker 1: law I saw. Depending on who you ask, the law
Speaker 1: took this very seriously like any other murder, and investigated
Speaker 1: and tried to prosecute it. Others are like Yeah, the
Speaker 1: local law didn't try that hard because everybody knew that
Speaker 1: this was actually justice, even though it was a grotesque
Speaker 1: form of justice.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Either way, no one was ever prosecuted, No one was
Speaker 1: even ever arrested or charged with the murder of Ken McElroy,
Speaker 1: because not a single witness would crack. There was apparently
Speaker 1: one witness who shortly after said that they saw a
Speaker 1: man named Dell Clement and another man speed off very
Speaker 1: quickly right after the shooting, and that person apparently said, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I was mistaken. That's the closest the cops
Speaker 1: got to a witness statement about who may have shot
Speaker 1: Ken McElroy. No one would say anything. Some people were
Speaker 1: interviewed five to six times. Yeah, and no one cracked.
Speaker 1: They would not crack. And yet whoever said that they
Speaker 1: saw Deel Clement speed off was probably telling the truth.
Speaker 1: Because Trina, Ken's wife, who by this time is twenty
Speaker 1: four and looks a lot like somebody who would have
Speaker 1: been friends with Eileen Warnos, it says that she turned
Speaker 1: around right before the shooting started and saw very clearly
Speaker 1: del Clement, owner co owner of the DNG tavern, taking
Speaker 1: aim and shooting Ken McElroy in the head with his
Speaker 1: deer rifle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was not only the owner of the tavern,
Speaker 2: but he had a livestock that had been Pilford. Apparently
Speaker 2: it was a big hothead, and I get the sense
Speaker 2: took great pleasure in pulling that trigger, as the sense
Speaker 2: I got.
Speaker 3: There was a lady in.
Speaker 2: The documentary and again this is the grain of salt,
Speaker 2: that said that the main gun was thrown in a river.
Speaker 3: So I was like, oh, very interesting. I hadn't heard
Speaker 3: that anywhere else.
Speaker 2: But she also said right after that she heard that
Speaker 2: they had maclroy's head in a head somewhere and a
Speaker 2: freezer thing. So they couldn't do like more I guess
Speaker 2: bullet ballistics work or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you couldn't find it because it was stolen by
Speaker 1: a monkey.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think that happened.
Speaker 2: There was another guy in there named Britt Small, and
Speaker 2: I get the feeling they just kind of gathered up
Speaker 2: whoever was still around and was like, you know, talk
Speaker 2: to me. And Britt was a local guy, a Vietnam veteran,
Speaker 2: who was like, you know what. The only mistake they
Speaker 2: made is that they let Trina live. I would have
Speaker 2: killed him in his driveway. I would have ambushed them both,
Speaker 2: killed her and him and burned his house down.
Speaker 3: That's what I would have done.
Speaker 1: Well, she if you read the newspaper accounts, like immediately after,
Speaker 1: the Kansas City Star had a couple of articles like
Speaker 1: the week after, like she's scared to death or she
Speaker 1: sounded scared to death that she was going to be
Speaker 1: next or that her kids were going to be murdered.
Speaker 1: And then of course the town's people that they interviewed
Speaker 1: for the same article are like, no one wishes her
Speaker 1: any ill, will right, you know, she's not in any danger.
Speaker 1: But she swore that she was told to stay out
Speaker 1: of Skidmore, doon't ever come back, or else she was
Speaker 1: going to get it and her kids would be after that.
Speaker 1: It's I don't know. It probably just depends on which
Speaker 1: town person you talk to.
Speaker 2: I mean, both things can be true. They could have
Speaker 2: felt like she was a victim, but also please leave.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And apparently when she was hustled off to
Speaker 1: the bank, whoever did that saved her life because even
Speaker 1: if they hadn't have been aiming for she probably would
Speaker 1: have gotten hit by a stray bullet. After that second
Speaker 1: round but when she was hustled at the bank, there
Speaker 1: was like a crowd, like you said to people there
Speaker 1: that seemed to be just sitting there watching, like people
Speaker 1: knew what was about to happen or what was going down.
Speaker 1: And she said they didn't need to do him like that,
Speaker 1: and someone said they had no choice. So even if
Speaker 1: you didn't agree with that mob, justice that had taken place,
Speaker 1: and you were a Skidmore resident, at the very least
Speaker 1: you weren't about to turn on your you know, fellow townspeople.
Speaker 1: Certainly not for the likes of somebody like Ken McElroy
Speaker 1: or Trina.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And in the end, you know, they couldn't with
Speaker 2: only Trina's word, there was nothing they could do that
Speaker 2: young Prosecutor Baird and the FBI said, you know, this
Speaker 2: is all we've got. We can't move forward. Everyone else
Speaker 2: is saying they don't know what happened. The FBI closed
Speaker 2: their investigation on September two, nineteen eighty two, And I
Speaker 2: believe the shariff, I'm sorry, the police chief, Hal Riddle
Speaker 2: was running the investigation and he said, you know, he
Speaker 2: was really trying to get this case to go to
Speaker 2: trial because he's he is a law enforcement officer, and
Speaker 2: they weren't all like great mob justice, you know, they're like,
Speaker 2: we we should have handled it to begin with, but
Speaker 2: you certainly can't handle it this way. And he said
Speaker 2: it was the most frustrating case of his career, and
Speaker 2: basically like this town got away with murder.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and if the local law enforcement didn't work hard enough,
Speaker 1: that was par for the course. Because if there was
Speaker 1: any theme to this aside from this horrible bully, it
Speaker 1: was the local institutions failing the community time after time
Speaker 1: after time after time for any number of reasons because
Speaker 1: they were intimidated because they were crup two no's. But
Speaker 1: that was like the subtext of this whole thing is
Speaker 1: that this community essentially had to take matters into their
Speaker 1: own hands or else this guy was going to eventually
Speaker 1: kill somebody, and they just decided that that was not
Speaker 1: going to happen. They were going to stop it before
Speaker 1: it happened. So it's tough to fault them for what
Speaker 1: they did. Even though I don't agree with that, I
Speaker 1: still I understand why they did it.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: I think you cannot agree with mob justice and also
Speaker 2: say the town of Skidmore in the world was probably
Speaker 2: better off without this child rapist walking around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, you're right. I like your theories. I'm going
Speaker 1: to subscribe to your newsletter.
Speaker 2: So as for Clement, the supposed one of the supposed shooters,
Speaker 2: he never said a thing about it. He died in
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine. Trina in nineteen eighty five filed
Speaker 2: a wrongful death civil case against the mayor, Clement, and
Speaker 2: the sheriff for five million bucks, settled for seventeen thousand,
Speaker 2: six hundred. The defendants didn't have to admit to any wrongdoing,
Speaker 2: they just wanted it to go away. She got remarried
Speaker 2: and a couple of years before that, in nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 2: so two years after the killing, and she died in
Speaker 2: twenty twelve. And you know, there was no mention of
Speaker 2: that life of hers in her obituary. I think she
Speaker 2: really put it behind her, and I hope at some point,
Speaker 2: you know, there are interviews with her. That's the one
Speaker 2: interesting thing about the doc, Like not too long after
Speaker 2: their interviews with Trina McLoud. I would hope that at
Speaker 2: some point she realized that.
Speaker 3: She was a victim.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I hope so too, and came to on that.
Speaker 1: But who knows, because I mean, you you there's a there,
Speaker 1: there's a certain amount of like grudging admiration you have
Speaker 1: for at the very least. It's like, man, this girl
Speaker 1: is so twisted. She was like a really ardent defendant
Speaker 1: of her husband's reputation and honor and memory and like
Speaker 1: really went would She was really like mad that they
Speaker 1: had killed him.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: One other detail I saw was that she offered a
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars reward for the for information about who
Speaker 1: killed them. Somebody had come forward, but she didn't have
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars. She was putting it up against the
Speaker 1: movie rights. She presumed she would eventually be paid for.
Speaker 3: Oh interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'm not sure. I don't think anybody would
Speaker 1: have take the five grand anyway, but certainly not a
Speaker 1: phantom five grand that didn't actually exist yet.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: As for the attorney, he was always like he was
Speaker 2: never like, you know, I really regret representing that dirt bag.
Speaker 3: He was pretty proud of his work.
Speaker 2: He had a long career as a lobbyist working in
Speaker 2: the legislature there in Missouri, and apparently would like buy
Speaker 2: copies of McLean's book and have McLean sign them and
Speaker 2: hand them out to all the delegates in the state Senate.
Speaker 2: He died in twenty twelve, Like I said, very proud
Speaker 2: of his work. And Stratton, the highway patrolman that we mentioned,
Speaker 2: was the guy who in an interview said, you know
Speaker 2: they did what they did because we didn't do our job,
Speaker 2: and I think he felt forever bad that the law
Speaker 2: enforcement had failed that town.
Speaker 1: Yeah. He also said in that same interview he knew
Speaker 1: for sure who did it, and he was never going
Speaker 1: to say.
Speaker 2: I think it was Clement, I just don't know who
Speaker 2: the second shooter was. The guy that says he would
Speaker 2: have killed them both and burned their house down, claims
Speaker 2: that he knew the second shooter, but he wouldn't say
Speaker 2: it either.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you got anything else?
Speaker 3: I got nothing else?
Speaker 1: Quite a story, yeah, man, Yeah, thanks and thanks Olivia
Speaker 1: for helping us with it. And since Chuck said good pick,
Speaker 1: that means, of course it's time for a brand new
Speaker 1: listener mail.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: This is a follow up on our what I thought
Speaker 2: was a really good episode that I enjoyed on Kenton
Speaker 2: Grua and the Grand Canyon River speed Record.
Speaker 3: Great episode on that guys.
Speaker 2: I read the book a few years ago, and to
Speaker 2: answer a question you had about the eleven pm start time.
Speaker 2: As I recall, you're correct in their desire to employ
Speaker 2: the cover of darkness. There was also another, probably more
Speaker 2: important issue that led to that decision. Per my recollection
Speaker 2: of the book, it was the timing of when they
Speaker 2: would run into the rapids where they eventually swamped the boat.
Speaker 2: That was a stretch they had expected would be the
Speaker 2: crux of the trip. Pointed out Kitting in his team
Speaker 2: were tenured river rats who knew all the river like
Speaker 2: the back of their hand. However, the unique dynamics of
Speaker 2: the unprecedented CFS meant that they were uncertain of exactly
Speaker 2: how fast they would be moving. By starting when they did,
Speaker 2: they were able to more or less ensure that section
Speaker 2: of the river where they flipped would be squarely in
Speaker 2: the middle of the day. A good worst case scenario
Speaker 2: and good pre planning.
Speaker 3: And that's from Noah. That sounds like a very reasonable assertion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks a lot, Noah. I'm not going to challenge
Speaker 1: him on it. Heck no, yeah, Okay. Well, if you
Speaker 1: want to be like Noah and be like, hey, I
Speaker 1: got you guys, you have a question, I'm in Noah,
Speaker 1: then get in touch with us. Do it like Noah did.
Speaker 1: Do everything like Noah did. Send us an email to
Speaker 1: Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 3: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 3: or wherever you listen your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: M