WEBVTT - SYSK’s Fall True Crime Playlist: The Strange Unsolved Murder of Ken McElroy 0:00:01.280 --> 0:00:03.840 The murder of Ken McElroy is an example of the 0:00:03.920 --> 0:00:07.360 kind of small town justice so well served that it 0:00:07.400 --> 0:00:10.000 seems like it's gotta be a movie. And it was 0:00:10.039 --> 0:00:13.200 a movie, not a very good one starring Brian Denahey, 0:00:13.600 --> 0:00:16.840 but the actual crime came first and it was true, 0:00:17.200 --> 0:00:20.400 hence its inclusion on this playlist. At any rate, the 0:00:20.400 --> 0:00:23.320 town of Skidmore, Missouri, doesn't play around. If they're pushed 0:00:23.360 --> 0:00:25.120 too far, you can bet on that. 0:00:29.080 --> 0:00:37.920 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:38.800 --> 0:00:41.200 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's 0:00:41.360 --> 0:00:44.479 Chuck and Jerry's here too, pushing us around as usual 0:00:45.240 --> 0:00:47.239 with this episode of Stuff you Should Know. 0:00:48.159 --> 0:00:51.839 Our second episode for us of the new year, And 0:00:54.080 --> 0:00:55.960 why didn't we save like a pretty happy one to 0:00:55.960 --> 0:00:56.560 get going with. 0:00:57.920 --> 0:01:00.960 I don't know, I don't know, probably because we knew 0:01:00.960 --> 0:01:02.800 we were going to be so bummed out after Jonestown. 0:01:02.840 --> 0:01:06.200 We needed something that was a pick me up. And 0:01:06.240 --> 0:01:09.080 what's crazy is this story actually is a pick me 0:01:09.160 --> 0:01:10.640 up compared to Jonestown. 0:01:11.120 --> 0:01:14.480 Yeh boy, that's tough to parse out. So thank you 0:01:14.560 --> 0:01:19.039 to Olivia for diving into this tough story and also 0:01:19.880 --> 0:01:22.399 this episode we want to issue a very big trigger 0:01:22.400 --> 0:01:25.960 warning because in it we are going to talk about 0:01:26.000 --> 0:01:29.920 a very bad man and some of the bad things 0:01:29.959 --> 0:01:34.760 he did, which included sexual assault, and some of which 0:01:34.760 --> 0:01:39.800 were with minors. So trigger warning. Know that going in. 0:01:40.360 --> 0:01:41.360 There's no way around it. 0:01:43.040 --> 0:01:46.319 There's very few stories that have like a clear cut villain, 0:01:48.080 --> 0:01:50.760 but this is one of them. And the villain who's 0:01:50.760 --> 0:01:54.160 also the center of our story. The person at the 0:01:54.200 --> 0:01:59.360 center of our story is a man named Ken Rex McElroy. Yeah, 0:01:59.400 --> 0:02:02.800 which I mean all you need to hear is that name, really, 0:02:02.840 --> 0:02:05.680 I think, and it kind of just puts a weird 0:02:05.960 --> 0:02:08.760 chill down your spine that you can't quite identify yet. 0:02:09.400 --> 0:02:11.760 Yeah, this is a story that you may have heard 0:02:11.760 --> 0:02:16.560 of before. There's no shortage of content about Ken McElroy. 0:02:17.520 --> 0:02:19.560 There was a book written in nineteen eighty eight by 0:02:19.800 --> 0:02:23.840 Harry McClain, a crime writer, called in Broad Daylight You 0:02:23.880 --> 0:02:27.880 Know What's Coming colon Our Murder in Skidmore, Missouri. There 0:02:27.960 --> 0:02:31.000 was a documentary just a few years ago in twenty 0:02:31.080 --> 0:02:35.400 nineteen called documentary series actually called No One Saw a Thing. 0:02:36.080 --> 0:02:37.720 Of which I watched at the first episode. 0:02:37.880 --> 0:02:41.040 How is it I didn't get a chance to yet, Well. 0:02:40.800 --> 0:02:42.519 We'll talk about it. It's okay. 0:02:42.680 --> 0:02:45.440 It's got like a seven plus on IMDb. That's really 0:02:45.480 --> 0:02:46.079 saying something. 0:02:46.840 --> 0:02:50.320 Yeah, Chuck gives it a six minus. 0:02:50.600 --> 0:02:52.239 Okay, Still it's not too bad. 0:02:52.639 --> 0:02:53.160 It's okay. 0:02:53.600 --> 0:02:55.400 I mean, not a ton of light was shed. So 0:02:55.919 --> 0:02:57.880 maybe it's because if I went into it blind it 0:02:57.960 --> 0:02:58.480 might have been. 0:02:58.360 --> 0:02:58.920 A little better. 0:02:59.000 --> 0:02:59.440 Gotcha. 0:03:00.320 --> 0:03:03.600 But there's also a nineteen ninety one TV movie starring 0:03:03.880 --> 0:03:07.840 Brian Denahey and Marcia gay Harden, which I actually I 0:03:07.880 --> 0:03:12.000 watched a very bad YouTube version of it. Mostly I 0:03:12.040 --> 0:03:14.160 scribbed you a little bit of it. But it's actually 0:03:14.240 --> 0:03:17.760 not terrible for a nineteen ninety one TV movie, largely 0:03:17.800 --> 0:03:20.200 because Brian Dennehey is perfectly cast and awesome. 0:03:20.440 --> 0:03:24.880 Yeah, he really is. I don't understand why they changed 0:03:24.919 --> 0:03:29.120 the names. Did Harry MacLean change the names for in 0:03:29.200 --> 0:03:29.920 Broad Daylight? 0:03:30.600 --> 0:03:33.560 I didn't read the book, but I don't know. Sometimes 0:03:33.600 --> 0:03:35.440 they do that with TV movies, huh. 0:03:35.440 --> 0:03:37.240 Well, regardlessly innocent, you know. 0:03:37.560 --> 0:03:42.400 I scrubbed ahead to the last probably thirty minutes, saw 0:03:42.440 --> 0:03:43.240 the good stuff. 0:03:43.320 --> 0:03:44.200 That's kind of all you need. 0:03:44.360 --> 0:03:46.920 And you're right, Brian Dennehey was great in it, and 0:03:47.000 --> 0:03:49.640 Marcia gay Harden did a great job at the really 0:03:49.680 --> 0:03:50.920 important point. 0:03:51.480 --> 0:03:55.320 Yeah, she's a tremendous actor, as was Dennehee Rip, Brian Dennhey. 0:03:55.760 --> 0:04:00.880 So Ken Rex McElroy. He was from skid' More in Missouri. 0:04:01.040 --> 0:04:05.000 That's where this story takes place. He was the fifteenth 0:04:05.040 --> 0:04:08.440 of sixteen kids. From what I saw, he was born 0:04:08.480 --> 0:04:12.440 in nineteen thirty four. And you can be the wealthiest 0:04:12.440 --> 0:04:15.080 person in your state and have sixteen kids and you're 0:04:15.080 --> 0:04:18.440 still going to be hard scrabble. Sure, his dad wasn't 0:04:18.440 --> 0:04:21.039 the wealthiest person in the state. So the mcilroys grew 0:04:21.120 --> 0:04:23.720 up kind of doing what they could to make their 0:04:23.760 --> 0:04:30.159 own way. And Ken himself, I saw either he made 0:04:30.200 --> 0:04:32.480 it up to age fifteen in school, which is a 0:04:32.520 --> 0:04:35.560 surprising statistic to me after I know a little more 0:04:35.600 --> 0:04:38.520 about him. I also saw that he was illiterate, which 0:04:38.560 --> 0:04:41.640 I would definitely believe more than the fact that he 0:04:41.800 --> 0:04:45.240 made it up to age fifteen in school. Either way, 0:04:45.360 --> 0:04:49.360 at a young age he started taking up crime. You 0:04:49.360 --> 0:04:51.760 get the impression not just out of necessity, but also 0:04:52.000 --> 0:04:54.159 probably out of a certain amount of pleasure. 0:04:54.800 --> 0:04:58.679 Yeah, and this was to frame it in then nineteen forties. 0:04:58.720 --> 0:05:01.320 He was born in thirty four, so by the time 0:05:01.360 --> 0:05:05.640 he was criming, it was in nineteen forties. One thing 0:05:05.640 --> 0:05:08.400 we should mention is, and I'm glad Livia dug this up, 0:05:08.720 --> 0:05:11.440 and this is no way excusing any of his behaviors, 0:05:11.480 --> 0:05:14.880 but when he was eighteen year years old, he was 0:05:14.880 --> 0:05:18.120 a working construction and there was an accident where some 0:05:18.720 --> 0:05:22.200 very heavy cribbing fell about thirty feet and hit him 0:05:22.200 --> 0:05:25.160 in the head. He had a construction helmet, but it 0:05:26.040 --> 0:05:29.320 cut his scalp, so it clearly, you know, provided minimal protection. 0:05:30.040 --> 0:05:32.560 And he said that he had a steel plate implanted 0:05:32.600 --> 0:05:36.279 and had episodes of like blackout episodes and pain throughout 0:05:36.279 --> 0:05:38.800 the rest of his life. And it should be noted 0:05:38.839 --> 0:05:43.880 that one common denominator in many cases of you know, 0:05:44.120 --> 0:05:46.800 sick people who do awful things is head injury when 0:05:46.800 --> 0:05:51.200 they're younger, So that very well may have been the case. Again, 0:05:51.279 --> 0:05:54.320 not excusing anything he did, but we're trying to paint 0:05:54.320 --> 0:05:55.200 a full picture here. 0:05:55.440 --> 0:05:58.080 He was like a modern day Phineas Gage. 0:05:58.600 --> 0:06:02.400 Yeah, exactly, like you said, It seemed like he enjoyed 0:06:02.520 --> 0:06:04.640 criming from a young age. 0:06:04.680 --> 0:06:06.359 He was a pretty i. 0:06:06.320 --> 0:06:08.960 Mean this is before the accident, even he was a 0:06:08.960 --> 0:06:11.719 pretty disturbed young man. 0:06:13.720 --> 0:06:15.720 Yeah. Oh, I have to say, yeah, I would say 0:06:15.880 --> 0:06:20.239 I would definitely agree with that. But he did do stuff. 0:06:20.279 --> 0:06:22.800 He wasn't just like a lay about like. He was 0:06:22.839 --> 0:06:28.400 a kind of an industrious criminal. He also trained hunting dogs. 0:06:29.279 --> 0:06:34.960 He was a dealer of antiques, a buyer and seller. 0:06:36.520 --> 0:06:39.640 But more than anything, he was a cattle wrestler. Apparently, 0:06:39.680 --> 0:06:44.520 the year before his death, the county that skidaways in 0:06:45.279 --> 0:06:50.480 our Skidmores in not Away County, the cattle thefts were 0:06:50.560 --> 0:06:53.159 six times that of any other place in the state. 0:06:53.360 --> 0:06:56.960 It led the state in cattle thefts. And apparently a 0:06:57.040 --> 0:07:02.280 lot of that was Ken Mackle. He was flush with cash. 0:07:02.600 --> 0:07:06.880 He would buy new cars, he could support. He ended 0:07:06.960 --> 0:07:10.800 up having at least ten kids, could support them all. 0:07:10.960 --> 0:07:13.520 He had a lot of money and all of it 0:07:13.640 --> 0:07:16.880 essentially was from crime because he had a tiny little 0:07:16.880 --> 0:07:19.920 farm and he wasn't making much of any money off 0:07:19.960 --> 0:07:22.400 of that. He was making it from stealing. 0:07:23.240 --> 0:07:23.760 Yeah. 0:07:23.800 --> 0:07:25.720 And when we say he had a lot of money, 0:07:25.960 --> 0:07:29.240 it's not the kind of it's not wealth. He had 0:07:29.240 --> 0:07:33.120 the kind of money for a criminal in the nineteen 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:36.840 sixties and skid More, Missouri, he. 0:07:36.880 --> 0:07:38.080 Had skid More money. 0:07:38.440 --> 0:07:41.280 Yeah, which is to say, oh, I hope there's no 0:07:41.320 --> 0:07:45.840 skidded Marians. There's a couple hundred of them well listening 0:07:45.920 --> 0:07:48.920 to us. Yeah, I just assume the whole town listens 0:07:48.960 --> 0:07:49.679 to us anyway. 0:07:50.120 --> 0:07:51.559 They're probably so sick of a story. 0:07:52.640 --> 0:07:55.440 But he's the kind of kind of money guy that 0:07:55.520 --> 0:07:58.040 like he always had like a few grand in his 0:07:58.120 --> 0:08:01.160 pocket with a big, fat money roll, like that kind 0:08:01.200 --> 0:08:03.840 of dude. He was a big guy. He was like 0:08:03.920 --> 0:08:07.680 six two or sixty three, had this sort of here 0:08:07.720 --> 0:08:10.000 again kind of like Jim Jones men of the time, 0:08:10.440 --> 0:08:14.160 had this jet black hair and these huge sideburns. He 0:08:14.240 --> 0:08:17.920 was imposing. But he picked on people smaller than he 0:08:17.960 --> 0:08:21.040 picked on women and children and young girls, and took 0:08:21.080 --> 0:08:24.680 advantage of all these people. And he was arrested and 0:08:24.800 --> 0:08:29.440 charged at least twenty one times without being convicted. And 0:08:29.440 --> 0:08:31.280 if you're thinking, like, how in the world does that 0:08:31.440 --> 0:08:36.480 happen when people know he's committing crimes, he's getting arrested 0:08:36.480 --> 0:08:39.960 of these committing these crimes, it's because he had a 0:08:40.120 --> 0:08:46.960 very I guess good, slippery attorney named Richard Gene McFadden 0:08:47.360 --> 0:08:51.560 who was supposedly a mob attorney in Kansas City, and 0:08:51.720 --> 0:08:54.160 upon their first meeting, he was like, you can't afford me, 0:08:54.880 --> 0:08:57.160 and McElroy said, let me be the judge of that, 0:08:57.400 --> 0:09:00.400 pulled out that big fat role from his pocket. Uh huh, 0:09:00.440 --> 0:09:04.040 threw it on the desk, and McFadden was delighted to 0:09:04.120 --> 0:09:07.480 have him as a cash paying client who listened to him. 0:09:07.640 --> 0:09:13.880 Yeah, so McFadden was so was so good at getting 0:09:13.920 --> 0:09:19.480 them off. He well, actually they worked together. McFadden was 0:09:19.520 --> 0:09:22.040 good at getting them off, but it was he probably 0:09:22.040 --> 0:09:25.319 wouldn't have been nearly as successful if Ken McElroy hadn't 0:09:25.320 --> 0:09:29.640 have been also a very active participant in getting himself off. 0:09:31.280 --> 0:09:35.439 So Gene McFadden would get delay after delay, all these 0:09:35.440 --> 0:09:39.920 procedural delays to just really put as much time between 0:09:40.520 --> 0:09:44.280 Ken McElroy's arrest and the actual trial date as possible, 0:09:44.800 --> 0:09:50.360 and then Ken McElroy would get busy intimidating witnesses, and 0:09:50.480 --> 0:09:52.760 if it got closer and closer to trial and a 0:09:52.840 --> 0:09:56.480 jury wasn't paneled, he would intimidate the jurors. He would 0:09:56.520 --> 0:09:59.079 threaten their lives. He would threaten the lives of their families. 0:09:59.200 --> 0:10:01.440 He would threaten to burn their houses down, he'd threaten 0:10:01.520 --> 0:10:05.360 to kill them. He would threaten, not just with words, 0:10:05.880 --> 0:10:09.400 he would intimidate them by parking in their driveways, by 0:10:10.000 --> 0:10:12.800 brandishing guns at them, by shooting guns in the air, 0:10:12.920 --> 0:10:17.240 sometimes in the night, outside of their house, like just 0:10:17.679 --> 0:10:21.079 it would take a couple of these for the average 0:10:21.120 --> 0:10:23.920 person to be like, I can't this is not what 0:10:23.960 --> 0:10:26.800 I've signed up for. This guy's scaring me to death. 0:10:27.440 --> 0:10:30.320 Some people lasted longer than others, but most of the time, 0:10:30.400 --> 0:10:34.640 almost in every single time, Eventually he would intimidate enough 0:10:34.679 --> 0:10:37.560 of the witnesses that the cases would fall apart. And 0:10:37.679 --> 0:10:42.480 that is how he became what Crime Library referred to 0:10:42.640 --> 0:10:44.760 as this teflon coated hicic. 0:10:45.679 --> 0:10:46.000 Yeah. 0:10:46.040 --> 0:10:50.040 Absolutely, like he shot a guy in the stomach in 0:10:50.120 --> 0:10:53.720 July of nineteen seventy six, a guy named Romaine Henry. 0:10:53.800 --> 0:10:57.160 And yes, you heard me right, Romaine Farmer spelled exactly 0:10:57.240 --> 0:11:00.280 like the lettuce. Was he named after the lettuce? Because 0:11:00.400 --> 0:11:01.240 was he a lettuce farmer? 0:11:01.400 --> 0:11:03.240 I don't know. Did they farm let us in Missouri? 0:11:04.559 --> 0:11:06.920 They did in you in Arizona, I think, just. 0:11:06.880 --> 0:11:10.160 For the sake of this story, Yes, he absolutely was 0:11:10.240 --> 0:11:12.920 a Romaine Lettuce. Farmer's parents raised him to. 0:11:12.840 --> 0:11:15.360 Be one and named him after that lettuce. 0:11:15.600 --> 0:11:18.040 So he was shot in the stomach with a shotgun, 0:11:19.040 --> 0:11:23.320 was not killed and got away with it. You know, 0:11:23.679 --> 0:11:26.560 in the documentary, like Romaine Henry pulls up his shirt 0:11:26.559 --> 0:11:29.760 and he's like, here's where he shot me, and court 0:11:29.840 --> 0:11:33.080 witnesses he you know, like you said earlier, he was 0:11:33.480 --> 0:11:36.720 one of his side hustles, was raising and training and 0:11:36.760 --> 0:11:41.000 selling hunting dogs, and he was well liked by some people, 0:11:41.080 --> 0:11:43.520 like the people that he dealt with with these hunting dogs. 0:11:43.920 --> 0:11:46.960 Other crime type people liked him. So he had this 0:11:47.040 --> 0:11:51.040 stable of dudes that would go to court and testify 0:11:51.320 --> 0:11:54.480 on his behalf and provide him with alibis and say, like, 0:11:54.640 --> 0:11:56.440 he didn't shoot him in the stomach. He was with 0:11:56.559 --> 0:11:59.559 us at the time of the shooting, So he got 0:11:59.600 --> 0:12:02.640 away with shooting Romaine Henry in the stomach with a shotgun. 0:12:02.679 --> 0:12:06.319 Even Yeah, and just to make sure that you understand 0:12:06.320 --> 0:12:08.920 what kind of person Kim McElroy was. The reason that 0:12:08.960 --> 0:12:12.040 he shot Romayne Henry in the stomach was because Romayne 0:12:12.080 --> 0:12:15.520 Henry approached him and said, hey, will you please not 0:12:15.600 --> 0:12:19.120 shoot pheasants out of season on my land anymore? And 0:12:19.240 --> 0:12:22.240 Kim McElroy responded by shooting him in the stomach because 0:12:22.240 --> 0:12:25.600 he told him basically to stop shooting birds illegally on 0:12:25.720 --> 0:12:26.600 that man's land. 0:12:27.280 --> 0:12:30.640 Yeah, it did matter who you were. There was a cop, 0:12:30.679 --> 0:12:36.120 even highway patrolman named Richard Stratton hashtag hero. Yeah who 0:12:36.120 --> 0:12:38.400 had you know, plenty of run ins obviously with McElroy 0:12:38.400 --> 0:12:41.520 because like you said, this is a town of you know, 0:12:41.640 --> 0:12:43.839 a few hundred people at the time. I think yep, 0:12:44.160 --> 0:12:47.680 maybe like four or five hundred. Again, so everyone knew 0:12:47.720 --> 0:12:51.520 this guy, including obviously Richard Stratton, and he had a 0:12:51.520 --> 0:12:55.760 bunch of run INDs, and so McElroy started threatening his 0:12:56.520 --> 0:12:59.440 home and his family. One day, his wife, Margaret, was 0:12:59.720 --> 0:13:01.360 on a to church. She got in the car to 0:13:01.360 --> 0:13:03.360 go to church and mclroy walks up to the car, 0:13:03.679 --> 0:13:06.960 puts a shotgun in her face. And he did that 0:13:07.280 --> 0:13:10.080 to cops wives, he did it to judges. The county magistrate, 0:13:10.120 --> 0:13:14.320 Montgomery Wilson, was so fearful that he wouldn't take these cases. 0:13:14.360 --> 0:13:16.880 He would have them move to other nearby counties. 0:13:16.920 --> 0:13:17.440 Like he was. 0:13:18.240 --> 0:13:21.120 People called him the town bully, but that is the 0:13:21.880 --> 0:13:25.680 kindest way to describe him, because he was also a 0:13:26.120 --> 0:13:28.040 child molester and rapist. 0:13:28.679 --> 0:13:30.320 Yeah. I say we take a break and then come 0:13:30.360 --> 0:13:32.160 back and talk about this all. 0:13:32.200 --> 0:13:56.199 Right, we'll be right back, all right. 0:13:56.240 --> 0:13:59.800 So when we left off, I leveled a pretty serious allegation, 0:14:00.240 --> 0:14:03.920 which is absolutely true, that Ken McElroy was a child 0:14:04.000 --> 0:14:07.439 molester and rapist. And this is one hundred percent true. 0:14:07.720 --> 0:14:12.360 The story gets very twisted and convoluted here, but it's 0:14:12.440 --> 0:14:16.679 kind of hard to follow along because he was married 0:14:16.840 --> 0:14:18.760 and then had a girlfriend and the wife at the 0:14:18.800 --> 0:14:21.520 same time, but then another one and then another Wooden 0:14:21.520 --> 0:14:24.320 would come in and they're overlapping, and he's having kids 0:14:24.360 --> 0:14:27.040 with most of them, and it gets very confusing. But 0:14:27.560 --> 0:14:30.600 like you said, he fathered ten kids. A lot of 0:14:30.640 --> 0:14:33.680 them were with underage girls. He got married for the 0:14:33.720 --> 0:14:36.280 first time in nineteen fifty two when he was eighteen 0:14:36.360 --> 0:14:40.200 and his wife, Alita, was sixteen, and he is not 0:14:40.240 --> 0:14:44.600 like he calmed down or anything. He would pray and 0:14:44.680 --> 0:14:47.160 stalk in groom girls as young as twelve and thirteen 0:14:47.240 --> 0:14:50.800 years old, one of which was a fifteen year old 0:14:50.920 --> 0:14:56.280 named Sharon, and they it was sort of a familiar 0:14:56.280 --> 0:14:59.440 pattern where he would he would groom and stalk these 0:15:00.040 --> 0:15:03.840 young teenage girls. He would abuse them, he would rape 0:15:03.920 --> 0:15:08.680 them and threaten them with death and somehow end up 0:15:08.680 --> 0:15:12.680 with them and not not somehow through coercion and threatened intimidation. 0:15:13.080 --> 0:15:17.880 Yeah, and he would get so he would be married already, 0:15:17.920 --> 0:15:19.680 and like you said, he'd be stalking and raping and 0:15:19.720 --> 0:15:23.440 abusing some other younger girl at the same time. And 0:15:23.480 --> 0:15:28.480 then inevitably, when charges were about to be brought against 0:15:28.520 --> 0:15:32.840 him because of his like rape and abuse and in 0:15:32.880 --> 0:15:37.280 one case shooting of one of the girls, he would 0:15:37.440 --> 0:15:41.360 he would convince them to marry him. He would go 0:15:41.440 --> 0:15:42.920 to his wife and be like, we have to get 0:15:42.960 --> 0:15:45.480 divorced because I got to marry this girl so that 0:15:45.520 --> 0:15:48.680 she won't testify against me, and he would be successful. 0:15:48.720 --> 0:15:52.760 And if if they refused at first, he would use 0:15:52.800 --> 0:15:56.200 those same tactics that he used to intimidate witnesses to 0:15:56.280 --> 0:16:01.960 intimidate these girls into marrying him and becoming and then astoundingly, 0:16:02.520 --> 0:16:05.280 he would go find a younger girl and start the 0:16:05.320 --> 0:16:07.880 whole thing over again. Like this guy got married more 0:16:07.920 --> 0:16:10.280 than once to keep the girl that he was raping 0:16:10.280 --> 0:16:14.120 from testifying against him, because back then a wife couldn't 0:16:14.160 --> 0:16:16.040 testify against her husband. 0:16:16.920 --> 0:16:17.200 Yeah. 0:16:17.240 --> 0:16:19.240 So, I mean, we don't need to get into every 0:16:19.240 --> 0:16:22.000 single one of those details, but suffice it to say 0:16:22.040 --> 0:16:26.960 this was happening over and over and over remarkably sometimes 0:16:27.120 --> 0:16:30.760 you know, obviously, these girls parents would put up a 0:16:30.800 --> 0:16:34.360 fight and get involved, and he would intimidate and threaten 0:16:34.480 --> 0:16:39.400 them to the point where at one point, and this 0:16:39.480 --> 0:16:41.560 is the wife he had sort of when the final 0:16:41.560 --> 0:16:45.600 incident went down, Trina McLeod, who he got together. 0:16:45.320 --> 0:16:47.560 With, this is just so sick. 0:16:47.880 --> 0:16:50.640 When she was twelve or thirteen years old, was like 0:16:50.680 --> 0:16:53.600 picking her up from the school bus. Yeah, and school 0:16:53.640 --> 0:16:56.400 officials were like, something's going on with this creep. No 0:16:56.400 --> 0:17:00.200 one ever did anything, got her pregnant at fourteen, and 0:17:00.320 --> 0:17:02.800 moved her into the house he shared with the previous 0:17:03.000 --> 0:17:07.119 young girl that he was with. So he had a 0:17:07.160 --> 0:17:11.119 son with Trina in nineteen seventy three, and a couple 0:17:11.119 --> 0:17:14.639 of others with this young girl Alice, and went to 0:17:14.640 --> 0:17:20.040 Trina's parents' house. They obviously are saying like, you can't 0:17:20.119 --> 0:17:23.720 keep our daughter like this, and he held them back 0:17:23.880 --> 0:17:27.480 at gunpoint, brought the girls back, continued to abuse them, 0:17:27.760 --> 0:17:31.320 and then eventually he would burn down the house of 0:17:31.400 --> 0:17:35.200 Trina McLeod's parents and shoot and kill their family dog. 0:17:35.440 --> 0:17:37.720 Yeah, is he a bad enough guy at this point? 0:17:38.080 --> 0:17:39.560 All right, dear listener. 0:17:39.720 --> 0:17:45.320 Apparently somehow Trina ended up being treated by a doctor 0:17:45.320 --> 0:17:48.600 somewhere or other, and the doctor got the story out 0:17:48.640 --> 0:17:52.000 of her, and the doctor was like, wait, can you 0:17:52.040 --> 0:17:55.040 tell me all that one more time? And I guess 0:17:55.040 --> 0:17:57.240 she did. And the doctor called the authorities, and this 0:17:57.359 --> 0:18:01.480 time McElroy was in a lot of trouble and they 0:18:01.480 --> 0:18:04.359 took Trina to child Services and took her to a 0:18:04.400 --> 0:18:07.960 family foster, a foster family, and he started stalking the 0:18:08.000 --> 0:18:11.600 foster family and stalking their biological kids and threatening to 0:18:11.680 --> 0:18:14.960 rape and kill them, and that foster family would not 0:18:15.520 --> 0:18:18.920 give in. They were protecting Trina up until the time. 0:18:19.240 --> 0:18:21.560 Trina's like, all right, I forgive you. I'm going back 0:18:21.600 --> 0:18:23.679 to you, and I'm sure that foster family is like, 0:18:23.720 --> 0:18:26.520 oh my god, I can't believe Yeah, I can't believe this. 0:18:26.920 --> 0:18:31.320 Can you can't make that decision? And she did and 0:18:31.800 --> 0:18:34.160 he got away with it yet again because he got 0:18:34.160 --> 0:18:37.040 her to marry him, to keep her from being able 0:18:37.040 --> 0:18:42.520 to even testify against her, and Gene McFadden in a 0:18:42.600 --> 0:18:46.440 show of just how sleazy lawyers can be, served as 0:18:46.440 --> 0:18:49.120 the witness to their wedding. I think she was fifteen 0:18:49.160 --> 0:18:52.080 at the time, and at the end of the ceremony, 0:18:52.160 --> 0:18:54.320 got her to sign a document saying all the things 0:18:54.320 --> 0:18:58.119 she told that doctor were lies, and they lived as 0:18:58.240 --> 0:18:59.119 husband and wife. 0:19:00.080 --> 0:19:04.080 Right, So this is this was his final wife, young 0:19:04.119 --> 0:19:07.240 Trinam of Cloud. He apparently got her parents because you know, 0:19:07.280 --> 0:19:10.520 you needed to have permission to get married at that age, 0:19:10.600 --> 0:19:14.080 and her parents acquiesced because he threatened to burn down 0:19:14.119 --> 0:19:17.679 the new house that they either bought or built. And 0:19:17.720 --> 0:19:20.119 this is where I get to the documentary, like a 0:19:20.160 --> 0:19:21.520 lot of it should be taken with a grain of 0:19:21.520 --> 0:19:25.280 salt because some of the local townspeople they interview are 0:19:25.320 --> 0:19:29.080 clearly sort of just maybe don't have all the facts straight. 0:19:29.119 --> 0:19:31.959 Because someone in that documentary said that he burned their 0:19:31.960 --> 0:19:35.399 house down again and shot their other new dog. And 0:19:35.480 --> 0:19:37.840 I didn't see anywhere else where that happened. I think 0:19:37.960 --> 0:19:39.399 it was just a threat or whatever. 0:19:39.480 --> 0:19:42.720 He killed a monkey too, right, That's what I heard. 0:19:42.640 --> 0:19:47.359 Deal with the documentary. So this is this is going on. 0:19:47.480 --> 0:19:50.800 He's terrorizing this town. Everyone knows he's an awful guy. 0:19:50.920 --> 0:19:54.520 He's just it can be overstated, what. 0:19:54.480 --> 0:19:58.639 An awful creep that he is. 0:19:59.520 --> 0:20:02.160 And I mean, and creep isn't even that's way too 0:20:02.200 --> 0:20:06.440 soft to describe a guy like this. Finally, in nineteen 0:20:06.560 --> 0:20:11.040 eighty he sort of pushes his luck. As Livia would 0:20:11.080 --> 0:20:13.280 call this section, things have kind of come a little 0:20:13.280 --> 0:20:13.880 bit to a head. 0:20:14.840 --> 0:20:16.520 They're these local shopkeepers. 0:20:16.720 --> 0:20:18.600 They ran the B and B grocery there in town, 0:20:19.119 --> 0:20:25.720 Lois and Earnest bo Bowen Camp, and they apparently his 0:20:25.920 --> 0:20:28.240 you know, his kids would go in there and shoplifts 0:20:28.240 --> 0:20:30.720 all the time, his very young kids. And one of 0:20:30.720 --> 0:20:34.360 his young daughters, her name was Tonia or Tanya, I'm 0:20:34.359 --> 0:20:38.199 not sure how I was pronounced Unia. Tanya was like 0:20:38.320 --> 0:20:40.879 four years old and was stealing candy from the store. 0:20:41.680 --> 0:20:45.600 They confronted this young girl, and of course McElroy wouldn't 0:20:45.600 --> 0:20:49.040 stand for that, so he starts up with his usual routine, 0:20:49.080 --> 0:20:54.280 parking outside their store, staring them down, brandishing a shotgun 0:20:54.320 --> 0:20:57.520 and carrying it around with him. And in July of 0:20:57.560 --> 0:21:02.080 that year, McElroy approached bow Bowen Camp, the grocery store owner. 0:21:02.400 --> 0:21:05.280 They had a brief conversation and he shot this seventy 0:21:05.359 --> 0:21:09.040 year old man through the neck again, not killing him, 0:21:09.080 --> 0:21:09.840 but wounding him. 0:21:10.200 --> 0:21:15.919 Yeah, and so bow and Lois Bowen Camp were like 0:21:16.000 --> 0:21:19.400 beloved in the town. Oh yeah, this is a big deal. 0:21:19.560 --> 0:21:25.960 He had assaulted and a beloved elderly shopkeeper grocer who 0:21:26.000 --> 0:21:30.439 fed the town, and even McElroy knew it was a 0:21:30.440 --> 0:21:32.560 big deal. He fled, he tried to get out of 0:21:32.560 --> 0:21:38.439 the state. And you mentioned Richard Stratton, the Missouri Highway 0:21:38.480 --> 0:21:41.960 patrolman who had run ins over and over and over 0:21:42.040 --> 0:21:46.320 again with Ken McElroy. Well, he was out on patrol 0:21:46.640 --> 0:21:49.479 that night when that happened. That day, I guess, and 0:21:49.520 --> 0:21:51.440 he got the all points bulltener to be on the 0:21:51.480 --> 0:21:55.680 lookout for Ken McElroy. And at the time the Sheriff's office, 0:21:56.040 --> 0:21:58.639 the rest of the Highway patrol they were setting up roadblocks, 0:21:58.680 --> 0:22:02.000 looking on every highway that they could for Ken McElroy. 0:22:02.200 --> 0:22:04.920 But Richard Stratton said, no, I know this guy. He's 0:22:04.920 --> 0:22:07.120 got a police scanner. He knows exactly where they are. 0:22:07.200 --> 0:22:09.480 He's going to take every back road he confined to 0:22:09.560 --> 0:22:11.159 get to Kansas and get out of the state and 0:22:11.240 --> 0:22:14.719 lay low for a while. And Richard Stratton said, I 0:22:14.800 --> 0:22:17.040 know he's going to have to go through Fillmore, Missouri 0:22:17.080 --> 0:22:18.919 to get to Kansas, and I'm going to stake that 0:22:18.960 --> 0:22:22.280 place out. And in short order, Ken McElroy came driving 0:22:22.320 --> 0:22:25.959 through in his Silverado with Trina in the seat and 0:22:25.960 --> 0:22:28.439 he ended up getting busted by Richard Stratton. He was 0:22:28.480 --> 0:22:32.159 caught and this again even he knew this one was 0:22:32.200 --> 0:22:32.840 a big deal. 0:22:33.480 --> 0:22:38.520 Yeah yeah, he finally was taken into custody this time. 0:22:38.600 --> 0:22:42.440 He I don't know if he just had it instinct 0:22:42.560 --> 0:22:44.359 that there was probably no way out of this one. 0:22:45.119 --> 0:22:48.640 But he hired his trustee lawyer again McFadden, who said, 0:22:48.640 --> 0:22:51.600