SYSK’s Fall True Crime Playlist: The Strange Unsolved Murder of Ken McElroy

The murder of Ken McElroy comes off like a story from a cheap paperback book you’d get to read on a plane. But this is a true crime story, set in Missouri in the early 80s. And boy does it pack a punch. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 0:47Josh Clark?

  Introducing Eating Interrupted, a new podcast from iHeart Ruby Studio, hosted by longtime journalist and Crohn's patient Cynthia McFadden. Listen in to unpack what it means when your body doesn't always respond to food the way you expect and what science is now revealing about why. Listen to Eating Interrupted on the iHeart app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The murder of Ken McElroy is an example of the kind of small town justice so well served that it seems like it's gotta be a movie. And it was a movie, not a very good one, starring Brian Dennehy, but the actual crime came first and it was true, hence its inclusion on this playlist. At any rate, the town of Skidmore, Missouri doesn't play around if they're pushed too far.

• 1:32Josh Clark?

  You can bet on that.

• 1:37Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:47Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, pushing us around as usual for this episode of Stuff You Should Know.

• 1:56Speaker 02

  Our second episode for us of the new year. And why didn't we save like a pretty happy one to get going with?

• 2:06Josh Clark?

  I don't know. I don't know. Probably because we knew we were going to be so bummed out after Jonestown. We needed something that was a pick me up. And what's crazy is this story actually is a pick me up compared to Jonestown.

• 2:19Speaker 02

  Oh, boy. It's tough to parse out. So thank you to Olivia for diving into this tough story. And also this episode, we want to issue a very big trigger warning. Because in it, we are going to talk about a very bad man. And some of the bad things he did, which included sexual assault. And some of which were with with minors. So trigger warning, know that going in. There's no way around it.

• 2:51Josh Clark?

  There's very few stories that have like a clear cut villain. And but this is one of them. And the villain who's also the center of our story, the person at the center of our story is a man named Ken Rex McElroy.

• 3:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:08Josh Clark?

  Which I mean, all you need to hear is that name, really, I think. And it kind of just puts it puts a weird chill down your spine that you can't quite identify yet.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is a story that you may have heard of before. There is there is no shortage of content about Ken McElroy. There was a book written in 1988 by Harry McLean, a crime writer called In Broad Daylight. You know what's coming, colon, Our Murder in Skidmore, Missouri. There was a documentary just a few years ago in 2019 called documentary series, actually called No One Saw A Thing, of which I watched the first episode.

• 3:46Josh Clark?

  How was it? I didn't get a chance to yet.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  Well, we'll talk about it. It's, it's okay.

• 3:51Josh Clark?

  It's got like a seven plus on IMDb. That's really saying something.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, Chuck gives it a six minus.

• 3:59Josh Clark?

  Okay, still, it's not too bad.

• 4:01Speaker 02

  It's okay. I mean, not a ton of light was shed, so maybe it's because if I went into it blind, it might have been a little better.

• 4:07Josh Clark?

  Gotcha.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Uh, but there's also a 1991 TV movie starring Brian Dennehy and Marcia Gay Harden, uh, which I actually, I, I watched a very bad YouTube version of it mostly. I scrubbed through a little bit of it, but it's actually not terrible for a 1991 TV movie, largely because Brian Dennehy is perfectly cast and awesome.

• 4:28Josh Clark?

  Yeah, he really is. Um, I don't understand why they changed the names. Did, did Harry McLean change the names for In Broad Daylight?

• 4:39Speaker 02

  I didn't read the book, but, um, I don't know. Sometimes they do that with TV movies.

• 4:44Josh Clark?

  Well, regardless.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  Protect the innocent, you know?

• 4:46Josh Clark?

  I, um, I scrubbed ahead to the last, um, probably 30 minutes. Saw the good stuff.

• 4:52Speaker 02

  That's kind of all you need.

• 4:52Josh Clark?

  And you're right, Brian Dennehy was great in it. And Marcia Gay Harden did a great job at the really important point.

• 5:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, she's a tremendous actor, as was Dennehy, uh, RIP Brian Dennehy.

• 5:04Josh Clark?

  So, um, Ken Rex McElroy, he was, uh, from Skidmore, Missouri. That's where this story takes place. He was the 15th of 16 kids, from what I saw. He was born in 1934, and you can be the wealthiest person in your state and have 16 kids and you're still going to be hard scrabble.

• 5:25Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 5:26Josh Clark?

  His dad wasn't the wealthiest person in the state, so the McElroy's grew up kind of doing what they, they could to make their own way. And Ken himself, uh, I saw either he made it up to age 15 in school, which is a surprising statistic to me after I know a little more about him. I also saw that he was illiterate, which I would definitely believe more than the fact that he made it up to age 15 in school. Either way, at a young age, he started taking up, uh, crime. You get the impression, not just out of necessity, but also probably out of a, a certain amount of pleasure.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, and this was, um, to frame it, in the 1940s. He was born in 34, so by the time he was criming. It was the 1940s. Um, one thing we should mention is, and I'm glad Livya dug this up, and this is no way excusing any of his behaviors, but uh, when he was 18 years old, he was a working construction, and there was an accident where some very heavy cribbing fell about 30 feet and hit him in the head.

• 6:31Josh Clark?

  Ow.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  Uh, he had a construction helmet, but it, it cut his scalp, so it clearly, you know, provided minimal protection. And he said that he had a steel plate implanted and had episodes of, uh, like blackout episodes and pain throughout the rest of his life. And it should be noted that, um, one common denominator in many cases of, of, you know, sick people who do awful things is head injury when they're younger.

• 6:56Josh Clark?

  Uh huh.

• 6:56Speaker 02

  So that, that very well may have been the case. Again, not excusing anything he did, but, um, we're trying to paint a full picture here.

• 7:04Josh Clark?

  He was like a modern day Phineas Gage.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. And like you said, it seemed like he enjoyed criming from a young age. He was a pretty, I mean, this is before the accident even. He was a pretty disturbed young man.

• 7:22Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 7:22Speaker 02

  Safe to say?

• 7:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I would say I would definitely agree with that. Um, but he did do stuff. He wasn't just like a, a layabout. Like he was a kind of an industrious criminal. He also trained, um, hunting dogs.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 7:37Josh Clark?

  He, um, he was a dealer of antiques, a buyer and seller.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 7:45Josh Clark?

  But more than anything, he was a cattle rustler. Apparently the year before his death, uh, the county that Skidways in, uh, or Skidmore's in, Nodaway County.

• 7:56Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 7:57Josh Clark?

  The cattle thefts were six times that of any other place in the state. It led the state in cattle thefts. And apparently a lot of that was, uh, Ken McElroy. He was flush with cash. He, he would buy new cars. He, um, could support. He ended up having at least 10 kids, could support them all. Um, he, he had a lot of money and all of it essentially was from crime because he had a tiny little farm and he wasn't making much if any money off of that. He was making it from, from stealing.

• 8:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. And when we say he had a lot of money, it's not the kind of- It's not wealth. He had the kind of money for a criminal in the 1960s in Skidmore, Missouri.

• 8:45Josh Clark?

  He had Skidmore money.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, which is to say, oh, I hope there's no Skidmoreans.

• 8:51Josh Clark?

  There's a couple hundred of them.

• 8:53Speaker 02

  Well, listening to us?

• 8:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I just assumed the whole town listens to us anyway.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  They're probably so sick of the story. But he's the kind of, kind of money guy that like, he always had like a few grand in his pocket with a big fat money roll.

• 9:08Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  Like that kind of dude. He was a big guy. He was like 6'2" or 6'3", had this sort of, here again, kind of like Jim Jones, men of the time, had this jet black hair and these huge sideburns. He was imposing, but he picked on people smaller than him. He picked on women and children and young girls and took advantage of all these people.

• 9:31Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 9:31Speaker 02

  And he was arrested and charged at least 21 times without being convicted. And if you're thinking like, how in the world does that happen? When like, people know he's committing crimes? He's getting arrested of these, committing these crimes? It's because he had a very, I guess, good slippery attorney named Richard Gene McFadden.

• 9:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  Who was supposedly a mob attorney in Kansas City. And upon their first meeting, he was like, you can't afford me. And McElroy said, let me be the judge of that, pulled out that big, you know, fat roll from his pocket, threw it on the desk and McFadden was delighted to have him as a cash paying client who listened to him.

• 10:16Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So McFadden was so, was so good at getting him off. He, well, actually they worked together. McFadden was good at getting him off, but it was, he, he probably wouldn't have been nearly as successful if Ken McElroy hadn't have been also a very active participant in getting himself off.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:39Josh Clark?

  He, um, so Gene McFadden would get delay after delay, all these procedural delays to just really put as much time between the Ken McElroy's arrest and the actual trial date as possible. And then Ken McElroy would get busy, um, intimidating witnesses. And if it got closer and closer to trial and a jury wasn't panelled, he would intimidate the jurors. He would threaten their lives. He would threaten the lives of their families. He would threaten to burn their houses down. He would threaten to kill them. He would threaten, um, not just with words. He would intimidate them by parking in their driveways, by, um, brandishing guns at them, by shooting guns in the air sometimes in the night outside of their house.

• 11:24Josh Clark?

  Like, uh, just, it would take a couple of these for the average person to be like, I can't, this is not what I've signed up for. This guy is scaring me to death. Some people lasted longer than others, but most of the time, almost in every single time, eventually he would intimidate enough of the witnesses that the cases would fall apart. And that is how he became, uh, what Crime Library referred to as this Teflon coated hick.

• 11:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. Like he shot a guy in the stomach in July of 1976, a guy named, uh, Romain Henry. And yes, you heard me right.

• 12:03Josh Clark?

  He's a farmer.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  Spelled exactly like the lettuce. Was he named after the lettuce? Cause was he a lettuce farmer?

• 12:10Josh Clark?

  I don't know. Did they farm lettuce in Missouri?

• 12:12Speaker 02

  Hmm, they did in Yuma, Arizona.

• 12:14Josh Clark?

  I think just for the sake of, uh, this story, yes, he absolutely was a romaine lettuce farmer. His parents raised him to be one.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  And named him after that lettuce. So he was shot in the stomach with a shotgun, uh, was not killed and, uh, got away with it. He, you know, in, in the documentary, like Romain Henry pulls up his shirt and he's like, here's where he shot me. And court witnesses, he, you know, like you said earlier, he was, one of his side hustles was raising and training and selling hunting dogs. And he was well liked by some people, like the people that he dealt with, with these hunting dogs, other crimey type people liked him. So he had this stable of dudes that would go to court and testify on his behalf and provide him with alibis and say like, he didn't shoot him in the stomach, he was with us at the time of the shooting.

• 13:07Speaker 02

  So he got away with shooting Romain Henry in the stomach with a shotgun even.

• 13:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and just to make sure that you understand what kind of person Ken McElroy was, the reason that he shot Romain Henry in the stomach was because Romain Henry approached him and said, hey, will you please not shoot pheasants out of season on my land anymore? And Ken McElroy responded by shooting him in the stomach because he told him basically to stop shooting birds illegally on that man's land.

• 13:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, didn't matter who you were, there was a cop even, a highway patrolman named Richard Stratton.

• 13:42Josh Clark?

  Hashtag hero.

• 13:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, who had, you know, plenty of run ins, obviously with McElroy, because like you said, this is a town of, you know, a few hundred people at the time, I think.

• 13:52Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  Maybe like four or 500 even. So everyone knew this guy, including, obviously, Richard Stratton. And he had a bunch of run ins, and so McElroy started threatening his home and his family. One day, his wife Margaret was on her way to church, she got in the car to go to church, and McElroy walks up to the car, puts a shotgun in her face. And he did that to cops' wives, he did it to judges. The county magistrate, Montgomery Wilson, was so fearful that he wouldn't take these cases, he would have them move to other nearby counties. Like, he was, people called him the town bully, but that is the kindest way to describe him, because he was also a child molester and rapist.

• 14:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I say we take a break and then come back and talk about this.

• 14:40Speaker 02

  All right, we'll be right back.

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• 16:02Speaker 02

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• 16:13Josh Clark?

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• 18:19Speaker 02

  All right, so when we left off, I leveled a pretty serious allegation, which is absolutely true, that Ken McElroy was a child molester and rapist, and this is 100% true. The story gets very twisted and convoluted here, but it's kind of hard to follow along, because he was married, and then had a girlfriend and a wife at the same time, but then another one, and then another one would come in, and they're overlapping, and he's having kids with most of them. And it gets very confusing, but like you said, he fathered 10 kids. A lot of them were with underage girls. He got married for the first time in 1952, when he was 18, and his wife, Olita, was 16.

• 19:02Speaker 02

  And it's not like he calmed down or anything. He would prey and stalk and groom girls as young as 12 and 13 years old.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  Uh, one of which was a 15 year old named Sharon. And they, uh, it was sort of a familiar pattern where he would, he would groom and stalk these young teenage girls. He would abuse them, he would rape them and threaten them with death and somehow end up with them and not, not somehow through coercion and threat and intimidation.

• 19:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah, um, and he would get, so he would be married already and like you said, he'd be stalking and raping and abusing some other younger girl at the same time. And then, um, inevitably when charges were about to be brought against him because of his, um, like rape and abuse and, and in one case, shooting of one of the girls, um, he would, he would convince them to marry him. He would go to his wife and be like, we have to get divorced because I got to marry this girl so that she won't testify against me. And he would be successful and if, if, um, they, they refused at first, he would use

• 20:16Josh Clark?

  those same tactics that he used to intimidate witnesses to intimidate these girls into marrying him and becoming his wife. And then astoundingly, he would go find a younger girl and start the whole thing over again. Like this guy got married more than once to keep the girl that he was raping from testifying against him because back then a wife couldn't testify against her husband.

• 20:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, I mean, we don't need to get into every single one of those details, but suffice it to say, this was happening over and over and over remarkably. Uh, sometimes, you know, obviously these, these girls' parents would, uh, put up a fight and get involved and he would intimidate and threaten them, uh, to the point where, uh, at one point he, and this is the, the wife he had sort of when the final incident went down, uh, Trina McLeod, who he got together with, this is just so sick. When she was 12 or 13 years old, was like picking her up from the school bus.

• 21:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 21:16Speaker 02

  And school officials were like, something's going on with this creep. No one ever did anything, got her pregnant at 14 and moved her into the house he shared with the previous young girl that he was with. Uh, so he had a son with Trina in 1973 and a couple of others with this young girl Alice, and went to Trina's parents' house. Um, they obviously are, are saying like, you can't keep our daughter like this. And he held them back at gunpoint, brought the girls back, continued to abuse them. And then eventually would burn down the house of Trina McLeod's parents and shoot and kill their family dog.

• 21:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 21:59Speaker 02

  Is he a bad enough guy at this point?

• 22:01Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  Dear listener?

• 22:03Josh Clark?

  Apparently he, um, somehow Trina ended up being treated by a doctor somewhere or other and the doctor got the story out of her and the doctor was like, wait, can you tell me all that one more time? And I guess she did and the doctor called the authorities and this time McElroy was in a lot of trouble. And they took Trina to child services and took her to a family foster, a foster family. And he started stalking the foster family and stalking their biological kids and threatening to rape and kill them. And that foster family would not give in. They were protecting Trina up until the time Trina's like, all right, I forgive you. I'm going back to you. And I'm sure that foster family was like, oh my God, I can't believe.

• 22:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:49Josh Clark?

  I can't believe this, like, can you, you can't make that decision. And she did. Um, and he got away with it yet again because he got her to marry him, to keep her from being able to even testify against her. And Jean McFadden.

• 23:05Josh Clark?

  In a show of just how sleazy lawyers can be, served as the witness to their wedding, I think she was 15 at the time. And at the end of the ceremony, got her to sign a document saying all the things she told that doctor were lies and they lived as husband and wife.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  That's right. So this is, this was his final wife, young Trina McLeod. He apparently got her parents, because you know, you needed to have permission to get married at that age and her parents acquiesced because he threatened to burn down the new house that they either bought or built. And this is where I get to the documentary, like, a lot of it should be taken with a grain of salt because some of the local townspeople they interview are clearly sort of, just maybe don't have all the facts straight because someone in that documentary said that he burned their house down again and shot their other new dog. And I didn't see anywhere else where that happened. I think it was just a threat or whatever.

• 24:03Josh Clark?

  He killed the monkey too.

• 24:04Speaker 02

  Right.

• 24:04Josh Clark?

  That's what I heard.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  With the documentary. So this is, this is going on. He's terrorizing this town. Everyone knows he's an awful guy. He's just, it can't be overstated what an awful creep that he is. And I mean creep isn't even, that's way too soft to describe a guy like this. Finally, in 1980, he, he sort of pushes his luck, as Livy would, would call this section. Things kind of come a little bit to a head. There are these local shopkeepers, they ran the B and B grocery there in town, Lois and Ernest, Bo, Bowen Camp.

• 24:46Speaker 02

  And they, apparently his, you know, his kids would go in there and shoplift all the time, his very young kids. And one of his young daughters, her name was Tonia or Tanya, I'm not sure how that's pronounced.

• 24:58Josh Clark?

  I'm guessing Tanya.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  Tanya, was like four years old and was stealing candy from the store. They confronted this young girl and of course, McElroy wouldn't stand for that. So he starts up with his usual routine, parking outside their store, staring them down, brandishing a shotgun and carrying it around with him. And in July of that year, McElroy approached Bo Bowen Camp, the grocery store owner. They had a brief conversation and he shot this 70 year old man through the neck. Again, not killing him, but wounding him.

• 25:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And so Bo and Lois Bowen Camp were like beloved in the town.

• 25:41Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 25:42Josh Clark?

  This is a big deal. He had assaulted a beloved elderly shopkeeper, grocer, who fed the town. And even McElroy knew it was a big deal. He fled. He tried to get out of the state. And you mentioned Richard Stratton, the Missouri Highway Patrolman who had run ins over and over and over again with Ken McElroy. Well, he was out on patrol that night when that happened, or that day, I guess. And he got the all points bulletin or the be on the lookout for Ken McElroy. And at the time, the sheriff's office, the rest of the highway patrol, they were setting up roadblocks, looking on every highway that they could for Ken McElroy.

• 26:25Josh Clark?

  But Richard Stratton said, no, I know this guy. He's got a police scanner. He knows exactly where they are. He's going to take every back road he can find to get to Kansas and get out of the state and lay low for a while. And Richard Stratton said, I know he's going to have to go through Fillmore, Missouri to get to Kansas. And I'm going to stake that place out. And in short order, Ken McElroy came driving through in his Silverado with Trina in the seat. And he ended up getting busted by Richard Stratton. He was caught. And this again, even he knew this one was a big deal.

• 26:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. He finally was taken into custody. This time, he, I don't know if he just had an instinct that there was probably no way out of this one. But he hired his trustee lawyer again, McFadden, who said, all right, let's move this thing to Harrison County, first of all. And here's our plan is we're going to say that this was a dispute with Bowen Camp. This sort of argument you guys had over your daughter stealing. And that he pulled a knife on you and that it was self-defense. And you were forced to do that. He was still using his, you know, typical playbook intimidation tactics on the Bowen Camps. But they refused to budge, which was great.

• 27:39Speaker 02

  So that was their, that was their defense. We should also mention while this is going on, he continues his reign of terror on the town. There's a, there was a Christian church whose minister was Tim Warren. And if you don't know anything about sort of small town, actually probably even larger town ministers, part of their job, they don't just get up there and preach on Sundays, is they have to minister to the congregation and their community. So they will do things, preachers and ministers will like come and check in on people if they're sick. They will visit people in the hospital if they're injured or, you know, or having some troubles. And this is what Tim Warren was doing when he

• 28:18Speaker 02

  checked in on, or had planned to check in on Lois Bowen Camp. And he got a call saying, don't go see old man Bowen Camp. It's gonna be bad news for you. He did it undercover by borrowing a friend's truck and going in that, but got a call was like, hey, I knew that that was you there within your friend's truck. Nice try. And if you do this again, I'm going to rape and murder your wife.

• 28:43Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So the Reverend, the local Reverend, Reverend Lovejoy is just told that his wife is going to be raped and murdered, right?

• 28:52Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 28:53Josh Clark?

  I didn't get what the point of that was. Did you? I didn't see any interpretation of that. I just saw it explained or described. I never saw it explained.

• 29:02Speaker 02

  Well, I think just anyone sort of on the Bowen Camp side, because who knows, like the Reverend could have been called to testify or something. Who knows?

• 29:12Josh Clark?

  I got you. That makes sense.

• 29:13Speaker 02

  I think he was just trying to shut it all down, kind of like with the town marshal, right?

• 29:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So the town marshal, nice setup. David Dunbar was 24 at the time. And if you were town marshal of Skidmore, you not only had to call the sheriff when there was an actual real, real trouble, because you weren't really allowed to do anything, you had to provide your own gun. The city would pay for your ammunition, but you had to provide your own gun. And David Dunbar was like, I don't even care about this job. I took this job because I wanted to win a bet that I had with my buddy for a case of beer.

• 29:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 29:50Josh Clark?

  And so in short order, he gets pulled into this whole thing by Ken McElroy, who pulls a gun on him, holds him at gunpoint. I saw for like 20 minutes at the, the punkin festival.

• 30:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, not punkin' chunkin'.

• 30:03Josh Clark?

  No, the punkin' festival or the punkin' show. That's what I saw it as.

• 30:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, they chunked and no punks.

• 30:08Josh Clark?

  Yes, no. But David Dunbar, David Dunbar did say like, that's it for me, man. I really didn't care that much about this job anyway. I'm not going to stand up to Ken McElroy. You guys need to find yourself another marshal. And they said, fine, we will. And then they couldn't. So the town was without a marshal even for a little while.

• 30:29Speaker 02

  They probably didn't need one.

• 30:30Josh Clark?

  I mean, it doesn't sound like it was very effective as positions go. And also, the other thing I said, they need to call the sheriff. I saw someone intimate that the sheriff may not have either taken Ken McElroy and the trouble he caused seriously, or he may have been a friend or a sympathetic ally or something to Ken McElroy, because apparently he was not super responsive to Ken McElroy trouble calls.

• 30:57Speaker 02

  You know, he was interviewed in this documentary. He certainly didn't seem sympathetic. He might have been intimidated as well.

• 31:05Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I guess that's possible. I wouldn't blame him, frankly.

• 31:08Speaker 02

  So this takes more than a year, or I'm sorry, close to a year to come to trial because of all the delays that, you know, McFadden, that's his game. Finally, it does. And there is another green, like, almost everyone in this story seems like they were, like, very young at the time.

• 31:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  The prosecutor, his name was David Baird. He was a super young attorney. He was the county prosecutor so named just a few months earlier. And all of a sudden, this kid is charged with prosecuting the case. He convicted him of second degree assault and sentenced him to two years in jail. And this was the very first conviction after this years-long reign of terror on this town that he faced. Of course, McFadden appealed. The judge said, you're out on $40,000 bail. And Baird said, oh, it sounds fine to me.

• 31:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So like after shooting Bo Bowen camp, getting caught by the highway patrol, he gets let out on $40,000 bond, which he probably paid his bail in cash from his pocket. And the town was like, you've got to be kidding me. Like you let this guy free? Okay, we will, we'll hang in there. Um, we're just gonna ride this out. And almost immediately, Ken McElroy was like, how can I get my bond revoked? I know, I'll go show up at the local tavern in Skidmore, the D and G Tavern, and I'll bring an M1 carbine rifle with bayonet on me, and I'll talk about how I'm going to use it to finish off Bo Bowen camp in front of everybody

• 32:39Josh Clark?

  in the bar. And that's exactly what he did. And there just happened to be a couple of brave souls. One of them was Pete Ward. I think it was he and his sons who, who went and like confronted him about it and then went and filed a complaint and said, this guy needs his bond revoked. And a bond hearing was set up 10 days from then. And that set up all of the machinations that we're now going to bring this story to its climax. Is it time for an ad break? Have we had our second one?

• 33:11Speaker 02

  I mean, if that's not a perfect setup for an ad break, then we've never had one.

• 33:31Speaker 02

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• 33:50Josh Clark?

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• 34:35Josh Clark?

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• 34:52Speaker 02

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• 35:07Josh Clark?

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• 35:20Speaker 02

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• 35:50Josh Clark?

  So I said that, um, that, uh, Ken McElroy has basically just brandished an arm. He's walking around town talking about he's going to finish off the guy. He's been now convicted of assaulting, um, but he's out on bail. And Pete Ward and his sons go file a complaint and a bond hearing to see if his bond should be revoked is set up for 10 days. And those 10 days pass, and on the 10th day, the day of his bond hearing, a group of farmers around town who have just had it up to here with Ken McElroy, come to the American Legion Hall to basically go to court with Pete Ward and Bo Bowen camp and show solidarity, but also show that these guys are protected, you better not mess with them.

• 36:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. Uh, by most accounts, it was. Most of the adults in the town were at this American Legion Hall meeting. Uh, I think there were like a little over a hundred adults maybe living there and it seemed like 80 of them were at this American Legion Hall meeting.

• 36:49Josh Clark?

  Yeah, there was a lot of people there.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  So they find out there that McFadden had gotten that hearing delayed, that bond hearing, uh, delayed for 10 more days.

• 36:59Josh Clark?

  Man.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  So instead of July 10th, it's going to be July 20th. Uh, they called, uh, the sheriff, Danny Estes, in that we talked about, and he basically said, you know, there's nothing that we can do about it. Um, and this is where I think that maybe, I don't think he was friendly to McElroy. I think he was just a law-abiding, biting sheriff that was like, you know, what do you want to do? Like, go kill this guy in the street? Like, we can't do that. Uh, all we can do is keep tabs on this guy and, you know, stick together is probably a good idea. So they said, that's a great idea. We should form a, a large group and, and stalk him, follow him around. There's strength in numbers. If we get enough of us together, like, what's this guy gonna do? Kill all of us?

• 37:43Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 37:44Speaker 02

  Um, there are some people that were at this meeting that was like, you know, no one was talking about doing anything more than that. Other people said, yeah, there were some people that were so, you know, pissed off about all this. They were like, we need to take matters into our own hands, vigilante style. And they found out, uh, at this meeting that he's back in town, uh, with his wife. They went to the tavern, the, uh, D and G Tavern. Still morning, mind you. They're in there drinking and, uh, they all go down there. They walk in there as a group and fill this tavern, about 50 to 60 people. And it's clear what's going on. Uh, McElroy would not be intimidated.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  He, he did leave, but he apparently just sort of thumbed his nose in their faces, bought a six pack to go and was like, you know, let's get out of here, Trina, and walked out.

• 38:39Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so this crowd was like, okay, I kinda like this following this guy around, watching his every step thing. And they actually walked out of the bar with him. And supposedly there was between 30 and 60 people. Some people had cleared out. Romaine Henry, whom he'd shot in the stomach before, said that he sensed that this crowd was possibly out for blood and he didn't want to have anything to do with it. So he left. So not everybody who was in the VFW hall or the American Legion hall was in the parking lot of the D and G Tavern, but a significant number of people were, and they had Ken McElroy and Trina surrounded in Ken McElroy's Silverado.

• 39:21Josh Clark?

  Ken McElroy apparently had the car turned on, still had it in park. He pulled out a cigarette and I saw that he either had just lit it or was about to light it when somebody shot him in the head with a high-powered hunting rifle. And then followed that up with a shot to the neck with Trina right next to him, who was suddenly covered in his blood.

• 39:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, through the back windshield of the pickup truck.

• 39:49Speaker 02

  I imagine instantly killed him with that first shot. His foot slams on the gas and this thing is revving at like full bore. This old truck starts smoking and eventually blows the engine and it just goes silent.

• 40:06Speaker 02

  Trina apparently urinated herself, was initially told to stay in the car or she would be killed too. And then gets hustled out of this truck into a nearby bank. And a bunch of more shooting happens until the shooting stops. It's about 20 seconds worth of shooting. People go up, peek in this truck. McElroy is hunched over. No one helps the guy at all. And in the end, they figure out he was hit by two different bullet types. So two different guns had actually made contact with his body, two different bullets. So, you know, in the documentary, again, there were people that were like, you know,

• 40:51Speaker 02

  five or six people shot him, three or four people shot him. Like, everyone sort of got their own story. But as far as the, you know, autopsy goes, there were two different calibers of bullet.

• 41:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because here's the twist to this whole story. We don't know, at the very least, the law can't say who killed Ken McElroy. There were between 30 to 60 people who were standing right there when he was killed from several feet away, and no one saw a thing. The town circled the wagons and clammed up to this day.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, they, the town fully cleared out right after that. And like, he was just sitting there alone in the middle of town, dead in his truck. Apparently, they like went into some local businesses and this one woman in the documentary said, "We were just sort of hanging out in there." And someone came in and said, "It's over. You can sleep tonight. Now just stand behind us."

• 41:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and they did, man. I mean, they, they did. The, the law, I saw, depending on who you ask, the law took this very seriously, like any other murder, and investigated and tried to prosecute it. Others are like, "Yeah, the local law didn't try that hard because everybody knew that this was actually justice, even though it was a grotesque form of justice."

• 42:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:13Josh Clark?

  Either way, no one was ever prosecuted. No one was even ever arrested or charged with the murder of Ken McElroy because not a single witness would crack. There was apparently one witness who shortly after... Said that they saw a man named Dell Clement and another man speed off very quickly right after the shooting. And that person apparently said, oh, I'm sorry, I was mistaken. That's the closest the cops got to a witness. Statement about who may have shot Ken McElroy. No one would say anything. Some people were interviewed five to six times. And no one cracked. They would not crack.

• 42:58Josh Clark?

  And yet whoever said that they saw Dell Clement speed off was probably telling the truth because Trina. Ken's wife, who by this time is 24 and looks a lot like somebody who would have been friends with Eileen Wuornos. Says that she turned around right before the shooting started and saw very clearly Dell Clement, owner, co-owner of the D and G Tavern, taking aim and shooting Ken McElroy in the head with his deer rifle.

• 43:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was a, not only a, the owner of the tavern, but he had livestock that had been pilfered. Apparently it was a big hothead and I get the sense took great pleasure in pulling that trigger is the sense I got. There was a lady in the documentary, and again, this is the grain of salt, that said that the, the main gun was thrown in a river. So I was like, oh, very interesting. I hadn't heard that anywhere else. But she also said right after that she heard that they had McElroy's head in a, head somewhere in a freezer thing. So they couldn't do like more, I guess, bullet ballistics work or whatever.

• 44:07Josh Clark?

  Yeah, you couldn't find it because it was stolen by a monkey.

• 44:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't, I don't think that happened. There was another guy in there named Britt Small. And I get the feeling they just kind of gathered up whoever was still around and was like, you know, talk to me. And Britt was a local guy, a Vietnam veteran, who was like, you know what? The only mistake they made is that they let Trina live. I would have killed him in his driveway. I would have ambushed them both, killed her and him and burned his house down. That's what I would have done.

• 44:34Josh Clark?

  Well, she, if you read newspaper accounts, like immediately after, Kansas City Star had a couple of articles like the week after, like she's scared to death, or she sounded scared to death that she was going to be next, or that her kids were going to be murdered. And then, of course, the townspeople that they interviewed for the same article are like, no one wishes her any ill will.

• 44:55Speaker 02

  Right.

• 44:56Josh Clark?

  Um, you know, she's not in any danger, but she swore that she was told to stay out of Skidmore, don't ever come back, um, or else she was going to get it and her kids would be after that. It's, I, I don't know, it probably just depends on which town person you talk to.

• 45:09Speaker 02

  I mean, both things can be true. They could have felt like she was a victim, but also please leave.

• 45:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah, exactly. And apparently when she was hustled off to the bank, whoever did that saved her life, because even if they hadn't have been aiming for her, she probably would have gotten hit by a stray bullet after that second round. But, um, when she was hustled to the bank, there was like a crowd, like you said, of people there that seemed to be just sitting there watching, like people knew what was about to happen or what was going down. And she said, they didn't need to do them like that. And someone said they, they had no choice. So, um, even if you didn't agree with that, that mob justice that had taken place and you were a Skidmore resident, at the very least, you weren't about to turn on your, your, you know, fellow townspeople, certainly not for the, the likes of somebody like Ken McElroy

• 45:57Josh Clark?

  or Trina.

• 45:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. And in the end, you know, they couldn't, with only Trina's word, there was nothing they could do. That young prosecutor bared, uh, and the FBI said, you know, this is all we've got. We can't move forward. Everyone else is saying they don't know what happened. Uh, the FBI closed their investigation on September 2nd, 1982.

• 46:19Speaker 02

  And I believe the sheriff, oh, I'm sorry, the police chief, Hal Riddle, was running the investigation and he said, you know, he was really trying to get this case to go to trial because he's, he is a law enforcement officer and they weren't all like great mob justice, you know, they were like, we, we should have handled it to begin with.

• 46:38Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 46:38Speaker 02

  But you certainly can't handle it this way. And he said it was the most frustrating case of his career. And basically like this town got away with murder.

• 46:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and if the local law enforcement didn't work hard enough, that was par for the course. Because if there was any theme to this, aside from this horrible bully, it was the local institutions failing the community time after time after time after time.

• 47:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:03Josh Clark?

  For any number of reasons, because they were intimidated, because they were corrupt, who knows? But that was like the subtext of this whole thing is that this community essentially had to take matters into their own hands or else this guy was going to eventually kill somebody.

• 47:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:19Josh Clark?

  And they just decided that that was not going to happen. They were going to stop it before it happened. So it's tough to fault them for for what they did, even though I don't agree with that. I still, I understand why they did it.

• 47:33Speaker 02

  Well, I think you can not agree with mob justice and also say the town of Skidmore in the world was probably better off without this child rapist walking around.

• 47:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah, no, you're right. I like, I like your theories. I'm going to subscribe to your newsletter.

• 47:51Speaker 02

  So as for Clement, the supposed, one of the supposed shooters, he never said a thing about it. He died in 2009. Trina in 1985 filed a wrongful death civil case against the mayor, Clement and the sheriff for five million bucks. Settled for seventeen thousand six hundred.

• 48:13Speaker 02

  The defendants didn't have to admit to any wrongdoing. They just wanted it to go away. She got remarried in a couple of years before that in 1983. So two years after the killing. And she died in 2012 and, you know, there was no mention of that life of hers in her obituary. I think she really put it behind her and I hope at some point, you know, there are interviews with her. That's the one interesting thing about the doc, like not too long after their interviews with Trina McLeod. I would hope that at some point she realized that she was a victim.

• 48:48Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I hope so too.

• 48:49Speaker 02

  And came to on that, but who knows?

• 48:53Josh Clark?

  Because I mean, you, you, there's a, there's a certain amount of like grudging admiration you have for, at the very least, it's like, man, this girl is so twisted. She was like a really ardent defendant of her husband's reputation and, and honor and memory. And like really went, would, she was really like mad that they had killed him.

• 49:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:19Josh Clark?

  One other detail I saw was that she offered a $5,000 reward for the, for information about who, who killed him. Somebody to come forward, but she didn't have $5,000. She was putting it up against the movie rights she presumed she would eventually be paid for.

• 49:34Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting.

• 49:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So I'm not sure, I don't think anybody would take the five grand anyway, but certainly not a phantom five grand that didn't actually exist yet.

• 49:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. As for the attorney, he was always like, he was never like, oh, you know, I really regret representing that dirtbag. He was pretty proud of his work. He had a long career as a lobbyist, working in the legislature there in Missouri. And apparently would like buy copies of McLean's book and have McLean sign them and hand them out to all the delegates in the state senate. He died in 2012. Like I said, very proud of his work. And Stratton, the highway patrolman that we mentioned was, was the guy who in an interview said, you know, they did what they did because we didn't do our job. And I think he felt forever bad that the law enforcement had failed that town.

• 50:28Josh Clark?

  Yeah. He also said in that same interview, he knew for sure who did it and he wasn't ever going to say.

• 50:33Speaker 02

  I think it was Clement. I just don't know who the second shooter was. The guy that says he would have killed them both and burned their house down, claims that he knew the second shooter, but he wasn't saying either.

• 50:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah. You, you got anything else?

• 50:45Speaker 02

  I got nothing else.

• 50:46Josh Clark?

  Quite a story.

• 50:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:48Josh Clark?

  Man. Uh, yeah. Thanks. And thanks Olivia for helping us with it. And since Chuck said good pick, that means of course it's time for a brand new listener mail.

• 51:00Speaker 02

  That's right. This is a follow-up on our, what I thought was a really good episode that I enjoyed on Kenton Grua and the Grand Canyon River Speed record. Great episode on that, guys. I read the book a few years ago, and to answer a question you had about the 11:00 PM start time, as I recall, you're correct, in their desire to employ the cover of darkness, there was also another probably more important issue that led to that decision. Per my recollection of the book, it was the timing of when they would run into the rapids where they eventually swamped the boat. It was a stretch they'd expected would be the crux of the trip. As you pointed out, Kenton and his team were tenured, river rats who knew all the river like the back of their hand. However, the

• 51:43Speaker 02

  unique dynamics of the unprecedented CFS meant that they were uncertain of exactly how fast they would be moving. By starting when they did, they were able to more or less ensure that section of the river where they flipped would be squarely in the middle of the day. A good worst-case scenario and good pre-planning. And that's from Noah. That sounds like a very reasonable assertion.

• 52:04Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Thanks a lot, Noah. I'm not going to challenge him on it.

• 52:07Speaker 02

  Heck, no.

• 52:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah, okay. Well, if you want to be like Noah and be like, hey, I got you, guys. You have a question? I'm a Noah. Then get in touch with us. Do it like Noah did. Do everything like Noah did. Send us an email to [email protected].

• 52:28Speaker 03

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 52:43Josh Clark?

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• 54:16Speaker 05

  What's that?

• 54:17Speaker 02

  My fresh detector.

• 54:18Speaker 05

  Uh, your what?

• 54:19Speaker 02

  There it is.

• 54:20Speaker 05

  What is it detecting?

• 54:22Speaker 02

  Fresh produce, fresh meat.

• 54:25Speaker 05

  Okay, what happens if it detects something really fresh?

• 54:30Speaker 02

  Apparently, we celebrate.

• 54:32Speaker 06

  At Food Lion, you can count on fresh food at fresher prices when your fresh detector is going off. Head to your local Food Lion or shop at foodlion.com. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.