Episode 672: The Death of Ken McElroy, The Town Bully

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Hey, weirdos, I'm Ash, and I'm Elena, and this is Morvin.

This is morbid.

It's morbid.

We're fresh off of vacay.

Yeah, we had a little vacay.

We hit Disney for a day.

We hit Disney.

I met a bunch of people.

I only met, I think, two.

Yeah, because you went one day.

Me and Drew rolled deep and we did.

We did five?

Four days.

We did four days and one at Universal.

We did the one because, yeah, we...

Well, you have like a lot of kids.

And we wanted to, we wanted to redeem the Disney vacation.

And guys,

I didn't have a bad time.

She, no, she had a good time.

I did.

Cause I ended up like,

I never, I don't do rides.

It's just like not.

And it's not me being an asshole.

It's just not me.

Not everybody.

I've never liked rides.

I've just never been a ride girl.

I didn't go to theme parks as a kid.

It just wasn't a thing.

Yeah.

And I, and I, I don't like the feeling of your tummy flipping.

It's just, it, like, people love that feeling and I get it.

Literally my favorite feeling.

Yeah, it's just not a feeling I enjoy.

Like if you're in a car and even and you dip down and it gives that like, whoop, I don't like that.

Oh, sometimes on those bumps, I speed up for them.

Yeah, see, I don't like that.

And so I'm just that kind of person.

So usually I will do like the very chill, chill, chill rides.

Yeah.

And other than that, John is the ride guy.

Ash is the ride person.

The ride TT.

I know that like, you know, Ash and Drew and John are going to take the, take the

there's always an adult for each.

Always.

And I'll hold all the shit you know and take the pictures have to have that person I'm so good at that you're great at that you're great you're great at holding shit but this time my kids now the new Tiana ride opened up I can't even express to you how fucking good this ride is well here's the thing if you know anything about me you know I fucking love Princess and the Frog she rides hard I love Tiana she's my favorite princess she's great that's my girl right there yeah and when I heard there was gonna be a Tiana ride I said oh fuck I'm just going to do that and then i looked it up and i was like i'm not going to do that and then my kids said mom will you do that with us and i said yep i'll do that with you so i literally went into this saying

i have to do this 50-foot drop and i don't know how the thing about the drops at disney though is that they slow them down this one was it's so fast that i don't remember it i think i blacked out the lightning this one is i just shared her velocicoaster and i was like now that's a roller coaster i don't do here's the thing tiana ride if you haven't been able to do it if you go to disney do the fucking tiana ride her bayou adventure so much fucking fun it's incredible a gorgeous ride the end of that ride one of the coolest things i've ever seen the whole thing i loved it and it's all it's long it's long like in a good way very fun i enjoyed it i enjoyed the little drops i was able to handle them and i was like okay and maybe even the little drops are good they're pretty decent i was impressed you know and but i think it was like my kids loved it so much and i was sitting next to one of them and it was fun it was so cute uh so that was a lot of fun i love to

recommend doing that i always love the haunted mansion it's the best ride that's a very fun one um i i had a i had a good day she wore ears i did

ears i did for part of the day they gave me a headache halfway through i know sometimes they press on the back yeah it was hot it was blazing hot which i don't love i don't know how y'all live in florida But here's a little tip from me to you.

What's up?

In case you're going.

I prepared for this because I said, we're not having a disastrous Disney trip like we did last time.

Never.

And I said, we're going to make this a fun day, which means I'm going to make everyone as comfortable as humanly possible, even though it's going to be a thousand zillion degrees.

And it was.

I highly recommend the cooling towels you can get like anywhere.

You can order them anywhere.

Sometimes you can even get them at the park.

Yeah, and you just, all you do is wet them and they stay wet and cold for a long time.

So you can just brace them over your neck or your shoulders.

They work.

I don't know what the science is behind those, but they're incredible.

They're very, and they're really easy to store in a backpack.

So it's like, if you're looking for that, those little misting fans that you can get, highly recommend.

They are good for a little, you know, little zap of that.

And I took it up a notch this time.

What'd you do?

Because I said, I know my kids.

I know they're going to want to see this fucking Main Street parade.

That parade's pretty awesome.

Oh my God.

It was pretty great.

It is.

I had a good day.

See, that's all I needed.

I just needed a good day.

I don't, I still, I don't want want to do it again anytime soon.

Oh, we're going to.

We will eventually.

But like, I'm not a theme park girl.

It's just not my thing.

You guys know that.

But I had a good day, which is exactly what I was looking for.

And she's holding time.

She's open to doing it again.

I am.

Absolutely.

And my kids had so much fun.

That's really all I'm looking for.

It's like the last time everybody got sick.

Yeah, it was just not good.

I didn't get to see their faces.

Their faces during the parade.

The parade was.

I said, I need to have eight children right now just to experience experience that experiencing that as an aunt, incredible.

Yeah.

I can't imagine how that made you feel as a mama.

Oh, yeah.

Seeing the little, the waving at the princesses, Tiana.

Again, with Tiana, I meant to be Tiana's friend, I think.

So they, she, when she went by, she pointed at one of my kids and did the little heart like formed a heart.

And my child beaming.

I have not seen her her that beaming and she was like tiana just did a heart to me like it was i was like all right this is very worth it

borderline about to cry yeah it was the sweetest thing ever but what i did for that was i got a parasol

and they sell parasols at discount which i didn't even know that i i just got that on my own get a parasol guy if you don't like the heat and you're worried about that kind of stuff I got one that like, um,

maybe I can try to post a link to it.

I'll find where I got it because it folded it up really small.

It like even the little spokes of the, of the umbrella itself bent upward to make it smaller.

It was super compact.

So I could put it in a bag, easy peasy, and it like just crunched up.

It was so worth it because they used it several times.

No, it was smart.

And I, I was like Loki making fun of you like before we were going.

I was like, everybody had a fucking parasol.

I saw so many people with parasols.

It's worth it.

You're with the trends.

So let me tell you, if you're thinking about it, it really does work.

And take this from somebody who's essentially translucent.

Yeah.

And who has children who are also pretty translucent?

I'm translucent too.

And I didn't even burn this time.

I was so good about my sunscreen.

That's right.

Oh, as you should be.

A recommendation, another one.

Oh.

There's an ELF like ELF setting spray.

that has SPF 45.

That's all I use for face sunscreen because a lot of times when you do like the cream, it gets in your eyes and shit.

This one, spray it on your face, face, good.

I sprayed it on my face probably like three, four times throughout the day.

Not a hint of a sunburn.

I love that.

So that's a good one, even just for the summer.

So there you go.

These are summer recommendations.

That's our summer recommendation.

I thought of something when I was, when I was there and I said, I got to tell the listeners.

I got to tell everybody.

I don't remember.

I'll post some, I, I went real ham with like.

preparing for this trip.

Yeah.

If I think of any like interesting hacks that I came up with, I'll be sure to post it for you guys just in case you have kids or are traveling or just traveling in general.

You and Drew Capricorn so hard because like you have kids, like a million kids.

So you had to get like 45 different things.

Yeah.

It was just me and Drew going.

Yeah.

Every day that I got home leading up to this vacation, he had a new thing for our trip because we drove.

Yeah.

So you have to be like prepared for that.

He got, this is a little bit gross, but I don't care.

He got these toilet seat covers.

He got these toilet seat covers and you put them down and they like adhes to the toilet seat.

It changes your going to the bathroom experience.

I hate a public restroom to the point where like even in school, like in high school, I didn't like going to the bathroom.

Incredible.

But yeah,

I'll try to link the toilet seat covers.

Yeah.

Because they were great.

Yeah, anything that works.

I mean, I'm by no means a gatekeeper

or like a professional when it comes to traveling or anything like that.

Just if it works with my kids or and us, honey, I'll share it.

Disagree.

I think you became a professional planner.

I think you should start a TikTok page of trips, even though you go on once a year.

Yeah, I don't go on many at all, but

hey, when I do, I really prepare to

do it.

So yeah, I found a lot of good hacks.

I'm just so happy that you had a good time.

I'm glad we turned our Disney trip around.

So it was real rough that everybody got the stomach bug and like John was super sick.

Everybody was sick and it was just such a lousy trip the first time.

And it was weighing on us that that's the Disney trip that we had been planning forever.

And so we were just determined.

We needed new memories.

I needed a good, and it was, and you have them.

We got this one picture of John and one of my kids in front of the castle.

I saw the fireworks going and I was like, we're framing that.

Frame it.

That's a thought.

That's a framer.

There's just, it was, it was a good day.

I didn't want to say it during the time because I was like, don't say it.

You can't jinx it.

You'll jinx it.

No.

But they had a great time and that's all that matters.

During the fireworks, I cried the first time I saw the fireworks at Disney.

I'm that Disney adult.

When Tinkerbell came flying by, sob, full sob.

Don't care.

Cry every time.

You know, it's hilarious.

You hate that.

Do you hate that?

No, I love it.

I think it's adorable.

That's why I was like, oh, that's so cute.

And I turned to one of my kids who is very like myself.

Oh.

And I turned to her and I said, oh my God, it's Tinkerbell.

What did she say?

If your kids are listening right now, please.

I'm going to say something that's going to ruin the magic.

So like, skip forward.

I just don't want to ruin other kids' magic.

No.

no uh but i was like look at oh my god it's tinkerbell and she goes yeah i can see the wire

and i was like what

i was like i was like i was like what

wires like what what wires you said she literally she's crying she goes she's zip lining okay

and i was like yeah and she was like she's not flying all right like she was literally like she was looking at me like mom are you sorry i'm ruining the magic for you but she's not really fly.

You know what, though?

As long as Tink is zip lining, I thought you were going to say something even worse.

No, she was just like, she was like, fuck that, that's not Tinkerbell.

She was literally, well, no, I think she essentially was like, that's a zip line.

That's not really Tinkerbell flyer.

Whatever.

Whatever child.

So I looked, and I looked at her and I was like, please don't like say anything in front of the younger one.

And she was like, of course I won't.

And she hasn't.

No.

Because the younger one brought it up and she was like, I know.

Wasn't that crazy?

Did you say don't tell TT either?

Don't tell TT.

Don't tell TT.

She thinks that's Tinkerbell.

But I was like, my, such, my logical child who's always looking to see how anything works.

Well, she wants to be an engineer.

Yeah.

She immediately saw those wires and was like, oh, I get it.

One thing I will say, and I say it every time I see the parade in between my tears, where are those projectors?

How do they project those images onto?

Because like they, if you've ever seen the castle show, like, it's fucking crazy.

Yeah.

I've never seen the projector.

I haven't either.

And there's only so many ways you can make Tink Flyer, right?

It's fucking.

I think it's great.

I think it's adorable.

So there you go.

It's a much different take on what happened.

There it is.

Because a lot of, I displeased a lot of people who love Disney that last time.

You don't want to piss those people off.

Yeah.

And it wasn't me.

It was just a bad drink.

Coming from the Disney community.

No, just kidding.

You're like, just kidding.

No, seriously.

But for real, shut up.

But yeah, so that was good.

We got some good stuff coming up that we can't tell you about yet.

you will find out and it will be awesome.

I think we say that every episode at this point.

But it's coming.

It's coming.

Yeah.

Manifesting it.

And I think with that, we can probably, this has been a long intro.

Yeah.

We don't do those all the time.

So sometimes it happens.

He lived.

Hopefully he lived.

Hopefully.

Jeez.

Born out if he did.

Oh, my goodness.

But yeah.

So, oh, quick little, little

side quest.

Are you going to talk about the poet?

Anyone else hyper-fixated on the conclave coming up the way i knew you were about to talk about the pope

did you see me call that i'm sorry i said are we about to talk about the the conclave it's wild that this happened like right after the new papa and ghost was announced it's suspicious stuff it's crazy

i'll give it to you but also guys and like this is no i am not a religious person you know this i've it's pretty clear by now you knew if you're shocked by that i don't know what to tell you uh but I'm hyper fixated on it because I feel like it's very gothic the way it all happened.

It's very metal.

It is interesting.

This whole conclave and the burning of the ballots and the black smoke and the white smoke and everybody waiting for that smoke to happen.

Love it.

Yeah.

Love it.

And if you want to bone up on the conclave.

On your pope knowledge.

Andy, hold on, I'm going to look it up because I'm going to give you somebody that you should follow.

I love this creator.

To get all your the pope games here.

He also covers the Berenstein Bear

books and it's great.

He's a TikTok creator.

He's on other platforms too, too, though, but I mainly follow him on TikTok.

Rob Anderson.

So funny.

He's doing a thing where he's calling it the Pope Games and he's treating it like a real housewives kind of thing.

But he's introducing all the would-be popes and telling you what they stand for and against.

So it actually, he's giving you the information in like a very funny way.

It's fun.

But I'm like, I would not, this is very interesting.

He also gives them a housewives tagline.

Because again, I, I don't care at all about this stuff, but I'm weirdly hyper-fixated on it from a purely curiosity level.

It's interesting.

Like it's a pure curious, just me being like, this is a wild situation.

It is.

I didn't know really anything about it.

Yeah.

When was the last conclave?

Francis has been a pope for a minute.

I thought he wasn't the pope that long.

I mean, a lot, some popes are popes for like 30 years and shit.

That I know.

But I thought Francis was like kind of a short pope.

He was only a few years, I think.

That's what I think.

Yeah.

So it's only been a few years.

That's also what I think.

So that's

so it can, it couldn't have been that long since the last conclave.

I'm googling.

Yeah, Google it.

Find it out.

But again,

none of like to each their own, the religious stuff doesn't really do anything for me with this, but it's, I'm just purely curious.

2013.

So he's been there for a minute.

I mean, that is a very long time ago, but in my brain, it's not.

Yeah, it's over 10 years ago.

So that's that.

Shredders.

But yeah, so become hyper-fixated on that with me because

it's fun.

It's wild.

It's the wild thing and follow Rob Anderson because he's really funny.

All his other content.

Yeah, all his stuff is funny.

Um, and that I think is the end of our very long intro.

Wait, no, I'm just kidding.

She's made up her mind to live pretty smart.

Learn to budget responsibly right from the start.

She spends a little less in boots more into savings.

Keeps her blood pressure low and credit score raises.

She's gotten

right out of her life.

She tracks her cash flow on a spreadsheet at night.

Boring money moves make kind of lame songs, but they sound pretty sweet to your wallet.

BNC Bank, brilliantly boring since 1865.

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So today, we're going to be discussing a very strange,

very, it's brutal at parts.

Okay.

And then has a wild ending case.

This is.

Fun question mark?

Well, this is the death of Ken McElroy.

Okay.

But he was known as the town bully.

Oh, okay.

I don't want to tell you too much up front about what happens.

I would like to leave the ending for the moment it happens because you're just going to be like, what the fuck is going on?

Okay.

So I'm going to give you very little of what I'm not going to tell you how this ends.

Just know the end.

He dies.

And that he was the town bully.

All right.

So this did happen.

The act itself happens on July 10th, 1981.

Okay.

when he ken miklroy was about 47 years old this took place in skidmore missouri uh that's all i'm going to tell you about the end of it let's start at the beginning now we it's so funny that this is 1981 because when you said the town bully for some reason that just read as like 1900s right didn't it 1904 yeah That's how I thought too, but it was in the 80s.

Okay.

Bully is a nice way to describe him, I would say.

The town predator,

the town monster, the town criminal, the town abuser the town assaulter like he was a he was pretty terrible okay he was pretty terrible okay so let's talk about him let's his name was kenneth rex mcelroy and he was born june 16th 1934 that's why he's so terrible he's a gemini there you go geminis are the most frightening yeah i say that as gemini so call it okay uh he was born in overland park kansas and he was one of 16 children that's a lot that's many children one might say too many one might say uh me no, because I won't step in that, but he

one might say it.

I don't know who that one is, but not me.

That's what I said, one.

I didn't say it.

His parents were Tony and Mabel McElroy.

Mabel had married Tony when she was just 14 years old, and he was 20.

Sounds illegal.

Very much so.

And it really sets the tone for how Ken is going to act later in life.

I think I'm not going to like that.

He married her because at 14, she was pregnant with Ken's oldest brother, Herschel.

Oh, no.

So the apple does not fall far from this tree.

14.

Yeah.

Born during the height of the Great Depression, Ken's early life was a bit of a struggle, for sure.

The whole family was.

Tony McElroy had always had a lot of difficulty finding and kind of like maintaining work, but it was because of his attitude and explosive temper, not just.

It wasn't because it wasn't available.

Just before the Depression started, he and Mabel had saved enough money to rent 14 or no, 400 acres of farmland in southern Missouri.

God damn.

And they planted a very large corn crop there, thinking this is their time.

Unfortunately, they had two rainless weeks in the summer of 1927, and it wiped out the entire crop.

Just two weeks.

Yeah, so he lost his entire investment.

According to author Harry McLean, the complete loss broke Tony, and he eventually just had to go back to working really low-paying construction and farming jobs in and around southern Missouri.

In the years that followed that, they continued having children and struggling to get by on Tony's very meager wages, moving from one rented home to another whenever things would become hard or unaffordable.

When the four oldest McElroy boys became strong enough, they were put to work, farming, clearing land.

This allowed the family to finally settle down in a rented home in Skidmore, Missouri.

Skidmore is a wild name.

Skidmore is a wild name, and I feel like it's been featured in like something that I saw lately.

Really?

Yeah.

Timore?

I don't know.

Well, it's a small town of less than 100 residents.

Damn.

And it's in Nottaway County in northern Missouri.

Okay.

So less than 100 residents.

Very small town.

According to McLean, Ken McElroy spent the first 13 years of his life as the child of a tenant farmer, living in someone else's house, subsisting at near poverty levels in a large family, and the bitterness of those years just never left him.

To make matters worse, with 14 kids in the house, Ken was definitely not ever his father's favorite child and never even came close to being the favorite child.

I mean, that's a lot of competition.

That's a lot of competition.

But also, you're not allowed to have a favorite child.

You're not.

You have to love them.

Now, with so much activity in the house, though, both Tony and Mabel were working 12 or more hours a day.

They were out of the house a lot.

So Ken and his siblings came and went as they pleased and were never really noticed by his parents.

Like they just let it go.

It was a very different time.

But when Ken did get noticed, it was usually long enough enough for his father to yell at him for not doing what he was supposed to be doing.

Okay.

So not great.

That's shitty.

One would think that in a family with so many people in it, that maybe there'd be some close bonds between most of them.

Maybe.

I don't know.

At least those close in age.

But when it came to Ken, his brothers and sisters seemed to not really pay a lot of attention to him, kind of like his parents didn't.

Oh.

So it was.

basically that because Ken spent a lot of his childhood by himself.

In the winter, he skated on the pond and in the summer he would hunt and trap animals, usually by himself.

And that's really sad.

Yeah.

During the Depression, it was common for a lot of like adolescents and teenage boys and some girls to be not going to school, absent from school a lot because they would need to stay home and help the family earn money, essentially.

In Ken's case, this was true, but even if they weren't growing up during the Depression, he probably would have been absent anyways.

He didn't like authority.

He was not into education.

And when he did show up for school, his appearance and hygiene were occasionally so bad that the teachers would either have to take him to the washroom and show him how to clean himself, or they would just send him home because they said he smelled so bad that it was distracting to other kids.

Oh, that's really awful.

This lasted until Ken turned about 15 and he dropped out of school.

Now, when it came to friends, he was never super successful at forming bonds with other children in the area either.

At best, his teachers would find him kind of like surly and like sullen, like he just wasn't.

But at worst, he was mean, aggressive, and unmanageable.

One of his former classmates said, when I came to Graham's school in fourth grade, one of the first things the other kids told me was about Ken McElroy, the type of kid he was.

I was told to stay away from him, that he pushed other kids around.

Damn.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's wild.

Another classmate said that on his first day riding the bus with Ken, Ken got into a fight with, and this was Ken's Ken's first day riding the bus.

Ken got into a fight with another student and Ken and one of his brothers pulled knives out and threatened to cut the other boy.

Holy shit.

And they said, after that, Ken had plenty of room on the bus.

I would, I would assume.

Yeah.

So it turned out the aggressive behavior that he was demonstrating at school was something he was definitely learning from home.

Usually is.

In one incident that McLean talks about in his book, Ken was caught stealing from a general store in town, and the owner called his father, Tony, to tell him that Ken had stolen from him.

Yeah.

Rather than like reprimand his son for stealing and saying, like, hey, that's not good.

You can't do that.

Like, we're not allowed to.

Tony, quote, burst into the store with a long curved hunting knife in his hand, slammed the owner up against the wall and held the knife to his throat and said, if you ever touch my boy again, I'll cut your heart out.

I think that's super rational.

I was like, whoa, here's the thing.

The report that I, that we saw was that he just called the father and was like, he's stealing.

Yeah.

He's saying, like, you ever touch my boy again, I'll cut your heart out.

I don't know what happened if the owner like did something to him.

Yeah.

It's never good to threaten somebody with a knife.

Don't do that.

Yeah, we don't recommend it.

I could understand the rage component there.

If somebody touched my kid, I would also want to cut their heart out, but like, you don't threaten people with a knife.

It's illegal.

But it also sounds, you know, this is, this is a situation where you can both be angry at the owner if he touched your kid.

Absolutely.

But again, this was a time period where this probably wouldn't have been looked at as crazy if an owner like slapped against your ceiling.

But also, you have to reprimand your kid for stealing from someone.

Yeah.

You can't

because they're just going to keep stealing and think that you'll attack people with hunting knives.

Well, that's this incident sent a very clear message to Ken and to everyone else in town that no matter what he did, no one had the right to control him or tell him what to do.

Or they'd have their heart cut out.

And from then on, Ken operated accordingly.

Oh.

Because this just did send a message to him.

I'd be fucking terrified.

Like as a community member, I'd be fucking terrified.

Absolutely.

And they were.

Yeah.

They eventually really were.

Now, as Ken grew older, his reputation got worse and worse and his behavior became more and more problematic.

Former classmate Bruce Roberts said he was in trouble so many times.

After dropping out of school, he found work at a local plant nursery, but he was fired within his first week when the owner caught Ken, quote, fooling around with a young young girl who also worked there.

Oh, no.

Now, this began a trend of Ken finding work and then losing work a short time later because of his temper, his disinterest in authority, his disinterest in work.

It would get the better of him.

As far as Ken's former friend John saw it, he said he was always in the kind of self-sabotage mode.

Sounds like it.

He said Ken never got over the fact that he was poor and he resented people who had money.

He could never bring himself to do their shit work.

Huh.

And it's like, but that's not like you can't treat people like shit.

No.

That's not going to get you anywhere.

Exactly.

You'll never work your way to the top with that attitude.

In 1952, when Ken was 18 years old, he married Oletta Holland, which was a girl two years younger than him.

So she was 16.

This was the first time Ken left the McElroy farm and struck out on his own.

He didn't go very far, though.

I was going to say, how'd that go?

Yeah.

After the marriage, Ken and Oletta moved to Denver, Missouri, which was a small town about an hour away from Skidmore.

And that's where one of Ken's sisters lived at the time.

Oletta at the time was pregnant when they moved to Denver.

Unfortunately, they did have a stillborn baby.

Oh, that's awful.

Which is really sad.

The move to Denver wasn't just an opportunity to start his own life with his new wife, though.

It was also looked to be like he was trying to start somewhere fresh where no one knew him and knew his reputation for being a complete dickwag.

Yeah, you already like pissed off too many people at work.

Yeah, like you piss off a town of 100 people.

That's going to be tough.

Yeah, word travels fast.

That's going to be tough.

Not long after they relocated, he found work on a construction crew and he was determined.

He was like, I'm going to keep my anger in check.

Like he was telling Oletta, this is going to be different until an accident derailed his newfound success.

One day while he was working at the site and he had been doing well up until here, a large piece of cribbing, which is a temporary support structure, fell from one of the beams 30 feet above him and landed directly on his head.

Holy shit.

He was wearing a helmet.

The blow split his construction helmet in half.

Oh my God.

And it cut him, obviously, in his head and compressed his spine as well.

Oh, fuck.

Which caused muscle and nerve damage in his neck that he would have forever.

Yeah.

Compressed his spine.

So for Ken, who had never been one for an honest day's work, this was just a sign to him that the straight and narrow way of life was not for him.

Okay.

He took that as, I tried to be good.

I tried to go on the straight and narrow and look what happens.

Struck down.

Not long after that, he and Aletta picked up their things and went back to Skidmore.

Was workers compassing back then?

Right.

Well, and he figured in Skidmore, he could find less dangerous and less

scrupulous ways of finding money.

So throughout his early adolescent and teen years, Ken had engaged in all manner of illegal activity, typically for no other reason.

than just enjoying doing illegal activity and hurting people.

Like much of his other very undesirable behaviors and characteristics that he demonstrated in his youth, there was never any consequences for any of these illegal activities, which appears to have enforced his own little fucked up belief that regardless of whether it was right or wrong, no one was stopping him from doing it.

There was never going to be any consequences, so I'll just keep going.

He always got himself out of shit, and he did that for his whole life.

Now, a slippery sloop.

It is.

It does not work out for him.

Now, once he and Aletta had settled back in a farm in Skidmore, he started out his criminal career pretty small.

According to Harry McLean, Ken quote, rigged a toggle switch to shut off the running lights in his Ford and shored up the plywood lining in the back so that he can bear more of a substantial load in the back.

With his truck now altered, he would drive the back roads of Skidmore and the surrounding areas, looking at the properties of local farmers and looking for calves or hogs that looked ready to be slaughtered and brought to market.

Once he would find one that he deemed deemed suitable, he would make note of the closest entrance and return in the middle of the night, sneak on the property and steal the animal.

He was stealing people's farm animals?

He was stealing people's farm animals.

That's messed up.

Most of the times, he would just go a short distance to another farm and sell the stolen animal to that farmer who didn't ask where it came from.

He's like just putting cows in the back of his truck.

Yeah.

Now, throughout Skidmore and the surrounding towns, most adults knew how Ken made his money.

But they looked the other way because they didn't want to get on his bad side because he was a scary motherfucker.

Yeah, it sounds like it.

And on schoolyards across Nottaway County, there were other stories about Ken.

According to McLean, people whispered, quote, that he had raped a 14-year-old Quitman girl who became pregnant and died delivering twins at home because she couldn't afford to go to the hospital.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

About a year later, McLean went on to say Ken, quote, returned and raped her older sister, who ended up marrying one of his best hunting buddies.

What the fuck?

Yeah.

Oh, that's a fucking terror.

And it gets worse.

The extent,

these are rumors.

These are all like things that are hard to verify.

Right.

But they are things that people were talking about and believed, and they are reports of it.

The extent of these, like how much is fact and how much is exaggerated is fiction for those specific rumors that we just talked about.

But what is true is that around 1960 or so, Ken started hanging out with a lot of young people.

And he's a full-blown adult.

Some much younger than himself.

During this period of his life, when Ken was about 21 or 22 years old, his best friend was reported to be a boy named Larry, who was at least a decade younger than him.

That's not normal.

Yeah.

Now, this, that relationship is strange, just as a friendship, but it was his relationships with younger women and girls that people around town were really concerned with.

Well, I'm sure he used Larry to meet girls to make you comfortable.

Right.

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Around the same time that he was spending considerable time with Larry and using him to find girls, Ken also met a young woman in her late teens named Barbara, who soon became his go-to drinking buddy.

Oh, God.

A teenage girl.

It's so sad because when you're that age, like as a teenager and somebody older wants to hang out with you, it's so exciting and it's so fun.

No, you don't think anything's wrong.

And then you become an adult and you're like, Why the fuck did that adult want to hang out with me?

Like,

no adult wants to hang out with teenagers like this for anything but nefarious reasons.

It's so hard to tell teenagers that.

Like, I was a teenager who hung out with older people, and I remember you being like, No adult should want to hang out with you like that.

And I was like, Fuck you.

And you're like, fuck that.

I was like, you're so wrong.

I missed a great time.

And now I realize it was fucking weird.

weird.

That's nefarious as fuck.

But it's so like, like, how do you tell kids?

How do you teach kids that?

I know.

It's like, because you have to like shatter completely their illusion of the world.

Yeah.

And their sense of self, too.

Yeah.

Like, you really have to.

You have to be a little.

You have to be a little.

You have to play them this way.

You have to mess with them.

And you have to be like.

Not everybody is a good person.

I've already had to tell my kids that.

Yeah.

Not everybody's a good person.

And there are adults who are really bad people and they want to do bad things to kids.

And you have to be on the lookout for that.

Yep.

Now, according to McLean, this type of behavior was quite common for Ken, who always seemed to have young women hanging around him.

Ew.

He wrote, he would laugh and tell them they didn't have to worry about him.

And this is, this is gross.

He would say, you're too old for me.

I like my women young and tender.

I like that young meat.

Ew.

When

Dave sent, like did, like helped me with this research, he sent me a note on one of these that said, I'm so sorry for this when he sent that because he was like, I'm sorry, you have to read this.

Yeah, that's

being heinous.

In fact, it was known around Skidmore that although he was married to Aletta at the time, Ken would often carry on sexual relationships with girls as young as 12 or 13 years old.

Oh, my God.

Meaning.

Not sexual relationships.

Rape.

Rape.

He was raping

or 13-year-olds, and he was claiming, like, these are relationships.

And poor Oletta, too, because I remember she was 14 when he got her.

Yep.

One of those girls, who is referred to as Donna G, that's not her real name, would frequently sneak out of her house at night to meet him

and be assaulted by him.

Yep.

About a year later, according to McLean, Donna gave birth to Ken's first child, a son.

Oh my God.

Of all the crimes and awful behavior that the people of Skidmore were tolerating from Ken, the hardest for most of them tolerate, tolerate was his predatory behavior with young girls.

Of course, I can't imagine.

And also his violence against women in general, because, like, just giving you a heads up, like, he is a violent, abusive man.

Like, and I'm going to mention a couple of instances, and it will be difficult to hear.

Not surprising.

Not long after moving back to Skidmore from Denver, Ken started an affair with a 15-year-old local girl named Sharon.

One evening in either 1959 or 1960, Ken and Sharon were arguing in his car when he pulled out a shotgun and held it to her face and said if she didn't shut up, he was going to blow her head off.

Now, nobody knows if it was intentional or not, but the gun discharged

and it tore open the underside of Sharon's chin.

Oh my God.

And it seriously injured her in the chin and neck.

It's incredible that she even lived.

For the first time, the police were called and charges were filed finally against this fucking asshole.

But as always,

he found a way to avoid any consequences.

How the fuck?

And explain, so he explained things to Oletta, his wife.

Uh-huh.

And Ken insisted he had to divorce her and marry Sharon in order to avoid being convicted for the shooting.

Because you can shoot your wife?

What?

Oletta agreed, and the two were soon divorced, and Ken took up with the teenager, Sharon.

Well, that's a, Oletta probably saw that as her ticket out.

Yeah.

Who soon gave birth to a son and she named Jerome.

Yep.

Jerome would eventually be taken in and raised by Ken's sister, Helen.

Luckily.

The fact that this woman had to marry a man who shot her in the face and then birth his child and then have that child taken away from her.

That's so fucked.

I feel for Sharon.

Big time.

Now, throughout the 1950s and 60s, McElroy and his various criminal associates continued their theft, their illegal sales schemes,

assaults, batteries, break-ins.

They did every, they were literally tormenting this town.

Like this town lived in fear of this man.

And he would just avoid arrest or consequences through intimidation tactics or just threats of violence.

Like he was literally running it.

And he shot a girl in the face.

That those tactics actually worked is a testament to his reputation for how violent he was.

And Ken's capacity for violence was on full display in the summer of 1968 when Ken and three of his associates, Larry Combs, Raymond Hayward, and Glenn Hayward, were arrested for a brutal assault on 52-year-old Glenn Graham, a farmer in Skidmore.

Oh.

Now, according to Graham, the farmer, he and his daughter went out to the pasture, their pasture, that evening, on June 13th to check on their horses, when they were the victims of a completely unprovoked attack.

And it was by four men who were armed with brass knuckles and clubs.

Oh, fuck.

Graham's daughter, Anita Foster, told police she heard her father call out for help.

And when she ran to see what was happening, she saw the men had her father on the ground and were kicking and punching him all over his body.

This gets gnarly.

The sheriff's report stated:

one of his eyes was kicked out of his head.

Oh my god.

Yes.

Holy shit.

The actual report states one of his eyes was kicked out of his head.

How does that even happen?

That is brutal on a level I can't even describe.

Oh my God, I just keep closing my eyes.

When Anita, the daughter, ran to help her father, quote, one of the four men assaulted her, held her down against the hood of a car, choked her, hit her in the stomach, and threatened her with death.

A neighbor, Jim Swope, called the police when he heard the assault.

And when he ran to help, one of

the men tacked him as well.

Holy shit.

Because all four men were known to Graham and his daughter, they were quickly rounded up and charged with assaults and intent to do great, grievous bodily harm.

However,

despite the severity and completely unprovoked nature of the beating, a judge agreed to release the men on as little as $2,500

for bond.

Even Blanche was just like, what the fuck?

I was just going to say that.

What?

Most of them were out of jail within a couple of days.

They kicked a man's eye out.

Yeah.

And were literally

beat his daughter brutally and threatened to kill her.

In his testimony given during the preliminary hearing a month later, Graham, the victim, the

farmer, told the judge when they arrived in the pasture, Ken McElroy, quote, came from the direction of a nearby house and accused Graham of calling him names.

That's

Graham tried to tell McElroy that he didn't know him and certainly hadn't called him any names, but McElroy only punched him in the face, and then the three other men joined in after that.

Among the injuries he sustained during this attack were several broken bones in his face.

His jaw was broken in two places.

He had damage to his left eye, which had to be stitched back into its socket.

Because remember, it was kicked out of his fucking head.

Before fleeing the area, Ken McElroy told Graham, quote, We're going to do the same thing to your daughter if you report this.

Oh, and he repeated it twice as he ran out of the scene.

What the fuck is wrong with this guy?

He's a demon.

He's a demon.

A few days later, the charges against McElroy and Glenn Hayward were dropped.

Don't even fucking say it.

But this is, this proves you right here that polygraph exams are fucking bullshit.

No.

They were dropped after both men passed polygraph examinations testing whether they were involved in the beating, beating, which they denied.

What a joke.

But Glenn Graham and Anita Foster were also given polygraph examinations, the two victims, during which they insisted McElroy and Hayward were the assailants, and they also passed.

It's also like, guys, in this town of 100 people, there's one man who's been terrorizing all of you for really 24 lives.

Like, come on.

And the prosecutor told a reporter, it's the first time I have been faced with defendants and prosecuting witnesses telling the truth and being of opposite beliefs.

What?

It's like they were like, literally like, this is the first time that the polygraph exam has said they are telling the truth and they are also telling the truth, but they have opposite stories.

At that point, they should have thrown it out the window.

Yeah.

Like, that's bullshit.

Yeah.

Hot dog, hot dog.

Like, we're truly.

Yup.

So the dismissal of charges against McElroy and Haywood caused outrage among the locals.

This was the moment when everybody was like, fuck this shit.

The fact that he's going to get out of this.

You can't kick a man's eye out and not expect public outrage.

one resident wrote to um a letter to the local paper and said are these people released to go out and conduct other crimes and maybe kill next time yeah should i and other men take the law in our hands to protect the ones we love yes which is like i mean if no if the law enforcement in your doctor is gonna let that happen so the letter writer was right to assume that they would go on to commit other crimes In fact, in the months that followed, Ken and these associates only seemed to increase their criminal activities in and around Skidmore.

Of course they did.

They were emboldened.

They were emboldened.

In the winter of 69, a farmer's co-op warehouse was robbed twice of several cases of fertilizer and pesticides, totaling in the thousands.

Wow.

Expecting that these thieves were going to return a third time, the co-op hired an elderly night watchman to guard the place and armed him with a shotgun.

A few weeks later, when the guard heard the sound of somebody trying to break back into the building, he called out and the thieves ran away, but the guard aimed the shotgun in the direction that they were running away and fired several warning shots just to scare them.

The night watchman said he never saw the faces of the men trying to break in and he couldn't identify them.

But according to Harry McLean, quote, the night of the third burglary, a man had some shotgun pellets removed from his rear end in a small town not far from St.

Joseph.

The man was Count McElroy.

I love that the LGBTQL.

Jealousy Night Watchman shot his ass.

He shot his ass.

Literally.

Now, Ken McElroy's violent and very unpredictable temper and his growing criminal enterprise at this point were a constant threat to the town and the locals.

Yeah.

But equally problematic and much more disgusting to the locals was his constant predation on teenage girls.

In 1961, he was 26 years old and he met and began an affair with Alice Wood, who was a 15-year-old girl who worked at a local pharmacy.

And did he end up marrying

another 15-year-old girl like a few years earlier?

Oh, yeah.

Yep.

Okay.

In 1964, he had left his previous wife

and now moved in with Alice.

And in 1968, they were married.

Who was allowing this?

That's what it's this time period is wild.

But even at that time, I like, this is like the 70s.

If your parents allow it, then

a lot of these, the parents would end up having to, they would be like bullied into it.

Gonna keep my mouth shut.

Yeah.

Like all the other women in his life, Alice suffered constant physical and verbal abuse from Ken that went unreported for the most part.

In one instance early in the marriage, and this is very upsetting, just so you know, this is like domestic assault, just so you're aware.

Ken returned home to find Alice packing clothes in a box and immediately exploded into a violent rage because he assumed that she was leaving him.

Before she could explain that she was just putting the clothes into storage for the season.

Oh my god.

He had, quote, grabbed her by the hair and swung her into a wall.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

And this apparently was a very typical experience that women or young girls who got involved with Ken McElroy would deal with on a regular basis.

He was very physically abusive, sexually abusive, physically abusive, verbally abusive,

emotionally abusive.

Nearly all of Ken's relationships were frowned upon by the townspeople, but no one seemed like they were going to do anything about this behavior, like they were like being bullied into submission almost.

The worst and most egregious of his relationships, which would also prove to be his last and I think the tipping point that he did, his reign of terror, began sometime in 1969.

He met 12-year-old Trina McNeely.

12?

You have to remember that right now,

he is 27 years old and she is 12.

12.

12.

He was 15 when she was born.

Yep.

He's 27 years old and she is 12.

He is a fucking monster.

I don't even want to know.

Yep.

So although he couldn't prove it at the time, Trina's uncle, sheriff's deputy Russ Johnson, suspected Ken of preying on schoolgirls when he stopped by a school dance one night and found Ken hanging around the middle school girls.

Middle school?

Like, what the fuck, dude?

Later, Johnson learned that Ken had intimidated Trina's date into picking her up and bringing her to him at the school, then bringing her home after.

What the fuck?

So like delivering Trina to him essentially.

Ew.

From that point on, it became common knowledge among the kids on the schoolyard that Ken had been arranging to meet Trina before or after school, often picking her up at the end of the school day.

Sometimes Trina would get other students to sign her mother's name on absentee notes, and instead of going to class, Ken would meet her at the bus stop and take her to Skidmore for the day.

And again, she's probably excited that an older man is expressing interest in her because she doesn't know better.

Exactly.

And also, she's terrible.

He was keeping her cat, like he was threatening her.

Yeah, of course.

This was a captive situation.

Yup.

And she was just doing whatever she could to survive it.

Yep.

Because one former friend said, in the beginning, she was more or less a captive.

And then she said, then they said, and sooner or later, when everybody abandoned her, she just gave up and went along with it.

Because that's what they do.

They isolate you.

Of course.

That's exactly what he did.

She's fucking a fucking 12-year-old.

Oh my God.

Throughout the years that he'd known Trina, Ken had abused her in nearly every way possible, including stalking, sexual assault, setting fire to her parents' home.

What?

And shooting her dog.

No.

He has literally stalked abused police.

He had raped.

committed arson to her parents' house and shot her dog.

Like, I just don't understand why they're not putting him behind bars.

That's what I'm saying.

That's how you stop people from doing crazy shit.

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Well, in 1971, when Trina was 14 years old, she became pregnant with Ken's child and dropped out of school to move in with him and Alice, who C is still living with.

Alice later denied that they lived together at any point, like all in the house together.

But he was fearing that he might be facing statutory rape charges, which, uh, yes, you absolutely all of a sudden is he fearing that so he bullied her parents into letting him marry her and then divorced Alice and they married in 1974.

Like he like threatened that he would like kill her, threatened he would kill them like they were totally put into a horrible

like the whole thing is just

beyond anybody's comprehension.

Yeah.

Because to allow

you to comprehend allowing that to happen.

I just can't.

But you have to think about if they did allow that to happen, what was going on here?

You know what I mean?

Like how bad it was.

Yeah.

And when you find out what happens to Ken and how

many people are complicit in it happening, he was really bad for a 10 years.

I mean, everything you've said, he's raped a 12-year-old.

He's raped like multiple 12-year-olds.

Multiple, multiple children.

Throughout the 1970s, Ken McElroy continued to terrorize the people of Skidmore with violence, theft, being a sexual predator, all the fun things.

In 1973, he was facing charges of forcible rape, assault with a dangerous and deadly weapon, and arson.

But he was released on bond and managed to get the charges dropped.

That's good.

That makes sense.

A few years later in 1976, Ken shot his neighbor, Romaine Henry, in the stomach after a minor argument and was quickly arrested for the shooting because, like, you shot your neighbor.

Why do they even bother arresting him, though?

This one's wild.

Before the trial had even begun, Ken burned the judge's barn to the ground and stalked several members of the jury and got himself acquitted.

Oh, okay.

He burned the judge's barn down and stalked the jury until he was acquitted.

That's just a Tuesday for Ken.

There is no stopping him.

There is, though.

The pattern continued four years later when McElroy shot 72-year-old grocer Ernest Boenkamp in the neck.

My God.

Ken was indicted for the shooting, but when the trial came in summer of 1981, the charge had been reduced.

And McElroy was convicted of a simple assault charge.

And he was released on bond pending an appeal date, which was scheduled for early July.

That's good.

Boencamp's wife, Lois, said, same old story.

Police arrest him, courts let him go.

So, like, she told a reporter that she's like, when is this going to stop?

Yeah.

Like, are we really just going to keep this going?

And the town said, yeah.

A few days later, one of the locals spotted Ken in Skidmore waving a gun around, which was in direct violation of the terms of his bond.

Uh-huh.

The witness signed an affidavit and agreed to testify at the bond hearing, which was brave as fuck.

When the hearing date arrived, the townspeople learned that the bond hearing had been been pushed back to an undecided date in the future.

Fantastic.

To everyone in Skidmore, it seemed like Ken McElroy had managed to find a way to avoid facing every single consequence in his entire life.

That must have been maddening.

The result they were fearing was that Ken would only become angrier, more vengeful, more powerful, and eventually he would take it out on the entire fucking town.

Had he not already?

Like, they were like, something even bigger is going to happen here.

Like, he's not going to stop.

We're all going to be dead at the end of this.

Yeah.

On the afternoon of July 10th a large group of skidmore locals met at a legion

town meeting at a legion hall a little town meeting at the legion hall to discuss the situation that they found themselves in for decades ken mcelroy had preyed on the people of skidmore he had terrorized them he had kept them hostage in their own homes I mean, they were terrified.

He had victimized them all in one way or another.

And it seemed like even law enforcement was too afraid of him to do anything about it by that point he'd shot more than a handful of people like and was liable to go on doing so until he finally killed people like everybody in the town yeah they all agreed something needed to be done about the situation and if the law wasn't going to do anything about it maybe they would have to do something about it girl As the group was talking,

as they're talking in the Legion, this is a true, like, take a sip of your drink.

I'm getting ready.

Like, bitch, I'm getting a little comfier.

As the group was talking, Ken entered the DNG tavern, which was just like a bar.

He had been in a few days earlier after the conviction for assault.

Oh, yeah.

And the bartender remembered him saying, I've been fighting prosecutors since I was 13 years old and I'm damn near 50.

This is the first time I've lost.

Oh, my God.

Imagine that man being in your town for nearly 50 years doing the shit he was doing.

Yeah.

The conviction, or more likely the loss, had made Ken angry.

And on that day, he was in one of his shittier moods, which almost always meant to the people of Skidmull,

something bad is going to happen.

He's going to hurt someone.

As Ken sat quietly at the bar, muttering about the conviction, pissing and moaning, getting angrier and angrier, one of the patrons slipped out of the bar and ran over to the Legion hall and told everybody, hey, everybody, Ken's over there, and he is fucking spitting mad.

So, like, something bad's going to happen.

And the fact that they all knew like this bitch is mad and bitching about something, somebody's going to get hurt.

Yeah.

That's bad.

That's like, that's scary now ordinarily this news would have cleared the room and sent everyone scrambling back to their homes just to wait locking their doors closing their shades they would like wait things out like until he had chilled out the group of men though all left the legion hall and walked over to dnd tavern where they found ken finishing his drink And the group of men just stared at him silently, wordlessly, until he got up from his bar stool.

And then he walked out the door.

And they just wordlessly, no one said a word they all just walked out after him and again no one's talking and he goes outside and he gets in his truck where Trina his 12 year old bride who is now you know she's a few years older now but that's that Trina was waiting for him in the truck the men all watched as Ken put the keys in the ignition and then before turning and starting the engine they watched him light a cigarette And then out of nowhere, nobody could figure out where, gunshots rang out.

Stop it.

One after the other, after the other, from different vantage points, different guns, just pow, pow, pow, pow, pow.

All, whoa, what happened?

A barrage.

By the time the shooting had stopped, the car had been riddled with bullets.

Was Trina okay?

Trina's okay.

Okay.

But the car had been riddled with bullets of various calibers.

from various guns.

Strange.

The first shot, a slug from a 30-30-30 rifle, I think it's called.

Couldn't tell me.

I don't know anything about guns.

I apologize.

Like, please don't get mad at me.

It's a rifle.

It shattered the back window of the truck and it struck Ken in the base of his skull,

tearing through his tongue and teeth before exiting through his cheek.

That's like low-key poetic because remember that time when he shot a child in the face?

Exactly.

It would eventually be found a few yards away in the wall of a small hut down the street from the cavern.

Nobody was hurt, don't worry.

That's good.

Nephorkin.

The second shot that hit Mikael Roy came from a.22 caliber rifle and was fired from farther down the street.

The bullet hit him in the upper skull and into his brain before exiting the other side of his head.

According to McLean, there was also, quote, substantial evidence that a shotgun was also fired at the truck, which would have accounted for the smaller pellet wounds found in Mikelroy's neck and face.

How terrible.

When the shooting stopped,

someone pulled Trina out of the car while this was happening as well.

Like literally dragged her to safety.

Wow.

This is a movie.

And they kept her there until it was all over.

When it was clear there would be no more shooting, someone called the sheriff's department to report the death of Ken McElroy.

I said, that's crazy.

He just killed over.

Of course, the sheriff was already in town.

In fact, he had been at the Legion Hall with everyone not long before the shooting meet.

No way.

He was getting a drink at that same time.

He was at the Legion Hall where the meeting occurred.

Oh.

Under the circumstances, it wouldn't really be appropriate for him to investigate the case.

Feels like a little bit of a conflict.

He said, you know what?

I have something going on right now.

You know.

How about the deputy?

The deputy.

Maybe you get the deputy on this one.

So the case was handed over to the Northwest Missouri Investigative Squad, or NOMIS,

a task force of law enforcement officers from the surrounding counties who occasionally were called upon to investigate unusual crimes.

Don't bother the task force with this.

He just,

it was a bad time.

He died.

We're not even done.

What?

Because the news of Ken McElroy's murder spread quickly, and soon journalists from around the country flocked to Skidmore to interview the town that, from all appearances, had taken the law into their own hands.

Unfortunately, for those people, no one in Skidmore would talk to anybody.

Well, they didn't.

Literally anybody, and they never would.

What?

When I tell you, no one talked.

No one saw nothing.

Wow.

No one.

No, one person in this town said, let me tell you what I saw.

That's brotherhood.

In his statement to Nomus investigators and eventually to Missouri FBI agents, Sheriff Dan Estes, the sheriff that was like, whoops, can't be there.

He admitted that he had met with a group of 35 or 40 men at the Legion Hall that afternoon to discuss their concerns about the Bowen Camp case.

And like the guy who, this 70

man, 70 year year old man grocer who was shot in the neck yeah and of Mik Elroy in general they were just discussing their concerns that he's a problem and that's all but he adamantly denies having anything to do with the shooting no in fact when the man from the tavern came into the hall to tell them McElroy was in town Estes distinctly recalls telling them all we're not going to go down there and do anything right boys then he left Assuming everyone would simply go home.

That's what he said.

And they did.

He said, I told him we're not going down there and doing anything.

he did his job as far as i'm concerned that sheriff did his job he said we're not going to do anything are we and they said nope and he said i'll believe you he said wig by

based on the evidence collected at the scene and from mcelroy's body there had been at least four shooters all firing from different positions along the street that's crazy one was directly behind the truck one was off to the driver's side another was down the hill a few yards and another was about a half a block away by the post office damn despite the fact that there were about 40 people in town that day, investigators found it nearly impossible to find anything who would admit they saw anything.

Anyone.

Anyone, anything,

nothing.

Anywhere.

Anywhere.

Anytime.

Any place.

One elderly man, one elderly guy told investigators he'd seen at least three men with guns just before the shooting started.

Couldn't tell you who they were.

that they were guys with guns.

But a short time later, his attorney withdrew the statement.

He never said that.

Citing his client's health problems.

He never said that.

And he didn't mean it either.

And those who would talk would talk mostly to reporters.

Lois Boenkamp, who had everything.

She said, I have something to say.

She told reporters justice had finally been served.

She said, you know how awful it was living in a town with Ken McElroy?

She said, my neighbor and I took turns sleeping at night.

It was frightening.

Oh my god.

Yeah.

That's how scary it was to live in that town with him.

That tells you something.

Yeah.

A few weeks later, on August 2nd, a grand jury was assembled to review the evidence and determine whether it was sufficient to warrant an indictment for murder.

On who?

The problem was.

Investigators had no suspect to indict.

Trina said in her statement, it seemed so strange.

There were vehicles lining the street, but no people anywhere.

A man in the crowd told me to stay in the truck, that they wanted to shoot me too, but someone else pulled me out.

In the end, the grand jury determined there wasn't enough evidence to indict anyone.

And the district attorney declined to press charges against any of the people who were there the day McElroy was shot.

The coroner's determination was that Ken was killed by a person or persons unknown.

And Trina's lawyer, Richard McFadden, said, We are disappointed but not surprised.

Now we can only hope for the Justice Department to complete its report soon.

If Trina and her lawyer were hoping that something would come out of the Justice Department's report, they were probably disappointed by the outcome.

When he was asked about the potential for an arrest or indictment, District Attorney David Baird told reporters, any hope of making a case against McElroy's killer or killers faded when a county grand jury disbanded to September 28th without issuing any indictments.

They said, we just don't know.

A short time later, the Missouri FBI wound down their investigation too, finding little evidence that would lead them to a suspect and virtually no one.

who would even admit to being in town that day.

Damn.

Trina and a few members of the McElroy family tried to speak out against the injustice that they saw, but eventually that died down too.

You feel for his family, for sure.

For sure.

That's tough.

After spending years researching the case for his book, Harry McLean isn't convinced that there are many people left in Skidmore who really know what happened.

He said, I don't think the guys on the street that day went home and told their wives and kids.

I think they went back home, got on their tractors, and shut up.

Former Sheriff's Deputy Dick Luziere more or less agrees with that assumption.

He told a reporter in 2001, they were so relieved that Ken McElroy was gone that it didn't matter to them whether the shooting was right or wrong.

In the four decades since his murder, no one has ever been charged with or even suspected of McElroy's murder.

No suspects.

Damn.

Mayor Tracy Shuey said, just because those bad things happen doesn't mean the whole town and the whole community is bad.

For newcomers, it does come up.

But what we say is, that's not all that we're about.

We've had a couple of things that have been not so pleasant, but to us, that doesn't define the town.

Please see past that.

If you can't, you've got to move on.

She said, if you can't, get the fuck out of schedule.

Tracy said, get the fuck out of here.

We don't talk about it anymore.

It is what it is.

You said, shut your mouth.

And that is the wild death.

of Ken McElroy, known as the town bully, which is a nice name, I would say, for him.

It's a good anecdote to learn from.

Yeah, you can't change your life, terrorizing

your community.

Don't

do it.

The ending of that case had my jaw on the fucking ground.

Well, I didn't really see that coming.

I'm very glad that Trina was not hurt.

I'm not sure somebody pulled her out of the situation.

And I'm sorry for his family that they did

because it's like, you know, it's a person.

It's a person that.

Yeah, and, you know, I'm sure they had different feelings for him.

Of course they did.

Like, yeah.

There are monsters in every family that you know that their family loves so it's like you know that's just the way it is but obviously vigilante justice is a very slippery slope and a very

a lot it's a complex and very nuanced thing there's it's you know this is a situation where you buy case wow

that i'm more i'm mostly interested in the fact that

no one ever rarely see people come together and just keep a secret like that or keep just no one saw nothing.

That's wild.

But I think they're right.

I think this is a, this was a community of like farmers and, you know, blue-collar workers.

And they're all, you know, like

they're working hard during a hard time.

Well, they're getting their shit rocked every day.

And they're getting their shit rocked every day by this guy.

Most of them are scared to go to sleep.

And like, the fact that she's there.

The children aren't safe.

The children aren't safe.

Like, he's going to schoolyards.

Like, he's going to school dances.

Like, there's nowhere that anywhere is safe.

Well, if you didn't know like any other detail other than the fact that one woman said her and her neighbor took shift sleeping that alone tells me

what kind of fear he had them living under like genuinely sit here right now and imagine you call up your neighbor to wake them up because it'd be like a cheering to watch for the town bully yeah like that's like that's crazy and that was not even that long ago and they were just they were tired of living under complete tyranny and just like

you know well and if the law is not gonna do anything and it's a wild case i'm I'm not saying what's right and what's wrong.

I'm just saying, like, this is a wild case.

Yeah.

And it's a wild case of you can't treat people like shit for your whole life.

Yeah.

And expect anything good to come out of it.

It's hard to say too much.

Exactly.

Like, cause again, I'm not condoning shooting people by any stretch of the imagination.

Never, ever.

It's a horrifying

sight to think about.

Yeah, it actually.

It's more or less just me saying you got to think about how you treat people.

Yes.

Because

you lay people in an every different way.

So you don't know what you're doing.

I've never heard another story quite like that.

Me neither.

It's shocked.

That's the thing.

It's just a shocking, shocking story.

Dave found that one?

Dave found that one.

Dave.

Dave.

Dave has the craziest shit.

Dave finds the craziest, like some of the most fascinating stories and most interesting ones I've heard.

Everyone just

killed the mind to Dave.

For real.

Damn.

Wow.

Well,

we hope you keep listening.

And after that, we're pretty sure you will.

Hell yeah.

And we hope you keep it weird.

but not so weird that you terrorize a town to the point where there's quite literally no return yes don't just don't do that they'll meet at the legion hall they will or the vfw that's all i could picture yeah that's basically it bye

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