Authors: Harry N. MacLean
Through most of the eighth grade, everything seemed fine to Vicki. Trena had a boyfriend, David, who took her to the homecoming dance, and she played basketball and competed in track, performing well against students from other schools. She seemed as happy as the average kid. Sometime that spring, Trena started to change.
"She started skipping school and getting in trouble. After a while, her attitude changed and she just didn't care about anything.
"Ken McElroy began coming to the school and sitting outside in his big, fancy car and waiting for her. When school was out, Trena would go with him. The school didn't like it, and there was trouble over it, but he kept on doing it.
"It got so she didn't have time for me anymore. We were still friends, but we didn't run around together anymore.
"After a while we weren't really best friends anymore."
Brenda, Treva's sister, had married Russ Johnson, a Nodaway County deputy sheriff and a member of the numerous Johnson clan. (Several opposing forces met in this family: One of Russ's sisters, Sue, was Ronnie McNeely's mother, whom Trena called "Grandma"; another sister was Lois Bowenkamp's mother-thus, when Ken married Trena, Lois would become his first cousin once removed by marriage.) Russ had suspected for some time that something was going on between Ken and Trena. In 1969 or 1970, when Trena was twelve or thirteen, Russ had been called to Graham regarding a shooting incident. He stopped by the junior high school to check out a dance and noticed Ken hanging around, talking to Trena. He learned later that Ken had intimidated Trena's date into picking her up at home and bringing her to him, then coming for her later and taking her home. Russ told Brenda about it, and she told Treva, but Treva adamantly denied anything was going on between her daughter and Ken McElroy.
Schoolchildren in Trena's area had to take one bus to Skidmore and transfer to another bus which took them to the school in Graham. Many mornings McElroy was waiting in Skidmore to pick Trena up. He would bring her back in the afternoon in time to catch the bus home. Her clothes were usually disheveled, and she often cried all the way home. The other kids on the bus would tell her she should stop going with McElroy, but she kept it up. At first, Ken took her to St. Joe and bought her things, like clothes and little gifts and candy. Then he began taking her to the Tic Toe Motel in St. Joe, where he molested her.
Although Cheryl (Bowenkamp) Brown was a year younger than Trena, they were in one class together-Introduction to Business. Trena sat next to her, and Cheryl felt sorry for her, so when she asked for the answers to the homework, Cheryl gave them to her. Cheryl and Trena rode the school bus from Skidmore to Graham together, and Trena would talk other kids on the bus into signing her mother's name on a note for the teacher.
In the fall of her freshman year, when Trena was fourteen, she became pregnant and dropped out of school. Katherine Whitney, the school counselor, was furious. She had heard the stories of McElroy taking Trena off the bus and could never understand why nobody-the school or the law-had done anything about it. Whitney believed Trena wanted to be rid of Ken but didn't have the strength to free herself.
Although Vicki felt a little bitter over being abandoned by her best friend, she tried to understand what had happened.
"I know other girls thought he was good looking, but I didn't. I think the reason Trena went with him was because he was an older guy with a fancy car and a lot of money. And you know, he paid a lot of attention to her. He was a friend of the family and went hunting with her dad, and she probably trusted him at first.
"In the beginning she was more or less his captive, and then sooner or later, when everybody abandoned her, she just gave up and went along with him."
Ronnie, the skinny, likable coon hunter, was not the guy to stand up to Ken McElroy-not that he didn't try. He told Ken more than once to leave Trena alone and he even pulled her out of school a couple of times, but what was he going to do when Ken didn't stop? The law sure as hell wouldn't help him in a war with Ken McElroy.
After Trena dropped out of school in 1972 (while Ken was in trouble in Savannah for stealing and in St. Joe for shooting Otha Embrey), her life essentially narrowed down to Ken McElroy. Although both Trena and Alice later denied that the two of them lived at the farm together (the townspeople swore they both lived there for years), Trena spent most, if not all, of her time there until she had her baby. Trena would later tell how Ken used to make love to them both in the same night, going from one room to the other. It bothered Trena, but what could she do? Trena learned that the way to get along with Ken was to do as she was told without asking questions. In the beginning, it was simple obedience, as a dog minds his master or a child her father. But in later years, Trena grew to believe in him. Whatever Ken said was the way it was.
On June 11, 1973, two weeks after her baby boy was born, Trena made a desperate bid for freedom. The baby was still in the hospital, and Trena told Alice she wanted to get away from Ken. Would Alice help her? Would she take her to Russ and Brenda's house in Skidmore? Alice, who should have known better, said she would. They told Ken they were going to the hospital to see the baby and left, taking Alice's two babies, Juarez and Tonia. They drove straight to Russ and Brenda's house, and Trena asked Brenda if she and Alice and the babies could stay there until Russ could take them somewhere. She wanted to get away from Ken, she explained, and if she was ever going to escape, it had to be now. Brenda hesitated. She knew what she was getting into, but the two women were obviously quite desperate. Finally, she said they could stay if they promised not to leave the house; she didn't want them going out and bringing McElroy back with them. The two women agreed, but it was only a few minutes before Trena called her parents and Ronnie came over to take her and Alice to the hospital to see Trena's doctor.
Somehow, McElroy figured out that his two women had run off, taking his favorite child, Juarez, with them. He hit the streets of Maryville in his Buick, and soon spotted Alice and Trena in Ronnie's truck. Driving alongside, he ordered them to pull over. McElroy aimed the shotgun at Ronnie and made him get in the Buick, then ordered the two women to drive back to Brenda's house in Ronnie's truck. (Ronnie thought for sure he was going to die. He would later tell his mother: "Ma, I wouldn't have given a nickel for my life that night.")
McElroy burned. To think that his women and Ronnie, puny little Ronnie, were defying him, telling him to get fucked. They were leaving him! Him!
When McElroy and Ronnie arrived at Johnson's house, Trena and Alice had already gone inside. McElroy jumped out of the Buick and stood on the sidewalk, the stock of the shotgun resting on his hip.
"Come on out here you fuckin' bitches," he yelled, "or I'm coming inside and blow your fuckin' brains out!"
Brenda took her two kids and Alice's babies and stuffed them in a closet in the back bedroom.
McElroy was getting worse, out of control.
"Bring my little boy out here, you fuckin' bitch," McElroy screamed at Alice, "or I'm comin' inside and blow you all away!"
Alice relented and took Juarez outside. McElroy stuck him in his car. When Alice went back inside, she began clawing and scratching at Brenda, yelling, "You said you would help us!"
"Yeah," Brenda said, "but you left like I told you not to, and now look what's happening!"
Brenda's daughter escaped from the closet and looked out the front window.
"Careful!" Trena said, pulling her away, "you'll get killed!"
Now that McElroy had his son, he started yelling for Trena. She ventured out onto the porch, then came back inside a few minutes later.
"He said he just wants to talk to me," she said.
"Don't leave, or you'll never make it back," Brenda warned. "He'll get you in the car and you'll never get out."
"He said he'll come inside and kill us all if I don't," said Trena.
Brenda gripped her loaded shotgun. "Well," she said, "he'll have to come through the door first."
McElroy kept yelling about what he was going to do to Trena and Alice when he finally got ahold of them, and eventually both women gave in and went outside. Soon they all left, Trena riding in the car with Ken, and Alice riding with Tonia, Juarez, and Ronnie in the pickup.
Once at the farm, the rage inside McElroy boiled over. Worried that Russ Johnson might call in the law, he leveled the shotgun at the two women and threatened to shoot them if anyone came to the farm. The shotgun roared forth inches from Alice's legs to make his point.
Trena would later describe what happened under oath in a court of law.
prosecuting attorney john fraze: O.K." just describe what happened there lat the farm].
Trena: Oh, after we got there, he made us get out except my dad and he sat in the car and I was behind the corner and he was in front of us and he shot the gun and he saw the car coming up the hill so he made us line up on the side and he says, "You guys might as well look forward to it if somebody comes you are gonna get killed." And then he just sat and talked for a while and then he took us behind the shed and he was going to shoot us because he thought another car came and after that he said we better take Ronnie home and he asked me if I wanted to go home and I said, I didn't say nothing for a while and then I said, "I don't know." And then he says well you are not going to go home until this is cleared up. And he told Alice to get in the car and he was going to be right behind her and if she made a wrong move that he would get her. So we went and let dad off and went on a gravel road.
fraze: O.K." after you let your dad off where did, you went where?
Trena: About a half a mile on a gravel road.
fraze: What happened when you got there?
Trena: He made me get out of the pickup and Alice stayed in the car and he put the gun up on top of the pickup and he wanted to know whose idea it was to go to my uncle's house and I said I didn't know and Alice said she didn't know. And then he got mad at me 'cause I kept on saying that I was feeling sorry for my mother and he kept on slappin' me and then after a while when he got done we went back to his house.
Ken beat Alice badly that night for her role in the attempted escape. In the midst of his fury, he whirled on her, shotgun in hand, and yelled that he was going to blow her head off. Instead, in a lightning movement, he drew the barrel back and brought it around full force on her face, smashing her nose and breaking both cheekbones and her brow. Alice stumbled away from the barn and managed to drive to the hospital in Fairfax. She arrived with her face puffed up and split open where the metal had hit the skin. In a few days, when the swelling dropped, her whole face turned an ugly, gruesome black-and-blue. The pain was excruciating, and it would leave her with headaches for the rest of her life.
McElroy's rage was not yet spent. He had to establish complete dominance. The next morning he told Alice, who had returned the following morning, to go to his mother's house down the road and make a phone call. Trena would later describe what happened under oath.
prosecutor john fraze: O.K." would you tell the Court what happened from the time that Alice left to make this phone call until she got back? Just tell it in your own words, however you want to tell it.
Trena: Well, I was in the kitchen with the baby and he was in the front room with the gun, and he told me to come in and I said, "What for?" and he said, "You know what for." And the baby was crying and I said,
"I don't want to put the baby down," and he said, "Put it down on the couch," so I put him down on the couch and he said, "Take your clothes off," so I took my clothes off, and he set down on the divan and I sat down on the divan and he put the gun up on top of the couch, the top, and he told me to suck his dick, and he told me to get on my hands and knees, and the baby started crying and I wanted to give the baby his bottle so I reached over and gave the baby his bottle and he came back and we had intercourse. Then Alice came and he acted like he was asleep on the couch and this was when he wanted to know what she had said, then after that he asked me to go get some water and bring some ice and some water to put in the jug. fraze: O.K. Did you agree to have intercourse with him, was that voluntary?
Trena: No.
fraze: Did you agree to do the other, was that voluntary?
Trena: No.
fraze: Why did you do it?
Trena: Because he had the gun, and I didn't want to fraze Were you afraid?
Trena: YeS.
fraze: Was it painful?
Trena: YeS.
fraze: You had a baby sixteen days before? I think that is all. mr. mcfadin on cross-examination: Was there anybody at the scene that witnessed this act of forcible rape?
Trena: No.
mcfadin: And the reason why, you are telling the Court, is that you were afraid at the time that you allowed Mr. McElroy to have intercourse with you?