Authors: Harry N. MacLean
Ken McElroy also grew more sullen and moody. Slipping into an obsession with the town and what people were saying about him and his family, he quizzed his friends and sympathizers in the community. His informants not only repeated the usual stories but they began telling him that some people were talking about doing something about him. McElroy was worried that somebody would come by one day while he was gone and gun down his kids in the yard, or shoot the propane gas tank alongside the house and blow the place up.
McElroy had about twenty dogs at his place at the time. Most of them were hunting dogs, but he had two German shepherds and two Dobermans. The dogs were usually tied up, but when a friend stopped by one day, he found two dogs running loose, growling, and snarling. They were so vicious that he crawled up on the roof of his car and yelled for McElroy, who eventually came outside and chained them up. He chuckled as he explained how they got that way.
"You'd be surprised what'll happen to a dog when you keep him chained up and give him speed and don't feed him for three or four days in a row.
One day in the spring of 1980, Ken McElroy spotted Beech Vogel, a local farmer, at the car wash in Maitland. After bringing his truck to a stop directly in front of Vogel, McElroy got out of the driver's side with a .38 in his hand. Trena got out with a .357 rifle, and his daughter got out with a shotgun. McElroy leveled the pistol at Vogel and demanded to know what he had been doing hanging around his place. Realizing that McElroy had him confused with someone else, Vogel managed to calm him down. McElroy stuck the .38 in the holster that lay against his rib cage beneath his shirt. He tilted his head and made some hand signals, the way a hunter would with his dogs. The daughter got back in the car with the two guns, but Trena stayed outside. McElroy, who seemed paranoid as hell, explained that a guy had been hanging around the house, acting weird and scaring his women. McElroy had cornered him one day, and the guy confessed that some man from around Mound City had offered him $2,000 to kill McElroy.
In mid-April, as if in response to the falling of a conductor's baton, the farmers drove their tractors into the fields and began planting. On the main street, stock trucks lined up at the city water pump to fill the large tanks of water that would be taken to the fields for mixing with herbicides. Huge machines, called Big A's because they sat on three wheels about ten feet off the ground and could spray twenty-four rows at a time, moved slowly down the main street like intergalactic vehicles. Spirits were high in the stores and at the gas stations. By the end of the month, however, some farmers had become anxious over the lack of rain. If the seed lay in the hot soil without water, it might dry up. Finally, rain began to fall, and it kept on falling. By the fourth day, those who drank hit the tavern early, and those who didn't became restless and irritable, doing endless chores at their farms, taking naps, watching the soaps, and going to the cafe three or four times a day. If the seeds received too much moisture and no sun, they would become susceptible to rodents and cutworms.
As Ken McElroy's trial date drew near, the farmers worried about more than just the weather. Every day, sooner or later, McElroy came to town. The minute the Silverado hit the main street the word spread. In the cafe, heads turned as the truck cruised by. When he walked into the tavern, the farmers drained their beers, shot the eight ball in the pocket, and put up their cues. Within ten minutes, the place emptied, except for McElroy and Red Smith. Red, who didn't have any choice, was tense; his two coon dogs had disappeared, and he heard that McElroy had bragged about stealing them and then shooting them.
One afternoon, someone walked in and told Red that the Silverado was parked in front of the grocery store, and the two-tone green Chevy was across the street in front of the Legion Hall. Red said to hell with it, closed the tavern, and went home. The next day, McElroy came in early and asked him irritably why the tavern had closed so early the day before.
"Wasn't no business," Red said.
Ken McElroy's presence hung over the town like the threat of a May frost. In the early hours of a spring morning, the temperature sometimes dropped below 32 degrees, freezing the moisture in the air and in the veins of the plants, whose tiny stalks were about three inches high. By early afternoon, the tips of the rich green leaves would have darkened, and by the end of the day, the leaves would be black to the stalk. To a passerby, the fields looked as if some evil, punishing plague had passed over. Such a frost was so rare that the farmers couldn't plan for it, and so devastating that some couldn't recover from it. The killing frost was a freak, a moment when the forces of nature fell out of their delicate balance, reminding the farmers, as if they needed reminding, of their dependence on the harmony of the elements and the precariousness of existence. The farmers who had survived the disease wondered whether they were now immune.
By mid-May, as the farmers began planting beans, the thin stripes of green running across the earth were becoming fuller and brighter each day. The lustrous green balanced with the deep brown soil, and the light spots, where the water had washed away the topsoil, stood out on the hillsides.
By May, the struggle between McElroy and his victims pervaded the entire community. The tavern began closing around 6:00, whether McElroy was in town or not. Business in the grocery store dropped to almost nothing. Kids were called home by 4:00, and the streets were silent and empty by suppertime. People stayed in their homes with the doors locked. Business got so bad at the liquor store that some evenings Rowlett didn't have a single customer. Finally, he just gave up and closed the store for good.
A coon hunter from south Missouri came to town one day looking to trade a dog or two with Ken McElroy. When the man asked around for McElroy, people mumbled nervously, as if they were afraid even to have a conversation about him. They wouldn't say where McElroy lived or whether they had seen him in town that day.
Some of the cops understood what was happening, but they felt helpless to do anything about it. Among themselves, they often said that if they ever caught McElroy alone on a back road, they would blow him away.
Patrolman Dan Boyer, who had been trained to kill and was nonetheless nervous around McElroy, tried to imagine what the people in the community must be feeling.
"I would get a call about McElroy sitting somewhere in his truck, and I would drive into town, and it would be like a graveyard, quiet and empty. It made my hair stand on end, to tell you the truth. Now and then, a face would poke out the window and stare at the patrol car. It seemed to make it worse, because my presence meant he was somewhere around. They didn't really see us as a source of protection anymore."
The Bowenkamps waited for the trial and simply tried to survive. Except for Tim Warren and the Sumys, most people left them alone. Everyone felt sorry for Bo, but nobody gave him any support or help. Nobody walked up and said, "I'm on your side, Bo. Let's see what we can do to take care of this bastard." They talked about helping him out, but nobody ever did.
Ever since his talk with McElroy's friend in St. Joe, Stratton felt that he and McElroy had a clear understanding that Stratton-if he got the chance, if he found McElroy with a weapon and had the slightest provocation-would nail him. One afternoon, Stratton went looking for McElroy and found him on a blacktop south of Graham, cruising in his new Silverado. Deciding to check out the truck, Stratton turned on his top light. McElroy pulled over immediately. Trena was with him, and no guns were visible. Stratton checked McElroy's driver's license and called in the registration, which was in Tammy's name. Neither McElroy nor Trena said a word, but McElroy glared as Stratton gave back the documents and said they could go.
Tom, one of the boys who stole for Ken, had been spending some time with him in the spring of 1981. At the farm, the mean dogs were off their chains, growling and snarling as they circled Tom, even after Ken called them off. Ken had been going on two-and three-day binges, drinking whiskey from the bottle constantly. When that happened, he talked a lot and acted scary, as if he could go off on anybody any minute. By the third or fourth day of a binge, Ken was really weird, talking about how he didn't like somebody and was going to kill him.
One day, Ken stopped in town and picked up Tom in the new Silverado, saying, "Get in and drive." Ken drank heavily from a fifth of Jack Daniel's as he gave Tom directions to a certain farmer's house. When they neared the house, Ken reached behind the seat and pulled out a shotgun. He laid it on his lap and fondled it, saying, "This goddamn farmer has been talkin' about me." As they rode, Ken drank more and got crazier and scarier. Looking out the window at the farmhouses, he stroked the metal barrel and said he was going to have to kill somebody because "they were always fuckin' with me." He went on and on about the Bowenkamps, how they had fucked with his kid, and how he was going to have to take care of the old man and do it right this time. His voice grew louder, and he took longer swigs from the bottle and smoked one cigarette after another. Toward the end of the ride, he reached inside his shirt, pulled the .38 out of its leather holster, and laid the pistol on his lap alongside the shotgun.
"I'm gonna get that goddamn Bowenkamp," he said, again and again.
Tom knew what Ken was doing to the town, and that night, the last time they rode together, Tom understood in his gut that Ken meant to push the struggle to the point of destruction.
Rain fell for three straight days, soaking the earth and turning everything into mud. Finally, the morning sun reappeared on the hilltops and threw a soft white light across the fields. The air smelled fresh, and the countryside emerged in full bloom. The timber awoke to the music of meadowlarks and robins and mourning doves. Orange butterflies in black trim fluttered about, skimming the verdant raspberry bushes. Masked cardinals monitored the morning activity from their stately perches.
In the fields, the earth remained a damp black, and the spikes of corn ran over the contours of the land like a pattern stitched in light, shimmering green.
In April 1981, Robert Nourie resigned as prosecuting attorney for Nodaway County to return to the Marine Corps in the judge advocate general's office. Some people in Skidmore said that he must have left because he couldn't take the heat that came with prosecuting Ken McElroy, but they had no evidence to substantiate this charge. Nourie's departure could have been a break for the defense. The prosecuting attorney's job was not highly sought after by lawyers in Nodaway County. The annual pay was $21,500, and the job was so time-consuming that the opportunities for an outside practice were limited. Probably none of the senior experienced attorneys in Maryville would be willing to abandon their practices to accept the position, and if one of them were to accept the case as a special prosecutor, his busy schedule might well require a postponement to allow him time to prepare for trial. A younger, inexperienced lawyer might not be anxious to go all the way to a jury trial, so a deal for a misdemeanor might be possible.
Neither the townspeople nor the defense anticipated the skills and abilities of the twenty-eight-year-old legal-aid lawyer, three years out of law school, who accepted the appointment as the new prosecuting attorney.
David Baird seemed more like a man born and raised in a refined Boston suburb than a man from agricultural northwest Missouri. Studious looking, with dark-rimmed glasses, he had an educated demeanor and an easy professional poise. He was well spoken, thoughtful, and sure of himself-without a trace of a typical barrister's arrogance. Baird had attended grade school and high school in Maryville, and had been graduated from Notre Dame in 1975. He obtained a degree from the University of Missouri at Columbia School of Law in 1978, then worked for legal aid in St. Joe. In June 1978, he returned to Maryville as a legal-aid lawyer.
In April, when Nourie spoke to Baird about accepting an appointment as prosecuting attorney, the two of them reviewed the existing caseload.
When they came to the McElroy case, set for trial only two months away, Nourie suggested that because Baird was new, he might want to ask the state attorney general's office to try the case. Baird didn't consider the possibility for a moment. If anything, he anticipated the challenge and welcomed the opportunity to try a major felony case right out of the gate.
Baird had run into McElroy and McFadin before when, as a legal intern, he had assisted Amy Davis in the prosecution of the Romaine Henry shooting, doing legal research and preparing witnesses. He had been absolutely amazed when the jury acquitted McElroy. The two cases were very similar in that the prosecution's case rested entirely on the testimony of one key witness. If that jury had not believed Romaine, maybe this jury wouldn't believe Bo, either. Baird compensated for his lack of experience in criminal cases by meticulous preparation. He reinterviewed all the witnesses, studied the transcripts, visited the crime scene several times, and ordered charts and diagrams of the scene drawn up for presentation to the jury.
Objectively, the prosecution had a strong case. If Bo maintained his story, and nothing untoward happened, they should have had a decent chance for a conviction. Then the call came from McFadin; he had a witness, a woman who had actually seen the incident, and he intended to call her at trial. He would send Baird a copy of the handwritten statement she had made in his office on May 8, 1981.