Authors: Harry N. MacLean
There was some damage to the soft palate, which would have been out of the path of the second bullet, suggesting the possibility that a third bullet entered through a small, unexplained hole in his right jaw. The report also described two small wounds in the back of the neck below the base of the skull as being "consistent with gunshot wounds" but did not indicate whether any attempt was made to locate the bullet fragments or their paths.
The wind began sometime in the middle of the night, most likely in the early, dark hours of the new day, rising gently from the south in light, gusty breezes. The golden dreadlocks on the cornstalks rose and danced in the cool night air. Gradually the wind picked up, and the gusts blew longer and more forcefully, lifting particles of the dry soil in rising swirls.
The cafe was full by 6:30 Saturday morning. The screen door slammed, engines started and stopped, and chairs scraped, as the conversation rose and fell, shifting back and forth from the weather to the killing. The northern horizon was clear, but many lifetimes of experience told the farmers that the sky would soon change, perhaps by midmorning. The warm southern winds would collide with the cooler northern air, and the sky would grow darker, until the thunderheads rolled in and the shadows disappeared from the land.
"He sure had it coming," someone would say.
"It's safe to walk the streets around here now," another would add.
"Betcha there aren't any more hog thefts around here!"
Someone would recount how long the engine ran and describe how Estes had blown up when he realized what had happened. But the mechanics of the killing-the types of weapons, who was behind them, the bullets -never came up. The official story, the shield, was "I don't know who killed him, and I don't want to know."
Whenever the creaking door announced the arrival of a stranger-an insurance salesman from Mound City or a truck driver from Savannah -the place would fall silent instantly. Then someone would murmur about the weather, about how much moisture was predicted for the next twenty-four hours, and the rhythm would pick up again.
Q Goslee was sitting at his breakfast table that morning with the radio tuned, as usual, to station KMA in Shennandoah, Iowa. He heard Skidmore mentioned, then McElroy's name, and then the words vigilante and killing. He set his cup down and turned to stare at the radio. The tinny male voice was saying that the entire town had killed McElroy. Years later, reflecting back on the course of events, Q would shake his head and say, "That's where it all started, when they used the word vigilante."
A thousand eyes watched the gray clouds spreading slowly across the northern horizon. Black and white thunderheads stacked up in billowing layers, and by late afternoon, the air was heavy and sticky with moisture. The wind blew harder in uneven thrusts, and the farmers left their tractors and came in from the fields. Deciding against his usual afternoon trip to the cafe, Q stood on his porch, watching and waiting. There was no beginning drizzle this day. Instead, the water suddenly burst forth and drove to the ground in huge drops, pelting the fragile bean plants and throwing up tiny puffs of dry soil. The wind rattled the windows and then slackened. Soon, the wind stopped altogether, and the rain fell even harder. Q went inside, pleased. In a couple of hours, he would check his rain gauges.
David Baird knew that the investigation and prosecution of the killing would be a highly charged process, but he had not the slightest idea what was truly in store for him until Saturday morning when he picked up the Kansas City Times from his doorstep and saw the front page headline:
FARMER SHOT TO DEATH IN APPARENT VIGILANTE ATTACK
The article, which would set off the ensuing media binge, began as follows:
In what appeared to be a vigilante killing, a crowd surrounded a man and his wife Friday as they sat in a pick-up in Skidmore, Mo." and someone shot the man with a high-powered rifle, officials said.
The victim was 45-year-old Kenneth Rex McElroy, a part-time Nodaway County farmer who lived south of Skidmore, a northwest Missouri town of 440 people.
The article gave no reason for describing the killing as an "apparent vigilante attack," except for statements that the crowd had surrounded the truck and the residents had distrusted and feared McElroy. The story contained the kind of minor inaccuracies that often plague first reports: McElroy was forty-seven, not forty-five; his name was Ken, not Kenneth; the crowd did not surround the truck but stood uphill to the west. The article also claimed inaccurately that McElroy had been sentenced and an appeal bond had been issued, that McElroy was well known for "brawling," and that McElroy had died in the ambulance on the way to town. The funniest quote, if anybody had been laughing, was the following: " "I've got three kids and I'm not married, so I just ain't gonna say nothing," said Lois Bowenkamp, the daughter of the man McElroy was convicted of shooting."
This erroneous and provocative story turned the incident from just another local killing into a national story-an Old West tale where a frontier town takes the law into its own hands. The appeal to the news media world-wide was irresistible, and within days, almost every major paper in the country would carry articles about the community that killed the "town bully." Reporters were assigned to the story by both wire services, all three networks, the New York Times, the Minneapolis Tribune, the Miami Herald, the Chicago Tribune, the Omaha World Herald, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, Der Spiegel, the London Daily News, the Stars and Stripes, Time, Newsweek, and the British Broadcasting Corporation. Rolling Stone and Playboy magazines assigned articles, and "60 Minutes" gave the story to Morley Safer. The casual description of the event as an "apparent vigilante attack" caused the media to descend like locusts on Skidmore, and the lynch mob angle allowed them to write dramatic, but sometimes inaccurate, articles.
Local residents contributed to some of the hyperbole by saying things about McElroy that the media could turn into provocative quotes. The residents also assumed that the reporters were interested in the truth, but when they realized that the press was interested primarily in facts that supported the vigilante angle (that the town had decided to take the law into its own hands and kill McElroy), people shut up. The silence only made matters worse.
Within a few days of the killing, the town also realized that it would be denied the clear-cut moral high ground. Many stories set up the ethical dilemma: Was the killing a matter of good versus evil or evil versus evil? Was the town any better than the man it had killed?
The spectacular failure of the NO MIS investigation inflamed the media reaction. On Friday afternoon, when Baird announced that NO MIS would be handling the investigation, he also announced that the investigation would last only five days. The investigators worked through Friday night and met Saturday morning to compare notes and receive new assignments. Everybody had essentially come up with the same thing-nothing. The witnesses weren't talking, and the investigators had no physical evidence, such as bullets or identifiable shell casings, to work with.
On Monday, the Kansas City Times picked up the lack of cooperation and introduced the second angle, one which would guarantee that the story wouldn't die: a conspiracy of silence.
TOWN NOT COOPERATING WITH PROBE OF APPARENT VIGILANTE-STYLE KILLING
The article stated that law enforcement officials weren't sure they would ever be able to solve the crime, because the witnesses weren't cooperating. Residents knew who killed McElroy, but they just weren't talking because they "apparently think more of the person who pulled the trigger than they did of McElroy." In addition to the conspiracy to cover up for the killer or killers, the article added support for the theory that there had been a broad-based conspiracy to kill McElroy. In her first interview with the press, Trena told the Times that when she and Ken left the tavern and got into the truck, the crowd " 'got closer to the truck from beside my door and just stood there, staring. It seemed like they were waiting for something." Mrs. McElroy said she saw a man 'across the street shoot at them."
" "It was a setup," Mrs. McElroy said. "They've been having meetings." "
The Times article did not, however, mention the one fact that would have lent the most support to the conspiracy theory: a meeting that had been held in the Legion Hall only minutes before the shooting.
The Times article drew the battle lines. Trena accused the town of shooting her husband, and the townspeople replied (in several quotes) that McElroy got what he deserved and that no one was crying over him.
The article also previewed the dilemma in which the town would find itself: On the one hand, the people defended the killing as justified; on the other, they claimed it wasn't a vigilante action. While arguing vociferously that McElroy deserved to die and that there really was no other choice but to kill him, the residents denied having had anything to do with his death or knowing who did. They seemed to accept the moral responsibility for the act, while denying the actual responsibility for it.
In reality, no conspiracy of silence existed. The stone wall was a spontaneous, reflexive reaction, like a mother's instinctual protection of a child in danger. Many residents wished that the killing hadn't happened, and some were angry at the killers for having put them in the position of having to lie or defend the act to the outside world, but the community had no intention of giving up its errant sons.
The solidness of the wall awed some experienced law enforcement officers. "They aren't cooperating with us," said the NO MIS public information officer. "They just aren't interested in talking with us." By Sunday evening, the cops had investigated thirty-five leads and "thirty-five leads saw nothing and heard nothing." NO MIS had received more than 100 calls on its special phone line, but not one from a citizen of Skidmore.
The citizens had learned the basic rule of the criminal justice system: no witness, no case.
The NO MIS investigators went back out to the farms and pulled some individuals into the Savings and Loan Building in Maryville for questioning. Mayor Steve Peter was questioned twice, the second time in Maryville. Like most of those present, the mayor said he was looking at the truck when the shots rang out, and he immediately ducked between the vehicles; when he looked up, the guns were gone. He saw nothing.
"Do you know who killed him?" the cops would ask.
"No, and I don't want to know," farmer after farmer replied.
On Monday, the Forum reported that the Times had called the shooting a vigilante killing. Sheriff Estes denied the allegation, saying, "These people were everyday people ... friends and neighbors who wanted to help each other."
The Forum also broke the story that a meeting had been held Friday morning just prior to the killing, and that Estes had attended the meeting. Estes denied that the participants had discussed taking action against McElroy.
" "I was asked to come to the meeting," he said. "They wanted to know what they could do to protect themselves. Basically, the questions asked concerned whether they could be allowed to patrol each other's houses and farms.""
Some residents began putting forth alternative theories of the killing. They were all ridiculous. Several women recounted seeing a "long black car" with two or three men inside wearing dark pinstripe suits drive down the main street a few minutes before the killing. Others said they saw the men in suits in the cafe drinking coffee that very morning. One suggestion was that some of McElroy's mobster friends from Kansas City had rubbed him out. Some pointed the finger at McFadin, arguing that McElroy had come to know too much about his alleged dealings with the Kansas City mob. Others suggested simply that the killer was some hired gun retained by farmers or grain dealers from a neighboring county. This second line of defense-"he had it coming, but somebody else did it"-was no more effective than "he had it coming, but we don't know who did it."
By Wednesday, no progress had been made, although the squad had been beefed up to twenty-four officers. Many cops still believed they could crack the case. They found it simply inconceivable that, with forty or fifty witnesses, they couldn't get at least one person to talk.
" "We don't know how long the investigation will take," said Owens. "It could break any minute or it could last several days." "
There were two "breaks." By Friday evening, the cops suspected one particular farmer of being the man with the shotgun. Two officers found him working in the fields the next day, and they handcuffed him and took him to Maryville for interrogation. Tough questioning brought him close to tears, and during a break Deputy Kish took him aside. "Look," Kish said, "there's no jury in the county that's going to convict the shooters. Why don't you just get it off your chest and explain what happened? It won't go any further than this room."
"I feel real bad."
"Tell me."
"They did it."
Kish named two people and asked the man if they were the ones he meant.