Authors: Harry N. MacLean
"If the courts would have done something, as late as Thursday, none of this would have happened. But he got just what he deserved. He had terrorized some good people long enough."
The citizens were, of course, building the case against themselves. Every time one of them said how much McElroy needed killing, they reinforced the perception that the town had organized his death. If the residents said nothing, they appeared to be conspiring to cover up for people who had murdered an innocent hog farmer; but if they defended the killing, they appeared to be admitting responsibility for it.
"We're not a bunch of vigilantes," one citizen was quoted as saying in the Gazette. "We're just a bunch of townspeople who are trying to protect what is rightfully ours. Why should we have to live in fear all the time?"
But if the townspeople were talking to the press about why McElroy was killed, they were saying nothing to the pressor anyone else-about how he was killed. One NO MIS investigator was quoted in the same article as saying, "It's like pulling teeth that aren't there." But he remained confident. "In a town of 440 or so people, sooner or later, someone's going to talk."
Paul Stewart had covered northwest Missouri for the St. Joseph Gazette for years. He had visited Skidmore several times and found it to be an average small farming community, where everyone knew everyone else, and a stranger's car was noticed before it reached the railroad tracks. A quiet, isolated community, Skidmore was known only for two things: the Punkin' Show and the Festival Band. He had covered the Punkin' Show several times, and the people of Skidmore had always been friendly and courteous to him. Like everyone else, they enjoyed reading their names in the paper. When the Festival Band first started, the members were long-haired hippies who lived together without being married. Area residents initially had difficulty accepting the band, but when the leader, Britt Small, and a few of the other members joined the volunteer fire department and the American Legion, the town opened up to them. Much to its credit, in Stewart's opinion.
He and another Gazette reporter drove to Skidmore the afternoon of July 10, 1981. The place was crawling with lawmen-sheriffs, patrolmen, city cops, and miscellaneous officers from five counties. Stewart and his colleague took different sides of the street and began canvassing the residents. Although a few people were willing to talk about McElroy, no one would talk about what had happened to him. They would not verify the slightest fact-whether six or sixty people were in the tavern, what time of day the killing occurred, or when the ambulance came. After a few doors were slammed in their faces, the reporters went into the post office. They could hear people chatting in the back room, but when the reporters knocked and said who they were, the voices stopped, and no one came out.
Stewart approached an old-timer who was sitting on the bench in front of the Legion Hall and had probably been sitting there every day for the past fifteen years. But when Stewart asked the man if he had been sitting there that morning, he said, "No."
As the months wore on, Stewart watched the bitterness of the residents grow. Even years afterward, when he would come to cover the Punkin' Show, people either refused to talk or gave very limited replies to queries about McElroy or the killing. They understood and deeply resented the fact that Skidmore would always be known as the place where the mob killed the town bully.
Stewart was startled by the extent of the townspeople's dislike for
Trena. They seemed to be holding her responsible for everything that had gone on. Stewart found her public performances amusing. Lawyer McFadin was the director, and when a certain question was asked, she seemed to break into tears right on cue. At the various court appearances, beginning with the coroner's jury, McFadin and Trena would drive up in a big car and park on the south side of the courthouse. The reporters standing around would spot Trena and run over to her. McFadin would stop once or twice on his way to the courthouse door, talking to Trena and posing her in different positions for the television cameras.
The various press accounts had Trena giving different versions of events. An early story quoted her as saying that the crowd had gathered on the driver's side, while a later story had her placing the crowd on her side of the truck. One account had her saying that when they got to town, Ken went to the grocery store and bought Rolaids. In one article, she said she didn't know how many shots were fired; in another, she claimed to have heard four shots; and in a third, she said that the first shot had killed him and that he had then been hit three or four more times.
In a press conference on Friday, July 17, one week after the killing, Trena gave the following account:
"A man in the crowd told me to stay in the truck, that they wanted to shoot me, too ... Someone else pulled me out, I went to the ground and begged 'em to stop shooting."
The widow, according to the Associated Press report, said there was an eerie quiet when she and her husband went to Skidmore that morning.
"It seemed so strange," she said at the Kansas City gathering, "there were vehicles lining the street, but no people anywhere. We walked into the tavern and it was empty. Then all of a sudden it just filled with people. They were giving everybody beers, but nobody paid for them."
Over the weekend, the national media attention grew. The New York Times started off its piece as follows:
Kenneth Rex McElroy was the bully of Nodaway County until an angry crowd confronted him last week and someone put a bullet in his brain.
Now only the police and a few editorial writers seem to want to know who killed the man who wanted what few friends he had to call him Ken Rex. Many of the 440 inhabitants of this little farm town in northwest Missouri know who did it, but they are not talking.
The Times' article also referred to McElroy as a "part-time farmer who held various jobs between here [Skidmore] and St. Joseph."
The prize for concocting facts for the sake of drama went to a London newspaper for an article published July 18. Describing McElroy as "the swaggering bully of Nodaway County" who "beat up ranchers and punched it out in barroom brawls and rode roughshod over anyone who stood in his way," the article said that "60 silent, vengeful citizens grouped around him." McElroy "grinned at the crowd," and as he was "climbing into the truck, a single shot rang out. According to the medical report, McElroy was dead before he hit the ground." The article claimed that the town meeting was held a week earlier at the school hall and was attended by Sheriff Russ Johnson and David Owens, who "had only hazy recollections of what transpired." After the shooting, the crowd "faded into the night, ignoring pleas to call an ambulance and leaving the showdown scene to the weeping widow and Deputy Sheriff Russ Johnson."
Meanwhile, time was running out for the NO MIS investigation. The original five-day charter had been extended another five days and would expire on Monday the nineteenth if not renewed. The investigators met at nine o'clock that morning to review the situation and reach a consensus. They soon realized that there was no reason to continue: No progress had been made and none seemed likely. The case depended on eyewitness testimony, but the people who saw the killing weren't talking. The investigators had tried most of the techniques they knew, including pairing sympathetic and hard-nosed interviewers in good-cop bad-cop routines, using different cops to interview people at different times, and talking to witnesses at their farms and then bringing them into headquarters. Nothing had worked. As Sergeant Rhoades explained to the press, there had been ninety leads and ninety dead ends. The investigators had nowhere to go. So NO MIS disbanded and turned its files over to Sheriff Estes for any further investigation. At this point, according to Deputy Sheriff Kish, Estes said privately that there would be no further investigation of the killing.
But the FBI had already stepped in. A few days before NO MIS disbanded, the U.S. attorney for the western district of Missouri had received a letter from McFadin on behalf of Trena requesting the FBI to investigate the killing. Federal law made it a crime to conspire to deprive someone of his or her civil rights under color of law, and McFadin's theory was that the sheriff and mayor and perhaps other officials had conspired to kill McElroy, thereby depriving him of his civil rights. The government decided to conduct a limited investigation to determine whether Ken McElroy's civil rights had been violated. Because of "intense media attention," the FBI investigation was to be expedited. The inquiry was initially limited to a review of documents and reports compiled by local officials, but eventually the effort expanded into a full field investigation.
When people in Skidmore read about the FBI's decision to become involved in the case, their reactions ranged from incredulity to indignation. The local cops were one thing, but the FBI? The federal government, which had ignored the community's pleas for help, was coming in to determine whether McElroy's civil rights had been violated? Where was its concern for civil rights when McElroy was terrorizing decent, law-abiding citizens? Behind the anger, however, lay fear: The FBI and federal crimes were serious business. Would the community hold together? If anybody talked, there would be a prosecution and a trial, and the cops and the press would be all over Skidmore for months, maybe years, to come.
The tavern had become the focal point for reporters and television crews. They stood outside on the sidewalk seeking interviews from anyone who walked by, and they crowded up to the bar, asking questions of the bartender or whoever was sitting there. The farmers heard French and German and Brooklynese spoken. A few locals forcibly ejected members of one network-television crew from the tavern for persisting in asking questions after being told several times that no one wanted to talk to them.
Lois and Bo were prime targets for anyone armed with a camera or a pad and pencil, and Cheryl began standing guard at the front of the store to protect them from the press. More than once, she physically barred the way to the back of the store, where Lois and Bo now spent most of their time. Once, when a cameraman slipped by her and she caught him talking to Bo at the meat counter, she threatened to break his camera.
Prosecutor David Baird, after four months on the job, found himself on the front line. When NO MIS disbanded, he became the spokesman for the investigation, possibly because of the allegation that Estes had conspired to kill McElroy, or possibly because Estes had done a poor job of handling the press for NO MIS in a murder case in St. Joe a few years earlier. In any event, Baird was articulate and low-key. As he dealt with reporters from small-and big-time papers alike, he appeared modest yet confident, issuing statements that revealed nothing but provided enough information for an article. His performance was that of a seasoned politician and was crucial for maintaining an atmosphere of normalcy and order.
When the Hyatt Regency collapsed in Kansas City shortly after the killing, Baird figured that interest in the McElroy case might diminish somewhat. Instead, reporters covering the Hyatt story drove up to Maryville for a quick run at the "vigilante killing of the town bully."
Week after week, pink phone messages from reporters around the world stacked up on Baird's desk, and reporters lined up at his door looking for a quote. To the unending questions, he usually responded, "There have been no arrests, and no arrests are imminent." But his easygoing nature, his obvious sincerity, and his intelligence precluded any thought that the prosecutor was stonewalling the press.
Baird faced an interesting prosecutorial dilemma. As a public official, he was well aware of the public sentiment that McElroy had got nothing more than what he deserved. Having participated in prosecuting McElroy for shooting Bo Bowenkamp and Romaine Henry, Baird knew that the victim was hardly an innocent hog farmer. As a lawyer and prosecutor with an oath to uphold, however, Baird could not let any personal feelings influence his judgment. He had read Trena's statement, and she had clearly, consistently, and without hesitation named Del Clement as the man who had pulled the trigger. Murder indictments had been brought and won on a lot less than one eyewitness. And McFadin was telling the press that Baird could and should indict Del Clement on the basis of Trena's statement. Yet, Baird had to consider the other thirty or forty eyewitnesses, any one of whom could corroborate or contradict Trena's story. If Del Clement went to trial now and was found not guilty, he couldn't be tried again, even if the other witnesses identified him in the future. Should the prosecutor file charges in such a tenuous situation?
Perhaps Baird would not have to make the decision. In a county the size of Nodaway, Missouri law required that a coroner's jury be impaneled whenever a death occurred under suspicious circumstances. The coroner's jury must first determine whether the death occurred in an unlawful manner, and then name, if possible, the person or persons responsible for the death. If the coroner's jury named someone, the law required that the person be arrested immediately and that an indictment be filed. If the jury named no one, the decision would be back in Baird's lap.
The coroner's jury met to consider the death of Ken Rex McElroy at 1 p.m. on Tuesday, July 21, eleven days after the killing. Convinced that the jury would name Del Clement as the killer on the basis of Trena's testimony, Baird had instructed his secretary the day before to prepare an arrest warrant and an indictment bearing Clement's name.