SYSK’s Fall True Crime Playlist: The Strange Unsolved Murder of Ken McElroy

Summary

Stuff You Should Know: The Strange Unsolved Murder of Ken McElroy

Podcast: Stuff You Should Know
Hosts: Josh Clark & Chuck Bryant
Date: September 26, 2025
Episode: SYSK’s Fall True Crime Playlist: The Strange Unsolved Murder of Ken McElroy

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Overview

This episode explores one of America's most chilling unresolved true crime tales: the 1981 daylight murder of Ken Rex McElroy in Skidmore, Missouri—a story marked by a terrifying antagonist, a town’s desperate search for justice, and a community-wide conspiracy of silence that endures to this day. Josh and Chuck dig into McElroy’s menacing history, the inability (or unwillingness) of authorities to stop him, the events leading up to his murder, and the epic silence of those who witnessed his death. The episode examines the lengths to which an entire town might go when the law fails them, and raises tough questions about justice, morality, and vigilantism.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Introduction & Trigger Warning

Timestamp: 02:19

• The hosts announce a strong trigger warning: topics include sexual assault, child molestation, and violence.
• “There's no way around it,” Josh warns, “this is a story about a very bad man and some of the bad things he did, including sexual assault and some of which were with minors.” (02:19 – Josh)

Who Was Ken Rex McElroy?

Timestamps: 03:07–05:25

• Born 1934, 15th of 16 kids, raised in poverty in Skidmore, Missouri.
• Left school early; possibly illiterate; began extensive criminal activity in his teens.
• Not just a petty criminal: he supported his large family through crimes such as cattle rustling (in a region notorious for it), antique dealing, and hunting dog trading.
• Physically imposing—over 6’2” with jet black hair and “huge sideburns.”
• “He always had like a few grand in his pocket... Like that kind of dude. He was a big guy... but he picked on people smaller than him.” (09:00 – Josh Clark)

The “Teflon-Coated Hick”

Timestamps: 08:58–13:11

• Notorious for evading the law—arrested and charged at least 21 times, never convicted due to a combination of delays, intimidation, witness/jury tampering, and a savvy mob-connected lawyer, Richard Gene McFadden.
• “Gene McFadden would get delay after delay... McElroy would get busy intimidating witnesses... most of the time, almost... every single time, eventually, he would intimidate enough of the witnesses and that the cases would fall apart. And that is how he became what Crime Library referred to as this Teflon coated hick.” (10:16 – Chuck Bryant)

Extreme Violence & Intimidation

Timestamps: 11:54–14:44

• Repeatedly assaulted, shot, and terrorized townspeople without consequence.
• Shot farmer Romaine Henry in the stomach simply for being asked not to poach pheasants.
• Intimidated everyone—cops, judges, and even lawmen’s families.
  • E.g. “One day, his wife Margaret was on her way to church... McElroy walks up to the car, puts a shotgun in her face. And he did that to cops’ wives, to judges...” (13:42 – Josh)

Predatory Behavior

Timestamps: 16:34–20:14

• Serial child molester and rapist; married multiple underage girls, often after grooming, coercion, and threats.
• Tactics included threatening to kill victims’ families, burning down their homes, and killing family pets to intimidate and control.
  • “He would get her to marry him to keep her from being able to even testify against her. And Jean McFadden, in a show of just how sleazy lawyers can be, served as a witness to their wedding.” (21:02 – Chuck)

The Trina McLeod Story

Timestamps: 18:55–22:18

• Most notorious victim: Trina McLeod, groomed from age 12/13, pregnant by 14, brought to live with McElroy’s other underage wives.
• Witness intimidation extended to foster families when Trina was briefly taken into protective custody.

The Final Straw

Timestamps: 22:18–30:14

• 1980: McElroy’s four-year-old daughter caught shoplifting at the local grocery.
• Grocery owner Bo Bowenkamp (well-liked, elderly) is shot in the neck by McElroy.
• For once, McElroy is apprehended, tried, and, after extensive delays, convicted of second degree assault—a first after years of crimes.
• Released on $40,000 bail (likely paid in cash) awaiting appeal.
• “He [then] showed up at the local tavern in Skidmore, the D&G Tavern, and I'll bring an M1 carbine rifle... and talk about how I'm going to finish off Bo Bowenkamp in front of everybody in the bar.” (30:14 – Chuck)

The Showdown in Skidmore

Timestamps: 33:23–38:34

• The town has had enough: a massive meeting at the American Legion hall captures the mood—either vigilance, mutual protection, or talk of taking matters into their own hands.
• A crowd (estimates range 30–60) follows McElroy and his wife Trina from the D&G Tavern to their truck in broad daylight.
• McElroy is shot and killed—two different rifles, both shots from behind, and no attempt at medical aid.
  • “He pulled out a cigarette and I saw that he either had just lit it or was about to light it when somebody shot him in the head with a high powered hunting rifle. And then followed that up with a shot to the neck with Trina right next to him, who was suddenly covered in his blood.” (36:12 – Chuck)
• No one helps. No one speaks to police.

Aftermath & Wall of Silence

Timestamps: 38:34–43:32

• Despite dozens in attendance, “no one saw a thing.”
• Law enforcement makes a show of investigation—but not a single person is arrested, indicted, or even credibly identified.
• One would-be witness quickly retracts; Trina identifies Del Clement (local bar owner with motive), but it isn’t enough.
• The FBI closes the case in 1982, with Chief Hal Riddle calling it the most frustrating of his career.
  • “...this town got away with murder.” (44:20 – Josh)

Reflections on Justice, Law, and Vigilantism

Timestamps: 43:32–45:18

• The episode raises hard ethical questions:
  • Had the authorities not failed so badly, would mob justice ever have occurred?
  • While mob justice is wrong, can it be wholly condemned when a predator is left unchecked?
  • “If there was any theme to this, aside from this horrible bully, it was the local institutions failing the community time after time after time... That was like, the subtext of this whole thing, is that this community essentially had to take matters into their own hands.” (44:20 – Chuck)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “He's a kind of money guy that, like, he always had like a few grand in his pocket with a big fat money roll, like that kind of dude.” (09:00 – Josh Clark)
• “He was arrested and charged at least 21 times without being convicted.” (09:16 – Josh Clark)
• “He shot a guy in the stomach... because that guy asked him not to shoot pheasants out of season on his land anymore.” (13:11 – Chuck Bryant)
• “This guy got married more than once to keep the girl that he was raping from testifying against him.” (17:51 – Chuck Bryant)
• "We don't know... at the very least the law can't say who killed Ken McElroy. There are between 30–60 people who were standing right there... and no one saw a thing. The town circled the wagons and clammed up." (38:34 – Josh Clark)
• “They did what they did because we didn’t do our job.” (47:16 – paraphrasing Richard Stratton, by Josh Clark)
• “If there was any theme to this... it was the local institutions failing the community time after time after time after time... The community essentially had to take matters into their own hands...” (44:20 – Chuck Bryant)
• "I think you can not agree with mob justice and also say the town of Skidmore—and the world—was probably better off without this child rapist walking around." (45:06 – Josh Clark)

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Timeline of Critical Segments

• Trigger Warning & Set-up: 02:19–03:07
• McElroy's Background/Character: 03:07–06:03
• Criminal Methods & Legal Evasions: 08:58–11:54
• Witness Tampering & Violence: 11:54–14:44
• Sexual Assaults & Predation: 16:34–22:18
• The Bo Bowenkamp Shooting: 22:18–25:12
• Arrest, Trial, Bond, and Town's Breaking Point: 25:12–31:26
• American Legion Hall Meeting & Mob Justice: 33:23–38:34
• Aftermath, Silence, and Legal Failure: 38:34–47:16
• Ending Reflections: 43:32–48:18

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Conclusion

This episode provides a harrowing look at what happens when a community is chronically failed by the legal system, ultimately leading—to paraphrase the hosts—to a grisly but perhaps inevitable act of vigilante justice. Through their characteristically engaging and thoughtful style, Josh and Chuck examine the complexities of community, law, and moral ambiguity, making this a quintessential SYSK deep-dive into a case both infamous and deeply unsettling.

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For listeners who need more, the hosts reference:

• Book: In Broad Daylight by Harry MacLean (1988)
• Documentary: No One Saw a Thing (SundanceTV, 2019)
• 1991 TV movie starring Brian Dennehy

Note: All ads, intro, outro, and listener mail omitted from summary per instructions.

Transcript

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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[Chuck Bryant]

The murder of Ken McElroy is an example of the kind of small town justice so well served that it seems like it's got to be a movie. And it was a movie. Not a very good one starring Brian Dennehy. But the actual crime came first and it was true, hence its inclusion on this playlist. At any rate, the town of Skidmore, Missouri doesn't play around if they're pushed too far. You can bet on that.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. And there's Chuck. And Jerry's here too, pushing us around as usual. This episode of Stuff you should know.

[Josh Clark]

Our second episode for us of the new year. And why didn't we save like a pretty happy one to get going with?

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know. I don't know. Probably because we knew we were going to be so bummed out after Jonestown, we needed something that was a pick me up. And what's crazy is this story actually is a pick me up compared to Jonestown.

[Josh Clark]

Oh boy, that's tough to parse out. So thank you to Livia for diving into this tough story. And also this episode, we want to issue a very big trigger warning because in it we are going to talk about a very bad man and some of the bad things he did, which included sexual assault and some of which were with minors. So trigger warning. Know that going in. There's no way around it.

[Chuck Bryant]

There's very few stories that have like a clear cut Villain. And. But this is one of them. And the villain, who's also the center of our story. The person at the center of our story is a man named Ken Rex McElroy.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Which, I mean, all you need to hear is that name, really, I think. And it kind of just puts a. Puts a weird chill down your spine that you can't quite identify yet.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. This is a story that you may have heard of before. There's no shortage of content about Ken McElroy. There was a book written in 1988 by Harry MacLean, a crime writer, called In Broad Daylight. You know, it's Coming. A Murder in Skidmore, Missouri. There was a documentary just a few years ago in 2019, called a documentary series, Actually called no One Saw A Thing, of which I watched the first episode.

[Chuck Bryant]

How is it? I didn't get a chance to yet.

[Josh Clark]

Well, we'll talk about it. It's okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's got like a seven plus on IMDb. That's really saying something.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Chuck gives it a six minus.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay. Still, it's not too bad.

[Josh Clark]

It's okay. I mean, not a ton of light was shed, so maybe it's because if I went into it blind, it might have been a little better.

[Chuck Bryant]

Gotcha.

[Josh Clark]

But there's also a 1991 TV movie starring Brian Dennehy and Marcia Gay Hardin, which, actually, I watched a very bad YouTube version of it. Mostly I scrubbed through a little bit of it. But it's actually not terrible for a 1991 TV movie, largely because Brian Dennehy is perfectly cast and awesome.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, he really is. I don't understand why they changed the names. Did Harry maclean change the names for In Broad Daylight?

[Josh Clark]

I didn't read the book, but I don't know. Sometimes they do that with TV movies. Well, regardless, Protect the Innocent.

[Chuck Bryant]

You know, I scrubbed ahead to the last probably 30 minutes, saw the good stuff.

[Josh Clark]

That's kind of all you need.

[Chuck Bryant]

And you're right, Brian Dennehy was great in it. And Marcia Gay Harden did a great job at the really important point.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, she's a tremendous actor. As was Dennehy. RIP Brian Dennehy.

[Chuck Bryant]

So Ken Rex McElroy, he was from Skidmore, Missouri. That's where this story takes place. He was the 15th of 16 kids. From what I saw. He was born in 1934. And you can be the wealthiest person in your state and have 16 kids and you're still going to be Hard Scrabble.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

His dad wasn't the wealthiest person in the state. So the McElroys grew up kind of doing what they could to make their own way. And Ken himself, I saw either he made it up to age 15 in school, which is a surprising statistic to me after I know a little more about him. I also saw that he was illiterate, which I would definitely believe, more than the fact that he made it up to age 15 in school. Either way, at a young age, he started taking up crime. You get the impression, not just out of necessity, but also probably out of a certain amount of pleasure.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And this was to frame it in the 1940s. He was born in 34, so by the time he was criming, it was the 1940s. One thing we should mention is, and I'm glad Livia dug this up, and this is no way excusing any of his behaviors, but when he was 18 years old, he was working construction and there was an accident where some very heavy cribbing fell about 30ft and hit him in the head. He had a construction helmet, but it cut his scalp, so it clearly provided minimal protection. And he said that he had a steel plate implanted and had episodes of, like, blackout episodes and pain throughout the rest of his life. And it should be noted that one common denominator in many cases of sick people who do awful things is head injury when they're younger. So that very well may have been the case. Again, not excusing anything he did, but we're trying to paint a full picture here.

[Chuck Bryant]

He was like a modern day Phineas Gage.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, exactly. And like you said, it seemed like he enjoyed criming from a young age. He was a pretty. I mean, this is before the accident even. He was a pretty disturbed young man. Yeah, safe to say.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I would say. I would definitely agree with that. But he did do stuff. He wasn't just like a layabout. Like, he was a kind of an industrious criminal. He also trained hunting dogs. He. He was a dealer of antiques, a buyer and seller. But more than anything, he was a cattle rustler. Apparently the year before his death, the county that Skidaway is in, or Skidmore is in Nottaway County. The cattle thefts were six times that of any other place in the state. It led the state and cattle thefts, and apparently a lot of that was Ken McElroy. He was flush with cash. He. He would buy new cars he could support. He ended up having at least 10 kids, could support them all. He. He had a lot of money and all of it essentially was from crime because he Had a tiny little farm, and he wasn't making much, if any, money off of that. He was making it from. From stealing.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And when we say he had a lot of money, it's not the kind of. It's not wealth. He had the kind of money for a criminal in the 1960s in Skidmore, Missouri.

[Chuck Bryant]

He has Skidmore money.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Which is to say, oh, I hope there's no Skidmoreans.

[Chuck Bryant]

There's a couple hundred of them.

[Josh Clark]

Well, listening to us.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I just assume the whole town listens to us anyway.

[Josh Clark]

They're probably so sick of this story. But he's a kind of. Kind of money guy that, like, he always had like a few grand in his pocket with a big fat money roll, like that kind of dude. He was a big guy. He was like 62 or 6 3. Had this sort of here, again, kind of like Jim Jones, men of the time. Had this jet black hair and these huge sideburns. He was imposing, but he picked on people smaller than him. He picked on women and children and young girls and took advantage of all these people. And he was arrested and charged at least 21 times without being convicted. And if you're thinking, like, how in the world does that happen when, like, people know he's committing crimes, he's getting arrested of these, committing these crimes, it's because he had a very, I guess, good, slippery attorney named Richard Gene McFadden, who is supposedly a mob attorney in Kansas City. And upon their first meeting, he was like, you can't afford me. And McElroy said, Let me be the judge of that. Pulled out that big fat roll from his pocket, threw it on the desk, and McFadden was delighted to have him as a cash paying client who listened to him.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So McFadden was so good at getting him off, he. Well, actually, they work together. McFadden was good at getting him off. But he probably wouldn't have been nearly as successful if Ken McElroy hadn't been also a very active participant in getting himself off.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So Gene McFadden would get Delay after delay, all these procedural delays to just really put as much time between Ken McElroy's arrest and the actual trial date as possible. And then Ken McElroy would get busy intimidating witnesses. And if it got closer and closer to trial and a jury was impaneled, he would intimidate the jurors, he would threaten their lives, he would threaten the lives of their families, he would threaten to burn their houses down, he would threaten to kill them. He would threaten, not just with words, he would intimidate them by parking in their driveways, by brandishing guns at them, by shooting guns in the air, sometimes in the night, outside of their house. Like, just. It would take a couple of these for the average person to be like, I can't. This is not what I've signed up for. This guy is scaring me to death. Some people lasted longer than others, but most of the time, almost in every single time. Eventually, he would intimidate enough of the witnesses and that the cases would fall apart. And that is how he became what Crime Library referred to as this Teflon coated hick.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, absolutely. Like, he shot a guy in the stomach in July of 1976. A guy named Romaine Henry. And yes, you heard me right, he's a farmer. Spelled exactly like the lettuce. Was he named after the lettuce? Because was he a lettuce farmer?

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know. Did they farm lettuce in Missouri?

[Josh Clark]

They did in Yuma, Arizona.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think, just for the sake of this story. Yes, he absolutely was a Romaine lettuce farmer. His parents raised him to be one.

[Josh Clark]

And named him after that lettuce. So he was shot in the stomach with a shotgun, was not killed, and got away with it. He, you know, in the documentary, like, Romaine Henry pulls up his shirt and he's like, here's where he shot me. And court witnesses, he, you know, like you said earlier, he was one of his side hustles, was raising and training and selling hunting dogs. And he was well liked by some people, like the people that he dealt with with these hunting dogs. Other crimey type people liked him. So he had this stable of dudes that would go to court and testify on his behalf and provide him with alibis and say, like, he didn't shoot him in the stomach. He was with us at the time of the shooting. So he got away with shooting Romaine Henry in the stomach with a shotgun, even.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And just to make sure that you understand what kind of person Ken McElroy was, the reason that he shot Romaine Henry in the stomach was because Romaine Henry approached him and said, hey, will you please not shoot pheasants out of season on my land anymore? And Ken McElroy responded by shooting him in the stomach because he told him basically to stop shooting birds illegally on that man's land.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. It didn't matter who you were. There was a cop, even a highway patrolman named Richard Stratton.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hero.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Who had plenty of Run ins, obviously with McElroy. Cause like you said, this is a town of a few hundred people at the time. I think maybe like 4 or 500 even. So everyone knew this guy, including obviously Richard Stratton. And he had a bunch of run ins. And so McElroy started threatening his home and his family. One day, his wife Margaret was on her way to church. She got in the car to go to church. And McElroy walks up to the car, puts a shotgun in her face. And he did that to cops, wives. He did it to judges. The county magistrate, Montgomery Wilson was so fearful that he wouldn't take these cases. He would have them move to other nearby counties like he was. People called him the town bully, but that is the kindest way to describe him because he was also a child molester and rapist.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I say we take a break and then come back and talk about this.

[Josh Clark]

All right, we'll be right back.

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[Josh Clark]

All right, so when we left off, I leveled a pretty serious allegation, which is absolutely true, that Ken McElroy was a child molester and rapist. And this is 100% true. The story gets very twisted and convoluted here, but it's kind of hard to follow along because he was married and then had a girlfriend and a wife at the same time. But then another one, and then another one would come in and they're overlapping and he's having kids with most of them and it gets very confusing. But like he said he fathered 10 kids. A lot of them were with underage girls. He got married for the first time in 1952 when he was 18 and his wife Oleta was 16. And he, it's not like he calmed down or anything. He would pray and stalk and groom girls as young as 12 and 13 years old, one of which was a 15 year old named Sharon. And they, it was sort of a familiar pattern where he would groom and stalk these young teenage girls. He would abuse them, he would rape them and threaten them with death and somehow end up with them and not somehow through coercion and threat and intimidation.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And he would get. So he would be married already and like you said, he'd be stalking and raping and abusing some other younger girl at the same time. And then inevitably, when charges were about to be brought against him because of his like rape and abuse and in one case shooting of one of the girls, he would, he would convince them to marry him. He would go to his wife and be like, we have to get divorced because I got to marry this girl so that she won't testify against me. And he would be successful. And if they refused at first, he would use those same tactics that he used to intimidate witnesses, to intimidate these girls into marrying him and becoming his wife. And then astoundingly he would go find a younger girl and start the whole thing over again. Like this guy got married more than once to keep the girl that he was raping from testifying against him. Because back then a wife couldn't testify against her husband.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So I mean, we don't need to get into every single one of those details. But suffice it to say this was happening over and over and over. Remarkably. Sometimes, you know, obviously these girls parents would put up a fight and get involved and he would intimidate and threaten them to the point where at one point he. And this is the wife he had sort of. When the final incident went down. Trina McLeod, who he got together with. This is just so sick. When she was 12 or 13 years old, was like picking her up from the school bus and school officials were like, something's going on with this creep. No one ever did anything. Got her pregnant at 14 and moved her into the house he shared with the previous young girl that he was with. So he had a son with Trina in 1973 and a couple of others with this young girl, Alice, and went to Trina's parents house. They obviously are saying like, you can't Keep our daughter like this. And he held them back at gunpoint, brought the girls back, continued to abuse them, and then eventually would burn down the house of Trina McCloud's parents and shoot and kill their family dog.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Is he a bad enough guy at this point? Dear listener?

[Chuck Bryant]

Apparently he somehow Trina ended up being treated by a doctor somewhere or other, and the doctor got the story out of her. And the doctor was like, wait, can you tell me all that one more time? And I guess she did. And the doctor called the authorities, and this time, McElroy was in a lot of trouble. And they took Trina to Child Services and took her to a family. Foster. A foster family. And he started stalking the foster family and stalking their biological kids and threatening to rape and kill them. And that foster family would not give in. They were protecting Trina. Up until the time Trina's like, all right, I forgive you. I'm going back to you. And I'm sure that foster family is like, oh, my God, I can't believe. Yeah, I can't believe this. Like, can you. You can't make that decision. And she did. And he got away with it yet again because he got her to marry him to keep her from being able to even testify against her. And Jean McFadden, in a show of just how sleazy lawyers can be served as the witness to their wedding. I think she was 15 at the time. And at the end of the ceremony, got her to sign a document saying all the things she told that doctor were lies. And they lived as husband and wife.

[Josh Clark]

That's right. So this was his final wife, young Trina McLeod. He apparently got her parents because, you know, you needed to have permission to get married at that age. And her parents acquiesced because he threatened to burn down the new house that they either bought or built. And this is where I get to the documentary. Like, a lot of it should be taken with a grain of salt because some of the local townspeople they interview are clearly sort of just maybe don't have all the facts straight, because someone in that documentary said that he burned their house down again and shot their other new dog. And I didn't see anywhere else where that happened. I think it was just a threat or whatever.

[Chuck Bryant]

He killed a monkey, too, right?

[Josh Clark]

That's what I heard with the documentary. So this is going on. He's terrorizing this town. Everyone knows he's an awful guy. He's just. It can't be overstated what an awful creep that he is. And, I mean, Creep isn't even. That's way too soft to describe a guy like this. Finally, in 1980, he sort of pushes his luck as Livia would call this section. Things kind of come a little bit to a head. There are these local shopkeepers, they ran the B and B grocery there in town. Lois and Ernest Bo Bowenkamp and they apparently his kids would go in there and shoplift all the time. His very young kids and one of his young daughters her name was Tonia or Tanya, I'm not sure how that's pronounced. I'm guessing T A N, I A Tanya was like four years old and was stealing candy from the store. They confronted this young girl and of course McElroy wouldn't stand for that. So he starts up with his usual routine parking outside their store, staring them down, brandishing a shotgun and carrying it around with him. And in July of that year, McElroy approached Bo Bowenkamp, the grocery store owner. They had a brief conversation and he shot this 70 year old man through the neck Again not killing him, but wounding him.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And so Bo and Lois Bowenkamp were like beloved in the town. Oh yeah, this is a big deal. He had assaulted a beloved elderly shopkeeper, grocer who fed the town and even McElroy knew it was a big deal. He fled. He tried to get out of the state. And you mentioned Richard Stratton, the Missouri Highway Patrolman who had run ins over and over and over again with Ken McElroy. Well, he was out on patrol that night when that happened or that day, I guess and he got the all points bulletin or to be on the Lookout for Ken McElroy. And at the time, the sheriff's office, the rest of the highway patrol, they were setting up roadblocks looking on every highway that they could for Ken McElroy. But Richard Stratton said no, I know this guy. He's got a police scanner, he knows exactly where they are. He's going to take every back road he can find to get to Kansas and get out of the state and lay low for a while. And Richard Stratton said I know he's going to have to go through Fillmore, Missouri to get to Kansas and I'm going to stake that place out. And in short order, Ken McElroy came driving through in his Silverado with Trina in the seat and he ended up getting busted by Richard Stratton. He was caught and this again, even he knew this one was a big deal.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah. He finally was taken into custody this time He. I don't know if he just had an instinct that there was probably no way out of this one, but he hired his Trustee, lawyer, again, McFadden, who said, all right, let's move this thing to Harrison County. First of all, and here's our plan is we're gonna say that this was a dispute with Bowenkamp, this sort of argument you guys had over your daughter stealing and that he pulled a knife on you and that it was self defense and you were forced to do that. He was still using his typical playbook, intimidation tactics on the Bowen camps, but they refused to budge, which was great. So that was their defense. We should also mention, while this is going on, he continues his reign of terror on the town. There was a Christian church whose minister was Tim Warren. And if you don't know anything about sort of small town, actually probably even larger town ministers, part of their job, they don't just get up there and preach on Sundays, is they have to minister to the congregation in their community. So they will do things. Preachers and ministers will, like, come and check in on people if they're sick. They will visit people in the hospital if they're injured or, you know, or having some troubles. And this is what Tim Warren was doing when he checked in on, or had planned to check in on Lois Bowenkamp. And he got a call saying, don't go see old man Bowenkamp. It's gonna be bad news for you. He did it undercover by borrowing a friend's truck and going in that. But got a call was like, hey, I knew that that was you there in your friend's truck. Nice try. And if you do this again, I'm going to rape and murder your wife.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So the reverend, the local reverend, Reverend Lovejoy, is just told that his wife is going to be raped and murdered, right?

[Josh Clark]

That's right.

[Chuck Bryant]

I didn't get what the point of that was, did you? I didn't see any interpretation of that. I just saw it explained or described. I never saw it explained.

[Josh Clark]

Well, I think just anyone sort of on the Bowen camp side, because who knows? Like, the reverend could have been called to testify or something. Who knows?

[Chuck Bryant]

I gotcha. That makes sense.

[Josh Clark]

I think he was just trying to shut it all down. Kind of like with the town marshal, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So the town marshal, nice setup. David Dunbar was 24 at the time. And if you were town marshal of Skidmore, you not only had to call the sheriff when there was an actual real, real trouble because you weren't really allowed to do Anything. You had to provide your own gun. The city would pay for your ammunition, but you had to provide your own gun. And David Dunbar was like, I don't even care about this job. I took this job because I wanted to win a bet that I had with my buddy for a case of beer.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And so in short order, he gets pulled into this whole thing by Ken McElroy, who pulls a gun on him, holds him at gunpoint. I saw for like 20 minutes at the punkin festival.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, not punkin chunkin.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, the punkin festival or the punkin show. That's what I saw it as.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, they chunked. No punks.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes. No. But David Dunbar. David Dunbar did say, like, that's it for me, man. I, I really didn't care that much about this job anyway. You, I'm not going to stand up to Ken McElroy. You guys need to find yourself another, another marshal. And they said, fine, we will. And then they couldn't. So the town was without a marshal even for a little while.

[Josh Clark]

They probably didn't need one.

[Chuck Bryant]

I mean, it doesn't sound like it was very effective as positions go. And also the other thing I said, they need to call the sheriff. I saw someone intimate that the sheriff may not have either taken Ken McElroy and the trouble he caused seriously, or he may have been a friend or a sympathetic ally or something to Ken McElroy. Because apparently he was not super responsive to Ken McElroy. Trouble calls.

[Josh Clark]

You know, he was interviewed in this documentary. He certainly didn't seem sympathetic. He might have been intimidated as well.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I guess that's possible. I wouldn't blame him, frankly.

[Josh Clark]

So this takes more than a year or, I'm sorry, close to a year to come to trial because of all the delays that, you know, McFadden, that's his game. Finally it does. And there is another green. Like almost everyone in this story seems like they were like very young at the time. Yeah, the prosecutor, his name was David Baird, he was a super young attorney. He was the county prosecutor, so named just a few months earlier. And all of a sudden this kid is charged with prosecuting the case. He convicted him of second degree assault and sentenced him to two years in jail. And this was the very first conviction after this years long reign of terror on this town that he faced. Of course McFadden appealed. The judge said, you're out on $40,000 bail. And Baird said, oh, it sounds fine to me.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So like after shooting Bo Bowenkamp, getting caught by the highway patrol, he Gets let out on $40,000 bond, which he probably paid his bail in cash from his pocket. And the town was like, you've got to be kidding me. Like, you let this guy free, okay? We will hang in there. We're just gonna ride this out. And Almost immediately, Ken McElroy was like, how can I get my bond revoked? I know I'll go show up at the local tavern in Skidmore, the DNG tavern, and I'll bring an M1 carbine rifle with bayonet on me, and I'll talk about how I'm going to use it to finish off Bo Bowenkamp in front of everybody in the bar. And that's exactly what he did. And there just happened to be a couple of brave souls. One of them was Pete Ward. I think it was he and his sons who, who went and like, confronted him about it and then went and filed a complaint and said, this guy needs his bond revoked. And a bond hearing was set up 10 days from then. And that set up all of the machinations that were now going to bring this story to its climax. Is it time for an ad break? Have we had our second one?

[Josh Clark]

I mean, if that's not a perfect setup for an ad break, then we've never had one.

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[Chuck Bryant]

So I said that that Ken McElroy has basically just brandished an arm. He's walking around town talking about he's going to finish off the guy he's been now convicted of assaulting, but he's out on bail and Pete Ward and his sons go file a complaint and a bond hearing to see if his bond should be revoked is set up for 10 days and those 10 days pass. And on the 10th day, the day of his bond hearing, a group of farmers around town who have just had it up to here with Ken McElroy come to the American Legion hall to basically go to court with Pete Ward and Bo Bowenkamp and show solidarity, but also show that these guys are protected. You better not mess with them.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, absolutely. By most accounts it was most of the adults in the town were at this American Legion hall meeting. I think there were like a little over 100 adults maybe living there. And it seemed like 80 of them were at this American Legion hall meeting.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, there was a lot of people there.

[Josh Clark]

So they find out there that McFadden had gotten that hearing delayed, that bond hearing delayed for 10 more days. So instead of July 10, it's going to be July 20. They called the sheriff, Danny Estes in that we talked about and he basically said, you know, there's nothing that we can do about it. And this is where I think that maybe, I don't think he was friendly to McElroy. I think he was just a law abiding sheriff that was like, you know, what do you want to do? Like, go kill this guy in the street? Like, we can't do that. All we can do is keep tabs on this guy and, you know, stick together is probably a good idea. So they said, that's a great idea. We should form a large group and stalk him, follow him around. There's strength in numbers. If we get enough of us together, like, what's this guy gonna do? Kill all of us?

[Chuck Bryant]

Right?

[Josh Clark]

There are some people that were at this meeting that was like, you know, no one was talking about doing anything more than that. Other people said, yeah, there were some people that were so, you know, pissed off about all this. They were like, we need to take matters into our own hands vigilante style. And they found out at this meeting that he's back in town with his wife. They went to the tavern, the D and G tavern, still morning, mind you. They're in there drinking and they all go down there. They walk in there as a group and fill this tavern about 50 to 60 people. And it's clear what's going on. McElroy would not be intimidated. He did leave, but he apparently just sort of thumbed his nose in their faces, bought a six pack to go and was like, you know, let's get out of here, Trina. And walked out.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So this crowd was like, okay, I kind of like this following this guy around, watching his every step thing. And they actually walked out of the bar with him. And supposedly there was between 30 and 60 people, some people had cleared out. Romaine Henry, whom he'd shot in the stomach before, said that he sensed that this crowd was possibly out for blood and he didn't want to have anything to do with it, so he left. So not everybody who was in the VFW hall or the American Legion hall was in the parking lot of the D and G Tavern, but a significant number of people were, and they had Ken McElroy and Trena surrounded in Ken McElroy Silverado. Ken McElroy apparently had the car turned on, still had it in park. He pulled out a cigarette and I saw that he either had just lit it or was about to light it when somebody shot him in the head with a high powered hunting rifle. And then followed that up with a shot to the neck with Trina right next to him, who was suddenly covered in his blood.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Through the back windshield of the pickup truck, I imagine instantly killed him with that first shot. His foot slams on the gas and this thing is revving at like full bore. This old truck starts smoking and eventually blows the engine and it just goes silent. Trina apparently urinated herself, was initially told to stay in the car or she would be killed too. And then gets hustled out of this truck into a nearby bank and a bunch of more shooting happens until the shooting stops. It's about 20 seconds worth of shooting. People go up, peek in this truck. McElroy is hunched over, no one helps the guy at all. And in the end they figure out he was hit by two different bullet types. So two different guns had actually made contact with his body. Two different bullets. So, you know, in the documentary, again, there were people that were like, you know, five or six people shot him, three or four people shot him. Like everyone sort of got their own story. But as far as the, you know, autopsy goes, there were two different calibers of bullet.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, because here's the twist to this whole story. We don't know. At the very least, the law can't say who killed Ken McElroy. There are between 30 to 60 people who were standing right there when he was killed, from several feet away, and no one saw a thing. The town circled the wagons and clammed up.

[Josh Clark]

To this day, yeah, the town fully cleared out right after that. And he was just sitting There alone in the middle of town, dead in his truck. Apparently they went into some local businesses and this one woman and the documentary said, we were just sort of hanging out in there and someone came in and said, it's over. You can sleep tonight. Now just stand behind us.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, and they did, man. I mean, they, they did. The, the, the law I saw, depending on who you ask, the law took this very seriously, like any other murder and investigated and tried to prosecute it. Others are like, yeah, the local law didn't try that hard because everybody knew that this was actually justice, even though it was a grotesque form of justice.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Either way, no one was ever prosecuted, no one was even ever arrested or charged with the murder of Ken McElroy because not a single witness would crack. There was apparently one witness who shortly after said that they saw a man named Del Clement and another man speed off very quickly right after the shooting. And that person apparently said, oh, I'm sorry, I was mistaken. That's the closest the cops got to a witness statement about who may have shot Ken McElroy. No one would say anything. Some people were interviewed five to six times and no one cracked. They would not crack. And yet whoever said that they saw Del Clement speed off was probably telling the truth because Trina, Ken's wife, who by this time is 24 and looks a lot like somebody who would have been friends with Eileen Wuornos, says that she turned around right before the shooting started and saw very clearly Del Clement, owner, co owner of the DNG Tavern, taking aim and shooting Ken McElroy in the head with his deer rifle.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, he was not only the owner of the tavern, but he had livestock that had been pilfered. Apparently was a big hothead and I get the sense, took great pleasure in pulling that trigger is the sense I got. There was a lady in the documentary, and again, this is the grain of salt that said that the main gun was thrown in a river. So I was like, oh, very interesting. I hadn't heard that anywhere else. But she also said right after that she heard that they had McElroy's head in a. Head somewhere in a freezer thing. So they couldn't do, like, more, I guess, bullet ballistics work or whatever.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, you couldn't find it because it was stolen by a monkey.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I don't think that happened. There was another guy in there named Brit Small and I get the feeling they just kind of gathered up whoever was still around and was like, you know, talk to me. And Britt was a local guy. A Vietnam veteran who was like, you know what? The only mistake they made is that they let Trina live. I would have killed him in his driveway. I would have ambushed them both, killed her and him, and burned his house down. That's what I would have done.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, she. If you read newspaper accounts, like, immediately after the Kansas City Star had a couple of articles like, the week after, like, she's scared to death, or she sounded scared to death that she was going to be next or that her kids were going to be murdered. And then, of course, the townspeople that they interview for the same article are like, no one wishes her any ill will. You know, she's not in any danger. But she swore that she was told to stay out of Skidmore, don't ever come back, or else she was going to get it and her kids would be after that. I don't know. It probably just depends on which town, person you talk to.

[Josh Clark]

I mean, both things can be true. They could have felt like she was a victim, but also. Please leave.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, exactly. And apparently when she was hustled off to the bank, whoever did that saved her life, because even if they hadn't been aiming for, she probably would have gotten hit by a stray bullet after that second round. But when she was hustled to the bank, there was, like, a crowd, like you said, of people there that seemed to be just sitting there watching, like people knew what was about to happen or what was going down. And she said they didn't need to do them like that. And someone said they had no choice. So even if you didn't agree with that mob justice that had taken place and you were a Skidmore resident, at the very least, you weren't about to turn on your fellow townspeople, certainly not for the likes of somebody like Ken McElroy or Trina.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And in the end, you know, they couldn't. With only Trina's word, there was nothing they could do. That young prosecutor Baird and the FBI said, you know, this is all we've got. We can't move forward. Everyone else is saying they don't know what happened. The FBI closed their investigation on September 2, 1982. And I believe the sheriff. I'm sorry, the police chief, Hal Riddle, was running the investigation. And he said, you know, he was really trying to get this case to go to trial because he is a law enforcement officer. And they weren't all like, great mob justice. You know, they were like, we. We should have handled it to begin with, but you certainly can't handle it this way. And he said it was the most frustrating case of his career. And basically, like, this town got away with murder.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And if the local law enforcement didn't work hard enough, that was par for the course. Because if there was any theme to this, aside from this horrible bully, it was the local institutions failing the community time after time after time after time, for any number of reasons, because they were intimidated, because they were corrupt. Who knows? But that was like, the subtext of this whole thing is that this community essentially had to take matters into their own hands or else this guy was going to eventually kill somebody. And they just decided that that was not going to happen. They were going to stop it before it happened. So it's tough to fault them for what they did. Even though I don't agree with that, I understand why they did it.

[Josh Clark]

Well, I think you can not agree with mob justice and also say the town of Skidmore, in the world was probably better off without this child rapist walking around.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, no, you're right. I like your theories. I'm gonna subscribe to your newsletter.

[Josh Clark]

So as for Clement, the supposed. One of the supposed shooters, he never said a thing about it. He died in 2009. Trina, in 1985, filed a wrongful death civil case against the mayor. Clement and the sheriff for 5 million bucks, settled for 17,600. The defendants didn't have to admit to any wrongdoing. They just wanted it to go away. She got remarried a couple years before that, in 1983, so two years after the killing, and she died in 2012. And, you know, there was no mention of that life of hers in her obituary. I think she really put it behind her, and I hope at some point, you know, there are interviews with her. That's the one interesting thing about the doc. Not too long after their interviews with Trina MacLeod. I would hope that at some point she realized that she was a victim.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I hope so, too.

[Josh Clark]

And came to on that, but who knows?

[Chuck Bryant]

Because, I mean, you. You. There's a. There. There's a certain amount of, like, grudging admiration you have for. At the very least, it's like, man, this girl is so twisted. She was like a really ardent defendant of her husband's reputation and. And honor and memory and, like, really when she was really, like, mad that they had killed him.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

One other detail I saw was that she offered a $5,000 reward for the. For information about who. Who killed him, somebody to come forward, but she didn't have $5,000. She was putting it up against the movie rights she presumed she would eventually be paid for.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, interesting.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So I'm not sure. I don't think anybody would take the five grand anyway, but certainly not a phantom five grand that didn't actually exist yet.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. As for the attorney, he was always like. He was never like, oh, you know, I really regret representing that dirtbag. He was pretty proud of his work. He had a long career as a lobbyist working in the legislature there in Missouri, and apparently would like, buy copies of McLean's book and have McLean sign them and hand them out to all the delegates in the state senate. He died in 2012. Like I said, very proud of his work. And Stratton, the highway patrolman that we mentioned, was the guy who in an interview said, you know, they did what they did because we didn't do our job. And I think he felt forever bad that the law enforcement had failed that town.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. He also said in that same interview he knew for sure who did it and he wasn't ever gonna say, I.

[Josh Clark]

Think it was Clement. I just don't know who the second shooter was. The guy that says he would have killed them both and burned their house down claims that he knew the second shooter, but he wasn't saying either.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. You. You got anything else?

[Josh Clark]

I got nothing else.

[Chuck Bryant]

Quite a story.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, man.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Thanks. And thanks, Olivia, for helping us with it. And since Chuck said, good pick, that means, of course, it's time for a brand new listener mail.

[Josh Clark]

That's right. This is a follow up on our. What I thought was a really good episode that I enjoyed on Kenton Gurua and the Grand Canyon river speed record. Great episode on that, guys. I read the book a few years ago, and to answer a question you had about the 11pm start time, as I recall, you're correct. In their desire to employ the COVID of darkness. There was also another, probably more important issue that led to that decision. Per my recollection of the book, it was the timing of when they would run into the rapids where they eventually swamp the boat. It was a stretch they had expected would be the crux of the trip. As you pointed out, Kitten and his team were tenured river rats who knew all the river like the back of their hand. However, the unique dynamics of the unprecedented CFS meant that they were uncertain of exactly how fast they would be moving. By starting when they did, they were able to more or less ensure that section of the river where they flipped would be squarely in the middle of the day. A good worst case scenario, and good pre planning. And that's from Noah. That sounds like a very reasonable assertion.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Thanks a lot Noah. I'm not gonna challenge him on it.

[Josh Clark]

Heck no.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Okay, well if you want to be like Noah and be like, hey, I got you guys, you have a question. I'm a Noah. Then get in touch with us. Do it like Noah did. Do everything like Noah did. Send us an email to stuff podcastheartradio.com.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey guys, it's Cheekies from Cheekies and Chill Cleaning Today. Well, not exactly my idea of fun, but wait a second, is Fabuloso involved? Because that's different. Cleaning with Fabuloso 2 times concentrated cleaner turns chores into fiestas. Fabuloso pairs twice the concentrated cleaning power with long lasting lavender freshness. From showers to countertops, floors to doorknobs, it leaves your whole home smelling and feeling like a fresh oasis. You may never love cleaning, but you will love a home cleaned with Fabuloso. So make your home dramatically clean with Fabuloso. Pick some up today at your favorite store. Fabuloso 2 times concentrated formula provides 2 times more active ingredients vs non concentrated Fabuloso original use as directed.

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[Josh Clark]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Podcast Host/Announcer]

This is an iHeart podcast.