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You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast. Hey listeners, it's Leon Nayfack.
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Just search for final thoughts, Jerry Springer, on the Audible app, or go to audible .com slash Springer.
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Hey, weirdos, I'm Osh.
And I'm Elena. And this is Marlon.
this is morbid as morbid we're fresh off a vacay yeah we had a little vacay we hit Disney for a day I met a bunch of people I only met I think to yeah because you went one day me and drew rolled deep and we did five four day we did four days and one at universal we did the one because yeah we well you have like a lot of kids and we wanted to we wanted to redeem the disney vacation and guys i didn't have a bad time she no she had a good time i did because i ended up like um i never i don't do rides it's just like not and it's it's not me being an asshole it's just not me I never liked rides I've
just never been a ride girl I didn't go to theme parks as a kid it just wasn't a thing yeah and I don't like the feeling of uh your tummy flipping it's just it like people love that feeling and I get it literally my favorite feeling yeah it's just not a feeling I enjoy like if you're in a car and even and you dip down and it gives that like whoop I don't like that oh sometimes on those bumps I speed up for them yeah see I don't like that and so I'm just kinda person so usually I will do like the very chill, chill, chill rides.
And other than that, John is the ride guy, Ash is the ride person.
The ride TT. I know that like you know Ash and Drew and John are gonna take the, take the reins.
There's always there's always an adult for each kid.
Always. And I'll hold all the shit you know and take the pictures.
And you have to have that person.
And I'm so good at that.
You're great at that.
You're great. You're great at holding shit.
But this time my kids, now the new Tiana ride opened up.
I can't even express to you how fucking good this ride is.
Well, here's the thing.
If you know anything about me, you know I fucking love princess in the frog.
She rides hard. I love Tiana, she's my favorite princess.
She's great. That's my girl right there.
And when I heard there was gonna be a Tiana ride, I said, oh fuck, I'm gonna want to do that.
And then I looked it up and I was like, I'm not gonna do that.
And then my kids said, mom, will you do that with us?
And I said, yep, I'll do that with you.
So I literally went into this thing, fuck, I have to do this 50 foot drop.
And that's how I got into it.
The thing about the drops at Disney though, is that they slow them down.
This one was... It's so fast that I don't remember it.
I think I blacked out, so like.
This one is, I just showed her Velocicoaster and I was like, nah, that's a roller coaster.
I don't do, here's the thing, Tiana Ride, if you haven't been able to do it, if you go to disney do the fuckin tiana ride her byeu adventure so much fucking fun it's incredibly gorgeous ride the end of that ride one of the coolest things i've ever seen the whole thing loved it and it's all it's long it's long in a good way very fun i enjoyed it i enjoyed the little drops i was able to handle them and i was like okay and maybe even the little drops are good they're pretty decent i was impressed you know and but i think it was like my kids loved it so much and I was sitting next to one of them and it
was fun. So that was a lot of fun.
I highly recommend doing that.
I always love the haunted mansion.
It's the best ride.
That's a very fun one.
I had a good day. She wore years.
I did. I wore years.
I did. For part of the day, they gave me a headache halfway through.
I know. Sometimes they press on the back.
Yeah. It was fucking hot.
It was blazing hot, which I don't love.
I don't know how y 'all live in Florida.
But here's a little tip from me to you What's up?
In case you're going.
I prepared for this.
I said, we're not having a disastrous Disney trip like we did last time.
Never. And I said, we're going to make this a fun day, which means I'm going to make everyone as comfortable as humanly possible, even though it's going to be a thousand zillion degrees.
And it was. I highly recommend the cooling towels you can get like anywhere.
You can order them anywhere.
Sometimes you can even get them at the park.
Yeah. And you just all you do is wet them and they stay wet and cold for a long time.
So you can just drape them over your neck or your shoulders.
They work. I don't know what the science is behind those but they're incredible they're very and they're really easy to store in a backpack so it's like if you're looking for that those little misting fans that you can get highly recommend they're good for a little you know little zap of that and I took it up a notch this time would you do because I said I know my kids I know they're gonna want to see this fucking mainstreet parade that parade's pretty awesome oh my god it was pretty great it is I had a good day see that's all I needed I just needed a good day no i can't i still i don't want to
do it again anytime soon but we're gonna we will eventually but like i'm not a theme park girl it's just not my thing you guys know that but i had a good day which is exactly what i was looking for and she's wanted a good time she's open to doing it again i am absolutely and my kids had so much fun that's really all i'm looking for is like the last time everybody got sick yeah i just felt good i didn't get to see their faces their faces during the the parade, the parade was I said I need to have eight children right now just to experience experiencing that as an aunt incredible yeah I can't imagine
how that made you feel as a mama oh yeah seeing the little the waving at the princesses, again with Tiana I think I'm meant to be Tiana's friend I think so.
when she went by she pointed at one of my and did the little heart thing to her, and my child.
Beaming. I have not seen her that beaming in a moment.
And she was like, Tiana just did a heart to me.
Like it was, I was like, all right, this is very worth it.
Very worth it. I was borderline about to cry.
Yeah, it was the sweetest thing ever.
But what I did for that was, I got a parasol and they sell parasols at Disney.
Which I didn't even know that.
I just got one on my own.
Get a parasol guy. If you don't like the heat and you're worried about that kind of stuff, I got one that like, maybe I can try to post a link to it.
I'll find where I got it.
Cause it folded up really small.
It's like even the little spokes of the, of the umbrella itself bent upward to make it smaller.
Not it was super compact so I could put it in a bag.
Easy peasy. And it like just crunched up.
It was so worth it because they used it several times.
No, it was smart. and I was like low -key making fun of you before we were going I was like you bought a fucking parasol I saw so many people with parasols it's worth it you're with the trends so let me tell you if you're thinking about it it really does work and take this from somebody who's essentially translucent yeah and who has children who are also pretty translucent I'm translucent too and I didn't even burn this time I was so good about my sunscreen you that's right oh as you should a recommendation another one oh um that there's an elf like ELF setting spray that has spf 45 oh that's all
i use for face sunscreen because a lot of times when you do like the cream if it gets in your eyes and shit this one spray it on your face good i sprayed it on my face probably like three four times throughout the day not a hint of a sunburn i love that so that's a good one even just for the summer so there you go these are summer recommendation it's our summer recommendation I thought of something when I was when I was there and I said I gotta tell the listeners I gotta tell everybody remember I'll post some it I I went real ham with like preparing for this trip yeah if I think of any like interesting hacks
that I came up with I'll be sure to post it for you guys just in case you have kids or traveling or just traveling in general you and drew Capricorn so hard because like you have kids like a million kids so you had to get like 45 of different things.
It was just me and Drew going.
Every day that I got home leading up to this vacation, he had a new thing for our trip because we drove.
So you have to be prepared for that.
He got, this is a little bit gross, but I don't care.
He got these toilet seat covers, he got these toilet seat covers and you put them down and they like adheres to the toilet seat.
It changes your going to the bathroom experience.
I hate a public restroom to the point where like even in school, like in high school, I didn't like going to the bathroom.
Incredible. But yeah, I'll try to link the toilet seat covers, because they were great.
Yeah, anything that works.
I mean, I'm by no means a gatekeeper or like a professional when it comes to traveling or anything like that.
But if it works with my kids and us, I'll share it.
I disagree. I think you became a professional planner.
And maybe I did. I think you should start a TikTok page of trips, even though you go on one once a year.
Yeah. I go, I don't go on many at all.
But, but hey, when I do, I really prepare for it.
So yeah, I found a lot of good hacks.
I'm just so happy that you had a good time.
I'm glad we turned our Disney trip around.
It was really rough that everybody got the stomach bug.
Super sick. I was everybody was sick and it was just such a lousy trip the first time and it was weighing on us that that's the Disney trip that we had been planning forever.
And so we were just determined.
You needed new memories.
I needed a good, and it was.
And you have them. We got this one picture of John and one of my kids in front of the castle.
The castle, I saw that.
With the fireworks going, and I was like, we're framing it, that's the cutest thing ever.
Frame it. That's a frame -er.
There's just, it was - it was a good day.
I didn't want to say it during the time because I was like, don't say it aloud.
You can't jinx it. You'll jinx it.
No. But they had a great time and that's all that matters.
During the fireworks - I cried the first time I saw the fireworks at Disney.
I'm not Disney adult when Tinkerbell came flying by, sob, full sob, don't care, try every time.
You know what's hilarious about that?
You hate that, do you hate that?
No, I love it, I think it's adorable.
That's why I was like, oh, that's so cute.
And I turned to one of my kids who is very like myself.
And I turned to her and I said, oh my God, it's Tinkerbell.
What did she say? If your kids are listening right now, please, I'm gonna say something that's gonna ruin the magic.
So skip forward, I just don't wanna ruin other kids magic.
No uh but I I was like look at oh my god it's Tinkerbell and she goes yeah I can see the wire I was like what I was like what wires like what what wires you said and she literally she's crying she goes she's lip lining okay and I was like yeah and she was like she's not flying all right like she was literally like she was looking at me like mom are you sorry i'm ruining the for you, but she's not really flying.
You know what though, as long as the tank is zip lining, I thought you were going to say something even worse.
So she was like, fuck that, that's not Tinkerbell.
Well, no, I think she essentially was like, that's a zip line.
That's not really Tinkerbell Flyer.
Whatever. I was like, child.
So I looked and I looked at her and I was like, please don't like say anything in front of a younger one, and she was like, of course I won't and she hasn't.
Cause the younger one brought it up and she was like, I know, wasn't that crazy.
Did you say, don't tell TT either?
Don't tell TT, she thinks that's Tinkerbell.
But I was like such my logical child who's always looking to see how anything works.
Well she wants to be an engineer.
Yeah, she immediately saw those wires and was like, oh, I get it.
One thing I will say, and I say it every time I see the parade in between my tears, where are those projectors?
How do they project those images on to, because like they, if you've ever seen the castle show, like it's fucking crazy.
Yeah. I've never seen the projector.
I haven't either. I've never been in the same room - There's only so many ways you can make TinkUSH Flyer, right?
It's fucking beautiful.
I think it's great.
I think it's beautiful.
So there you go. It's a much different take on what happened.
There it is. Because I displeased a lot of people who love Disney that last time.
You don't want to piss those people off.
Yeah. It wasn't me.
It was just a bad trip.
Coming from the Disney community.
No, I'm just kidding.
You're like, just kidding.
No, seriously. But for real.
Shut up. But yeah. So that was good.
And we got some good stuff coming up that we can't tell you about yet.
Like they said, but you will find out and it will be awesome.
I think we say that every episode at this point.
But it's coming. Yeah, it's manifesting.
And I think with that we can probably, this has been a long intro.
We don't do those all the time so sometimes it happens.
He lived. Or geez. Or not if he didn't.
Oh my goodness. So, oh, quick little, little side quest. Anyone else hyper fixated on the conclave coming up?
The way I knew you were about to talk about the, did you see me call that?
I'm sorry. I said, are you about to talk about the conclave?
I think it's WILD that this happened like right after the new Papa & Ghost was announced.
It's suspicious stuff.
It's crazy. I'll give it to you.
But also guys and like this is no, I'm not a religious person.
You know this. I've pretty clear by now you're shocked by that.
I don't know what to tell you.
Uh, but I'm hyperfixated on it because I feel like it's very Gothic the way it all happens.
It's very metal. It is interesting.
This whole conclave and the burning of the ballots and the black smoke and the white smoke and everybody waiting for that smoke to happen.
Love it. Yeah. Love it.
And if you, you want to bone up on, on the conclave or your Pope knowledge and the hold on, I'm going to look it up because I'm going to give you somebody that you should I love this creator to get all your uh the pope games here he also covers the Berenstein bearer books and it's great the he's a TikTok creator he's on other platforms too though but I mainly follow him on TikTok um Rob Anderson so funny he's doing a thing where he's calling it the pope games and he's treating it like Unreal Housewives kind of thing but he's introducing all the would -be popes and telling you what they stand for and again so it
actually he's giving you the information in like a very funny way.
It's fun. But I'm like I would, this is very interesting.
He also gives them a house lives tagline.
Because again I don't care at all about this stuff but I'm weirdly hyper fixated on it from a purely curiosity level.
It's interesting. Like it's a pure curious just me being like this is a wild situation.
It is, I didn't know really anything about it.
When was the last conclave?
Um, Francis has been a, a Pope for, for a minute.
I thought he wasn't the Pope that long.
I mean, a lot of some popes are popes for like 30 years and shit.
That I know. But I thought Francis was like, kind of a short Pope.
He was only a few years.
I think. That's what I think.
Yeah. That's what I think.
That's that's also what I think.
It couldn't. It couldn't have been that long since last Conclave. I'm Googling.
Yeah. Google it, find it out.
Um, but again, uh, none, none of, like to each their own, the religious stuff doesn't really do anything for me with this but it's I'm just purely curious.
2013. So he's been there for a minute.
I mean that is a very long time ago but in my brain it's not.
Yeah it's over ten years ago so there's that.
But yeah so become hyper fixated on that with me because uh.
It's fun. It's wild!
It's a wild thing and follow Rob Anderson because he's really funny.
All his other content.
Yeah all his stuff is funny and that I think is the end of our very long intro.
Wait! No, I'm just kidding.
Hey, weirdos, if Ash and Elena's episode on Ken McElroy left you wondering how someone could become so cruel, manipulative and untouchable, you'll want to hear my psychological break down of this case on my podcast, Killer Psyche.
I examined the twisted mindset behind McElroy's reign of terror, how he exploited fear, used charm as a weapon, and turned an entire town into his victims. Understanding what made him tick is exactly the kind of insight I bring on Killer Psyche, where I use my experience profiling criminals for the FBI to uncover what drives people like Ken McElroy to become predators.
So, if you're curious about the mind behind the mayhem, join me for an inside look at the psychology of a man who got away with everything, until he didn't.
Follow Killer Psyche on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Last year, law and crime brought you the trial that captivated the nation.
She's accused of hitting her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O 'Keefe with her car.
Karen Reed is arrested and charged with second -degree murder.
the six week trial resulted in anything but resolution.
We continue to find ourselves at an impasse.
I'm declaring a mistrial in this case.
But now the case is back in the spotlight.
And one question still lingers.
Did Karen Reed kill John O 'Keefe?
The evidence is overwhelming that Karen Reed is innocent.
How does it feel to be a cop killer, Karen?
I'm Kristin Thorne, investigative reporter with law and crime and host of the podcast, Karen The Retrial.
This isn't just a retrial.
It's a second chance at the truth.
I have nothing to hide.
My life is in the balance, and it shouldn't be.
I just want people to go back to who the victim is in this.
It's not her. Listen to episodes of Karen the Retrial, exclusively and ad -free on on OneDry Plus.
So today, we're gonna be discussing a very strange, very, it's brutal at parts, and then has a wild ending case.
This is - Fun question mark?
This is the death of Kent McElroy.
Oh, okay. But he was known as the town bully.
Oh, okay. I don't wanna tell you too much upfront about what happens.
I would like to leave the ending for the moment it happens because you're just gonna be like, what the fuck is going on?
So I'm gonna give you very little of what, I'm not going to tell you how this ends.
Just know that he dies.
And that he was the town bully.
So this did happen, the act itself happens on July 10th, 1981, when he, Ken McElroy, was about 47 years old.
This took place in Skidmore, Missouri.
That's all I'm going to tell you about the end of it.
Let's start at the beginning now.
It's so funny that this is 1981, because when you said the town bully, for some reason, that just read as 1900s to me.
didn't it? Like 1904?
Yeah that's how I thought too but it was in the 80s.
Okay. And bully is a nice way to describe him, I would say.
Oh. The town predator, the town the town monster, the town criminal, the town abuser, the town assaulter, like he was a was pretty terrible.
Okay. He was pretty terrible.
So let's talk about him.
Let's. His name was Kenneth Rex McElroy and he was born June 16, 1934.
That's why he's so terrible, he's a Gemini.
There Here you go. Many Geminis are the most frightening.
I say that as Gemini, so calm down.
He was born in Overland Park, Kansas, and he was one of 16 children.
That's a lot. That's many children.
One might say too many.
One might say me. No, cause I won't step in that.
But he, one might say it.
I don't know who that one is, but not me.
That's when I said one, I didn't say it.
His parents were Toni and Mabel McElroy.
Mabel had married Tony when she was just 14 years old and he was 20.
Sounds illegal. Very much so.
And it really sets the tone for how Ken is gonna act later in life.
I think I'm not gonna like that.
He married her because at 14 she was pregnant with Ken's oldest brother, Hershel.
Oh no. The apple does not fall far from this tree.
14. Yeah, born during the height of the Great Depression, Ken's early life was a bit of a struggle, for sure, the whole family was.
Tony McElroy had always had a lot of difficulty finding and kind of like maintaining work.
But it was because of his attitude and explosive temper.
Not just because it wasn't available.
Just before the depression started, he and Mabel had saved enough money to rent, uh, 14 or no, 400 acres of farmland in Southern Missouri.
And they planted a very large corn crop there thinking this is their time.
Unfortunately, they had two rainless weeks in the summer of 1927, and it wiped out the entire crop.
Just two weeks? Yeah, so he lost his entire investment.
Ohh. According to author Harry Maclean, the complete loss broke Tony, and he eventually just had to go back to working, really low paying construction and farming jobs, in and around southern Missouri.
In the years that followed that, they continued having children and struggling to get by on Tony's very meager wages.
Moving from one rented home to another whenever things would become hard or unaffordable.
When the four oldest McElroy boys became strong enough, they were put to work farming, clearing land.
This allowed the family to finally settle down in a rented home in Skidmore, Missouri.
Skidmore is a wild name.
I don't know why. Skidmore is a wild name.
And I feel like it's been featured in something that I saw lately.
Skidmore? I don't know.
Well, it's a small town of less than 100 residents.
And it's in Nottoway County in northern Missouri.
OK. So less than 100 residents, very small town.
According to McLean, Ken McElroy spent the first 13 years of his life as the child of a tenant farmer, living in someone else's house, subsisting at near poverty levels in a large family, and the bitterness of those years just never left him.
to make matters worse with 14 kids in the house Ken was Definitely not ever his father's favorite child and never even came close to being the favorite child I mean that's a lot of competition.
That's a lot of competition But also you're not allowed to have a favorite you're not you have to love them up Now with so much activity in the house though, both Tony and Mabel were working 12 or more hours a day They were out of the house a lot So Ken and his siblings came and went as they pleased and were never really noticed by his parents like, they just let it go.
It was a very different time.
But when Ken did get noticed, it was usually long enough for his father to yell at him for not doing what he was supposed to be doing.
Okay. So not great.
That's shitty. One would think that in a family with so many people in it, that maybe there'd be some close bonds between most of them perhaps?
Maybe. I don't know.
At least those close in age.
But when it came to Ken, his brothers and sisters seemed to not really pay a lot of attention to him.
Kind of like his parents didn't oh so it was basically that because ken spent a lot of his childhood by himself in the winter he skated on the pond and in the summer he would hunt and trap animals usually by himself and that's really sad yeah during the depression it was common for a lot of like adolescents and teenage boys and some girls to be not going to school absent from school a lot yeah because they would need to stay home and help the family earn money essentially In Ken's case, this was true, but even if they weren't growing up during the depression, he probably would have been absent
anyways. He didn't like authority.
He was not into education.
And when he did show up for school, his appearance and hygiene were occasionally so bad that the teachers would either have to take him to the washroom and show him how to clean himself, or they would just send him home because they said he smelled so bad that it was distracting to other kids.
Oh, that's really awful.
This lasted until Ken turned about 15 and he dropped out of school.
Now, when he came to friends, he was never super successful at forming bonds with other children in the area either.
At best his teachers would find him kind of like surly and like sullen, like he just wasn't but at worst he was mean, aggressive, and unmanageable.
One of his former classmates said, when I came to Graham School in fourth grade, one of the first things the other kids told me was about Ken McElroy.
the type of kid he was.
I was told to stay away from him and that he pushed other kids around.
Damn. Yeah. Let's say fourth grade.
Yeah, it's wild. Another classmate said that on his first day riding the bus with Ken, Ken got into a fight with and this was Ken's first day riding the bus.
Ken got into a fight with another student, and Ken and one of his brothers pulled knives out and threatened to cut the other boy.
Holy shit. And they said after that, Ken had plenty of room on the bus.
I would think so. It turned out the aggressive behavior that he was demonstrating at school was something he was definitely learning from home.
Usually is. In one incident that McLean talks about in his book, Ken was caught stealing from a general store in town and the owner called his father, Tony, to tell him that Ken had stolen from him.
Rather than reprimand his son for stealing and saying, hey, that's not good.
You can't do that. Yeah, we're not allowed to.
Tony quote burst into the store with a long curved hunting knife in his hand Slammed the owner up against the wall and held the knife to his throat and said if you ever touch my boy again I'll cut your heart out.
I think that's super rational.
I was like, whoa Here's the thing the report that I that we saw was that he just called the father and was like he's stealing Yeah, he's saying like you ever touch my boy again.
I'll cut your heart out I don't know what happened if the owner like did something to him.
Yeah it's never good to threaten somebody with a knife don't do that.
Yeah we don't recommend it.
I could understand the rage component there, if somebody touched my kid I also want to cut their heart out, but like you don't threaten people with knives.
It's illegal. But it also sounds, you know, this is a situation where you can both be angry at the owner if he touched your kid.
Absolutely. But again this was a time period where this probably wouldn't have been looked at as crazy if an owner like slapped again on the ceiling but also you have to reprimand your kid for stealing from someone yeah you can't cuz otherwise they're just gonna keep stealing and think that you'll attack people with hunting well that's this incident sent a very clear message to Ken and to everyone else in town that no matter what he did no one had the right to control him or tell him what to do or they'd have their heart cut out and from then on can operate it accordingly cuz this just did send
a message to him I'd be fucking terrified as a community member I'd be fucking terrified Absolutely and they were.
They eventually really were.
Now, as Ken grew older, his reputation got worse and worse and his behavior became more and more problematic.
Former classmate Bruce Roberts said he was in trouble so many times.
After dropping out of school he found work at a local plant nursery but he was fired within his first week when the owner caught Ken quote fooling around with a young girl who also worked there.
Oh no. Now, this began a trend of Ken finding work and then losing work a short time later because of his temper his Disinterest in authority his disinterest in work it would get the better of them as far as Ken's former friend John saw it He said he was always in the kind of self -sabotage mode sounds like it He said Ken never got over the fact that he was poor and he resented people who had money He can never bring himself to do their shit work Huh?
It's like but that's not like you can't treat people like shit.
No, that's not gonna get you anywhere exactly You'll never work your way to the top with that attitude.
In 1952, when Ken was 18 years old, he married Oleta Holland, which was a girl two years younger than him.
So she was 16. This was the first time Ken left the McElroy farm and struck out on his own.
He didn't go very far though.
I was going to say, how'd that go?
Yeah. After the marriage, Ken and Oleta moved to Denver, Missouri, which was a small town about an hour away from Skidmore.
And that's where one of Ken's sisters lived at the time.
Olita at the time was pregnant when they moved to Denver.
Unfortunately they did have a stillborn baby.
Oh that's awful. Which is really sad.
The move to Denver wasn't just an opportunity to start his own life with his new wife though, it was also look to be like he was trying to start somewhere fresh where no one knew him and knew his reputation for being a complete dickwad.
Yeah you're already pissed off too many people to get work.
Yeah, like you piss off a town of 100 people, that's gonna be tough.
Yeah word travels fast. That's gonna be tough.
Not long after they relocated, he found work on a construction crew and he was determined.
He was like I'm going to keep my anger in check, like he was telling Olara this is going to be different, until an accident derailed his newfound success.
One day while he was working at the site, and he had been doing well up until here, a large piece of cribbing which is a temporary support structure, fell from one of the beams 30 feet above him and landed directly on his head.
Holy shi - He was wearing a helmet.
the below split his construction helmet in half.
Oh my god. And it cut him, obviously in his head and compressed his spine as well.
Oh, fuck. Which caused muscle and nerve damage in his neck that he would have forever.
Compressed his spine?
So for Ken, who had never been one for an honest day's work, this was just a sign to him that the straight and narrow way of life was not for him.
Okay. He took that as, I tried to be good, I tried to go on the straight and narrow and look what happens.
got struck down not long after that he and aleta picked up their things and went back to skidmore was workers compa thing back then right well and he figured in skidmore he could find less dangerous and less um scrupulous ways of finding money uh so throughout his early adolescent and teen years ken had engaged in all manner of illegal activity typically for no other reason than just enjoying doing illegal activity and hurting people like much of his other very undesirable behaviors and characteristics that he demonstrated in his youth it was never any consequences for any of these illegal activities
which appears to have enforced his own little fucked up belief that regardless of whether it was right or wrong no one was stopping him from doing it right it was never gonna be any consequences so I'll just keep going yeah he always got himself out of shit and he did that for his whole life now a slippery slope it is it does not work out for him now once he and Aletta had settled back in a farm in skidmore he started out his criminal career pretty small according to harry maclean ken quote rigged a toggle switch to shut off the running lights in his Ford and shored up the plywood lining in the back
so that he could bear more of a substantial load in the back with his truck now altered he would drive the back roads of Skidmore and the surrounding areas looking at the properties of local farmers and looking for calves or hogs that looked ready to be slaughtered and brought to market oh once he would find one that he deemed suitable you would make note of the closest entrance and return in the middle of the night sneak on the property and steal the animal he was stealing people's farm animals stealing people's farm animals that's messed most of the times he would just go it's short distance
to another farm and sell the stolen animal to that farmer who didn't ask where it came from.
He's like just putting cows in the back of his truck.
Now throughout Skidmore and the surrounding towns, most adults knew how Ken made his money.
But they looked the other way because they didn't want to get on his bad side because he was a scary motherfucker.
That sounds like it.
And on schoolyards across Nottoway County there were other stories about Ken.
According to McLean, people whispered, quote, that he had raped a 14 -year -old equipment girl who became pregnant and died delivering twins at home because she couldn't afford to go to the hospital.
Oh my god. Yeah. About a year later McLean went on to say, can quote, returned and raped her older sister who ended up marrying one of his best hunting buddies.
What the fuck? Yeah.
Oh, that's... He's a fucking monster.
And it gets worse. The extent, these are rumors, these are all like things that are hard to verify, right, But they are things that people were talking about and believed and they are reports of it.
The extent of these, like how much is fact and how much is exaggerated is fiction for those specific rumors that I just talked about.
But what is true is that around 1960 or so, Ken started hanging out with a lot of young people.
And he's a full blown adult.
Yeah, so much younger than himself.
During this period of his life when Ken was about 21 or 22 years old, his best friend was reported to be a boy named Larry who is at least a decade younger than him that's Not normal.
Yeah. Now this that relationship is strange just as a friendship But it was his relationships with younger women and girls that people around town were really concerned when I'm sure he used Larry to meet girls comfortable, right Lamont Jones' world is shattered when his cousin dies in custody just weeks after entering prison.
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Around the same time that he was spending considerable time with Larry and using him to find girls Ken also met a young woman in her late teens named Barbara who soon became his go -to drinking buddy.
A teenage girl. It's so sad because when you're that age, like as a teenager and somebody older wants to hang out with you, it's so exciting and it's so fun and you don't think anything's wrong and then you become an adult and you're Like why the fuck did that adult want to hang out with me when I was that age?
No adult wants to hang out with teenagers like this for anything but nefarious reasons.
It's so hard to tell teenagers that like, I was a teenager who hung out with older people.
And I remember you being like, no adult should want to hang out with you like that.
And I was like, fuck you.
And you're like, fuck that, I'm so wrong.
I was like you're so cruel.
I'm mature. I had a great time.
And now I realize it was fucking weird. That's nefarious as fuck.
But it's so, like, how do you teach kids that?
I know it's like, because you have to like shatter completely their illusion of the world.
And their sense of self too.
Like you really have to, you have to be a little, you have to be a little - You have to play them this podcast. Honest with them.
And you have to be like, not everybody is a good person.
I've, I've already had to tell my kids that.
Yeah. Not everybody's a good person and there are adults who are really bad people and they want to do bad things to kids and you have to be on the look out for that.
Now, according to McLean, this type of behavior was quite common for Ken, who always seemed to have young women hanging around him.
Ew. He wrote, he would laugh and tell them they didn't have to worry about him.
The, and this is, this is gross.
He would say, you're too old to me for me, I like my women young and tender.
I like that young meat.
Ew. When when Dave sent, like, did I, like helped me with this research, he sent me a note on one of these that said I'm so sorry for this when he sent that because he was like I'm sorry you have to read this yeah that's like I apologize heinous in fact it was known around skidmore that although he was married to a letter at the time can would often carry on sexual relationships with girls as young as 12 or 13 years old oh my god meaning not sexual relationship rape rape he was raping twelve or thirteen year olds and he was claiming like these are relationships and poor oleita too because remember
she was 14 when he got her yep one of those girls who is referred to as donna g that's not her real name would frequently sneak out of her house at night to meet him she was probably excited to be assaulted by him about a year later according to mcleen donna gave birth to Ken's first child a son oh my god of all the crimes and awful behavior that the people the people of skidmore were tolerating from ken the hardest for most of them to tolerate tolerate was his predatory behavior with young girls of course i can't imagine and also his violence against women in general because like just giving
you a heads up like he is a violent abusive man like and i'm going to mention a couple of instances and it will be difficult to hear not surprising um not long after moving back to skidmore from denver Ken started an affair with a 15 year old local girl named Sharon.
One evening in either 1959 or 1960 Ken and Sharon were arguing in his car when he pulled out a shotgun and held it to her face and said if she didn't shut up he was gonna blow her head off.
Now nobody knows if it was intentional or not but the gun discharged and it tore open the underside of Sharon's chin.
Oh my God... And it seriously injured her in the chin and neck.
It's incredible that she even lived.
For the first time, the police were called and charges were filed, finally, against this fucking asshole.
But as always, he found a way to avoid any consequences.
How the fuck? So he explained things to Oleta, his wife.
Uh -huh. And Ken insisted he had to divorce her and marry Sharon in order to avoid being convicted for the shooting.
cause you can shoot your wife?
What? Aleta agreed, and the two were soon divorced and Ken took up with the teenager, Sharon.
Well that's, Aleta probably saw that as her ticket out.
Yeah. Who soon gave birth to a son, and she's 15.
They named Jerome. Yep.
Jerome would eventually be taken in and raised by Ken's sister, Helen.
Luckily. The fact that this woman had to marry a man who shot her in the face and then birth his child and then have that child taken away from her.
That's so fucked. Yeah.
I feel for Sharon. Big time.
Now throughout the 1950s and sixties, McElroy and his various criminal associates continued their theft, their illegal sales schemes, assaults, batteries, break -ins.
They did every, they were literally tormenting this town.
Like this town lived in fear of this man.
and he would just avoid arrest or consequences through intimidation tactics or just threats of violence.
Like he was literally running and he shot a girl in the face that those tax tactics actually worked is a Testament to his reputation for how violent he was.
Um, in Ken's capacity for violence was on full display in the summer of 1968 when Ken and three of his associates, Larry Combs, Raymond Hayward, and Glenn Hayward were arrested for a brutal assault on 52 -year -old Glenn Graham, a farmer in Skidmore.
Now, according to Graham, the farmer, he and his daughter went out to the pasture, their pasture that evening, on June 13th to check on their horses when they were the victims of a completely unprovoked attack.
And it was by four men who were armed with brass knuckles in clubs.
oh fuck graham's daughter anita foster told police she heard her father call out for help and when she ran to see what was happening she saw the men had her father on the ground and were kicking and punching him all over his body this gets gnarly the sheriff's report stated one of his eyes was kicked out of his head oh my god yes holy shit The actual report states, one of his eyes was kicked out of his head.
How does that even happen?
That is brutal on a level I can't even describe.
Oh my God, I just keep closing my eyes.
When Anita, the daughter, ran to help her father, quote, one of the four men assaulted her, held her down against the hood of a car, choked her, hit her in the stomach and threatened her with death.
Oh. A neighbor, Jim Swope, called the police when he heard the assault, And when he ran to help one of the men, the men attacked him as well.
Because all four men were known to Graham and his daughter, they were quickly rounded up and charged with assaults and intent to do great grievous bodily harm.
Even however, they did do grievous bodily harm.
Despite the severity and completely unprovoked nature of the beating, a judge agreed to release the men on as little as $2 ,500 for bond.
Even Blanche was just like, what the fuck is that?
I was just going to say that.
What? Most of them were out of jail within a couple days.
They kicked a man's eye out.
And were literally beat...
beat his daughter brutally and had threatened to kill her.
In his testimony given during the preliminary hearing a month later, Graham, the victim, the farmer, told the judge when they arrived in the pasture, Ken McElroy, quote, came from direction of a nearby house and accused Graham of calling him names." That's what this is from.
Graham tried to tell McElroy that he didn't know him and certainly hadn't called him any names, but McElroy only punched him in the face.
And then the three other men joined in after that.
Among the injuries he sustained during this attack were several broken bones in his face.
His jaw was broken in two places.
He had damaged his left eye, which had to be stitched back into its socket because, remember, it was kicked out of his fucking head.
Before fleeing the area, Ken McElroy told Graham quote, we're going to do the same thing to your daughter if you report this.
And he repeated it twice as he ran out of the scene.
What the fuck is wrong with this guy?
Yeah, he's a demon. He's a demon. A few days later, the charges against McElroy and Glen Hayward were dropped.
Don't even fucking say it.
But this proves you right here that polygraph exams are f***ing bullshit.
No. They were dropped after both men passed polygraph examinations testing whether they were involved in the beating which they denied.
What a joke. But Glenn Graham and Anita Foster were also given polygraph examinations, the two victims, during which they insisted McElroy and Hayward, were the assailants, and they also passed.
It's also, like, guys in this town of a hundred people there's one man who's been terrorizing all you for 20 years.
Like, come on. The prosecutor told the reporter, it's the first time I've been faced with defendants and prosecuting witnesses telling the truth and being of opposite beliefs.
Why? It's like they were like, literally like, this is the first time that the polygraph exam has said they are telling the truth and they are also telling the truth, but they have opposite stories.
Yeah. Like at that point, they should have thrown it out the window.
Yeah. Like that's bullshit.
Yeah. Hot dog in a trench coat.
where truly yep so the dismissal of charges against mcaulroy and haywood caused outrage among the locals this was at the moment when everybody was like fuck this shit the fact that he's gonna get out of this you can't kick a man's eye out and not expect public outrage one resident wrote to a letter to the local paper and said are these people released to go out and conduct other crimes and maybe kill next time yeah should i and other men take the law on our hands to protect the ones we love.
Yes. Which is like, I mean, if the law enforcement in your time is going to let that shit happen.
So the letter writer was right to assume that they would go on to commit other crimes.
In fact, in the months that followed Ken and these associates only seem to increase their criminal activities in and around Skidmore.
Of course they did.
They were emboldened.
They were emboldened.
In the winter of 69 of farmer's co op warehouse was robbed twice of several cases of fertilizer and pesticides totaling in the thousands.
Wow. Expecting that these thieves were gonna return a third time, the co -op hired an elderly night watchman to guard the place and armed him with a shotgun.
A few weeks later, when the guard heard the sound of somebody trying to break back into the building, he called out and the thieves ran away, but the guard aimed the shotgun in the direction that they were running away and fired several warning shots, just to scare them.
The night watchman said he never saw the faces of the men trying to break in and he couldn't identify them but according to Harry McClean quote the night of the third burglary a man had some shotgun pellets removed from his rear end in a small town not far from Saint Joseph.
The man was Ken McElroy.
I love that that elderly now large man shot his ass he shot his ass literally now Ken McElroy is violent and very unpredictable temper in his growing criminal enterprise at this point, were a constant threat to the town and the locals.
But equally problematic and much more disgusting to the locals was his constant predation on teenage girls.
In 1961, he was 26 years old and he met and began an affair with Alice Wood, who was a 15 year old girl who worked at a local pharmacy.
And he ended up marrying another 15 year old girl like a few years earlier.
Oh yeah. Okay. In 1964 he had left his previous wife and now moved in with Alice and in 1968.
They were married Who's allowing this that's what it's this time period is wild Well, but even at that time I like this is like the 70s you could your parents allow it then a Lot of these the parents would end up having to they would be like bullied into it gonna keep my mouth.
Yeah Uh, like all the other women in his life, Alice suffered constant physical and verbal abuse from Ken.
That went unreported for the most part.
In one instance, early in the marriage, and this is very upsetting, just so you know, this is like, um, domestic assault, just so you're aware.
Ken returned home to find Alice packing clothes in a box and immediately exploded into a violent rage cause he assumed that she was leaving him before she could explain that she was putting the clothes into storage for the season oh my god he had quote grabbed her by the hair and swung her into a wall oh my god yeah and this apparently was a very typical experience that women or young girls who got involved with ken mccelroy would deal with on a regular basis by the hair into a wall he was very physically abusive sexually abusive physically abusive verbally abusive any possible emotionally abusive
nearly all of ken's relationships were frowned upon by the townspeople but no one seemed like they were gonna do anything about this behavior like they were like being bullied into submission almost the worst and most egregious of his relationships which would also prove to be his last and i think the tipping point for the town his reign of terror uh began some time in 1969 he met twelve year old Trina McNeely.
12? You have to remember that right now he is 27 years old and she is 12.
12. He was 15 when she was born.
Yep, he's 27 years old and she is 12.
He is a fucking monster.
I don't even want to know.
Yep, so although he couldn't prove it at time, Trina's uncle, Sheriff's deputy, Russ Johnson, suspected Ken of preying on school girls when he stopped by a school dance one night and found Ken hanging around the middle school girls.
Middle school? Like what the fuck, dude?
Later, Johnson learned that Ken had intimidated Trina's date into picking her up and bringing her to him at the school, then bringing her home after.
What the fuck? So like delivering Trina to him essentially.
From that point on, it became common knowledge among the kids on the schoolyard that Ken had been arranging to meet Trina before or after school, often picking her up at the end of the school day.
Sometimes Trina would get other students to sign her mother's name on absentee notes.
And instead of going to class, Ken would meet her at the bus stop and take her to skid -moore for the day.
And again, she's probably excited that an older man is expressing interest in her because she doesn't know better.
Exactly. And also she's terrified.
he was keeping her cat like he was threatening her yeah like this was a captive situation and she was just doing whatever she could to survive it yeah um because one former friend said in the beginning she was more or less a captive and then she said then they said and sooner or later when everybody abandoned her she just gave up and went along with it because that's what they do they isolate you of course that's exactly what she's fucking 12 years old oh my god throughout the years that he'd known trina ken had abused her in nearly every way possible, including stalking, sexual assault, setting
fire to her parent's home, and shooting her dog.
No. He has literally stalked, abused, raped - Committed arson to her parent's house and shot her dog.
Well, I just don't understand why they're not putting him behind bars.
That's what I'm saying.
That's how you stop people from doing crazy shit.
it. Well in 1971 when Trina was 14 years old, she became pregnant with Ken's child and dropped out of school to move in with him and Alice, who she is still living with.
I, Alice later denied that they lived together at any point, like all in the house together.
But he was fearing that he might be facing statutory rape charges, which, uh, yeah, yeah, you absolutely all of a sudden is he fearing that?
So he bullied her parents into letting him marry her and then in divorce Dallas and they married in 1974.
Like, he like threatened that he would like, kill her, threatened he would kill them.
Like they were totally put into a horrible, like the whole thing is just beyond anybody's comprehension.
Because to allow...
It's certainly beyond my comprehension.
I can't comprehend allowing that to happen.
I just can't. But you have to think about if they did allow that to happen, what was going on here?
You know what I mean?
Like how bad it was.
And when you find out what happens to Ken and how many people are complicit in it happening, he was really bad for a time.
I mean everything you say, he's raped a 12 year old.
Yeah. He's raped like multiple year olds.
Multiple. Multiple children throughout the 1970s Ken Mcelroy continued to terrorize the people of Skidmore with violence theft, being a sexual predator, all the fun things.
In 1973 he was facing charges of forcible rape, assault with a dangerous and deadly weapon and arson.
But he was released on bond and managed to get the charges dropped.
That's good. That makes sense.
A few years later in 1976, Ken shot his neighbor Romaine Henry in the stomach after a minor argument and was quickly arrested for the shooting because like you, you shot your neighbor.
Why do they even bother arresting him though?
Um, this one's wild.
Uh, before the trial had even begun, Ken burned the judges barn to the ground and stalked several members of the jury and got himself acquitted.
Oh, okay. He burned the judges barn down and stocked the jury until he was acquitted.
That's just a Tuesday for Ken.
There is no stopping him.
No, there is though.
The pattern continued four years later when McElroy shot 72 year old grocer Ernest Bowen Camp in the neck.
Oh my God. Ken was indicted for the shooting, but when the trial came in summer of 1981 the charge had been reduced and McElroy was convicted of a simple assault charge.
And he was released on bond pending an appeal date, which was scheduled for early July.
That's good. Bowenkamp's wife, Lois, said, same old story.
Police arrest him, courts let him go.
So he'd like she told a reporter that she's like, when is this going to stop?
Yeah. Like, are we really just going to keep this going?
And the town said, yeah, a few days later, one of the locals spotted Ken and Skidmore waving a gun around, which was in direct violation of the terms of his bond.
uh huh the witness signed an affidavit and agreed to testify at the bond hearing which was brave as fuck when the hearing date arrived the townspeople learned that the bond hearing had been pushed back to an undecided date in the future fantastic to everyone in skidmore it seemed like ken McElroy had managed to find a way to avoid facing every single consequence in his entire life that must have been maddening the result they were fearing was that ken would only become angrier more vengeful more powerful and eventually he would take it out on the entire fucking town had he not already like you
they were like something even biggers gonna happen here like he's not gonna stop we're all gonna be dead at the end of this yeah on the afternoon of July 10th a large group of skidmore locals met at a Legion how meeting at a Legion Hall a little town meeting at the Legion Hall to discuss the situation that they found themselves in for decades Ken McElroy had preyed on the people of Skidmore he had terrorized them he had kept them costaged in their own homes.
I mean, they were terrified.
They were, he had victimized them all in one way or another.
And it seems like even law enforcement was too afraid of him to do anything about it.
By that point he'd shot more than a handful of people and was liable to go on doing so until he finally killed people.
Like he had already - Killed everybody in the town.
Yeah, they all agreed something needed to be done about the situation and if the law wasn't gonna do anything about it maybe they would have to do something about it.
As the group was talking as they're talking in the Legion this is a true like take a sip of your drink.
I'm getting ready, like bitch, I'm getting a little clumpier.
As the group was talking Ken entered the D &G tavern which was just like a bar.
He had been in a few days earlier after the conviction for assault.
Oh yeah. And the bartender remembered him saying I've been fighting prosecutors since I was 13 years old and I'm damn near 50, this is the first time I've My god, imagine that man being in your town for nearly 50 years doing the shit he was doing.
Yeah, the conviction or more likely the loss had made Ken angry and on that day he was in one of his shittier moods, which almost always meant to the people of Skidmore something bad is going to happen, he's going to hurt someone.
As Ken sat quietly at the bar muttering about the conviction, pissing and moaning, getting angrier and angrier, one of the patrons slipped out of the bar and ran over to the legion Hall and told everybody, hey everybody Ken's over there and he is fucking spitting mad.
So like something bad is going to happen.
And the fact that they all knew like this bitch is mad and bitching about something.
Somebody's going to get hurt.
That's bad. That's scary.
Now, ordinarily this news would have cleared the room and sent everyone scrambling back to their homes just to wait.
They would like wait things out like until he had chilled out the group of men though all left the legion hall and walked over to dng tavern where they found ken finishing his drink and the group of men just stared at him silently wordlessly until he got up from his bar stool and then he walked out the door and they just wordlessly no one's said a fucking word they all just walked out after him and again no one's talking and he goes outside and he gets in his truck where trina his 12 year old bride who is now Well, you know, she's a few years older now but that's that Trina, was waiting for him
in the truck. The men all watched as Ken put the keys in the ignition, and then before turning, then starting the engine, they watched him light a cigarette.
And then out of nowhere, nobody could figure out where, gunshots rang out.
Stop it. One, after the other, after the other.
From different vantage points, different guns.
just, pow pow pow pow pow pow.
All, woo, what happened?
A barrage. By the time the shooting had stopped, the car had been riddled with bullets.
Was Trina okay? Trina's okay.
Okay. The car had been riddled with bullets of various calibers from various guns.
Strange. The first shot, a slug from a 30 -30 -30 rifle, I think it's called.
Couldn't tell ya. I don't know anything about guns, I apologize.
Like, please don't get mad at me.
It's a rifle. It shattered the back window of the truck, and it struck Ken in the base of his skull.
Tearing through his tongue and teeth before exiting through his cheek.
That's low key poetic, because remember that time when he shot a child in the face?
It would eventually be found a few yards away in the wall of a small hut down the street from the cavern.
Nobody was hurt, don't worry.
That's good. Except for Ken.
The second shot that hit McElroy came from a .22 caliber rifle, and was fired from farther down the street.
The bullet hit him in the upper skull and into his brain before exiting the other side of his head.
According to MacLean, there was also, quote, substantial evidence that a shotgun was also fired at the truck, which would have accounted for the smaller pellet wounds found in McElroy's neck and face.
How terrible. When the shooting stopped, someone pulled Trina out of the car while this was happening as well.
Like literally dragged her to safety.
Wow, this is a movie.
And they kept her there until it was all over.
When it was clear there would be no more shooting, someone called the Sheriff's department to report the death of Ken McElroy.
He said, that's crazy.
He just killed over.
Of course the Sheriff was already in town.
In fact, he had been at the Legion Hall with everyone.
Not long before the shooting.
Wait, no way. He was getting a drink at that same time.
He was at the Legion Hall, where the meeting occurred.
Oh. Oh, under the circumstances, it wouldn't really be appropriate for him to investigate the case, feels like a little bit of a conflict.
He said, you know, I have something going on right now.
You know, so the deputy, maybe you get the deputy on this one.
So the case was handed over to the Northwest Missouri Investigative Squad or NOMIS, a task force of law enforcement officers from the surrounding counties who occasionally called that were called upon to investigate, uh, unusual crimes.
Nah, don't bother the task force with this.
He just, it was a bad time, he died.
We're not even done.
What? Because the news of Ken McElroy's murder spread quickly and soon journalists from around the country flocked to Skidmore to interview the town that, from all appearances, had taken the law into their own hands.
Unfortunately for those people, no one in Skidmore would talk to anybody.
Well, they didn't know.
Literally anybody. and they never would." What?
When I tell you no one talked, no one saw nothing.
Wow. No one. No one person in this town said, let me tell you what I saw.
That's brotherhood.
And his statement to No Miss Investigators and eventually to Missouri FBI agents, Sheriff Dan Estes, the Sheriff that was like, whoops, can't be there.
He admitted that he had met with a group of 35 or 40 men at the Legion Hall that afternoon to discuss their concerns about the Bowen camp case and, like, the guy who, this 70 -year -old grocer who was shot in the neck, and of Miquel Roy in general.
They were just discussing their concerns that he's a problem.
That's all. But he adamantly denies having anything to do with the shooting.
No. In fact, when the man from the tavern came into the hall to tell them Miquel Roy was in town, Estes distinctly recalls telling them all, we're not going to go down there and do anything.
Right, boys? Then he left, assuming everyone would simply go home.
That's what he said.
And they did. He said, I told him we're not going down there and doing anything.
He did his job. As far as I'm concerned, that sheriff did his job.
He said, we're not going to do anything, are we?
And they said, nope.
And he said, I'll believe you.
He said, wink, wink.
Based on the evidence collected at the scene and from McElroy's body, there had been at least four shooters, all firing from different positions along the street.
That's crazy. One was directly behind the truck.
one was off to the driver's side, another was down the hill a few yards, and another was about half a block away by the post office.
Despite the fact that there were about 40 people in town that day, investigators found it nearly impossible to find anything who would admit they saw anything.
Anyone. Anyone, anything, nothing.
Anywhere. Anywhere, anytime.
Any place. One elderly man, one elderly guy told investigators He'd seen at least three men with guns just before the shooting started.
Couldn't tell you who they were, just that they were guys with guns.
But a short time later his attorney withdrew the statement, citing his client's health problems. He never said that.
He never said that.
He didn't mean it either.
And those who would talk would talk mostly to reporters.
Lois Bowenkamp, who had everything.
She said, I have something to say.
She told reporters justice had finally finally been served.
She said, you know how awful it was living in a town with Ken McElroy?
She said my neighbor and I took turns sleeping at night.
It was frightening.
Yeah, that's how scary it was to live in that town with him.
That tells you something.
Yeah. A few weeks later on August 2 a grand jury was assembled to review the evidence and determine whether it was sufficient to warrant an indictment for murder.
On who? The problem was investigators had no suspect to indict.
Trina said in her statement, it seemed so strange.
there were vehicles lining the street but no people anywhere, a man in the crowd told me to stay in the truck that they wanted to shoot me too but someone else pulled me out.
In the end, the grand jury determined there wasn't enough evidence to indict anyone and the district attorney declined to press charges against any of the people who were there the day McElroy was shot.
The coroner's determination was that Ken was killed by a person or persons unknown, and Trina's lawyer, Richard McFadden, said, We are disappointed but not surprised.
Now we can only hope for the Justice Department to complete its report soon.
If Trina and her lawyer were hoping that something would come out of the Justice Department's report, they were probably disappointed by the outcome.
When he was asked about the potential for an arrest or indictment, district attorney David Baird told reporters any hope of making a case against McElroy's killer or killers faded when a county grand jury disbanded September 28th without issuing any indictments.
They said, we just don't know.
A short time later, the Missouri FBI wound down their investigation too, finding little evidence that would lead them to a suspect and virtually no one who would even admit to being in town that day.
Trina and a few members of the McElroy family tried to speak out against the injustice that they saw but eventually that died down too.
You feel for his family.
For sure. For sure.
That's tough. After spending years researching the case for his book, Harry McClean isn't convinced that there are many people left in Skidmore who really know what happened.
He said, "...I don't think the guys on the street that day went home and told their wives and kids.
I think they went back home, got on their tractors, and shut up." Former sheriff's deputy, Dick Lussier, more or less agrees with that assumption.
He told a reporter in 2001 they were so relieved Ken McElroy was gone that it didn't matter to them whether the shooting was right or wrong in the four decades since his murder no one has ever been charged with or even suspected of McElroy's murder no suspects damn mayor Tracy shirt Shui said just because of those bad things happened doesn't mean the whole town and the whole community is bad for newcomers it does come up but what we say is that's not all that we're about we've had a couple of things that have been not so pleasant.
But to us that doesn't define the town.
Please see past that.
If you can't, you've gotta move on.
She said if you can't get the fuck out of Skidmore, Tracy's like, get the fuck outta here.
We don't talk about any more.
It is what it is. She said shut your mouth.
And that is the wild death of Ken McElroy known as the town bully.
Which is a nice name, I would say for him.
It's a good anecdote to learn from.
Yeah, you can't spend your life terrorizing your community.
community. Don't do it sad the ending of that case had my jaw on the fucking ground well I didn't really see that coming I'm very glad that Trina was not hurt I'm we pulled her out of the situation and I'm sorry for his family that they did have closure like you know it's it's a person it's a person that yeah and then you know I'm sure they had different feelings for him of course they did like yeah there are monsters in every family that you know you just family loves so it's Like, you know, that's just the way it is.
But obviously vigilante justice is a very slippery slope and a very, a lot, it's a complex and very nuanced thing.
There's, it's, you know, this is a situation where you go, wow.
But I'm more, I'm mostly interested in the fact that you rarely see people come together and just keep a secret like that Yeah.
Or keep just… No one saw nothing.
That's wild. But I think they're right.
I think this is a this was a community of like farmers and you know, blue collar workers and they're all you know like they're working hard during a hard time.
Well, they're getting their shit rocked every day.
And they're getting their shit rocked every day by this guy.
Most of them are scared to go to sleep and like the fact that she said the children aren't safe.
The children aren't safe the young girls.
Like he's going to school dances.
Like there's nowhere that anywhere is safe here.
when if you didn't know like any other detail other than the fact that one woman said her and her neighbor took shifts sleeping, that alone tells you.
Well, tell you what kind of fear he had them living under.
Can, like, genuinely sit here right now and imagine you call up your neighbor to wake them up cause it's their turn to watch for the town bully.
Like that's wild. And that was not even that long ago.
And they were just, they were tired of living under complete tyranny and just like, you know.
One if the law is not going to do anything It's a wild case.
I'm not saying what's right and what's wrong.
I'm just saying like this is a wild case Yeah, and it's a wild case of you can't treat people like shit for your whole life.
Yeah and expect anything good to come out of it It's hard to say too much. Exactly like cuz again, I'm not condoning Shooting people, by any stretch of the imagination.
Never ever. It's a horrifying Sight to think about.
Yeah, it actually it's more or less just me saying you got to think about how you treat people people be people in every different way.
So you don't know what you're doing here.
I've never heard another story quite like that.
Me neither. It's shocked, that's the thing, it's just a shocking, shocking story.
Dave found that one?
Dave found that one.
Dave. Dave finds the craziest shit.
Dave finds the crazy, like some of the most fascinating stories and most interesting ones I've heard came out of the mind of Dave. For real.
Damn. Wow, well, we hope you keep listening.
And after that, we're pretty sure you will.
Hell yeah. We hope you it weird. But not so weird that you terrorize a town to the point where there's quite literally no return.
Yes. Don't just don't do that.
They'll meet at the Legion hall.
They will or the VFW.
That's all I can picture.
That's basically it.
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