The year is 1981. The town, Skidmore, Missouri. A town surrounded by cornfields with only 437 residents. On July 10, 1981, Ken Rex McElroy would be shot dead in the street in broad daylight, amongst as many as 60 witnesses. Yet, to this day, the crime remains unsolved.
Ken McElroy was a big man and people were afraid of him
Ken Rex McElroy was born June 1, 1934 to a family of poor tenant farmers who moved near the town of Skidmore, Missouri. By the eighth grade, McElroy had left school and it’s believed he was largely illiterate. At 18, he was said to have been seriously injured when a steel slab fell on him at a construction site. The incident left him with chronic pain, and some have attributed his bizarre and violent behavior to a head injury suffered in this event. McElroy was reportedly a 270 pound giant of a man. A local farmer described McElroy saying, “I think that Ken simply wanted to be big and important and have people afraid of him when he walked down the street. And he got that, they were.”
In spite of all this, McElroy made a relatively substantial living off of leasing land near his farm, trading and racing dogs, as well as allegedly stealing livestock, grain, alcohol, gasoline, and antiques. McElroy was in constant trouble with the law. His lawyer estimated that he was charged with various crimes at least three times a year, and by some counts, he was indicted as many as 21 times but escaped conviction all but once. McElroy was often known to brag that his Kansas City lawyer, Richard Gene McFadin, also represented the mob and would effectively keep him out of jail. So, he’s walking around town saying, “I could do whatever I want, I got a big fancy-pants lawyer from out of town and he’s gonna make sure all you small folk can’t touch me.”
Ken McElroy intimidated witnesses to avoid jail
Another tactic to avoid jail that McElroy would employ is intimidating witnesses. To do this, he’d follow them or park outside their homes and watch them until they were no longer willing to testify against him. His various alleged crimes include robbery, harassing/assaulting women, destroying property, threatening lives, and assault, including shooting at least two people. One of those two people he shot was local farmer, Romaine Henry, who McElroy shot in the stomach when Henry tried to chase McElroy off Henry’s land.
McElroy was accused of raping two young women as young as 12 years old, both of which he was said to have married to keep them from testifying against him. One of these women was 24-year-old Trena McCloud, who was his partner and was also present at the time of McElroy’s death.
Trena was McElroy’s third wife, though all unions were suspect due to the fact that some of his marriages overlapped, as well as the fact that McElroy was known to prefer girls around the age of 13 or 14. In fact, McElroy actually entered a relationship with Trena when she was only 14 years old, having a child with her around that same time. Soon after having their first child, Trena attempted to escape to her parents’ house. McElroy responded by allegedly burning down Trena’s parents’ home and shooting their dog.
McElroy faced claims he was abusing his wives
Yet, in 1981, Trena told People Magazine that the house fire was, just faulty wiring. To make matters worse, McElroy was also accused of abusing his first two wives, Sharon and Alice, as is often the case in stories of domestic abuse. In later interviews with both Alice and Trena, they seemed to minimize their abuse and even claimed McElroy treated them well. In 1981, shortly after his death, Alice told People Magazine that, “Ken was totally different from the way they are saying he was now. Oh, he was wild, but he wasn’t guilty of all those things they say. He was honest and generous. I never knew him to steal anything, ever.”
However, it’s known that even the county’s law enforcement officials were afraid of encountering McElroy, who was known to always be heavily armed and unafraid of shooting cops. For over two decades, the people of Skidmore often felt abandoned by the justice system that couldn’t stop McElroy from further terrorizing them. Little did they know, an instance would occur that would change everything.
Police were afraid to encounter Ken McElroy
On April 25, 1980, in Ernest “Bo” Bowenkamp’s general store, the store clerk, Evelyn Sumy, would ask McElroy’s eight year old daughter, Tonya, to return a piece of candy she had not paid for. When he learned of the incident, McElroy was so incensed he reportedly began stalking the Bowenkamp family. This led to the events of July 8th, 1980, when McElroy would drive into the alley behind the Bowenkamp General Store. Once there, he threatened Bo Bowenkamp and shot the grocer in the neck at close range with a shotgun, marking at least the second reported time McElroy had shot somebody.
Luckily, Bo Bowenkamp survived, and McElroy was arrested and charged with attempted murder. His preliminary trial was set for August 18th, 1980. In typical fashion, McElroy made attempts to intimidate the Bowenkamp family and supporters to keep them from testifying. Bowenkamp’s wife recalled, “you can’t know how intimidating it was after that. Before his trial, he’d drive up to our house in his pickup at night and just sit there. Sometimes, he would fire his gun. It was frightening.”
He managed to delay the trial for five months
Through legal maneuvers, McElroy was able to delay the trial almost five months, until June 25, 1981. During this time, the acting prosecuting attorney resigned and a young new prosecutor named David Baird was hired to fill his position. Some have speculated that McElroy had bullied the previous prosecutor to leave. The new prosecutor, David Baird, was only three years out of law school, yet Baird accomplished what no other lawyer had been able to do in all of McElroy’s criminal history. He convicted him of a crime.
Granted, McElroy was ultimately only convicted at his trial of second degree assault. The jury set a maximum sentence of two years, and the judge freed him on a $40,000 bail bond pending the appeal. This was partly because Baird lessened McElroy’s charge from “attempt to kill” to “knowingly caused serious physical injury”, to ensure that he could secure a conviction.
City looked for ways to deal with Ken McElroy to stop him from hurting the community
McElroy reportedly said at the trial, “the jury convicted me and they gave me two years. But I’ll tell you what, I’ll never go to jail. I’ll appeal and get off. I’ve been fighting the law since I was 13, and I’m damn near 50. I’ve been arrested for over 53 felonies, and this is the first one I ever lost.”
Soon after he was released, McElroy, bizarrely, was spotted with a rifle and bayonet at the town’s local bar, D and G Tavern, where he was allegedly making graphic threats about murdering Bo Bowenkamp. As a result, he was arrested and quickly released, with the only consequence being the postponement of his court hearing to July 20, 1981, for violating his bail provisions for being armed. In the wake of these events, on the morning of July 10th, 1981, there was a meeting at the town’s Legion Hall just down the street from the D and G Tavern. As many as 60 Skidmore residents attended, including both the mayor and the sheriff. The meeting’s entire purpose was to discuss what they could legally do to prevent McElroy from harming anyone else. County Sheriff Dan Estes suggested the formation of a neighborhood watch.
People stayed quiet when police investigated Ken McElroy murder
But the collective mindset of those in attendance seemingly could be summed up by one quote from an attendee. “We simply felt that the system had failed us. We all knew what McElroy was like, and there he was again and again. It seemed like nobody could stop him.” Those at the meeting heard reports that McElroy and Trena were spotted heading to the D and G Tavern in Skidmore to grab drinks. It is said that the meeting adjourned, and that the crowd of about 60 people then quietly descended upon the D and G Tavern, flanking McElroy’s truck.
Some even went into the bar, where they waited for him to finish his drinks. Upon their return to the truck, where Trena was sitting in the passenger seat, McElroy lit a cigarette. Trena claimed to have turned over her shoulder and seen someone pull a rifle from the back of the truck and take aim at McElroy. And then, shots were fired, shattering the truck’s windows. Trena reportedly dove from her side of the vehicle onto the street, and was picked up by a man named Jack Clement and walked toward the bank for safety.
McElroy, at the age of 47, remained in the car shot dead, getting hit twice. The shot came from roughly behind him, so he would not have seen his shooter. Bullet casings from two different guns were found. Notably, none of the witnesses called an ambulance.
Only one came forward to say who fired the shots
While there were as many as 60 witnesses reported at the scene, no one but Trena would come forward in the investigation that followed to say who had fired the shots. Cheryl Huston, the daughter of Bo Bowenkamp, witnessed the shooting from her family’s store, and said this on the silence that followed the murder. “Once the shroud of silence fell, there was going to be no one talking. They could have pushed and dug, pushed and dug, and gotten nothing. We were so bitter and so angry at the law letting us down that it came to somebody taking matters in their own hand. No one has any idea what a nightmare we lived.”
Theories
There was only one suspect. It was a shooter that Trena identified as Del Clement. He was a part-owner of the D and G Tavern.
However, Clement denied the charge and there were no other witnesses to come forward. Ultimately, the DA and the coroner’s jury did not order an arrest warrant or press charges.
Harry N. MacLean, author of a book on the case titled In Broad Daylight, spent some time with Clement during his years researching his book and describes Clement as a “short man with a chip on his shoulder and a hot temper, wore a cowboy hat and drank heavily”.
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In regards to the shooting, MacLean describes Clement saying, “it wasn’t hard to imagine him jerking the gun from his pickup in a burst of anger and opening up on the large black head on the other side of the rear window of the pickup.” MacLean also says that in the years he spent researching, he never heard another name seriously mentioned as the shooter besides Del Clement. In 2009, Clement passed away, and up until his death, he continued to deny any role in the killing.
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