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When people have had enough.
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| Ken Rex McElroy |
In certain of the more, shall we say conservative states, there is a little known and seldom talked about legal defense that influences investigations, grand juries, juries and judges to refuse to enforce the letter of the law. In some places in the country, there is a principle that justifies even murder. The defense is, quite simply, “He needed killin’.”
And this isn’t something that just existed in the Wild West of the late 1800s, although the principle may have derived from those rowdy days when law enforcement was kind of thin on the ground. It may have gained favor in legal circles and community law enforcement in those days, but as late as 1981, the community of Skidmore, Missouri with this principle in mind invoked their collective judgment on one local thug and bully, one Ken Rex McElroy. His list of crimes was lengthy: assault, child molestation, statutory rape, burglary, and hog and cattle rustling. Somehow, to the dismay of the citizens of Skidmore, this hooligan avoided conviction for all of these crimes. Every time he was arrested, he was soon released to once more terrorize the community.
At
the age of 12, his future 3rd
wife, Trena
McCloud, had
the misfortune to cross McElroy’s path. He
raped her
repeatedly over the next couple of years. Now, statutory rape is a crime of the first order and
law enforcement should have ended McElroy’s career on the spot.
Instead McElroy proceeded to burned
her parents’
house down and shoot
the family dog. He
terrorized her family until he forced
her parents to consent
to
his
marriage to Trena.
This kept her from testifying against him in the rape. Thiss wasn't the first young girl he'd done this too. At
the age of 14,
Trena gave
birth to their child. Terrified,
she
fled to her unfortunate
mother's
house. In
short order, McElroy
came
for her, burning down
her parents house AGAIN,
shooting
their dog AGAIN.
McElroy was arrested and indited 21 times including robbery, property destruction and abuse of his first two wives Sharon and Alice. McElroy, shot a local farmer named Romaine Henry. McElroy shot Henry in the stomach for trying to chase him off of Henry's own
land.Next he shot a 70 year old grocer, Ernest "Bo" Bowenkamp, sitting outside his own store on a
smoke break. The grocer’s sin against McElroy? He had earlier
accused McElroy's children of shoplifting. It was 2 cents worth of
candy. The man had caught them in the act.
The cops dutifully arrested McElroy for the shooting. This time he was convicted then turned loose on bond while waiting for an appeal. With the legal system and the cops failing to do their jobs, the good citizens of Skidmore were understandably frustrated. McElroy was once more among them to prey upon the innocent and threaten the peace and safety of the town. And, darn it, people liked that grocer. To this point, McElroy had been arrested 21 times and released to continue his wide range of antisocial behaviors. The man posed a severe threat to the community.
After McElroy was released on bond, he began cruising the grocery store, harassing Bo, who was still recovering from his wounds. He was spotted near the grocery, with a rifle and bayonet. McElroy even openly threatened to kill the poor man while threatening everyone that expressed any kind of sympathy for the grocer or criticized McElroy himself. If he heard someone express any animosity toward himself, he would park his pickup outside their houses for long and terrifying hours. In a burst of massive hubris, McElroy even threatened to kill a minister for expressing sympathy for the grocer.
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| © Don Shrubshell (July 1981) |
One fateful day, McElroy loaded Trena into the truck and set off for a local bar. When they walked in, everyone in the bar turned to look at the pair and went strangely silent. McElroy was kind of creeped out, so, when the pair finished off their drinks, they left the bar. and got in their pickup truck. Trena later said that when she looked in the side view mirror, she saw 30–50 people gathered in the parking lot behind them. Then the guns came up. In an instant, the truck windows shattered amid a hail of gunfire that riddled the pickup. Trena ducked. When she looked up she could see that McElroy was dead. There was a big hole in the back of his head. Trena, herself, was unharmed and quickly bailed out of the passenger seat.
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| © Don Shrubshell (July 1981) |
In the aftermath, the police questioned virtually everyone in town, but no one seemed to have witnessed the incident, nor could say who shot McElroy. The newly liberated Trena was of little help to cops and to this day, more than 40 years later, the crime is on the books as an “unsolved” cold case.
The
Dixie Chicks’ hit song, “Goodbye Earl” has a line in it that
Earl turned out to be a missing person that nobody missed at all. For
the town of Skidmore, Missouri, Ken Rex McElroy turned out to be one of those
folks that nobody
missed at all and an example of someone who, as we say in Texas,
“needed killin’”.
©
2021
by Tom King
REFERENCES:
1. https://allthatsinteresting.com/ken-mcelroy
2. https://www.buzzfeed.com/christopherhudspeth/18-facts-about-the-murder-of-ken-rex-mcelroy-one-of-the
3. https://patch.com/us/across-america/who-killed-ken-rex-mcelroy-town-keeps-its-secret-38-years
4. https://www.talkmurderwithme.com/blog/2019/11/14/ken-rex-mcelroy
5. https://www.aetv.com/real-crime/ken-rex-mcelroy-vigilante-murder-skidmore-unsolved
6. https://www.historicmysteries.com/ken-mcelroy-skidmore-missouri/
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