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The Town That Got Away With Murder and Other Largely Forgotten Historic Events

Khalid Elhassan November 23, 2019 33 min

35. Penny Candy: The Beginning of the End For the Town Bully

McElroy - Trena McElroy — Trena McElroy. Life Daily

By 1980, Ken McElroy had firmly established himself as Skidmore’s reigning thug and town bully. People had been intimidated into putting up with his violent antics for so long, that his presence and depredations just became an accepted part of life in that part of Missouri. That changed in April, 1980.

McElroy’s wife and erstwhile child bride, now grown up into a nasty piece of work, told him that 70-year-old Bowenkamp and his wife Lois, owners of the local grocery store, had accused the McElroys’ four-year-old daughter of shoplifting some penny candy. Accompanied by her husband, Trena McElroy returned to the store, and subjected the elderly owners to an F bomb filled tirade, while her husband vowed vengeance for the affront to his family. Following through on that vow is what finally did him in.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.