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Vigilante Justice and the Small Town Bully – A Crime That Shocked America

Khalid Elhassan December 7, 2024 13 min

McElroy - Ken Rex McElroy, as depicted in film — Ken Rex McElroy, as depicted in film. Pinterest

5. Uniting a Town in Murder

When word arrived that McElroy was in town, two men met him in his truck, and told him to leave Skidmore. They were followed by a crowd. As McElroy started his truck, some men hustled his wife Trena out of the passenger seat, then gunfire erupted. When the shooting stopped, McElroy lay slumped against the steering wheel, the engine revving at maximum RPMs with one of his feet jammed down on the accelerator. Nobody called an ambulance, and everybody just… went home. McElroy had been vile enough to unite an entire town of otherwise peaceful good folk to commit murder in public.

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.