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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

17. A Bad Kid Who Became a Bad Man

Ken Rex McElroy of Skidmore, Missouri, was bad news from early on. Born in 1934, he was the 15^th of 16 children of poor sharecroppers. McElroy fell off a hay wagon in his parents’ farm when he was a child, and cracked his skull bad enough to require a steel plate implanted in his head. Many attributed the horrible person he became to that childhood accident. Whatever the reason, McElroy became a delinquent before he had even reached puberty – a bad kid who grew up to become a bad man. He quit school in fifth grade, and lived his life as a de facto illiterate who could neither read nor write.

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.