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

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.

16. A Budding Criminal Career

McElroy got started small on his criminal path with petty thefts, graduated to livestock rustling, and soon escalated into violent assaults and vicious mayhem. He was helped by an intimidating appearance: the adult McElroy stood at over six feet, weighed in at 270 pounds, had bushy eyebrows and bushier sideburns, and heavily lidded, crazy-looking, cold steel-blue eyes that sent shivers down spines. For years, he harassed, threatened, and stalked the locals. Nobody saw him work, but he always seemed to have pockets full of cash, which he liked to show off. On one occasion, he reportedly covered the local bar’s pool table with $100 bills. 

15. Staying Out of Jail

Ken McElroy piled up a long list of indictments, ranging from burglary to child molestation to carnal assault to attempted murder. His lawyer, Richard McFadin, estimated that he defended McElroy from an average of three or four felonies each year. As he put it: “Best client I ever had … He was punctual, always said he didn’t do it, paid in cash and kept coming back“. McElroy’s lawyer went on to add:  “I was the only friend he had … He told me he would pay me whatever I needed to keep him out of jail“. Whether through McFadin’s legal skills, or his client’s intimidation of witnesses, the numerous indictments produced no convictions. Scared witnesses was probably the greater factor: McElroy so terrorized Skidmore’s residents with his brutality and threats of the revenge he would exact, that none dared to testify against him.

14. A Raging Alcoholic and Skeevy Womanizer

Livestock owners looked the other way when some of their cattle or hogs vanished, or if the gas barrels used to fuel their farms were emptied. On the rare occasion that a case did make it to trial, jurors received unsubtle warnings, such as rattlesnakes in their mailboxes or shotgun blasts shattering the quiet of the night near their homes. The result was a series of mistrials followed by the eventual dismissal of charges, or outright acquittals. In addition to thefts and violent assaults, Ken McElroy was a raging alcoholic and a notorious womanizer. Although, “womanizer” might not be the most accurate term, since most of the females he was attracted to were underage – technically children.

13. A Local Monster Who Liked ‘Em Young

Over the years, Ken McElroy fathered at least fifteen children with numerous women, both in and out of wedlock. Most of his baby mamas had barely been past puberty when McElroy knocked them up. In 1971, a 37-year-old McElroy met his youngest and last wife, Trena, when she was only twelve. Two years later, she was pregnant. When she gave birth, Trena tried to escape his mistreatment by fleeing with her newborn son to her parents’ home. McElroy had no intention of letting her get away.

12. McElroy’s Child Bride

McElroy followed the teenage Trena to her parents’ home, demanded her return, and would not take no for an answer. Astonishingly, although this was in mid-1970s America, not the 1670s or 1270s, he got what he wanted. When Trena’s parents demurred, McElroy shot their dog, burned down their house, then forcibly took her and the baby back home, where he punished her for her defiance. Trena told a local doctor about the abuse and arson, and he contacted social services. Faced with child molestation and statutory rape charges, McElroy discovered that if Trena was his wife, she would be exempt from having to testify against him. Since she was a minor, he needed her parents’ permission. He had no trouble getting that, after he threatened to burn their new house to the ground if they said no. Thus, McElroy got a child bride, and the statutory rape charges vanished.

11. A Cunning Illiterate

Ken McElroy was illiterate – he had dropped out of school at age thirteen, before he had mastered reading and writing. However, he was quite cunning. He knew that his intimidating reputation was his greatest protection, so he carefully cultivated and enhanced that rep. As the author of a biography that chronicled McElroy’s life and death put it: “He knew which people to pick on — the weak people — and he followed through on his threats just often enough to make people believe he was going to do what he said he was going to do. He had a legendary status, and it all got to be bigger than he was. Somebody would hear his name, and the legend grew bigger. When he got off on a trial, it grew even bigger. It went beyond just hammering people and being mean-spirited“.

10. The Beginning of the End

By 1980, Ken McElroy had firmly established himself as Skidmore’s town bully and reigning thug. People had been intimidated into putting up with his violent antics for so long, that his depredations just became an accepted part of life in that part of Missouri. That changed in April, 1980, when McElroy, at the instigation of his erstwhile child bride, now grown up into a nasty piece of work, went after the town’s beloved elderly grocers, Bo Bowenkamp and his wife Lois.

9. A Vendetta Over Penny Candy

Trena McElroy told her husband that 70-year-old Bo 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 profanity-filled tirade. Simultaneously, her husband vowed vengeance for the affront to his family. Following through on that vow is what finally did him in. McElroy offered the elderly Lois Bowenkamp cash to fight his much younger and stronger wife, Trena. When she refused, he set out to turn the Bowenkamps’ life into a hell. His antics included parking his pickup truck outside the Bowenkamps’ home at all hours of the day and night, and firing off his gun into the air. The Bowenkamps put on a brave face and tried to go about their normal lives.

8. The Shooting of Bo Bowenkamp

The Bowenkamps’ lack of fear – or at least pretense of lack of fear: in reality, they were terrified, even if they refused to show it – infuriated McElroy, and led him to steadily ramp things up. Finally, one July night in 1980, Bo Bowencamp was standing outside his store, when McElroy drove up, pulled out his shotgun, and shot him in the neck with a deer slug. Miraculously, he survived the shooting, and the senseless attempted murder of their beloved elderly grocer finally snapped Skidmore out of the terror spell cast by McElroy. After years of intimidation, the locals had had enough. Prosecutor David Baird tried McElroy for first degree assault and won a conviction – the town bully’s first felony conviction. Skidmore’s menace was sentenced to two years, but his lawyer Richard McFadin appealed, and the judge allowed McElroy to go free on bond, pending appeal.

7. Useless Appeals to the Authorities

The locals banded together and wrote to all and sundry. Letters went to state legislators, the state attorney general, and the governor. They informed them that the town of Skidmore and its surrounding region lived in fear of the psychopath in its midst, and asked the authorities to do something about it. Their pleas were ignored. In the meantime, soon after his conviction, McElroy was seen in a local bar brandishing an M-1 rifle with an affixed bayonet – a clear violation of his bond – and vowing bloody revenge on the Bowenkamps and all who sided with them.

6. “The Last Straw“

Witnesses who saw an armed Ken McElroy told the county prosecutor to request a bond revocation hearing. The people of Skidmore organized a caravan to escort the witnesses to the hearing, but McElroy’s lawyer got it postponed. As a resident put it: “That was the last straw. That was the last failure of criminal justice“. On July 10^th, 1981, the infuriated townsfolk gathered in Skidmore’s American Legion Hall. What they discussed is unknown. Some who were there said they talked about ways to keep the Bowenkamps safe. McElroy’s lawyer, Richard McFadin, believed that what they really talked about was how to murder his favorite client.

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.

4. The Town That Kept Mum About Murder

Skidmore had no police. When county sheriff’s deputies and Highway Patrol troopers finally arrived in the small town, the streets were deserted and quiet. The only thing to break the silence was the rumbling and smoking engine of McElroy’s pickup, that nobody had bothered to turn off. Shell casings from at least two firearms, an 8 mm World War I German Mauser, and a .22 caliber Magnum, were recovered at the scene. However, the weapons were never found. Although at least 40 people had witnessed the public killing, the people of Skidmore kept mum.

3. A Media Firestorm

The media, print, radio, and TV, along with hordes of the merely curious and morbid, descended upon tiny Skidmore. The event would eventually be narrated in a New York Times bestseller, and made into a Hollywood movie. The story was not so much about the killing, but about an entire town that refused to talk, and continued to stay mum and keep the secret for decades since and into the present. Aside from local and state investigations, the FBI conducted more than 100 interviews. State and federal grand juries were convened. Other than McElroy’s wife Trena, however, nobody was inclined to say anything, and her testimony, absent corroboration from anybody else, was deemed too weak by prosecutors.

2. A Retired Lawman’s Perspective on Skidsmore’s Vigilantes

Retired Missouri Highway Patrol trooper Richard Stratton had patrolled the region for years, during which he had many run ins with McElroy. He thought law enforcement had dropped the ball and let slip many opportunities to put Skidmore’s bully away. As he put it: “Those were fathers and grandfathers on the street in Skidmore that day … Ordinary, hardworking people. They did what they did because we didn’t do our job. Then they went home and kept their mouths shut and kept them closed all these years“.

1.     The Town That Got Away With Murder

Skidmore is an even smaller town nowadays. It has no grocery store or gas station, and the only school has closed. The beer joint where McElroy used to hang out has long gone out of business, and sits as en empty reminder of the past across from a new restaurant and bar. To this day, although it happened in broad daylight in front of dozens of witnesses, the public slaying of Ken Rex McElroy remains an unsolved homicide. As his lawyer put it: “I know why they didn’t talk – they were all glad he was dead. That town got away with murder“.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

History Collection – Crime Facts That Belong in Jail

MacLean, Harry N. – In Broad Daylight (1988)

McClatchy – 3 Decades On, Who Killed Skidmore Town Bully is Still Secret

Morbidology – The Town That Got Away With Murder: Ken Rex McElroy

Patch – Who Killed Ken Rex McElroy: Town Keeps Its Secret For 38 Years