Bully | Criminal Podcast | Forensic Files

Harry MacLean: He grew up in a small town in Skidmore, Missouri, on a hog farm about
two and a half miles outside of town. [Music comes in.] He was the twelfth of twelve children.
I mean, he always had a chip on his shoulder. His family was not a part of the successful farming community of Northwest Missouri.
They were poor. They had come from Kansas. He kind of grew up resenting those he considered to be more successful.
And a lot of the farmers that were doing well, the kids of the farmers that were doing well
in school, he was bullying them by 4th and 5th grade. Phoebe Judge: Ken McElroy was mean when he was young, and he only got meaner.
Kids were afraid of him and adults were, too. We're hearing about him from Harry MacLean.
He's an author and a lawyer. Harry MacLean: Well, he would basically run loose and run wild.
And his family essentially gave up on trying to control him. And he would bully other kids out of their money.
He would go into stores and bully. He would take items from the store and basically challenge people.
And as far as I know, Ken was illiterate. I've seen documents he signed with an 'x.'
Phoebe Judge: He was born in 1934. If you look at school pictures of him at the time, he's half a foot taller than everybody
else, because he kept getting held back in school. Even though he was bigger than everyone else, Ken McElroy figured out pretty early that
the easiest way to control someone is to scare them. Harry MacLean: Which actually is one of the more interesting parts of his personality.
He was never a fist fighter, per se. The few instances where it happened, it was with somebody a lot smaller and younger than
him. But he wasn't a tough guy in the sense of being willing to duke it out. It was always a gun.
[Music fades out.] Phoebe Judge: He would break into farms late at night, steal a pig or a calf, and drive
to another town and sell it. He stole grain and expensive chemicals. There were reports of property damage, harassment, and threats against people's lives.
This continued for years. And even though the sheriff's department investigated, they never managed to bring charges.
It's tough to get a witness to talk when they don't feel safe. Harry MacLean: The people in the town itself, he had them so terrified at the end that all
he had to do is look at them and that was enough. Phoebe Judge: It wasn't until 1976, when he was over 40, that he actually went to trial.
He was charged with the assault of a man named Romaine Henry, a farmer who lived outside
of Skidmore. Harry MacLean: Basically Ken confronted Romaine Henry on the road right outside of Romaine's
farm and pulled a shotgun out of his truck and stuck it in Romaine's stomach and pulled
the trigger twice. And basically blew a good portion of his stomach away. Phoebe Judge: It's never been quite clear what went on between the two men.
Some people say they were fighting over a woman. McElroy was charged with first degree assault.
It should have been a pretty open and shut case. McElroy shot Romaine Henry in broad daylight.
Romaine Henry survived to testify against him. There were three people who had seen McElroy on Romaine Henry's road.
But McElroy had no intention of going to jail. He found out where members of the jury lived and put rattlesnakes in their mailboxes.
[Music comes in.] They found him not guilty. Harry MacLean: You know, Romaine always said, "How could I not know who shot me?"
And it was that sort of an event, where his guilt was obvious and he got acquitted when
the formal legal system kicked in, that created this myth of kind of invincibility.
Because when you're tried in front of a jury and your own peers, other farmers, decide
that you didn't do it even though the victim clearly says that you did, then it gives him
this kind of status of being able to act beyond the law and get away with it. Phoebe Judge: The closest police station to Skidmore was 14 miles away.
So if there was any real trouble, it took awhile for police officers to show up.
The mayor decided it might be a good idea to have someone in town with a badge and a
gun. So the town hired a marshal to patrol Skidmore and hopefully to watch over Ken McElroy.
It didn't take long for McElroy to threaten the marshal, David Dunbar, with a gun.
Dunbar called the sheriff's department for backup, but he couldn't get any help.
Officers told him they weren't coming and that he should just remain calm and walk away.
Harry MacLean: This is a law officer who had had weapons pulled on him. And the official law enforcement community says, "We're not going to come help you out.
Just keep things calm." And the next day, David turned in his badge and his gun and said, "That's it."
Phoebe Judge: What do you do when even the police won't help you? Today, the story of what happens when a bully takes over a town and when the people in that
town have finally had enough. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. [Music up to full volume for a few seconds.]
When he was in his late 30s, Ken McElroy began stalking a 13-year-old girl named Trena McCloud.
Harry MacLean: And Ken started going after her in his ways. He started following the school bus that she was on.
He'd pull the school bus over and demand that she get off. She would get off. Everybody knew about it.
The kids in the school knew about it. Their parents knew about it. The law enforcement knew about it.
[Music fades out.] Phoebe Judge: This went on for several months before the district attorney got involved.
Trena agreed to testify against McElroy on more than a dozen felony charges. Harry MacLean: But he was very smart in the sense that he knew that without Trena, there
was no case. And they had Trena hidden away in another town with a family, and he found her.
He could find anybody, anywhere, in that whole Northwest Missouri region. And he found her and talked her into coming back, basically.
Phoebe Judge: He knew that if he and Trena were married, she couldn't testify against
him. But because Trena was a minor, McElroy needed her parents' consent. So we went to them and made them agree.
Harry MacLean: And the prosecutor then said, "Well, you've got a husband and wife privilege
here. She's not going to be able to testify against him," and dropped the case. Phoebe Judge: McElroy had a little compound on some farmland outside of Skidmore.
He lived there with Trena, but other women were always around. And he had lots of children who drifted in and out.
Some of these women and children said he was generous, not the monster everyone said he
was. He was apparently a pretty caring father. In Skidmore, everyone knew everyone else.
And when McElroy's kids came to town, people noticed. One day, two of his daughters went into the local grocery store, B&B Grocery.
It was owned by a 70-year-old man named Bo Bowenkamp And his wife, Lois. Bo worked as the butcher and Lois behind the cash register.
Harry MacLean: This would've been 1980. And Lois and another woman were standing at the cash register.
And there was a dispute that went on about whether the youngest girl had paid for a couple
of jaw breakers. When the little girl left, she was in tears and felt that she had been accused of stealing
the jaw breakers. The older girl was out and she took great offense at the incident with her younger sister
and came back into the store and said, "I understand you have accused my little sister
of stealing." And Lois said, "No, we were just trying to get straightened out what happened with these
jaw breakers." And so they all left and about half an hour to an hour later, Ken McElroy shows up with
Trena and that escalates. And he said, "I understand you accused my daughter of stealing."
"No, no." They tried to explain. Well Lois was very cantankerous, provocative, I don't want to say mean, but she got into
it with him. And at one point McElroy said, "Well, we're not going to shop here anymore, you can be
sure of that." And then later, he tried to buy some cigarettes, and Lois said to him, "I understand you're
not going to shop here anymore. We're not going to sell you any cigarettes." [Music comes in.]
Well, you don't say that to Ken McElroy if you're trying to deescalate the situation.
Phoebe Judge: On July 8th, 1980, McElroy drove into town and pulled around to the back of
B&B Grocery. He saw some kids near the store and gave them some money to go away.
Then he spotted Bo working in the back. Harry MacLean: And pulled out his shotgun and got into a conversation with Bo where
he's basically challenging him about what was said to his kids, calling them thieves.
And Bo said, "I didn't say anything. I don't know anything about it. I didn't — I was in the back of the store."
And McElroy takes his shotgun, sticks it up probably about two feet away, three feet away
from Bo's neck and pulls the trigger. At the last instant, Bo twitches basically to his left, and so the shot
rips out about a quarter of his neck. It doesn't tear open the carotid artery, but it drops him to the floor.
And he's basically bleeding to death. Phoebe Judge: McElroy didn't wait to see what happened.
He took off out of Skidmore and headed for the Kansas border. Harry MacLean: He knew that whole area, including Iowa and Kansas.
And the one state patrolman that had stood up to McElroy over the years, Richard Stratton,
heard the call that McElroy had shot Bowenkamp and was running. [Music fades out.]
And Stratton figured out exactly how he was going to run, that he was going to go over
a bridge a little bit north of St. Joe, into Kansas. And so Stratton headed him off and they met at an intersection in a small town, not too
far from the border. And Stratton arrested him. Phoebe Judge: We called Richard Stratton and spoke with his wife.
She didn't want to be recorded, but remembers McElroy well. "I looked down the barrel of that bully's gun," she said.
She said McElroy came to their home and threatened them in an attempt to get her husband to back
off. But he didn't, and McElroy was charged with first-degree assault. Bo Bowenkamp survived.
The trial began in the spring of 1981. The prosecutor was a very young attorney named David Baird.
Harry MacLean: David Baird was a very courageous person to take that case on. The prosecutor that was there in Maryville resigned rather than prosecute it.
David Baird was a year out of law school. He was a legal aid attorney. They couldn't get anybody to be the prosecutor because this was the first case they were
going to have to try, and David Baird took it on. David Baird: I took over as prosecutor in April of 1981.
Phoebe Judge: David Baird. David Baird: There were periods of time where the law enforcement picked up chatter about
a threat directed at me and others, and so that was conveyed to me and certain steps
were taken. Phoebe Judge: I think I would have been scared. David Baird: Well, people with whom I shared that with, family members and girlfriends
at the time, were concerned, but that never entered my perspective. Because my perspective was, it does Mr. McElroy no good to kill me because there will simply
be another prosecutor named. Phoebe Judge: David Baird's family and friends were right to be scared.
McElroy had been spending almost every night sitting in his car in front of Bo Bowenkamp's
house holding a gun. Sometimes he would get out and shoot into the air. This stuff had worked for him before.
[Music fades in.] Harry MacLean: A lot of these witnesses over the years to the events backed off.
And they would not testify against him, and that's how I got out of a lot of cases.
And he was pretty sure Bo was going to back off, too. And he tried to intimidate Bo and his wife and his kids and grandkids to get them not
to testify. Because without Bo, there wouldn't have been a case. Bo held in there.
Phoebe Judge: Ken McElroy was convicted on second degree assault charges. He was sentenced to two years in prison.
Harry MacLean: It was the first time in the history of Ken McElroy's rampage in Northwest
Missouri that he was convicted of anything. He was shocked. The judge was shocked.
Everybody was shocked that McElroy was actually convicted. And a lot of it was due to David Baird's skill, I have no doubt about that.
Phoebe Judge: And then in a move that surprised everyone, the judge let McElroy out on a $60,000
bond. Harry MacLean: Terrible mistake. He should have been kept. He should have been put in jail right away.
He had been convicted. The judge lets him out on a bond. So now you have a raging bull that has been stuck by the picadors, to use a really bad
metaphor. Now he's really pissed off. Now he's really angry. Now he's really on the run.
Now he's really going to pay people back for what happened to him, because he thinks he's
going to go to jail. [Music fades out.] So by this time, the town had lost complete confidence in the ability of every aspect
of the criminal justice system to protect them from this man. The sheriff had failed.
The DA had failed. The judges had failed. And they had all the incidents in the world to believe that the law had failed utterly,
and it was him against them, and they were going to have to protect themselves if they
wanted to survive. Phoebe Judge: Four days after his conviction, McElroy walked into the D&G Bar, gun in hand,
a violation of the terms of his bond. Some men at the bar decided to sign an affidavit to testify that they'd seen McElroy with a
gun, hoping to send him right to jail. Harry MacLean: So the town now kind of pulls together, and the bond hearing is set about
two weeks away. And these three individuals who signed it now basically have a target on their back,
and McElroy starts hunting them down. Phoebe Judge: The town hatched a plan to make sure the men testifying against McElroy would
not travel alone. There would be a caravan of trucks along the road to the bond hearing,
a show of force and solidarity. The plan was to meet at 7:30 in the morning on July 10th, 1981.
And the group met, just as planned. Trucks lined both sides of the street. But what the townspeople didn't know is that at the last minute, the bond hearing had been
postponed because of a scheduling issue. Harry MacLean: And so now you have all these men in town, there's about 60 of them, and
they've met and their coalescence at that point gives them the courage to do something.
They meet up at the Legion Hall, about two blocks up the hill from the tavern, and there's
a big conversation there about what they're going to do. Phoebe Judge: McElroy heard people in town were talking about him.
He went to see what was going on and brought Trena with him. He parked his truck right outside the D&G Bar and went in and ordered a beer.
Word got out to the group of men in the Legion Hall that McElroy was down the street.
Harry MacLean: They realize they now have to act. They have to have a confrontation with him.
They leave the Legion Hall. They go down the street. Half of them go in the bar.
Half of them stay out on the street. There's some conversation in the bar between McElroy and the guys there.
There's plenty of people out on the street waiting to see what happens. McElroy eventually leaves with his wife.
They get in the truck. They're sitting in the truck. [Music comes in.] He starts the engine, pulls out a cigarette, starts to light it, and two rifles from across
the street open up and blow his head off, basically, all over the dash. And there are at least 40 witnesses that saw what happened.
Phoebe Judge: Not one person helped. They just walked away. For 45 minutes, his body sat there in his truck in the middle of an empty street.
Trena, after taking cover, managed to find her way to the bank and call McElroy's brother,
who called the sheriff. David Baird, the prosecutor, got a call that afternoon that someone had been shot in Skidmore.
David Baird: My initial thought process was that Mr. McElroy had gotten into a confrontation
and that Mr. McElroy had shot somebody else. That was my initial thought process.
Phoebe Judge: And what did you learn after about the circumstances of the shooting?
David Baird: We had a major case squad, which immediately began the investigation in the
case, understanding that we're trying to put this together from statements of multiple
witnesses. But it appears that Mrs. McElroy made an exclamation, something along the lines of, "He's got a
gun." And shortly thereafter, there was gunfire and Mr. McElroy was killed. Phoebe Judge: Who shot him?
David Baird: That has never been determined and no charges to this point have been rendered,
nor have there been any indictments from the multiple juries and grand juries that have
come down with an evaluation on the case. Phoebe Judge: I kept asking David Baird the same questions over and over.
How could no one know who shot Ken McElroy when there were at least 40 witnesses?
Does he think that people in Skidmore do know and are hiding something? And to his credit, after all these years, David Baird will not speculate.
What we do know is that town residents didn't hesitate to say they thought McElroy deserved
to die and had gotten "what was coming to him." But when investigators asked them what exactly had happened that day, no one said a word.
They said they didn't remember. A spokesperson from the Northwest Missouri Investigation Squad said, "They aren't cooperating.
They just aren't interested in talking with us." Harry MacLean: Suffice it to say that the farmers that were called in to the grand jury
all said they hadn't seen anything. And there are three grand jury investigations: county, state, and federal.
Trena identifies the shooter. She knows exactly who it is. [Music fades out.] Phoebe Judge: Trena identified a man named Del Clement, the owner of the bar, as the
shooter. Harry McLean says there was never a doubt in her mind who did it. She said a number of times under oath that she saw Del Clement pull the trigger.
He had been part of the group at the Legion Hall. But Trena's testimony wasn't enough.
There was no physical evidence. And not a single person would corroborate her account.
Do you think that law enforcement did absolutely everything that they they could?
David Baird: Yes, law enforcement interviewed every lead and that's all they did and that's
all they concentrated on. Harry MacLean: I thought, when I first heard of this story, I thought, "That'll crack those
guys. One of those guys, two of those guys will crack under that sort of pressure."
And I kind of kept track of the grand jury investigation. And one day I picked up the paper and it said, "Grand jury disbands.
No indictment. No one's talked." So that's like kind of the third piece of the story.
The first one being his reign of terror for 20 years. The second being his shooting, how that came about, what it was really.
Was it a vigilante action, or was it a couple of guys who just lost it? And the third was the nature and extent of the coverup.
Did these farmers talk to each other? Did they agree what they were going to say?
And yeah, they were there. I know where they were standing. If you hear a shot, the first thing you're going to do is turn around and look and see
where it is, where it's coming from. And there were guys up the street from the shooters
who would not have been in the line of fire, who were looking right at it, who were looking
right at them when they did it. Phoebe Judge: Harry MacLean investigated what happened that day for seven years.
He actually moved to Skidmore and he talked to everyone in town. No one broke. So all of these people that you talked to in town, it's your conclusion — I mean,
you were there for seven years — it's your conclusion that these people just said, "Thank
God he's dead." Harry MacLean: Yeah. I mean, in a way that's exactly what they said.
And their rationale was, "Where was the law? Where was the FBI? Where were all these state patrol investigators when he was running loose?
You guys couldn't take care of him. We had to take care of him." It pained a lot of them, there's no doubt about that.
A lot of them it didn't pain at all. But it wasn't an easy thing for them to do, to raise their hands and lie under oath, which
is what they did. Phoebe Judge: We spoke with several Skidmore residents who didn't want to be recorded.
Someone told us we were going to come up against a brick wall anywhere we went. Only one man agreed to talk with us on tape, Kirby Goslee.
Kirby Goslee: My name's Kirby Goslee, lifelong resident of Skidmore, fifth generation.
We've all been farmers, caretakers of the land. Phoebe Judge: He was downtown the day McElroy was killed, but says he decided to take his
5-year-old daughter home when he realized things were starting to get tense. [Music comes in.]
Kirby Goslee: Back these people in this town down there far enough and they come out shooting.
I guess that's the way it works. It's kind of like the old West days, huh? Phoebe Judge: Why didn't anyone open up to the police?
Kirby Goslee: That's easy. Why would you turn in a friend, a fellow community person that got rid of such a bad character,
even though it was wrong in the way they did it? What he got, he — I won't say he deserved it, but he asked for it, anyway.
Phoebe Judge: Maybe the people in town talk to each other about who did what that day,
but they've still never opened up to the police or to the press. It's amazing to imagine an entire town keeping a secret, together.
Del Clement died in 2009, so if Trena was right and he really did do it, his town protected
him for 28 years. [Music up to full volume for a few seconds.] Criminal is produced by Lauren Spohrer, Nadia Wilson, and me.
Audio mix by Rob Byers. Special thanks to Alice Wilder and Mary Helen Montgomery.
Julienne Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them on our website thisiscriminal.com, where you can also find a link to Harry MacLean's
book about Skidmore, In Broad Daylight. Original music from Blue Dot Sessions. Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC.
We're a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collection of the best podcasts around — shows
like Strangers, hosted by Lea Thau. In it, she tells intimate, true stories about the people we meet, the heartbreaks we suffer,
and these odd moments when we realize we aren't quite who we think we are. And she's not afraid to turn the microphone on herself.
Lea Thau: I don't want some fancy ring. I mean, maybe a little bit nicer than the rubber band ring that the kids made me.
But I do have that thing. I want to be proposed to. I don't know why. Maybe it's because it went so wrong the last time, I want it to go better.
Or maybe it's just like, I want that from you. Phoebe Judge: Go listen. Radiotopia from PRX is supported by the Knight Foundation.
And special thanks to Adzerk for providing their ad-serving platform to Radiotopia.
I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. [Music ends.] Jingle: Radiotopia. From PRX.

Skidmore, Missouri, is a very small town. In the ’70s, there was only one bar, one grocery store, and one bully. Ken McElroy was so ruthless and intimidating that even police officers looked the other way. He terrorized the town for decades, until they finally fought back.

We spoke with Harry MacLean, author of In Broad Daylight: https://www.harrymaclean.com/in-broad-daylight/

Music in the episode: “Plaster Combo” by Blue Dot Sessions “Chapel Bottom” by Blue Dot Sessions “The Blotter” by Blue Dot Sessions “Milkwood” by Blue Dot Sessions

Criminal is a show about people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle. Hosted by Phoebe Judge. Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

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Episode transcripts are posted on our website https://thisiscriminal.com/.

Episode 66 originally published 5/5/2017 https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-66-bully-5-5-2017

Brief Summary

Ken McElroy terrorized Skidmore, Missouri, until his murder by townspeople who refused to testify against him.

Key points

The Rise of Ken McElroy. Ken McElroy's childhood shaped him into a notorious bully in Skidmore.
Trial and Terror. Despite overwhelming evidence, McElroy was acquitted, creating a myth of invincibility.
The Stalking of Trena McCloud. McElroy's obsession with a young girl leads to a series of felonies.
The Confrontation. A group of men confront McElroy, leading to his shocking death.
The Aftermath. Witnesses refuse to cooperate, leaving the case unresolved.
Kirby Goslee's Perspective. Kirby Goslee shares his thoughts on community loyalty and justice.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

How could I not know who shot me?

Romaine Henry's disbelief after being shot by McElroy.

3:49WatchDec 10, 2022

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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