[This is the second and last of a two-part article about how tiny Skidmore, Missouri, solved its resident bully problem in a manner that shocked the country. For Part I, click here]
Ken Rex McElroy had terrorized Skidmore and the surrounding region for decades, committing sundry crimes that went unpunished. The law never caught up with him, but as seen below, the fed up people of Skidmore finally did.
Bullying the Bowenkamps
Ken McElroy offered the elderly Lois Bowenkamp cash to fight his much younger and stronger wife, Trena. When Lois refused, he set out to turn the Bowenkamps’ life into a living hell. He would park his pickup truck outside the Bowenkamps’ home at all hours of the day and night, and fire off his gun into the air. The Bowenkamps put on a brave face and tried to go about their normal lives. That lack of fear – or at least pretense of lack of fear: in reality, the Bowenkamps were terrified – enraged McElroy and made him steadily escalate his antics. Finally, one night in July, 1980, as Bo Bowencamp stood outside his store, when McElroy drove up, pulled out his shotgun, and shot him in the neck with a deer slug. Miraculously, Bo survived the shooting.
The senseless attempt to murder the beloved elderly grocer finally snapped Skidmore out of the terror spell cast by Ken McElroy. After years of cowering in fear, the locals had had enough. McElroy was tried and convicted of first degree assault – his first felony conviction. However, he remained free on bail, while the case was appealed. The locals banded together and wrote to all and sundry. The sent letters to the state attorney general, state legislators, and the governor, complaining that Skidmore lived in fear of a psychopath in its midst, and asking the authorities to do something. Nothing was done. 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 vengeance on the Bowenkamps and their supporters.
Vigilantism to the Rescue
Witnesses who saw an armed Ken Rex McElroy and heard his threats asked the county prosecutor to request a bond revocation hearing. The townsfolk organized a caravan to escort the witnesses to the hearing. However, McElroy’s lawyer managed to get the hearing postponed. As a resident put it: “That was the last straw. That was the last failure of criminal justice”. On July 10th, 1981, the exasperated locals gathered in Skidmore’s American Legion Hall.
When word arrived that McElroy was in town, two men, followed by a crowd, met him in his truck and told him to leave town. As McElroy started his truck, some men hustled his wife Trena out of the passenger seat, and 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.
An Unsolved Homicide Despite Dozens of Witnesses
The streets were deserted when state troopers finally arrived in Skidmore. Other than the revving and smoking engine of McElroy’s pickup, that nobody had bothered to turn off, all was quiet. Shell casings from at least two firearms were recovered, but the weapons were never found. Although at least forty people had witnessed the violent bully’s violent demise, the locals kept mum.
State and federal grand juries were convened, but nobody would say anything, aside from McElroy’s wife Trena. However, Trena’s testimony was deemed too weak by the prosecutors. To this day, although it happened in broad daylight in front of dozens of witnesses, the public vigilante killing remains an unsolved homicide. As McElroy’s 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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Some Sources & Further Reading
History Halls – Cases That Shocked America: The Skidmore Bully’s Shocking End
MacLean, Harry N. – In Broad Daylight (1988)
New York Times, December 16th, 2010 – Town Mute for 30 Years About a Bully’s Killing
Patch – Who Killed Ken Rex McElroy: Town Keeps Its Secret For 38 Years
