Over the course of three decades spent viciously bullying the people of Skidmore, Missouri, Ken McElroy was charged with assault, child molestation, statutory rape, arson, animal cruelty, burglary, and attempted murder. But finally, on July 10, 1981, the fed-up people of Skidmore decided they’d had enough of their town bully. That day, two people shot McElroy to death on the town’s main street in broad daylight in front of 50 witnesses — and no one called an ambulance or ever said a word to the police. To this day, no one has been charged with his murder.⁠

• When Ken McElroy was shot in broad daylight in front of dozens of witnesses on July 10, 1981, not a single citizen of Skidmore, Missouri called an ambulance or said a word about who was responsible to the cops.

“Iheard shooting and got down. Didn’t see a thing.”

This was the response investigators received time and time again when they questioned residents of the small community of Skidmore, Missouri about the death of Ken McElroy.

It wasn’t a secret that McElroy was disliked in his community. Throughout his life, McElroy had been accused of dozens of crimes, including but not limited to assault, child molestation, statutory rape, arson, burglary, and animal cruelty.

Despite his litany of crimes, however, McElroy always managed to avoid conviction. Then, on July 10, 1981, McElroy finally got what was coming to him when a mob of around 50 people accosted McElroy outside the local tavern — and the shooting began.

How He Terrorized A Small Missouri Town
Born in 1934, Kenneth Rex McElroy was a resident of Skidmore, Missouri. To the residents of the tight-knit town, he was the local bully.

After dropping out of school in the eighth grade, it didn’t take long for Ken McElroy to fall into a life of delinquency. What started with hunting raccoons escalated into petty crime until McElroy ultimately emerged as a full-fledged criminal.

According to Fox2Now, McElroy’s status as the “town bully” may have been something of an understatement. While he was charged 21 times in theft cases, he never saw any time behind bars — usually because he intimidated any witnesses. But it only gets worse from there.

McElroy raped a 12-year-old girl, but managed to avoid statutory rape charges by divorcing his wife and marrying the young girl when she was 14 and pregnant with his child. To get the girl’s parents to agree to the marriage, McElroy set their house on fire and shot their dog.

Then, in July 1976, McElroy shot a farmer named Romaine Henry in the stomach with a shotgun. Thankfully, Henry survived, and McElroy was charged with assault with intent to kill. Yet again, however, McElroy avoided any consequences. In this instance, his attorney produced two witnesses who claimed they were out hunting with McElroy that day, and that they were nowhere near the scene of the shooting.

Somehow, Ken Rex McElroy was found not guilty.

But not being one to rest on his laurels, McElroy was involved in another shooting in 1980. This time, he shot the 70-year-old town grocer, Ernest “Bo” Bowenkamp, in the neck — over an argument about whether McElroy’s child had stolen a piece of candy. The grocer lived in this case, too, and McElroy was eventually convicted of assault.

Unfortunately, he was let out of jail while awaiting appeal, and then threatened the grocer publicly while holding a rifle.

As author Harry MacLean later wrote in his book on McElroy’s story, In Broad Daylight, the most baffling component of McElroy’s story was, “He didn’t have a bank account, didn’t have a Social Security number, he didn’t read. How did this uneducated person — how is he able to outwit the criminal justice system for 20 years?”

The Killing Of Ken McElroy
While nearly everyone in the town of Skidmore may have despised Ken McElroy, there was at least one person who had good things to say about him: his attorney, Richard McFadin, who routinely defended Ken McElroy in three or four felonies a year.

“Best client I ever had,” McFadin said in an interview with the Kansas City Star. “He was punctual, always said he didn’t do it, paid in cash and kept coming back… I was the only friend he had. He told me he would pay me whatever I needed to keep him out of jail.”

DG Tavern

But for the town, McElroy’s row with Bowenkamp was the last straw. For more than two decades, McElroy had been a plague on the town of Skidmore, and somehow, he just kept getting away with it.

“We were so bitter and so angry at the law letting us down that it came to somebody taking matters in their own hands,” Bowenkamp’s daughter Cheryl Huston told the New York Times. “No one has any idea what a nightmare we lived.”