“I’ll tell you what,” McElroy continued. “My fuckin’ lawyer better get me off. I’ve already paid him $30,000 and now he wants another $20,000 for an appeal.”
Word of McElroy’s return spread through town. Some people had heard about the verdict; others had seen the two trucks in town. After disbelief came shock: What the hell had happened? The man had been found guilty by the jury; what was he doing back out on the streets?
After the guilty verdict, Baird could have made a motion to increase McElroy’s bond on the grounds that the likelihood of his fleeing had increased because of the verdict. Such a motion might have been a futile gesture—unless the new amount were really high, McElroy probably would have been able to meet it—but he might have had to spend a few days in jail, and the motion would at least have indicated that the jury verdict wasn’t a worthless piece of paper. Baird might have had more luck—and provided a greater service to the community—if he had sought to have McElroy prohibited from entering the town of Skidmore as a condition of his bond. Such restrictions were clearly permissible under Missouri law, and Judge Donelson had previously restricted McElroy’s ability to travel after the St. Joe incident. If grounds were needed to
support such a request, Baird could have sought a hearing
to present evidence on McElroy’s harassment of Skidmore
residents. Baird, however, made no such request, and
Donelson simply ordered that the bond be continued as it was.
35
Many people in Skidmore felt that it would have been better to acquit McElroy rather than convict him, tell him he was going to jail, and then send him back into the town. The community felt exposed and unprotected.
One housewife remembered it this way: “The last few weeks were pretty scary. Nobody would come to the business area because they didn’t want to run into McElroy or confront him. Somebody would see his pickup downtown and the word would spread. My biggest fear was for my kids. Kids are pretty much allowed to run free, playing all over town, with a few rules about coming home for meals and chores. But, after he was turned loose, I kept my kids at home, and I know most other mothers did too. If he went on a rampage, I wanted them in the house.”
Cheryl Brown: “Day after day, he sat on the street in front of Mom and Dad’s house. The town emptied out every time he came to town. Everyone was so uncomfortable and scared. The guys down at the pool hall didn’t like to be around when he was in town, I suppose because they were nervous and scared too. You just couldn’t be sure what was going on in his mind. To wake up every morning afraid, be scared and nervous all day long, and terrified when the dark came and you couldn’t see him, and every time there was a noise in the night, to prowl the windows and to wonder if everything was okay in town. That’s how it was for me.”
The townspeople weren’t the only ones in shock that Friday afternoon. Ken McElroy had spent his life creating an image of invulnerability, and now the image had been cracked. McElroy could see the effect of the community’s little victory: White he was not allowed to carry a gun, more and more of the farmers were carrying weapons in their trucks, and he knew they were talking in the tavern and on the street corners about taking care of him.
In the late afternoon clouds began to move in from the northwest, and by evening the sky roiled with deep blue-black thunderheads. In the middle of the night, the rain fell and the farmers rose to the surface of their slumber and absorbed the sounds and smells of a long, hard rain that would soak the earth and rise through the roots of the plants to the veins in the tips of their leaves. The rain continued through the night and in the morning, the fields were muddy and impassable, the dirt roads treacherous mud slicks. In town, pickups were splattered brown, and the main street of town was littered with chunks of mud.
By 6:30 a.m., the tables at the cafe were filled with farmers, and the floor was muddy from work boots and galoshes. The cafe was noisy with the ritual bragging about whose rain gauge showed the most moisture, and as usual the first liar was in the worst shape—if he said one and a half inches fell on his land, the next guy claimed two inches fell on his.
The rain slowed in the afternoon and stopped altogether around dinnertime, but still the dark clouds hung in the sky. The morning of the following day the sun rose hot on the eastern horizon, and by noon the countryside was a shimmering mosaic of vibrant greens and golds. Vast dark green seas of corn rose and fell with the rolling land. Fields of winter wheat, their golden stalks heavy with grain, danced and swayed in the wind. Long parallelograms of light green soybean plants, on the verge of blossoming, merged with the pale blue sky. A doe, dark and lustrous this time of year, pranced up the iridescent hillside, pausing every few steps to look carefully about. Her black eyes glistened in the sunlight.
The corn was five feet tall in the hill country and seven feet on the bottoms; the stalks were sturdy and the leaves were wide and long. The
wheat would be ready to harvest within a few days. As soon as
the fields were dry, the red, green, and yellow combines would
come rumbling out of their sheds and roam over the golden fields,
devouring the ripened grain with their whirring blades.
36
The world seemed to be slowly closing in on Ken and Trena McElroy. They became convinced that the townspeople were planning to get rid of Ken. The son of a neighboring farmer had come to the farm and told Trena that some men were going to pay him if he’d shoot Ken. Trena saw a shotgun and a pistol on the passenger seat of the man’s truck. She told Ken about the visit, and later that night, when the man came back in his truck with the lights off, Ken confronted him and told him to stay off the property. He never came round again.
A few days after the trial, Ken and Trena were sitting in the D & G Tavern when a farmer they knew sat down beside them and said that the townspeople were circulating a petition to ban Ken from Skidmore, and that everybody in town was signing it. Del Clement and Red Smith were standing behind the bar, and Red Smith made a face at the farmer. Another time, Del told Ken not to come in the tavern anymore, because whenever he came in, the tavern lost money.
Ken told Trena that Sheriff Danny Estes had pulled him over one day and told him that “he was going to catch him one of these days on a gravel road and shoot him and say that he had resisted arrest.’’ One night not long afterward, when Ken and Trena were driving home, a car parked off the road shined a spotlight on them as they passed. Rounding a curve, they looked back and recognized the sheriff’s car.
Another time, Ken and Trena pulled up to a stop sign by Birt Johnson’s
gas station and noticed a group of people standing on the corner. One of them looked at Ken and Trena and hollered, “We don’t want you in this town!”
McElroy’s loss of face and the prospect of going to jail caused wild swings in his behavior. Sometimes, he bragged and laughed it off. Two or three days after his conviction, he walked into the tavern and poured a sack full of bills on the counter. “There’s more than $20,000 there,” he said. “I’ll bet anyone here that I won’t spend one day in jail.” No one took him up on it.
Other times, he seemed to sense his power slipping away. In the Shady Lady one night, as he talked with two women about the people who had testified against him at his trial, his mood grew increasingly foul. “I’m going to get ’em,” he said menacingly.
Just then, the boy who had testified about getting the pop money from McElroy walked into the bar. Ken nodded in the boy’s direction and said, “And that’s one of them right there.”
The boy walked over to Ken. “You’re not mad at me, are you, Ken?” the boy asked nervously.
“No, I don’t have a thing against you,” Ken replied sarcastically.
Ken and Trena asked Alice Wood if she would be custodian of their children if both of them died. Alice agreed, and papers were drawn up, executed, and put in lawyer McFadin’s safe. At the time, Alice noticed that Ken seemed to have put on even more weight,
not just in his stomach, but also in his face. He complained about the pain in his neck from the old injury and seemed drained. His eyes, the deep blue eyes that had always danced, were now flat. To Alice, he seemed tired of everything, looking for a way out, but doubtful of finding any.
To Trena, the fight seemed to simply have gone out of Ken, as if he didn’t care anymore. When they were driving down the middle of a gravel road and met a car coming the other direction, Ken would wait to swerve out of the way until the last second.
Lying in bed one night, Ken turned to Trena and asked, “What are you going to do when I’m gone?”
Trena was silent.
“These people won’t let you stay here,” he said.
“I don’t want to talk about it” was all she could say.
“Well, when it happens,” he said, “I want you to take the girls and get the hell out of Skidmore.”
He talked to the girls about what was going to happen to him, and they became upset and told him they didn’t want to hear him talking like that. He told them where he wanted to be buried and what clothes he wanted to be buried in.
One day Trena asked him, "Why do you go to town when you know there’s going to be trouble?”
“I have to do something to get back at them,” he replied.
To a long-time partner in crime, the man who had been with him when he shot Romaine Henry, Ken admitted that the world was closing in on him. To another friend, he talked about men being hired to kill him.
“You know, Jack,” said Ken, “I don’t give a shit no more. I don’t care if I fuckin’ live or die, I just don’t care.”
37
On June 30, 1981, four days after his conviction, Ken McElroy drove into town in the Silverado, and Trena followed in the green Chevy. As had been the practice since Donelson prohibited him from carrying weapons, Trena carried a gun with her in the Chevy. Today, an army M-l rifle hung in the rear window. In the tavern, Red Smith stood behind the bar, and Pete Ward, his two sons, Wesley and Wilson, Gary Dowling, a local farmer, and Larry Rowlett sat on barstools. Trena followed McElroy into the bar, which was strange, and none of the men left immediately, which was also strange. McElroy sat a few stools away from Rowlett, and ordered a beer from Red. After a few minutes, McElroy got up and walked over to where Pete Ward was seated beside his sons.
“You’re an old war man, aren’t you?” said McElroy.
“Yes, I am,” replied Pete.
“Well, I’ve got a gun out here I want you to look at,” McElroy said.
Ken turned to Trena, nodded to the door, and she left.
On the sidewalk, one of the boys whom McElroy had sent inside prior to shooting Bo saw Trena emerge from the tavern, walk over to the green Chevy pickup, reach in, and take out a rifle. As she turned and started back toward the tavern, the boy realized that McElroy was inside, and that she must be taking the gun in to him. The boy wavered for a moment: Going inside a tavern where Ken McElroy had a gun was scary, but, damn it, there was sure to be some action. In a snap, the boy turned and reached for the door knob. The door was stuck so he pushed and fumbled
fumbled with the knob. By the time he had it open, Trena was upon him with a rifle in her arms. He had no choice but to step back and hold the door for her. She neither looked at him nor said anything as she walked by him into the tavern. This could look real funny, he thought, following her inside.
McElroy was at the north end of the bar, so Red Smith was hanging around at the south end. Red had not paid much attention when Trena left, but now he looked up and thought he saw a blade flashing in the air. As he looked closer, he realized it was a bayonet attached to the barrel of an army rifle.
Trena handed the gun to McElroy, and he began showing it off, asking everyone what they thought of it, waving it around, and talking about what a neat gun it was. Then he reached inside his pocket and brought out a five-round clip. He slapped the clip in the rifle, jacked a shell into the chamber, and began talking about what he was going to do to Bo, all the while popping the clip in and out and jabbing the air with the bayonet. Once or twice, the rifle came to rest with the bayonet pointed in Rowlett’s face, and McElroy described how he was going to cut the old man in half. Scared shitless, Rowlett figured he’d seen enough. He sucked down his beer and left. The Wards and Gary Dowling stayed, and McElroy demonstrated for them how he was going to shoot Bo in the face, then roll him over and rip him open from his ass up his spine to his neck.
Looking McElroy in the eye, Pete Ward said, “Like hell you will!” then stood up and marched out of the tavern, his sons behind him.
The grizzled former army officer had decided that the terrorizing had gone on long enough, and that the folks on the east side of town needed some help. The time had come to do something about Ken McElroy, and Pete was going to do it. He walked west up the hill toward Four Corners, past the bank, and another block west to his house. A minute or so later, he reappeared on his porch with a high-powered rifle and proceeded to walk back down to Four Corners. He stopped at the corner in front of Birt Johnson’s gas station. If McElroy was coming for Bo, he would have to come up the hill toward Pete. He stood on the corner holding the rifle, shell in the chamber, the safety off.
“If that son of a bitch comes up this way with that rifle,” said Pete, “I’m going to blow him away.”
Perhaps McElroy sensed danger as he walked out of the tavern door, or perhaps he saw Pete Ward out of the corner of his eye. In any event, he got into the Silverado and drove in the other direction out of town, with Trena following in the Chevy.
Pete Ward’s action was like a drover cracking a whip over a dozing animal’s head or a hypnotist snapping his fingers in the face of an entranced subject. Although only one or two people saw what Pete did, the word spread like fire on a dry prairie. In the cafe, the story was told and retold and people shook their heads in admiration. Pete Ward was one guy you didn’t mess with. With his white, short-cropped hair, a white mustache, and a gravelly voice, Pete was the subject of a lot of stories, many about his heroics in World War II, always told with respect. Pete wasn’t afraid of the devil himself.
More important, Pete was also a local boy and a highly respected farmer. If Pete said someone had crossed a line, then he had indeed crossed it.
For the community, Pete’s action meant the long season of running and avoiding was over. It signaled the possibility that the community was not totally helpless in the face of this man, that there were things people could do to take care of themselves, that they could stand up to him. Fear would still pervade the town, but Pete Ward’s simple act rekindled a spark of self-respect in the community, and began to transform the fear from a fragmenting force into a coalescing force.
Although Pete had pulled a weapon and had been prepared to defend Bo’s life with it, this was not the way he would have chosen to deal with Ken McElroy. In Pete’s eyes, he had fought to keep the country free, and he believed that a man should respect the law and play by the rules. So that same day, he turned to the law for help. Knowing that McElroy had violated his bond by carrying a firearm, and assuming that threatening to kill a witness was a crime, Pete called the sheriff, told him the story and asked him what he was going to do about it. Estes said he would talk to Baird. Baird told Estes to get affidavits from the witnesses spelling out what they had seen and heard. When he brought the affidavits in, Baird would file a petition with the court in Bethany to revoke McElroy’s bond. Baird told Estes to explain to the witnesses that even if he were successful
in court, McElroy would not necessarily go to jail.
This was when people usually backed off, when they had to come forward and point the finger for all the world, including Ken McElroy, to see. This was when they thought about Romaine Henry and Bo Bowenkamp, and what happened to them and their families. But Pete Ward didn’t waver. He signed the affidavit himself, persuaded his sons and Gary Dowling to sign it, and took the document to the sheriff.
On July 2, 1981, o
nly two days after the incident in the tavern, Baird filed a motion seeking to revoke McElroy’s bond or, in the alternative, to add certain bond conditions. If the court wouldn’t put him in jail, then Baird asked that the court prohibit McElroy from traveling through, crossing into, or being in the corporate city limits of Skidmore. Baird also requested that McElroy be prohibited from frequenting bars and taverns and from having any contact with any witness in the criminal case.
When Stratton heard of the M-l incident, he assumed that McElroy had cracked up, that his obsession with the town and his fear of going to jail had pushed him over the edge. Flashing a gun in the middle of the day in front of several witnesses seemed contrary to his usual calculated approach.
Sam T., a Skidmore resident who knew McElroy from the bars and the timber, but wasn’t really a friend, had spent some time in prison in Jefferson City a few years back. When he heard that McElroy had been convicted he wondered how the big guy was going to handle the time.
In Broad Daylight (Crime Rant Classics) Page 30
