Local residents contributed to some of the hyperbole by saying things about McElroy that the media could turn into provocative quotes. The
residents also assumed that the reporters were interested in the truth, but when they realized that the press was interested primarily in facts that supported the vigilante angle (that the town had decided to take the law into its own hands and kill McElroy), people shut up. The silence only made matters worse.
Within a few days of the killing, the town also realized that it would be denied the clear-cut moral high ground. Many stories set up the ethical dilemma: Was the killing a matter of good versus evil or evil versus evil? Was the town any better than the man it had killed?
The spectacular failure of the NOMIS investigation inflamed the media reaction. On Friday afternoon, when Baird announced that NOMIS would be handling the investigation, he also announced that the investigation would last only five days. The investigators worked through Friday night and met Saturday morning to compare notes and receive new assignments. Everybody had essentially come up with the same thing—nothing. The witnesses weren’t talking, and the investigators had no physical evidence, such as bullets or identifiable shell casings, to work with.
On Monday, the Kansas City Times picked up the lack of cooperation and introduced the second angle, one which would guarantee that the story wouldn’t die: a conspiracy of silence.
TOWN NOT COOPERATING WITH PROBE OF APPARENT VIGILANTE-STYLE KILLING
The article stated that law enforcement officials weren’t sure they would ever be able to solve the crime, because the witnesses weren’t cooperating. Residents knew who killed McElroy, but they just weren’t talking because they “apparently think more of the person who pulled the trigger than they did of McElroy.” In addition to the conspiracy to cover up for the killer or killers, the article added support for the theory that there had been a broad-based conspiracy to kill McElroy. In her first interview with the press, Trena told the Times that when she and Ken left the tavern and got into the truck, the crowd “ ‘got closer to the truck from beside my door and just stood there, staring. It seemed like they were waiting for something.’ Mrs. McElroy said she saw a man ‘across the street shoot at them.’
“‘It was a setup,’ Mrs. McElroy said. ‘They’ve been having meetings.’”
The Times article did not, however, mention the one fact that would have lent the most support to the conspiracy theory: a meeting that had been held in the Legion Hall only minutes before the shooting.
The Times article drew the battle lines. Trena accused the town of shooting her husband, and the townspeople replied (in several quotes) that McElroy got what he deserved and that no one was crying over him.
The article also previewed the dilemma in which the town would find itself: On the one hand, the people defended the killing as justified; on the other, they claimed it wasn’t a vigilante action. While arguing vociferously that McElroy deserved to die and that there really was no other choice but to kill him, the residents denied having had anything to do with his death or knowing who did. They seemed to accept the moral responsibility for the act, while denying the actual responsibility for it.
In reality, no conspiracy of silence existed. The stone wall was a spontaneous, reflexive action, like a mother’s instinctual protection of a child in danger. Many residents wished that the killing hadn’t happened, and some were angry at the killers for having put them in the position of having to lie or defend the act to the outside world, but the community had no intention of giving up its errant sons.
The solidness of the wall awed some experienced law enforcement officers. “They aren’t cooperating with us,” said the NOMIS public information officer. “They just aren’t interested in talking with us.” By Sunday evening, the cops had investigated thirty-five leads and “thirty-five leads saw nothing and heard nothing.” NOMIS had received more than 100 calls on its special phone line, but not one from a citizen of Skidmore.
The citizens had learned the basic rule of the criminal justice system: no witness, no case.
The NOMIS investigators went back out to the farms and pulled some individuals into the Savings and Loan Building in Maryville for questioning. Mayor Steve Peter was questioned twice, the second time in Maryville. Like most of those present, the mayor said he was looking at the truck when the shots rang out, and he immediately ducked between the
vehicles; when he looked up, the guns were gone. He saw nothing.
“Do you know who killed him?” the cops would ask.
“No, and I don’t want to know,” farmer after farmer replied. On Monday, the Forum reported that the Times had called the shooting a vigilante killing. Sheriff Estes denied the allegation, saying, “These people were everyday people . . . friends and neighbors who wanted to help each other.”
The Forum also broke the story that a meeting had been held Friday morning just prior to the killing, and that Estes had attended the meeting. Estes denied that the participants had discussed taking action against McElroy.
“ ‘I was asked to come to the meeting,’ he said. They wanted to know what they could do to protect themselves. Basically, the questions asked concerned whether they could be allowed to patrol each other’s houses and farms.’ ”
Some residents began putting forth alternative theories of the killing. They were all ridiculous. Several women recounted seeing a “long black car” with two or three men inside wearing dark pinstripe suits drive down the main street a few minutes before the killing. Others said they saw the men in suits in the cafe drinking coffee that very morning. One suggestion was that some of McElroy’s mobster friends from Kansas City had rubbed him out. Some pointed the finger at McFadin, arguing that McElroy had come to know too much about his alleged dealings with the Kansas City mob. Others suggested simply that the killer was some hired gun retained by farmers or grain dealers from a neighboring county. This second line of defense—“he had it coming, but somebody else did it”—was no more effective than “he had it coming, but we don’t know who did it.”
By Wednesday, no progress had been made, although the squad had been beefed up to twenty-four officers. Many cops still believed they could crack the case. They found it simply inconceivable that, with forty or fifty witnesses, they couldn’t get at least one person to talk.
“ We don’t know how long the investigation will take,” said Owens. “It could break any minute or it could last several days.’’
There were two “breaks.” By Friday evening, the cops suspected one particular farmer of being the man with the shotgun. Two officers found
him working in the fields the next day, and they handcuffed him and took him to Maryville for interrogation. Tough questioning brought him close to tears, and during a break Deputy Kish took him aside. “Look,” Kish said, “there’s no jury in the county that’s going to convict the shooters. Why don’t you just get it off your chest and explain what happened? It won’t go any further than this room.”
“I feel real bad.”
‘Tell me.”
“They did it.”
Kish named two people and asked the man if they were the ones he meant.
“Yes, they did it.”
Kish said he had heard that the man had been holding a shotgun during the killing, and the man didn’t deny it. He agreed to talk on the record and to take a polygraph test. But by the time he was wired up, he had changed his mind.
“Boys,” he said, “I better not do this.”
The following day, one of the men who had been standing on the corner at Sumy’s gas station crumbled. Tipped off that he was the nervous sort, two officers confronted him at his home and grilled him. When he caved, they took him to Maryville for questioning. He gave a three-page, notarized statement setting forth in detail what had happened that morning. His version substantially confirmed Trena’s statement that Del Clement had been one of the killers. The officers took him to the prosecuting attorney’s office, where the statement
was reviewed and signed.
The next day, however, the man reappeared with an attorney— the same one representing Del Clement. The man said that he had been under stress and duress when he talked to the officers, and that the statement was not true. When asked why a witness needed a lawyer, the attorney replied, “Everybody is entitled to an attorney.”
Trena and McFadin became increasingly angry over the law’s failure to arrest the man she had identified as the killer. From the very first interview, she had named Del Clement, and she never wavered. “I saw him do it,” she would say, “I saw him hit my husband.” Her statement as to where Del had stood was completely consistent with the ballistics. She gave Del’s name to the papers, but they wouldn’t print it. On the Wednesday after the killing, she went on the attack. Through McFadin,
Trena charged that NOMIS was “dragging its feet and was not trying to do anything about the murder. I don’t see anything done yet.” She claimed that the police “never did a thing with the information” she had given them.
In a radio interview, McFadin belittled the investigation by the NOMIS squad and threatened to file a wrongful-death suit and refer the matter to the U.S. attorney for a federal investigation. McFadin added that, in his opinion, the killing was a vigilante action.
Cameron Police Chief Hal Riddle responded that NOMIS had spent more than 1,000 hours investigating the killing, and that part of the problem was that the investigators couldn’t find Trena for further questioning. “It appears,” said Riddle, “that Mr. McFadin and Mrs. McElroy are more interested in giving information to the media than to NOMIS.” In Riddle’s opinion, “if you don’t know what you are talking about, keep your mouth shut.”
Even after Trena had joined McElroy in harassing the Bowenkamps and others in Skidmore, a few people had hesitated to condemn her. They had difficulty blaming her for failing to stand up to a man who had been able to intimidate farmers and judges and cops. Her defenders felt that she wasn’t acting of her own free will. But the last thread of sympathy snapped when, after his death had left her a free woman, Trena stuck up for McElroy and attacked the town.
In an interview with the Daily Forum, she accused the townspeople of making up stories about Ken and said that police officers had harassed the McElroys. Sobbing, she said, “I hope they just remember that he never kneeled down to them. They’ll never forget him, because there will never be none like him. He was the best.” She insisted that “they were all in on it.”
Trena had loved Ken McElroy. “He was a goodhearted person,” she said. “He’d help anyone that needed to be helped. He was good to his kids and good to me.” In response to questions about the bad deeds people had accused him of, Trena said, “They’re making most of it up. He was just a man who would stand up for his rights.”
Some of the townspeople lashed back at Trena, ridiculing her for peeing in her pants and for sobbing and weeping every time the television cameras turned her way. One resident, a woman, said bitterly, “You know
some people said he was a nice man, that he was nice to his children. Well, how nice is it to rape a fifteen-year-old girl?”
Teacher Kathleen Whitney found it sad and hard to believe that the gentle, naive girl she had known was saying the things quoted in the newspaper. In Whitney’s mind, Trena didn’t have the wherewithal to do and say what she was doing and saying. Someone else must have been putting words in her mouth.
Ginger Clement, who had seen Trena quake at the sound of McElroy’s car, was outraged to read an article in which Trena said that she had never been scared of Ken McElroy and that they had planned to be married all along. Ginger remembered the little girl who had been afraid to sleep alone in her room for fear that Ken McElroy would come in the middle of the night and kill her and take the baby away. This couldn’t be Trena talking.
Seeing Trena on television sobbing and feeling sorry for herself and talking about what a good husband and father Ken had been, Margaret Stratton thought, You were plenty tough when you were sitting in my driveway in your big car and looking in my garage windows.
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Juarez told his mother he wanted to say good-bye to his father. A psychologist recommended to Alice that she allow the boy to view the body or else he might have a hard time accepting his father’s death. The body was available for viewing only by family members on specific request, so on Sunday morning Alice made the arrangements. She, Juarez, and the two older girls took their last look at Ken. He was dressed in dark blue pants and a white shirt, and his black hair was slicked back. His face, a pasty yellow color, was puffed up, and Alice could see the thin red lines where they had put his face back together, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
Juarez grew more bitter by the day. He didn’t cry or break down, except for occasional outbursts of anger at the people of Skidmore, particularly the sheriff, who he heard had been riding with the killers on the morning of the killing. His behavior—quiet, cold, defiant—continued to remind Alice of Ken.
Tonia was the most fragile, frequently slipping back into the scene at the farm, and Alice watched her closely. For a few months before the killing, Tonia had been going to a fundamentalist church with a friend and her parents, and she went with them the Sunday after her father’s death. The congregation said a prayer for the soul of Ken McElroy, and that seemed to make Tonia feel better. But even then, Tonia envisioned her dad lying in the cold ground, in pain, feeling abandoned and alone. She knew he didn’t think his kids or anyone else loved or cared about him, and that he felt terribly lonely. She told her mother she might be able to make her dad feel better if she were with him. In long talks, and with the
help of some church members, Alice tried to convince her that her father wasn’t feeling alone, that he wasn’t in pain, and that he knew that his kids and his family still loved him. She would sit Tonia down on the couch and take her in her arms.
“All suffering,’’ Alice would say gently, “ends at death.”
The funeral for Ken Rex McElroy was held at 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday, July 14, at the Price Funeral Home in Maryville. Funeral director Bob Braham had met Ken and other members of the family a few years earlier, when Tony McElroy died. For funeral plans, Tim acted as the primary spokesman for the family, although Trena, who seemed shaken but calm, offered several suggestions. The McElroys made it clear they wanted a private service—no strangers or media anywhere near. Two McElroy males stood at the door of the funeral home to control admission to the service. Braham tried his best to keep the media away, but reporters and television cameras from St. Joe and Kansas City filled the mortuary’s two parking lots and recorded the coffin being loaded into the hearse and the widow being helped into the back of a limousine.
Swirling through the community on Monday and Tuesday morning were rumors that McElroy’s friends and relatives were coming for revenge, and that Trena might be hit herself by the townspeople. The Maryville Police Department put extra officers on duty and stationed them at various locations around the funeral home.
Vicki Garner had not heard from Trena, but she continued to wonder and worry about her friend. On the day of the funeral Vicki and a friend drove over and parked in the funeral home lot. She watched as Trena was helped from a car into the building, sobbing and almost unable to walk, so unstable that several times she nearly fell down. Regardless of whatever had happened, Vicki thought, Trena obviously had loved Ken on the day he died.
Twenty or thirty people attended the brief service, which lasted about ten minutes and included no eulogies or extended prayers. The Reverend Mike Smith of the Skidmore/Graham/Maitland Methodist Church presided. Smith had moved to Skidmore only a few months earlier, and he had driven out to the McElroy farm on Friday afternoon when he heard of the shooting. Two rifle shots had been fired in his direction before he
could make his mission known. Smith told others that he performed the service because no one else would, and because he wanted the members of the family to know that someone cared about them. He c
laimed that people tried to run his car off the road, threw rocks through his window, and sent threatening letters, because of his assistance to the family. Tim Warren had asked him how he could, in good conscience, hold a funeral for someone who was going to hell.
“Well, I don’t know whether he’s going to hell,” said Smith. “The more I hear about the man, he could have been mentally ill. I would think he had some emotional problems.”
In Broad Daylight (Crime Rant Classics) Page 37
