In a statement to the police, given only a few hours after the killing, and with blood still on her arms and blouse, Trena unhesitatingly identified Del Clement as the shooter. She gave oral and written statements to officers in the State Patrol headquarters in St. Joe. She was clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that the man who had shot her husband was Clement. She knew that he worked as an auctioneer and owned the tavern with his brother. She could describe him physically, how he was dressed, the type of rifle he used, and the color of the truck he pulled the rifle from. Her story of what happened in the bar, and later as she and Ken left, matched up in most particulars with the statements of others present. She described what happened after she and Ken left the tavern.
trena: Got in the truck and here they all came out all these people came out... We turned around and looked and there was Del Clement going across the street to his pickup
police: Who was? Del Clement?
trena: Yea. And he got his gun out, it was either a 30-30 (?) or a .357 magnum, I don’t know for sure which one it is, either one.
police: Or a 357 magnum
trena: Yea. Lot of his are rifle type. And I turned around talked to Mac. They’ve got a gun out there when I said that the gun went off and I turned around to tell my husband what was going on and the whole town was around they shot three or four more times they kept on shooting and one guy come over there ... cowboy hat said the trouble is, you’ll get shot too . .. police: Del Clement, he went over to his pick-up.
trena: Yea. A red brand new pickup, it was just across the street just before the post office.
police: OK. It was by the Post Office, right?
trena: Yea, right in front of the Post Office ...
police: Did he come walking back towards your truck?
Trena: No. He got it out of his truck and walked back toward the tailgate of his truck, then he started to shoot.
Trena stated that Clement was no more than 50 feet away when he fired. After the first shot, she looked at Ken and saw the hole in his cheek, and then looked back around. Clement just “kept on shooting,” at least four times.
police: Now you can say definitely that Del fired the first shot.
trena: Yea, I seen him do it. I seen him get that gun out there, that’s how come I know what kind of gun it is, cause he had it up in the air. I thought he was just going to act like a fool and I told Ken they had a gun out there ... The gun was lever action.
police: Lever action, you can say that he definitely fired that first shot, is there any possibility. . .
trena: He was still holding the gun after the first shot cause I turned around.
police: He wasn’t attempting to put it back in the truck?
trena: No
police: He was still standing back of the pickup
trena: Yea ... I don’t know if it’s his pickup or not but it is a brand new red pickup
police: Deep red
trena: Yea.
After reading her statements, I wondered if Trena could distinguish Del from among the three other Clement brothers (Greg, Scott, and Royce). They were all about the same size and usually wore jeans, cowboy boots and cowboy hats. Maybe she had the brothers mixed up. Several facts indicated, however, that she definitely knew who Del was. She said in her statement that, while she and Ken were sitting at the bar, Red Smith, the bartender, was playing a video game across the room. When Del came in the tavern, he told Red to quit the game and come over behind the bar because
they had business to attend to. Red told me, and is quoted in the book as saying, that he was playing a video game with some kids at the front door when Del came in and said, “You better be behind the bar. There’s going to be a bunch in here.” Trena, Del and Greg Clement all told police that Del went behind the bar to help Red serve drinks. No one placed either Greg, Scott or Royce behind the bar. I think Trena knew who Del Clement was.
Trena told police that Del walked to a brand-new red pickup in front of the post office. Del told police that he was driving a Pontiac, which he parked up the street from the post office. Del also told police another interesting fact: a man by the name of Gary Dowling was driving a “new red 81 GMC Searia (sp) 1/214 x 4 bright red P/U, it was parked in front of the post office on the n. side of the street.” Trena made it clear she didn’t know if the red truck was Del’s or not, only that he took the rifle from it. Both Del and Trena said that the truck was bright, red and new, and parked in front of the post office.
Gary Dowling was a farmer who, at the time of the killing, lived on the same road west of town as Del Clement. He was one of the four men who had earlier signed the affidavit saying McElroy had brought a gun into the tavern in violation of a court order. On July 10 he was scheduled to testify to that effect in the hearing to revoke McElroy’s bond, and McElroy knew that. According to Del Clement, Dowling was contacting people and asking them to come to the meeting in the Legion Hall the morning of the 10th to form a caravan to escort him and the other signers to Bethany, where the hearing was to be held. From the moment I hit town, I had heard Dowling’s name as one of the possible shooters. I didn’t mention him in the book because he had neither been identified publicly nor to me privately by an eyewitness to the shooting.
Frankie Aldridge, who worked at Sumy’s gas station at the top of the hill, gave a statement saying that that he was at work when he heard a shot, saw Jack Clement walking Trena to the bank, and that
was all he saw. The next day, however, he gave a different statement at NOMIS headquarters in Maryville. The statement says that the first shot was followed by a rapid series of explosions.
Mr. Aldrige [sic] said that he then observed two men that he knows as Del Clement and Gary Dowling standing on the north side of the street across from the D & G bar and in the area of the post office. When Mr. Aldrich [sic] observed Del Clement and Gary Dowling they were both armed with what he thought were rifles and both men were aiming at Ken McElroy’s truck. Mr. Aldrich stated that he then observed Clement get into a blue pontiac or buick and drive east on Highway 113 in a “big hurry.” He also observed Gary Dowling get into a red pickup truck and drive east on Highway 113 in the same manner as Clement. Mr. Aldrich stated that he then saw Jack Clement helping Mrs. McElroy up the street and into the bank.
In a statement written out by a trooper and signed by Aldridge, Aldridge gave a little more detail:
I heard a “boom” which I thought was an M-80 firecracker. It sounded like it came from the east. I looked up, east, and I saw Del Clement and Gary Dowling holding guns on the north side of HWY 113, Dell [sic] aiming the gun at the back of McElroy’s truck. I saw Gary aiming his gun in the direction of McElroy’s truck also. Gary was in the area just west of the post office next to his truck. Del was standing east of his blue pontiac or buick diesel in the area of the post office.
The next day, however, Aldridge reappeared at headquarters with an attorney—the same one that, strangely enough, represented Del Clement—and recanted his statement, saying he had given it under stress and duress.
The police took Dowling off the combine in the field, arrested and cuffed him and took him to Maryville. According to his statement, Dowling first said that when he left the tavern and started walking up the hill he heard shots fired and fell to the ground, covering his head for protection. He didn’t see anyone with a weapon, before or after the shooting. Later, in a pre-polygraph interview, when the officer told Dowling they had information that he had a shotgun in his truck at the time of the shooting, Dowling admitted that upon hearing the shots fired he “crouched down to the left rear of his truck, opened the driver’s door and removed a shotgun from the truck but upon doing this, the shots ceased and he placed the shotgun back into the cab of the truck, behind the seat.” Dowling then told the officer that there were three males shooting and he knew who they were, but wouldn’t say. Dowling refused to take the polygraph test.
Del Clement denied any role in the killing. In one statement, he said he was walk
ing out of the tavern when he heard the shots and he lay down in the doorway until it was over. In another, he said he saw McElroy getting shot as he walked out of the tavern.
A state trooper involved in the investigation told me in the mid-eighties that he was absolutely convinced from everything he knew that the two shooters were Del Clement and Gary Dowling. In fact, he never heard any other names associated with the shooting. Another trooper, not involved in the investigation but very much aware of the situation, confirmed that the only names he had heard mentioned in law enforcement as the shooters were Del Clement and Gary Dowling. The only two driver’s license photos contained in the NOMIS files were of Del Clement and Gary Dowling.
Months later, Aldridge repeated his identification of Del Clement as the shooter to FBI agents, but when Baird called him in for an interview he once again recanted the identification. A woman—probably one of the women in the bank—also gave a statement to the FBI, one which we can assume matched Aldridge’s and Trena’s identification of Del Clement. When Baird interviewed her, however, he found her statement to be so vague as to be of little or no value.
There remain lots of unanswered questions: Were there two or three shooters? If three, who was the third? Was a shotgun fired? How did Aldridge get turned around so quickly? (It’s unlikely he went home that night and told someone that he had identified the killers to the police, so one can’t help but wonder if someone in law enforcement leaked the word.) And how did he come to be represented by the attorney for Del Clement, the prime suspect from the very beginning? (According to one statement, the same attorney also represented another potential witness, the postmaster, who after initially agreeing to a polygraph, refused to take one, on advice of counsel). Who was the woman who identified the killer(s) to the FBI agents? What happened to the weapons?
The files clear up certain things about the shooting. Although there is some disagreement, the consensus of the men there that day seems to be that about sixty people walked from the Legion Hall and into the tavern. After the crowd followed McElroy and Trena from the bar, about eight to ten people remained, which means that roughly 50 people went out the door. Which also means that there were approximately 50 people who were in a position to see some or all of what happened.
Everyone agrees that when they left the building they turned west, or up the hill. (Except Del Clement, who said he walked east down the hill to the restaurant, which is odd because that would have put him in the line of fire). Most of the men apparently stopped either on the sidewalk or within one or two car spaces west of McElroy’s truck, and stared at him. This would have put the men almost directly across the street from the post office. If the shooters were either directly in front of the post office, or just to the west of it, they would have been within 40 to 50 feet of the men on the sidewalk, at most. The witnesses in the street would have been even closer to the shooters. In other words, the shooters would have been only fifteen or so yards to the left, or west, of the witnesses, when the firing began. Maybe the
witnesses didn’t see the shooters take the guns from the vehicles, but certainly when the shots sounded fifteen yards to their left they would have glanced in that direction to determine the source and figure out how not to get hit. There were from five to eight shots fired, in succession. Even if they ducked during the shooting, they would have looked up when it stopped, if for no other reason than to make sure it was over. And most likely they would have seen the guns being put away.
The men at Sumy’s station at the top of the hill, where Aldridge was standing, could not have missed the shooting. They would have been no more than 30 yards away from the red truck. If they were watching the scene, staring at McElroy’s truck or the men gathered just up the hill from it, when the shooting started, which seems likely, they could barely have missed seeing the shooters a few degrees to the left.
One thing is clear—in spite of all the witnesses, there will be no prosecution unless and until at least one of the men comes forward and tells the story of the killing under oath.
Assuming that the NOMIS files are complete, one can argue that the investigation was not impressive. Despite the almost immediate identification of Del Clement by Trena, he was not interviewed until the following day. A search warrant was never sought for his house or vehicle. Neither was a search warrant sought or issued for Gary Dowling’s house or vehicle. Pete Ward, one of the key players in the drama, was never interviewed. And neither were Scott or Royce Clement, who Trena placed inside the bar just prior to the shooting. It almost seems that the officers were so sure of the identity of the killers that when they ran into the stone wall—I didn’t see anything, and if I did I wouldn’t tell you—they simply hung it up. NOMIS disbanded ten days after the killing, and since then little appears to have been done at the local level to bring McElroy’s killers to justice. The Patrol followed up a few leads in 1983, and occasional leads
filter into the sheriff’s office, but they don’t amount to anything. No one has been out trying to solve the case for twenty years. One thing seems certain: not a person in town that day offered aid or assistance to McElroy as he lay dying in his truck. No one stopped by the truck to check his vital signs, and the ambulance that finally came to the scene an hour after the shooting was a result of a call from McElroy’s lawyer to the sheriff’s office.
All this, of course, leaves the underlying moral issue of the killing unresolved. I have never settled the matter for myself. As a lawyer and an advocate of the justice system, as a citizen of a country committed to the rule of law, I know it is a highly dangerous thing to excuse murder, no matter what the reason. Due process means only the state can decide when a man’s behavior warrants his death. Another part of me is simply curious to know what actually happened on the street. If an eyewitness required a promise of eternal silence in exchange for telling me what went down that morning, I would give the promise, and live up to it.
My sympathy has always lain with the townspeople. When the law failed, two or three renegades decided to take care of the problem on their own, leaving the town forever cast as a bunch of vigilantes. Was it right to kill Ken Rex McElroy? If it was wrong, would it somehow even the moral scales to prosecute his killers? July 10, 1981, was a bad moment in time, when all seemed lost, when there seemed no choice. The killing was an impulsive act, brought on by ongoing, unrelenting fear. You might call it the battered town syndrome. It’s not good to have it hanging out there, though, unresolved. The town can’t get on its way.
As for the killers, I wonder what goes through their heads when they drive through town, past the spot where they stood with their rifles, past the spot where McElroy sat dead in his truck. I wonder if they feel a tiny thread of regret or guilt—lots of kids lost their father that morning, after all. Finally, I wonder if they worry. There is no statute of limitations on murder. Even now, it would take only one guy out of many to have a change of heart. A death bed confession, say, or a conversion to the faith of a God who viewed lying under
oath as a serious sin.
At the remembrance service for Bobbi Jo, I asked two girls, age 6 and 8, if they knew of Ken McElroy. Oh, yes, they both said. I asked what they had heard.
“He was a bad guy, who bullied lots of people,” the older of the two said.
“He was shot here in town,” the younger one joined in. “Right over there.” She pointed at the tavern.
“He had it coming,” the older one said.
It’s hard to argue with that, I thought.
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In Broad Daylight (Crime Rant Classics) Page 45
