Shadow Vigilantes

by Paul H. Robinson

  Part II focused on the people who, frustrated with perceived failures of the criminal justice system, take the law into their own hands to impose the justice that the system is unwilling or unable to impose. But as we hinted in chapter 4, these classic vigilantes, as they might be called, are not the real problem. It is the reaction of the broader public that can be more troublesome.

  To gain a sense of how the same vigilante impulse that inspires the classic vigilante can influence a broad cross section of the larger community, consider these two case studies.

  A FRUSTRATED NEIGHBORHOOD HIDES A KILLER

  The Assassination of William Malcolm

  In 1981 William Malcolm is living in East London with his wife and her two children, a six-year-old stepdaughter and a nine-year-old stepson. He sexually abuses both of his stepchildren on a regular basis. He is caught, and during the trial it comes to light that he has been abusing his stepdaughter since she was three years old. Malcolm is given a two-year jail term.1

  Since England does not, at this time, have a pedophile registry system or laws that allow restrictions to be placed on convicted sex offenders’ movements, when released in 1984, Malcolm returns to the same house and resumes life with the same two children whom he was convicted of abusing. Before the end of the year, he is again charged with abusing his stepchildren, as well as other young victims from the neighborhood; again he is convicted and sent to jail. Upon his second release, Malcolm moves in with a new girlfriend and her five children.

  Malcolm continues to abuse children. In one instance, he tracks down a former victim who testified against him in a previous trial and rapes her again. He tells her that she is “asking for it” because she helped send him to jail.2

  In 1994 Malcolm is once again charged with sexually abusing children. The charges involve thirteen different children, including children who are living with Malcolm. Among the charges are multiple instances during which children are “tied to a bed and forced to perform sex acts.”3 Details of some incidents include Malcolm placing his shoeless young victim in a bedroom and then spreading carpet tacks on the floor outside the room so he can be alerted if the victim tries to escape. It is also reported that Malcolm frequently beats his victims with a belt.

  Prior to prosecution for the latest charges, Malcolm undergoes a psychological evaluation, which determines that he is a sexual psychopath. The report describes him as having pedophile tendencies of a “strongly sadistic nature.”4 Social workers suggest that he is “incurably psychopathic and violent.”5 At trial, the judge describes the crimes as “unspeakable” but concludes that there can be no trial for the new offenses because his two previous convictions make it impossible for him to receive a fair trial.6 The judge explains that victims of the offenses cannot realistically be expected to testify without mentioning previous abuses they have suffered from him and that this type of testimony will be prejudicial to the defendant. Malcolm is released from custody without restriction.

  The victims and neighbors are not happy with the court's refusal to even try Malcolm. A female victim expresses disbelief: “The judge says he is not going to get a fair trial because of his history, but surely it's that history which proves what a dangerous man he is.”7 A male victim complains, “I didn't have a childhood. I was petrified of him.”8 In court, furious cries of “kill the pervert” come from the public gallery. Upon being set free, Malcolm receives death threats.

  Malcolm moves to a block of flats in Manor Park that overlook a common area where children frequently play. Sharing the apartment with him is his current girlfriend and her children, three of whom are under the age of six. By lying about his background, Malcolm obtains a job across the street from a primary-grade school. Residents of Manor Park are outraged when they learn that Malcolm lives there. One neighbor explains, “You can't do what he did without creating an awful lot of enemies.”9

  On February 18, 2000, at around 10:00 p.m., Malcolm answers the door of his flat and is shot in the face. No one else is home at the time. Neighbors rush out when they hear a gunshot and find him lying on the floor still breathing but bleeding profusely. An ambulance arrives, but Malcolm is pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.

  The case is not different from others considered previously in which vigilantes take the law into their own hands when the law shows itself unwilling to punish serious wrongdoing. But what happens next illustrates another dimension of vigilante action.

  News of Malcolm's killing is greeted with jubilation. As one neighbor explains, “I'm quite happy that people like him are out of this community. I can understand quite clearly why someone would want to have him out of the way.”10 Another neighbor reports, “Nobody will feel sorry, except maybe his relatives. I was shocked when I heard someone had been shot on the doorstep like that, but when I heard it was him I was relieved.” In fact, Malcolm's relatives are not feeling sorry about the killing. Andy, Malcolm's brother, says, “I want to shake hands with his killers…. He was vermin, I'm glad he is dead…. Our entire family wants to say how glad we are that Bill is no longer on this earth. As far as I'm concerned, my brother was lower than the rats in my barn.” Malcolm's former stepdaughter, now an adult, who was raped repeatedly since her earliest childhood, is ecstatic when she receives news of the killing, saying, “Hearing the animal is dead is the happiest I've ever felt.” While she knows that, as one of his victims, she is a suspect in his killing, she insists that she personally was not involved, saying, “It was none of us [but] I wish it had been me who killed him.”11

  Police investigators question Malcolm's former victims and relatives, as well as the people in the neighborhood. They run into a wall of silence. The next-door neighbor reports seeing a pair of white males of average height and average build leaving the premises after the shooting. Although the entire neighborhood seems to have known about Malcolm and has been outraged by his living there, the next-door neighbor, whose son was killed by a pedophile in 1994, claims not to have known that Malcolm had ever sexually abused children. The police are nearly certain that the neighbors know who has done the killing and that many of them have information that could help in the investigation, yet no one comes forward, and those who are interviewed do not provide information.

  Months after the murder, investigators are no closer to apprehending the killer or killers. It is clear that Malcolm's murder is a crime that the neighborhood does not want solved.

  The doctrines of disillusionment, such as those illustrated in chapter 4, can spark all manner of classic vigilante action, including acts like the killing of William Malcolm. Where the criminal justice system has shown itself to be unable or unwilling to do justice and provide protection, a vigilante may be inspired to step in and take on that role. Earlier chapters are full of such cases.

  But the Malcolm case illustrates a new dimension to the vigilante impulse: where people act not by taking on the task of doing justice themselves but rather by helping to protect the vigilante by refusing to help authorities in their efforts to investigate and prosecute the vigilante conduct. The community here is essentially serving as an accomplice of the vigilante, or at least an accessory after the fact, as the law might call it. They are not willing to go into the streets to do the justice, but they are willing to take the smaller, less aggressive step of refusing to help authorities, probably motivated by the same impulse that provoked the classic vigilante.

  Such vigilante complicity appears in a wide range of forms, some even more public and more aggressive than in Malcolm's case.

  AN OUTRAGED COMMUNITY COLLECTIVELY ATTACKS A BULLY AND SHIELDS HIS KILLERS

  The Killing of Ken McElroy

  A resident of Skidmore, Missouri, in the 1980s Ken McElroy is a local thief, bully, and sexual predator. He rarely holds a job but always has plenty of money from stealing anything he can get a fence to buy. He is an active livestock rustler, and as a result, for years Skidmore County has the highest incidence of cattle rustling in the state.12

 
; McElroy's sexual preferences are for young girls between the ages of twelve and fifteen. Married three times but never faithful, he attracts one young girl after another, keeping them compliant first by attention and support in this poor rural area, then by intimidation and abuse. He fathers more than twenty children with different girls.13

  If family or friends of one of the underage girls objects, McElroy responds with an aggressive intimidation campaign. In one instance, a twelve-year-old girl in eighth grade is his current target. She soon becomes pregnant, drops out of school, and moves in with McElroy. Sixteen days after their child is born, she goes home to her parents to escape McElroy's regular beatings. McElroy brings her back at gunpoint and beats her, then returns to her parents’ home, shoots their dog, and burns their house to the ground. Unsurprisingly, most people are too intimidated to report McElroy to the police, and even when they do, little happens, perhaps because the police are also afraid of him.14

  Whenever McElroy is charged with an offense, he arranges for one of his coon-hunting buddies to offer an alibi and works to intimidate any witnesses. In one instance, when a neighbor complains of his trespassing, McElroy shoots the man with a shotgun, wounding him. The wounded neighbor insists that charges be filed, but between the shooting and the trial McElroy parks outside the man's house to stare at him on nearly one hundred occasions. When the trial takes place, it plays out in the same way that previous trials have in the past: McElroy is acquitted by an intimidated jury after one of his buddies presents the usual false alibi. Free to exact revenge, McElroy shows up at the complainant's farm and shoots at him with a rifle as he drives his tractor in a field.

  Fig. 8.1. Ken McElroy, killed by the people in his town, 1981. (Courtesy of Harry MacLean)

  One episode finally brings things to a head. Some of McElroy's many children are accused of stealing from a local grocery store owned by Louis and Bo Bowenkamp. After an argument, McElroy is refused further service and is banned from the store. As usual, McElroy engages in an aggressive response: he begins a staring vigil outside the store and outside the Bowenkamps’ home. Also, as usual, the police refuse to do anything. When McElroy twice fires a shotgun at the Bowenkamps’ house, they insist on filing a complaint, but nothing is done about it. McElroy returns two nights later, firing again, with the same nonaction by authorities.

  On July 8, 1980, McElroy confronts Bowenkamp outside his store and shoots him with a shotgun, hitting him in the neck. McElroy is arrested and charged. Freed while awaiting trial, McElroy continues his campaign of intimidation, including threatening a minister and a local sheriff who might be witnesses against him.

  Despite his usual witnesses, who swear in court that they happened to be driving by just at the moment that McElroy shot the elderly man in what they testify was self-defense, McElroy is finally convicted of second-degree assault and sentenced to two years in prison. The town's citizens breathe a collective sigh of relief. Perhaps the McElroy reign of terror is finally over.

  But McElroy is released on bail pending appeal, and a hearing to consider revoking his bail is delayed repeatedly. When McElroy shows up at a local bar ranting that he will kill the Bowenkamps, the townspeople arrange a meeting to discuss how to deal with the situation and set up a watch to protect the store owners.

  McElroy hears of the meeting and drives to a nearby bar, with his wife in the passenger seat. He goes inside, buys cigarettes, then climbs back into his truck and sits. A group of about forty-five people assemble. He starts the truck, then lights a cigarette. Six shots ring out from multiple directions, striking and killing McElroy. His young wife is taken from the truck to the safety of a nearby bank. The foot of the dead man has fallen onto the accelerator, and the engine roars on its way to nowhere.

  Amazingly, despite the large group of people present at the time of the shooting in broad daylight, no one is able to provide information to investigators (with the exception of McElroy's latest young wife, who was seated in the truck at the time of the shooting). A state investigation is followed by an FBI investigation ordered by the US Department of Justice. Nearly one hundred interviews of apparent witnesses and local residents are conducted, but no one seems willing to provide information to investigators.

  Explains Cheryl Huston, whose elderly father had been shot by McElroy and who watched the killing of McElroy from her family's grocery store, “We were so bitter and so angry at the law letting us down that it came to somebody taking matters in their own hands…. No one has any idea what a nightmare we lived.” The case remains unsolved.15

  This sort of vigilante complicity can include not only refusing to help authorities investigate and prosecute but also publicly supporting the vigilantes, as in talking with the news media to explain their motivation and to promote their point of view.

  COMMUNITY SUPPORT FOR GROUP LAWBREAKING PROVOKED BY LESS SERIOUS WRONGS

  The Destruction of the Venice Pagodas

  Venice, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, California, is known for its two-mile-long promenade along the Pacific Ocean.16 The boardwalk has long attracted an eclectic mix of people, including street performers, tourists, and sun worshippers. A tourist attraction during the day, it draws a less respectable crowd at night. A series of wooden pagodas with benches along the boardwalk provide tourists and neighbors with a welcome place to sit out of the sun, but at night the same shelters serve as a prime place for local gang members to deal drugs. These structures allow dealers to hide their drugs in a place nearby so they can control the drugs without personally holding them, then signal a confederate to retrieve a certain amount once a buyer pays.

  The neighborhood has repeatedly appealed to police to deal with the drug problem or at least to remove the pagodas so that the drug dealing will move to less prominent places, reducing the extent of the trade, but their pleas have no effect. Frustration builds until one local resident finally takes matters into his own hands, ramming the structures with his pickup truck until they are destroyed. With the pagodas gone, the drug dealers move away.

  Over the objection of residents, the city rebuilds the seating and tables, this time constructed in concrete. The newly installed gathering areas are popular with tourists and the local merchants who sell to them, but, as expected, the shelters are once again a hit with the drug dealers, who now have a nicer location in which to deal drugs at night. As a local resident puts it, “Once the picnic tables went back in, it re-created the problem.”17 Although local community members regularly call the police to report the drug dealing, the police rarely respond because, in their view, there are bigger crime problems elsewhere.

  Fed up with the lack of police response, local residents decide to again take matters into their own hands. One weekend in August 1994, a group of residents in ski masks arrives at the site, post a lookout for police, and take sledgehammers to the new benches. Organizers have informed the neighbors beforehand that the demolition is going to occur so that the loud demolition noises will not prompt calls to the police. Apparently, someone missed the message and called the police, but the police simply ignore the call as being of insufficient importance.

  When the sun rises on Monday morning, all of the new structures have been destroyed, to the cheers of the large crowd of onlookers. Local drug dealers are unhappy with the destruction, and that same morning they send their people swarming into the local apartment buildings, demanding to know who destroyed their hangouts.

  The people who demolished the benches justify their actions by citing the refusal of law enforcement to deal with the problem. As one of the perpetrators describes the group's sledgehammer escapade, “We've got a bunch of nineteen-year-old kids running this street. The fear is unbelievable…. We have the silent approval of the whole community. People were cheering—we even had a woman take a few swings.” Another resident explains, “Sometimes you have to tear the house up to get the rat out. We have complained and complained and complained to the police and they will not stop here…. It was intolerable.” Other
s who are less enthusiastic about the destruction nevertheless concede that “the guys who did this may have some legitimate complaints.”18

  Fig. 8.2. Venice Beach shelters such as these were destroyed by neighbors, 1994. (Courtesy of Nan Palmero, Flickr.com)

  Despite the fact that eighty or ninety people witness the demolition and that one of the perpetrators is interviewed at the time by the press, investigators can find no one willing to help them with their inquiries. As one investigator marvels, “It is just amazing to me that there were three or four people out there busting up tables and none of the residents saw anything.”19 Because no one in the neighborhood is willing to help, no prosecution is ever brought.

  This public support for vigilantes is only one of a wide variety of ways in which the vigilante impulse can express itself in conduct short of classic vigilantism. As will become apparent in the following two chapters, these more covert expressions of the vigilante impulse can be more pervasive, more dangerous, and more destructive to justice and effective crime control than classic vigilantism ever was or could be.

  A vigilante shoots child abuser William Malcolm in the face, and the neighbors refuse to help authorities investigate. Several vigilantes shoot bully Ken McElroy while he is surrounded by a large crowd, but none of the many witnesses are willing to identify the shooters to investigators. Residents of Venice watch a group of vigilantes spend the weekend destroying the seating areas that drug dealers use to ply their trade, yet the police must read about the events in the newspaper.