In Broad Daylight (Crime Rant Classics)

by HARRY N. MACLEAN

  PRAISE FOR HARRY N. MACLEAN’S

  IN BROAD DAYLIGHT

  “Frightening ... an examination of how McElroy and the townspeople reached this fatal conclusion.”

  —The Kansas City Star

  “Plenty of revealing facts . . . details about the grimness of Ken McElroy’s early years, about the history of Skidmore, about McElroy’s beatings of ‘young meat,’ the teenage girls he also liked to have sex with ...”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “Chilling!”

  —The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

  “An Engrossing, Credible examination of the way vigilante action can take over when the law seems to be powerless.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Charged by the author’s indignation at a legal system that failed to halt McElroy and at a media that issued distorted accounts of the case, this is a sad, disturbing tale of institutional betrayal, colorfully set against a backdrop of changing seasons and agricultural cycles.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  IN BROAD

  DAYLIGHT

  Harry N. MacLean

  10 9876543

  In Broad Daylight

  Copyright © 1988 by Harry N. MacLean.

  Epilogue: 2006 copyright © 2006 by Harry N. MacLean.

  Previously published by Harper & Row

  Dell edition / February 1990

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / December 2006

  For

  Mom and Dad and

  my sister Sharon

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Over the years of researching and writing this book, I came to know well many people in the Skidmore community and northwest Missouri. More than a few of them opened their homes and spent hours, in some cases days, sharing their recollections and perceptions of what happened between Ken McElroy and the town of Skidmore. Foremost among those were Q and Margaret Goslee, who farm outside Skidmore. By the time the book was completed, they had become my second family, and their kindness and generosity, as well as that of their sons Kermit and Kirby, provided the environment which allowed me to persevere in my search to understand the course of events described herein.

  Kriss Goslee, the youngest son of Q and Margaret, conducted a series of interviews soon after the killing which were used extensively in the preparation of the manuscript. Kriss also provided ongoing research assistance which was extremely valuable.

  The contribution of Anne Meadows to the book is immeasurable. Ms. Meadows, a friend and free-lance editor in Washington, D.C., edited the book from an initial rough draft through three versions to its final form. With extraordinary skill and dedication, she reorganized sentences, paragraphs, scenes, and chapters, pushing mercilessly and relentlessly for clarity and simplicity. Her mark is everywhere present. Any awkward sentences remain only over her protest.

  I would like to express my profound gratitude to Jules Roth.

  Without his caring support and his unflagging faith in me, the idea would never have become reality.

  The heart of the book was written at the home of Tom Austin and Jean Obert (and son Gabe) in Kealakekua, Hawaii. From the deck of the guest quarters of their home, I looked out over the bay and began putting to paper what I had learned of the killing in Skidmore, Missouri. I relied immensely on their love.

  Mike and Pat MacLean, my brother and sister-in-law, and brothers Jim and Jack believed absolutely in the book from the beginning. Their affection and encouragement were a constant source of support.

  I am grateful for the generosity of Mary and George Leyland, at whose summer home on Fishers Island, New York, the final pieces of this book fell into place.

  Others I would like to thank for their assistance in various ways: Charles Cortese, associate professor of sociology at the University of Denver; Thomas Cameal, associate professor of history, Northwest Missouri State University; Tom Watkins, attorney, St. Joseph; Charles Lepley, chief deputy district attorney, Denver, Colorado; and typists Janet Lange and Laurie Brasel.

  Thanks to Glenna Kelly for her invaluable assistance in fine- tuning the final draft.

  Lastly, I acknowledge a lasting debt to Lawrence University, where my study of the art of learning continues to shape the course of my life.

  In cases where a first name is followed only by a last initial, the name has been changed at the individual’s request.

  PART

  ONE

  1

  On the morning of July 10, 1981, Cheryl Brown stood by the small window at the rear of her parents’ grocery store and looked out at the pickups lining both sides of the main street. All but a few of them she recognized as belonging to farmers or merchants from the surrounding area. Cheryl folded her arms, glanced around the store to locate her parents, and looked back out the window—there wasn’t a person in view. It was a strange sight, particularly for midmorning on a Friday, but she understood it; the town had finally been pushed too hard, or perhaps the wrong people had finally been pushed too hard.

  Cheryl lived on a farm a few miles west of town with her husband and two children. An attractive woman in her early twenties, Cheryl had curly brown hair, hazel eyes, and an engaging smile. She loved to talk, and spent much of her boundless energy participating in community activities. In the past fifteen months, before her family’s problem had become the town’s problem, her spirited resiliency had been vital in keeping herself and her family together.

  The B & B Grocery sits on Route 113 just as the road completes its climb to the top of the hill from the Nodaway River bottoms. A few yards further on is the main intersection where 113 turns right and proceeds down the hill as Elm Street, the main street of Skidmore. The front of the grocery store faces the American Legion building across 113 and the back looks out across a gravel drive at the side of the D & G Tavern, which is around the corner facing on Elm Street.

  The small window at which Cheryl stood was behind the freezer and a few feet from the two large doors opening onto the loading dock. Had she been standing on the loading dock itself, or even looking through the windows in the doors, she would have been easily visible to anyone entering or leaving the tavern across the drive. But even if someone had glanced in the direction of her small window, Cheryl’s face would probably have been hidden by the sun’s reflected glare. From here she could see most of the street and sidewalk area in front of the tavern.

  Since January, when she had begun working at the store, and particularly in the past few months, Cheryl had spent a lot of time at this place by the window. She believed, along with her mother, that if violence were to erupt again at the store, it would come from the back. Last summer her dad, Ernest “Bo” Bowenkamp, had been standing just inside the rear door when he was shot in the neck at close range with 00 buck, shotgun pellets the size of .32 caliber bullets. Bo spent most of his time at the meat counter, which was only a few feet inside the loading-dock doors. The rear of the store, although not blocked from public view, was less visible than the front. If McElroy intended to carry out his most recent threats, he would either hit Bo at home or come in the back of the store, like he had before.

  Word usually came to the store by phone when McElroy was in town or when one of his trucks had been spotted in the area. If Cheryl was there, she would bolt the back door, pile 100-pound bags of potatoes on the trapdoor to the cellar and take up her post at the window. She knew all four McElroy trucks by both sight and sound, the way one might know a neighbor's sons. Last summer, after the candy incident in the store, she began to automatically scan every street and alley for the trucks whenever she came to town. If McElroy was in town, he would, sooner or later, pull up and park in front of the tavern. If
Trena was with him, as she often was, she would stay out in the truck for however long he was inside, sometimes sitting by herself for hours in the bitter cold or the sweltering heat. If he was alone, Cheryl would scan the streets for the backup—the other McElroy truck—almost always driven by a woman, always with rifles visible in the rear window rack. Cheryl usually found the truck in front of the post office across the street, or on one of the Four Comers, or at the bottom of the hill, with a clear view of the front of the tavern. In either case, she would stay be the window until she saw

  McElroy leave the tavern, get in his truck, and drive out of town.

  This morning, as she stood and looked out the window at the gleaming Silverado parked in front of the tavern, and mentally linked the other pickups with their owners, she understood that everything was finally coming to a head. The nature of the struggle had been irretrievably altered by the events of the past few weeks. The affidavits, the pickups lining the streets, the meeting in the Legion Hall, the absolute stillness of the town itself, all meant to her that the community, however belatedly, was finally responding to the threat that she and her family had faced virtually alone for so many months. Whatever happened, her family’s long ordeal, their tormented isolation, would soon be over.

  On Friday morning, her parents always delivered groceries for the weekend to some of the elderly residents in town, many of them widows who lived alone. This morning a few calls came in after the run was made, and when Cheryl arrived for work around nine, she had to deliver the new orders in her mother’s station wagon. By the time she returned, the street in front of the store had also filled with pickups. A short while later, one of the men at the meeting stuck his head in the door and told them in a low, excited voice that McElroy was in town. The meeting had broken up, he said, and the men were heading toward the tavern to face him.

  She bolted the rear door, piled the potato sacks on the cellar door, and took her place by the window. Evelyn Sumy, her parents’ neighbor and a clerk at the store who had been entangled in the struggle from the very beginning, stood beside her. After a few seconds Cheryl’s gaze shifted from the Silverado to the men walking down the street from the Legion Hall to the tavern. As each man passed by, she spoke his name, as if she was reciting an honor roll of men who finally had the guts to stand up to Ken McElroy. She watched with fascination and apprehension as about forty men disappeared single file into the tavern, holding the screen door for one another.

  As the minutes passed, she stayed focused on the Silverado. With its heavy steel running boards, chrome brush guard, red clearance lights and Cattle Country mud flaps, the Silverado was the biggest, the newest, and the fanciest of the McElroy trucks, the one that Ken almost always drove himself. The story was that he had bought it the previous December off

  the lot of the Chevy dealer in Mound City for $12,000 cash, carried in a paper bag.

  Suddenly, the screen door to the tavern opened and McElroy appeared on the sidewalk in front of the tavern. He was wearing dark slacks and a brown tank top, and he was carrying a brown paper sack with what looked like a six-pack of beer in it. His movements were slow and deliberate, as always. Trena followed behind, carrying a small purse, and got in the passenger side of the pickup, closest to Cheryl. The men began pouring out of the tavern a few feet behind them. She noticed one farmer lean up against the front of the tavern with a beer in his hand, and it occurred to her that it was illegal to take a glass of beer out of the tavern. Others stood on the sidewalk out of her field of vision.

  When she heard the first shot ring out, she was confused, wondering who was shooting at whom, and from where. Then she saw the glass splattering in the air in front of the pickup and McElroy’s head fall forward on his chest. Trena turned away and threw open the passenger door and dived out onto the street. By then the men were hitting the ground, crouching between the pickups and scattering up the street to the top of the hill. Royce Clement jumped clear over the hood of a pickup.

  She saw Jack Clement, Royce’s father and the cowboy patriarch of the Clement family, rush over and pick up Trena, who had blood and dirt on her arms and shirt, and hustle her up the walk toward the bank, out of the line of fire. The gentleman in the cowboy made him do that, she thought later.

  As the shooting continued, in bursts of two and three shots, Cheryl rushed to the telephone in the front of the store to call her baby sitter, who lived in town. More shots rang out as she explained to the baby sitter that it wasn’t safe to bring the children to the store. The front door opened and a man stepped halfway in.

  “It’s over now,” he said. “You people can sleep tonight. Just stand behind us.”

  The relief hit Cheryl like a blast, then flooded slowly through her body. The constant harassment, the fear for her father and her children’s lives, all of it was finally over. She grabbed onto a shelf to steady herself as the tears came to her eyes. Her dad—tall, gangly Bo, the sweetest man in the world, who never understood why he had been shot—walked over to comfort her. He put one arm around her and another around Evelyn,

  who also was crying and shaking.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s all right now.”

  When she had steadied herself, Cheryl returned to her observation post and surveyed the scene. The pickups were hurriedly backing out and leaving town in all directions, and the few men on foot were also clearing out. Later, when her strength returned and she regained her composure, she would respond to her curiosity and need for confirmation and venture out for a closer view of the killing scene. For the moment, though, she simply stared at the smoke pouring out of the hood of the big Silverado, which she figured must have caught fire in the shooting. Burn! Cheryl thought. Burn until there’s nothing left of any of it.

  On the day of his death, Alice Wood had been involved with Ken McElroy for more than twenty years. She had lived with him for sixteen years, borne him three children, been beaten severely by him untold times, loved and hated him, and dreamed of shooting him with one of his own guns. Alice was no longer in love with Ken—those feelings had ended a few years earlier when the sex and violence had gone beyond what she could handle—but still she cared for and respected him. He was a good father to her children, and in recent years they had become pretty good friends.

  Alice was a mildly attractive brunette in her mid-thirties, with blue eyes and a disarmingly direct manner. For the past year or two, she had lived in an apartment in St. Joseph with her three children.

  Juarez, the oldest at twelve, slight with brown hair and clear blue eyes, had always been a favorite of his father. The feeling was mutual—Juarez worshiped his dad to the extent that sometimes Alice felt almost left out of her son’s life. Ken had called Juarez the day before and told him he would be down on Monday to watch him pitch in a Little League baseball game. Tonia, named for Ken’s dad and called Tony, was a sweet, sensitive eight-year-old girl, with medium-length brown hair and a round face and broad forehead like her father’s. Ken, Jr., nicknamed “Mouse,” was a quiet and easygoing six-year-old, seemingly unaware of the storm that surrounded the McElroy name wherever it came up.

  St. Joseph had always been one of Ken’s stomping grounds, and he often came by the apartment to see Alice and spend time with the

  children. Tonia especially looked forward to her long visits at his Skidmore farm in the summer, when she could see him every day and play with the other kids. She was in the middle of one of those visits on the morning of July 10, 1981.

  Alice and her boyfriend, Jim, had planned to take the boys up to the Skidmore farm for the weekend. They would leave that Friday afternoon after Jim got off work and bring Tonia home with them Sunday night. As they often did, Alice and the two boys had driven to the appliance store around noon to take Jim his lunch. When they arrived, the boss’s wife was talking on the phone. She looked up and saw Alice and an odd look came over her face. Handing Alice the phone, the woman said, "It’s Trena. Something’s really wrong, I can’t understand her.”
Strange, Alice thought, I just talked to her this morning about groceries and supplies for the weekend and everything was all right then. Alice held the receiver to her ear and said hello.

  “They shot him,” said Trena, sobbing.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Alice.

  “Ken, they shot him.”

  Alice could barely make out the words. “Who shot him?” she asked.

  “They did.”

  “Is he hurt bad?”

  “No, no,” Trena wailed. “He’s dead.”

  Alice said, “We’ll be up as soon as we can,” and hung up. Jim’s boss gave him the rest of the day off, and they loaded the boys into the car and headed north out of St. Joseph for Skidmore.

  For most of the forty miles the four of them sat in silence, anxious to get to the farm, but holding on to the last few minutes before they would have to face Ken’s death.

  By the time they reached the farm, Trena was gone. On the advice of McElroy’s Kansas City lawyer, one of Ken’s sisters had driven her to the highway patrol headquarters in St. Joseph for her own protection (an irony not lost on the citizens of Skidmore when they later learned of it). Several of Ken’s brothers and sisters had gathered at the farm and they tearfully told Alice what had happened: The people had conspired to kill Ken, and even the sheriff and mayor had all been in on it. There had been four guns firing, and Ken had been shot over eight times in the head. Trena had been in the truck beside him and had seen the whole thing. Somebody at the bank had called Tim, Ken’s younger brother, to