In Broad Daylight (Crime Rant Classics)

by HARRY N. MACLEAN

  On the morning of July 10, the clerk of the court in Bethany had begun calling the jurors in the Bowenkamp case to warn them that McElroy or one of his representatives would be coming by to question them about what had gone on in the jury room. Although the clerk explained that they didn’t have to answer the questions if they didn’t want to, several jurors were upset by the call. Having learned the truth about McElroy, they didn’t want anything to do with him or his people.

  One juror was watching the evening news when the story of the killing came on. He saw the picture of the truck, the same one they had heard about at the trial, being towed away. The newscaster kept describing McElroy as a “farmer from Skidmore.” The juror couldn’t believe McElroy wasn’t locked up. We did our job, the juror thought, tried, convicted, and sentenced him, and here he never went to jail!

  Daryl Ratliff, the juror whom Ray Ellis was supposed to have tried to bribe, was also upset when he heard that the McElroy people were going to be around trying to get him to change his mind about the verdict. When he saw the news of the killing on TV, he became angry. The system had worked the way it was supposed to: McElroy had had a good lawyer, perhaps too good; Donelson had been a decent judge; the jury had done its job, listening to the evidence and applying the law as the judge had said,

  and had found McElroy guilty. So what was he doing out on the street when he was killed? Why wasn’t he in jail? How come the judge let him out? What was the point of the jury spending two days trying and convicting McElroy if the judge set him free?

  Ratliff was so upset that, at one point, he considered going to Skidmore and explaining to the people that it wasn’t the jury’s fault that McElroy had been turned loose on their streets, that the jurors had done what they could. The way he felt about it, if McElroy had done all that people said, then he deserved killing.

  Kathleen Whitney, who had taught Trena McElroy, Debbie McElroy, Del Clement, Steve Peter, Cheryl Brown, Romaine Henry’s kids, the Goslees, and others, had a hard time believing that anyone in Skidmore could actually shoot McElroy in cold blood. If it was true, then the law was responsible for turning a bunch of decent farmers into killers. She was doubtful that Del Clement could have done it; in her opinion, Del thought too much of his own skin, and she doubted he was that good a shot. As for McElroy’s death, she felt that it couldn’t have happened to a nicer person.

  42

  A reporter and a photographer from the Maryville Forum arrived in Skidmore around noon on the day of the killing, and a news team from Channel 2 in St. Joseph followed close behind. By 1 P.M. the reporters had left to file their stories, and the police had gone to Maryville to organize their investigation. The Silverado, the most visible evidence of the murder, had been towed away. The town was left to itself. Perhaps for a few hours, the community believed that its worst problem had been solved.

  Like many people in shock who pick up their routines and go on with their lives as if nothing has happened, the farmers went home that afternoon and told their wives and children what had occurred—or at least some version of what had occurred—then climbed on their tractors and went to work in the fields, or drove their trucks to Maryville for inspections, or scattered fresh straw for the pigs, or began repairing fences. The clerks went back to work at the bank, Cheryl Brown checked groceries, and the Sumys pumped gas and changed tires. If everyone acted normal, maybe life would be normal. Maybe the cops and the press had everything they needed and wouldn’t come back. Maybe the nightmare really was over.

  Few believed it. They might not have known exactly what was in store for them, but at least those in town that morning knew that life in Skidmore would never be as before. Images slipped too easily into their minds, one after the other, with extraordinary clarity—the shattered glass,

  the blood, the still figure with a hole in his neck, the Silverado hanging on the hook.

  They also knew that the legal system, which had so utterly failed the town, would now try to find and punish the killers.

  NOMIS established its headquarters in the basement of the Savings and Loan Building in Maryville, and by 2 p.m. on the day of the killing, more than twenty officers from five counties had gathered, under the supervision of Sergeant Robert Anderson of the highway patrol. Assignments were made, and officers fanned out to interview all of the people who had been at the meeting in town that morning. Four officers, including patrolman Boyer, were assigned to interview Del Clement. They found his wife, Lisa, at home. She didn’t know where Del was, but his father, Jack, was asleep in one of the bedrooms. She tried unsuccessfully to rouse him, then told the cops they were welcome to try. They went to the bedroom and woke him up. Startled and angry at the sight of four cops in his bedroom, Jack Clement said that neither he nor Lisa would have anything to say to them, and he told them to get out.

  Meanwhile, Del had apparently gone to a small town in Iowa to play in the Clement Brothers Band. When the cops finally found him and brought him to Maryville for interrogation, his position was simple. He pushed his straw cowboy hat back on his head, put his feet up on the desk, and said, “Boys, I wish I could say that I done it, because he sure had it coming, but I didn’t. He stole our livestock, shot our horses, and raped our women.” (Deputy Kish shook his head at the hierarchy of crimes in Del’s mind.)

  Dave McLain, a city cop in Maryville assigned to work with NOMIS, knew McElroy mainly as the gun-toting character who bullied Skidmore and got away with everything he did. Not until McLain got out into the countryside that afternoon and talked to the farmers did he come to understand how far McElroy had pushed the people of Skidmore. Most of them seemed calm at first, but as the questioning progressed, some became resentful that the officers were there at all. The good of the community had finally been served, they said, and they should all be left alone in peace. A few farmers got irritated, almost angry, with him, but most were polite and blunt: “I didn’t see anything, and if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.” As a lawman, McLain became frustrated over his inability to develop any information. As a human being, he came to respect the people for their strength and the way they stood together. By the time the

  sun went down, he knew the cops were up against a stone wail.

  For the community, the feeling of relief was muted by the fact that a murder had occurred in town, and by anxiety over what was coming next. Being interrogated as if they had done something wrong gave rise to anger—an ugly, unattractive anger, directed, at least on the surface, at the judges, cops, and lawyers for leaving the town with no alternative. A vague, undefined sense of shame also flickered around the community, perhaps because the killing had happened in the heart of town, or perhaps because McElroy had been shot in the back.

  But the events of the day had a coalescing effect on the community, drawing it closer together. Before the month was out, Skidmore would develop a rock core and an impenetrable outer shield. Richard Stratton was right when he predicted that a lot of people would say they saw nothing, would say they knew nothing, and that attempts to open them up would only tighten the seal and bind them further to the common good.

  Stratton was a permanent member of the NOMIS squad, but he and his sergeant agreed that because of his past dealings with McElroy, he shouldn’t be involved in the investigation. The decision was probably for the best; Stratton had a few ideas on how to go about unraveling the truth were he to be assigned to the investigation. (Oddly, another patrolman stayed on the squad even though the man suspected of holding the shotgun was his third cousin.)

  Patrolman Boyer sensed the wall that afternoon. He felt as though the minute the rifles had stopped blazing, an unspoken bond of incredible strength had formed among the people. What happened might not have been right, they apparently felt, but what had happened before wasn’t right either, and by God, you could walk the streets of Skidmore now without fear. In interview after interview, Boyer heard the same story: “I heard a couple of shots, hit the ground, and didn’t see nothing.”

  As Boye
r thought about it that afternoon, he knew other feelings would surface as the memory of the fear faded and the threat lessened.

  Deputy Sheriff Kish drove from the Price Funeral Home to St. Joe to witness the autopsy. At the funeral home, the employees had treated McElroy with care—undressing him, washing him, combing his hair,

  laying aside his personal effects (a watch, a knife, and comb)—almost as if he would wake up when they were finished.

  The approach was different at St. Joe. The pathologist took a large knife and cut McElroy’s scalp in a circular motion on top and then peeled it down over his face, exposing his skull. The pathologist next sawed a large hole in the top of the skull, removing the circular piece of bone, stuck his hand in and lifted out McElroy’s brain. There was no steel plate. Dictating while he worked, the pathologist laid the brain on scales that reminded Kish of those used in supermarkets, and weighed it, as if it were a vegetable. Picking up the brain, he described the shape, size, and condition, mentioning the massive hemorrhaging and damage to the brain stem. Then he began slicing the brain like a cucumber, describing the bullet fragments he found as he went. Dumbstruck, Kish stared at McElroy’s hollow skull with the hair hanging over his face. Then the pathologist set the brain aside, stuffed paper towels in the skull cavity, replaced the bone fragments, lifted the flap into place, and casually stitched up the skin. Kish felt strange staring at McElroy with the top of his head back on, his hair in place, looking as if he were merely asleep—his head filled with dreams rather than paper towels.

  The pathologist put the knife on McElroy’s shoulder and sliced through the tissue at an angle to the center of his chest, and then down to his pubic bone. When he bore down, the fat almost exploded, as if he had cut open an overripe watermelon. The smell was foul when he opened the chest and the stomach. He reached into the cavity and took out the organs, one by one. The heart. The liver. The kidneys. Weighing and slicing them, he described their condition and noted whether they contained any foreign objects. As he finished with each organ, he placed it on the table beside the brain. At the end he scooped up all the organs, including the brain, and stuffed them into the stomach cavity.

  How degrading, thought Kish, to have your body used as a garbage can.

  Although vague and incomplete, the autopsy report concluded that the bullet that killed McElroy entered his head about three inches above the right ear, leaving a wound less than an inch long and half an inch wide. The impact of the bullet caused multiple skull fractures in a starburst pattern before penetrating the right hemisphere of his brain and lodging in the cavity that held his pituitary gland. The bullet essentially obliterated

  the right side of his brain, and the shock waves slammed the brain up against the left side of his skull, causing similar destruction in the left hemisphere. The front half of his skull was fractured in several areas, leaving most of the pieces movable.

  The shot in his neck left a wound an inch and a half high and less than a quarter of an inch long. This wound connected linearly with the exit wound slightly beyond the left corner of his mouth. The exit wound was two and a half inches high and nearly an inch wide in its midsection. Beginning at the base of his skull, the bullet tore an angled groove along his tongue before smashing into his left jaw near his mouth and exiting. All portions of the lower jaw were fractured. This wound involved no vital organs and was considered survivable.

  There was some damage to the soft palate, which would have been out of the path of the second bullet, suggesting the possibility that a third bullet entered through a small, unexplained hole in his right jaw. The report also described two small wounds in the back of the neck below the base of the skull as being “consistent with gunshot wounds” but did not indicate whether any attempt was made to locate the bullet fragments or their paths.

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  PART

  FIVE

  43

  The wind began sometime in the middle of the night, most likely in the early, dark hours of the new day, rising gently from the south in light, gusty breezes. The golden dreadlocks on the cornstalks rose and danced in the cool night air. Gradually the wind picked up, and the gusts blew longer and more forcefully, lifting particles of the dry soil in rising swirls.

  The cafe was full by 6:30 Saturday morning. The screen door slammed, engines started and stopped, and chairs scraped, as the conversation rose and fell, shifting back and forth from the weather to the killing. The northern horizon was clear, but many lifetimes of experience told the farmers that the sky would soon change, perhaps by midmoming. The warm southern winds would collide with the cooler northern air, and the sky would grow darker, until the thunderheads rolled in and the shadows disappeared from the land.

  “He sure had it coming,” someone would say.

  “It’s safe to walk the streets around here now,” another would add.

  “Betcha there aren’t any more hog thefts around here!”

  Someone would recount how long the engine ran and describe how Estes had blown up when he realized what had happened. But the mechanics of the killing—the types of weapons, who was behind them, the bullets—never came up. The official story, the shield, was “I don’t know who killed him, and I don’t want to know.”

  Whenever the creaking door announced the arrival of a stranger —an insurance salesman from Mound City or a truck driver from Savannah—the place would fall silent instantly. Then someone would murmur about the weather, about how much moisture was predicted for the next twenty-four hours, and the rhythm would pick up again.

  Q Goslee was sitting at his breakfast table that morning with the radio tuned, as usual, to station KMA in Shenandoah, Iowa. He heard Skidmore mentioned, then McElroy’s name, and then the word vigilante and killing. He set his cup down and turned to stare at the radio. The tinny male voice was saying that the entire town had killed McElroy. Years later, reflecting back on the course of events, Q would shake his head and say, “That’s where it all started, when they used the word vigilante.”

  A thousand eyes watched the gray clouds spreading slowly across the northern horizon. Black and white thunderheads stacked up in billowing layers, and by late afternoon, the air was heavy and sticky with moisture. The wind blew harder in uneven thrusts, and the farmers left their tractors and came in from the fields. Deciding against his usual afternoon trip to the cafe, Q stood on his porch, watching and waiting. There was no beginning drizzle this day. Instead, the water suddenly burst forth and drove to the ground in huge drops, pelting the fragile bean plants and throwing up tiny puffs of dry soil. The wind rattled the windows and then slackened. Soon, the wind stopped altogether, and the rain fell even harder. Q went inside, pleased. In a couple of hours, he would check his rain gauges.

  David Baird knew that the investigation and prosecution of the killing would be a highly charged process, but he had not the slightest idea what was truly in store for him until Saturday morning when he picked up the Kansas City Times from his doorstep and saw the front page headline:

  FARMER SHOT TO DEATH IN APPARENT VIGILANTE ATTACK

  The article, which would set off the ensuing media binge, began as follows:

  In what appeared to be a vigilante killing, a crowd surrounded a man and his wife Friday as they sat in a pick-up in Skidmore, Mo., and someone shot the man with a high-powered rifle, officials said.

  The victim was 45-year-old Kenneth Rex McElroy, a part-time Nodaway County farmer who lived south of Skidmore, a northwest Missouri town of 440 people.

  The article gave no reason for describing the killing as an “apparent vigilante attack,” except for statements that the crowd had surrounded the truck and the residents had distrusted and feared McElroy. The story contained the kind of minor inaccuracies that often plague first reports: McElroy was forty-seven, not forty-five; his name was Ken, not Kenneth; the crowd did not surround the truck but stood uphill to the west. The article also claimed inaccurately that McElroy had been sentenced and an appeal bon
d had been issued, that McElroy was well known for “brawling,” and that McElroy had died in the ambulance on the way to town. The funniest quote, if anybody had been laughing, was the following: “ ‘I’ve got three kids and I’m not married, so I just ain’t gonna say nothing,’ said Lois Bowenkamp, the daughter of the man McElroy was convicted of shooting.”

  This erroneous and provocative story turned the incident from just another local killing into a national story—an Old West tale where a frontier town takes the law into its own hands. The appeal to the news media world-wide was irresistible, and within days almost every major paper in the country would carry articles about the community that killed the “town bully.” Reporters were assigned to the story by both wire services, all three networks, the New York Times, the Minneapolis Tribune, the Miami Herald, the Chicago Tribune, the Omaha World Herald, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, Der Spiegel, the London Daily News, the Stars and Stripes, Time, Newsweek, and the British Broadcasting Corporation. Rolling Stone and Playboy magazines assigned articles, and “60 Minutes” gave the story to Morley Safer. The casual description of the event as an “apparent vigilante attack” caused the media to descend like locusts on Skidmore, and the lynch mob angle allowed them to write dramatic, but sometimes inaccurate, articles.