Meanwhile, in a statement to the Forum, Trena announced that she was offering a $5,000 reward for “anyone supplying information to authorities which leads to the arrest and conviction of the person(s) responsible for the murder of Ken Rex McElroy.” The only catch was that Trena didn’t have the money. The reward would be paid only from the proceeds of the sale of Trena’s movie rights. McFadin explained that several producers had contacted Trena about the purchase of her rights.
In Skidmore the announcement of the reward brought a big chuckle. Although five thousand dollars was a lot of money, there wasn’t a farmer in Nodaway County who would put his rear end on the line for money that wasn’t even there.
Of slightly more concern to the community was Baird’s invitation to the public to submit information to the grand jury and the listing in the Forum of a post office box number for that purpose. Baird explained that if the grand jury found probable cause to believe that a specific person had committed the murder, an arrest warrant would be issued immediately by the judge. Baird said that he would submit the lab reports, the autopsy report, the ballistics report, and extensive oral testimony to the grand jury. The unspoken message seemed to be that if one witness backed Trena’s story, an indictment would be issued.
The Punkin’ Show was held on August 8, 9, and 10, the weekend before the grand jury convened. An extra deputy sheriff and two plainclothesmen were on hand in case of trouble. The reporters from St. Joe and Kansas City came, but not to cover the beauty contests or the talent show or the tractor pull or the parade; they wanted to talk about the killing and find out how people were feeling about it. Some residents were so annoyed that they told a couple of reporters to get out of town.
Festival played two nights in a row at the Punkin’ Show. For years
the band had played at the show for free, and band members had worked on committees and helped design the sound system for the stage. But the band had been losing too much money recently, and members decided they would have to start charging for the concerts in the future. This didn’t sit well with a few townspeople, who were already disgruntled that someone had passed a hat to help the band buy a piece of land. Band members noticed bad vibrations—trucks sometimes passed too close to them as they walked in the road, their waves were not always returned, and a few people made nasty comments about them.
After the shooting, Festival members felt their relations with the town grow particularly cool. The townspeople seemed negative and defensive. On stage at the Punkin’ Show, Britt Small tried to break the ice with humor, describing Skidmore as a “small town of 440 people, well actually only 439 now.”
No one laughed.
“People, we don’t have to crumble in the face of the media,” he said, hoping to rally the audience. “We can hang together; we can stand tall. There’s no reason why we have to let this get the best of
us.”
He got no response.
The grand jury met for the first time on August 11 but did not turn to the killing until Thursday, August 20. The press kept the story alive because McElroy’s death was the only news other than hog prices, predictions for the fall harvest and garden club meetings. After every headline—“Jury Work Begins,” “Grand Jury Slated to Meet Again Thursday,” “Grand Jury Reconvenes; McElroy Probe Started”—two sentences would be devoted to a new fact or two, followed by two columns rehashing the entire sequence of events. The articles continued to describe the crowd as surrounding the truck.
The grand jury subpoenas went out, and the recipients were eager to know who else was on the list. Those who had been outside the tavern at the time of the killing, but claimed not to have seen anything, were particularly nervous. They talked some about what was going to happen, but the discussions were generally superficial.
The first day, eight residents testified. Trena testified on Friday. She arrived with Alice Wood, Juarez, and McFadin, who was in a three-piece
suit, briefcase in hand, to face a throng of reporters and cameras on the courthouse steps. Never far from Trena’s side, McFadin was photographed and quoted extensively. Lest there be any doubt, he said that he “hadn’t accepted a dime” from Trena and didn’t intend to.
At a press conference after her testimony, Trena stated that she didn’t think anyone would talk, for fear of being killed. “I think if anyone would come forward with any information they would have to get out of town or be in constant danger. I think the whole town would do as they did to my husband.”
Trena’s claims of grand jury bias got a slight boost when a newspaper revealed that one of the jurors was married to Del Clement’s wife’s great-uncle.
In August and September, Skidmore continued to draw attention from the national media. Staff from “60 Minutes” showed up to begin researching their story, and a free-lance writer doing the Playboy article came to town. He wrote a melodramatic piece entitled “High Noon in Skidmore,” which angered the community by stating that the townspeople had hunted McElroy down like a coon and by portraying the town as a hick backwash.
People magazine published its article on September 14. It began: “Anyone looking for Ken Rex McElroy could usually find him at the D & G Tavern in Skidmore.” McFadin gave his usual quotes about the immorality of the people taking the law into their own hands, but this time he proclaimed, “The whole county is guilty.”
Newsday published its piece, entitled “A Town Bully Meets His Match,” which described his vehicle (the shiny Silverado) as a “battered pickup” and McElroy as a “hulking 230-pound farmer.” The article said that several “stony faced citizens surrounded him in the bar” and “stared him down in a wordless sidewalk confrontation.” Newsday described the town as a “close knit, hardworking group of farmers” who, among other things, “appreciate good beer.”
47
The first two weeks of September were hot, a scorching continuation of August. The growing season for corn was coming to an end, and the green stalks and leaves were gradually turning yellow, from the bottoms up and the tips in. The cobs, encircled with rows of plump kernels, peeked out of their husks, and began to point out and gradually downward, as the moisture left the plant and the stalk withered. In a few weeks, the leaves and stalks would shade from yellow to burnt orange, then to a rusty brown.
The bean plants expired more subtly. About a foot and a half tall, and covered with dark green leaves, the plants spread across the fields, hiding the soil beneath a solid green carpet. The carpet faded unevenly, and the fields became a huge impressionistic canvas: deep emerald fading into lighter, more delicate green shades, and small splotches of bright yellow emerging beside the palest hues.
Judge Donelson had not yet finished with the community of Skidmore. Reporters had been hounding Baird for information on the Bowenkamp trial, and he had referred them, logically, to the official court records in Bethany. Judge Donelson, upset by the reporters (the one from Playboy in particular) crawling all over his domain, and perhaps concerned about what they might find, decided to close the files to the public.
Under Missouri law, criminal files were closed in cases where the defendant was arrested but not charged, or where the defendant was
charged but the case was later dismissed, or where the defendant was found not guilty. The rationale for the law was that the legal system should not maintain records of alleged misconduct of which a defendant was not convicted.
In this case, of course, McElroy had been charged, tried, and found guilty of a crime. But Donelson, relying on the technical status of the case, devised a way to twist the statute so that he could close the files. Because the motion for a new trial had not yet been filed or heard, and because no judgment had been entered by the court, McElroy technically had not yet been convicted. Since the case was thus still alive, it could be dismissed, and if it was dismissed, Donelson could argue that the records were sealed by statute. His only problem was that under Missouri law, the judge couldn’t dismiss the case. But, at least arguably, the prosecut
or could. Donelson telephoned David Baird and said that he wanted Baird to dismiss the case. Baird clearly understood that Donelson was seeking the dismissal in order to close the files. Although Baird was skeptical of his legal authority to dismiss a case after a jury verdict had been rendered, he bowed to the judge and filed a motion with the court reciting the facts of McElroy’s death and dismissing the case. Now, when someone sought the files, Donelson could point to Baird’s dismissal and say the law declared the files to be closed. Even if Donelson’s action perverted the intent of the statute, a journalist’s only recourse would be to file a lawsuit—in Donelson's court—to open the files. When that suit failed, the journalist could appeal the decision to the state supreme court.
Over the radio, almost incidentally, the townspeople learned that the case had been dismissed and the records closed. They were not particularly upset about the records, but to learn that the case against McElroy had been thrown out was galling. The judge had denied them their only victory against Ken McElroy; now in the eyes of the law, McElroy was not guilty of second-degree assault for shooting Bo Bowenkamp.
A vote of eight of the twelve members of the grand jury was required for an indictment to issue. Such a result was never very likely. The jurors knew all about Ken McElroy, and, in their view, if anybody was responsible for his being killed, the law was. Although Trena had identified Del Clement as the killer, no one else had backed her up, and she was as bad as Ken had been. Nobody was going to stand trial solely
on the basis of what she said. Even if someone else had corroborated Trena’s identification, if someone had cracked under pressure, an indictment would have been hard to come by. The man had got what he deserved.
On September 25, the final day of the grand jury session, Baird called a press conference to announce that the grand jury would issue no indictments in the McElroy case. He distributed a news release explaining that the grand jury had heard forty-five witnesses in more than eight days of testimony and had not found probable cause to return an indictment. Somewhat defensively, he stated that he had withheld no evidence from the grand jury.
Baird’s announcement brought the press running back to town. The longer nobody was charged in the killing, the more newsworthy the story became. McFadin took the lead for the family, saying that Mrs. McElroy was “disappointed,” but then she never expected the grand jury to indict anyone. Not only should Trena’s identification of Del Clement have been adequate for an indictment, he said, but he had also turned over to authorities the names of other people who claimed to have seen the shooting.
Baird defended the grand jury, saying that they had worked hard and could consider only the evidence that was presented to them. And in a statement that endeared him to the community, he criticized the press, saying, “I think the major misconception has been the idea that it was some sort of vigilante killing—a killing by a town, so to speak. The point of view many papers have taken from the very beginning is the vigilante-type killing. That is one area where we’ve disagreed. The idea that it was a vigilante killing makes a nice story, but I simply feel there is no evidence to confirm that.”
The grand jury action not only let Baird and the killers off the hook, at least temporarily, but the failure to indict also marked Skidmore as the town that killed the town bully. Editorial writers condemned the jury’s action as a continuation of the conspiracy of silence—as if the entire town had gone into the jury room and denied seeing anything and was, therefore, guilty of a vigilante action. Headlines that followed referred to “vigilante justice” and to the “public execution” that had occurred in Skidmore.
The St. Joseph Gazette led off with a statement that it “didn’t seem possible” that a grand jury could investigate the killing for two months and not indict anyone. The paper compared the shooting of Ken McElroy to the burning of Ray Gunn in 1981 and opined that “Missouri must not
get the reputation of a state where murder is tolerated.”
A Kansas City paper compared the killing with the assassination of Anwar Sadat and called it a “planned execution” that threatened the “destruction of the system of government we have fought for 200 years to maintain.” Saying that “the bullet that killed McElroy was a direct hit at the basis of democracy,” the paper called on someone in Skidmore to step forward and point the finger.
For the people of Skidmore, the most devastating editorial appeared on September 28 in the Maryville Forum. Attacking the St. Joseph Gazette because it criticized the grand jury for failing to do its job, the Forum said that the real problem was not the grand jury, which could act only on the evidence before it, but the townspeople who saw the killing and lied in front of the grand jury. After praising Baird for handling the matter so well, the editorial concluded, “For now any condemnation of the grand jury should be edged out by a chilling fear: citizens who take the law into their own hands are to be dreaded much more than the McElroys of the world.”
No harsher judgment could possibly have been delivered: The town was worse than Ken McElroy. What they had done to him was worse than what he had done to them.
The community’s only solace was that at least now, the crazy circus was surely over. There would be no more strange cars prowling the town, no more television cameras in the tavern, and no more cops out in the fields serving subpoenas. The grand jury didn’t indict anyone, so the story was finished, and the people could get back to farming and living their private lives. Perhaps the healing could begin.
Not long afterward, in a Kansas City shoe store, Q Goslee was talking with a salesman from Lawrence.
“Skidmore?” said the salesman, scratching his head. “Isn’t that where you shoot ’em out in the street?”
Later, on a vacation to the West Coast, Q registered at a motel in a tiny town in Oregon.
“Say,” said the clerk, “isn’t that where you killed the bully?”
“Yeah, that’s where it happened.”
“From what I read he sure had it coining. He must have been a helluva ornery guy.”
Q said nothing.
“Why did he carry on so long without the courts or the law taking care of him?”
“A lot of us wondered the same thing.”
When Kenny Weston, an alderman, wore his Punkin’ Show hat to a fair in Shenandoah, Iowa, a man approached him, saying, “You’re from Skidmore, huh? Isn’t that where you guys shot the bully? By God, from what I read, he sure had it coming.”
The approval of their countrymen only made matters worse. Most people in Skidmore didn’t enjoy being looked on as vigilantes, whether the man deserved to be killed or not.
48
By the first week of October, the fields of corn were russet armies of stiff, dried stalks. The once upright cobs now hung almost straight down, their golden silks a dirty brown, their brittle leaves rasping and rattling in the autumn winds.
The bean fields were now spectacular arrays of bright yellows and oranges. The greens had vanished, and the early patches of orange had faded to rust. Soon the leaves would begin to fall. In the timber bordering the fields, the trees and bushes shimmered red and gold and orange.
The evenings were cool, and a heavy fog sometimes crept in on the south wind. The vaporous mist draped the fields and collected in the troughs between the steep hills, making the roads dangerously slick.
For days, the mornings dawned gray and gloomy, the steady drizzle punctuated by bursts of rain. The fields stood wet and empty, abandoned to the clinging moisture.
Finally, the sun broke through, and its light illuminated the autumn leaves, many now in full color and beginning to fall. The hedge was still green, but the hackberry leaves radiated a light yellow, and the wild cherry was mixed with flaming reds and golds. Q sat on his porch and looked up at the translucent leaves on the tall linden tree, trying to predict which leaf would fall next.
Squirrels scampered down the trees and across the lawn, going about their business of burying walnuts for the winter. Q didn’t beli
eve, as some people did, that the squirrels would remember where they buried
each walnut. He had seen the animals sniffing uncertainly across January snow, and he had seen the nuts they had missed, or forgotten, shoot up as saplings in the spring.
Down the Valley Road, in the middle of the second curve, the two-story house stood empty and quiet. The windows were nailed shut, the yapping dogs and their cages were gone, and the weeds were beginning to grow in the drive where the pickups once stood. A hundred yards away, in the small house, eighty-four-year-old Mabel McElroy still lived with her youngest son, Tim. The once-sturdy body which had borne and raised fourteen kids and toiled in the harvest fields had grown frail and weak. Mabel had come home from the hospital a few days after Ken’s death, but her diabetes was worsening, and her respiratory system was failing. She spent most of her days sitting in a chair hooked up to an oxygen machine, with vials of medicine on the table next to her. Tim had told her that Ken had been shot and killed, but he spared her the details of how and why. She seemed to accept the news without wanting to know more. On some days, her mind slipped, and she would sit by the window looking for him.
In Broad Daylight (Crime Rant Classics) Page 40