Authors: Harry N. MacLean
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 doors, 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. It reminded her of the pickup in the television show "The Fall Guy," with the 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 the other 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 come and get her. Trena had been a mess, a whirling, bloody, blond apparition, and she blurted out the story in spasms of words and sobs, her eyes still wild with fear for herself. The people in the bank had tried to lure her into a back room and kill her, Trena had said, and they might still be coming out to the farm to get her.
Several of McElroy's sisters, who lived in surrounding towns and farms, came to the farm immediately when they learned of the killing. They found Tonia in such bad shape, crying and sobbing uncontrollably, that they took her and Oleta, Ken and Trena's four-year-old daughter, to Maitland, away from the scene, and tried to calm them down. Tonia wasn't in much better shape when Alice found her-her body was convulsed in wrenching sobs, and she was absolutely inconsolable.
Ken, Jr." sat in a corner of the farmhouse living room by himself and cried softly. Juarez, a tough guy like Ken who never showed his feelings, took his bike a few hundred yards down the road to Tim's house and rode in circles in the driveway for hours.
Someone called and warned them that it might be dangerous to stay around the farm-that some of the townspeople might be coming out to the house-so they left, vowing to come back that night to claim the family possessions. After dark, with the younger kids parceled out to Ken's sisters, Tim, Alice, Jim, Juarez, and the older girls returned with two trucks and a horse trailer. They worked through the night moving the personal items and furniture to Faucett, where Trena could retrieve them later. They made three trips that night, hauling items out of the darkened house, loading them silently onto the vehicles, and creeping down the drive to the gravel road.
By Saturday morning Tonia had calmed down somewhat. She and the boys were watching TV around noon when news of the killing came on. A picture of their father with a thick, fleshy face and cold eyes staring out under heavy black eyebrows appeared on the screen, while the announcer recounted his reputation as the most hated and feared man in Nodaway County.
The newscast also showed a photograph of the killing scene that would later become a part of almost every story that was written or produced about the incidenta close-up of the driver's side of the Silverado. The window in the driver's door was shattered, and the shards of glass around the edges framed the side of the tavern and the D & G sign. Through the window, two people could be seen examining the building for bullet holes. The right edge of the picture showed the bullet holes in the rear window behind the driver's seat. The upholstery was splotched with a wide, dark spill of blood. The television cameras had arrived at the scene just as the truck was being towed away, and the station replayed the footage of the Silverado hanging by a hook from the back of the truck, shot full of holes and looking, as it would later be described, as if it had been the target in a shooting gallery.
By the time Alice realized what was happening and got over to turn off the TV, Tonia was hysterical and Ken, Jr." had burst into tears. That afternoon, when she couldn't calm Tonia, Alice took her to a doctor, who prescribed tranquilizers for her. By evening, Tonia finally fell asleep and was put to bed.
On the morning of July 10, 1981, Highway Patrolman Dan Boyer was heading north on Highway 71, only a mile or so out of St. Joseph, when the call came over the radio to return to Troop H headquarters immediately. When Boyer pulled in a few minutes later, the dispatcher explained that someone had called in a report that Ken McElroy had been shot and killed on the main street of Skidmore. Boyer froze for a second, and then shook his head. Probably just another one of the weird calls the patrol got all the time, he thought, as he walked back to the patrol car. Who would have the guts-or be crazy enough-to go up against McElroy with a gun? Skeptical but curious, Boyer headed back out north on Highway 71, driving without lights or siren and barely exceeding the speed limit.
Boyer was 32 years old, a stocky man of medium height with short brown hair and brown eyes. He lived with his wife and two kids in a small town in Worth County, bordering Nodaway to the east. Boyer liked the people and the country life, but most of all he loved being a patrolman.
Many people in northwest Missouri considered the Missouri State
Highway Patrol the best law enforcement agency in the area. All the patrolmen had survived six months of rigorous training, and many of them, including Boyer, had college degrees. Patrolmen drove the fastest cars with the fanciest equipment, and they carried the most firepower. They projected a crisp, professional look with their tailored blue wool uniforms, black ties, and patent leather Sam Brown belts. Patrolmen were trained to be gentlemen cops-tough but even-handed, polite but firm, treating citizens with respect but always retaining control of every situation. As a matter of policy, they were never assigned to areas where they had grown up or lived before joining the patrol.