On July 10,1981, forty-seven-year-old Ken McElroy was sitting in his truck in Skidmore, Missouri with his wife, Trina, when the vehicle was struck by a hail of gunfire that seemed to come from all directions. Although there were nearly fifty witnesses to the shooting, they all claimed not to have seen the shooters, and none of them called an ambulance. Later, when asked why no one did anything to help McElroy or cooperate with investigators, the people of Skidmore all agreed, Ken McElroy got what he deserved.The story of Ken McElroy’s death captured the nation’s attention, primarily because it amounted to a modern-day lynching. However, while no one denies that McElroy’s death was murder, few people in and around Skidmore were interested in holding anyone accountable for the shooting. In fact, many seemed pleased to hear of McElroy’s death, which raised the question, how could someone become so hated by their neighbors that they’d be willing to overlook one of the most heinous crimes?Thank you to the Incredible Dave White of Bring Me the Axe Podcast for research and Writing support!ReferencesAssociated Press. 1981. "FBI enters Missouri shooting case." New York Times, July 18: 6.—. 1981. "Little chance of trial in 'town bully' shooting." St. Joseph News-Press, October 26: 1.Graham, O.E. 1968. "What is justice?" St. Joseph News-Press, July 19: 9.Hansen, Rose. 2018. Skidmore revisited. February 6. Accessed April 9, 2025. https://missourilife.com/skidmore-revisited-part-1-death-ken-mcelroy-2/.Loh, Jules. 1981. "Brute of Nordaway County: chilling rembeberances ." Kansas City Star, August 2: 1.MacLean, Harry. 1988. In Broad Daylight: A Murder in Skidmore, Missouri. New York, NY: Harper Collins.McGuire, Donna. 2001. "Two decades after bully's death, Skidmore still guards its secrets." Kansas City Star, July 10: 1.St. Joseph News-Press. 1968. "Dismissals to 2 more defendants in beating case." St. Joseph News-Press, July 11: 9.—. 1968. "Four now charged in beating of man, attack on woman." St. Joseph News-Press, June 14: 7.—. 1973. "Three charges against man." St. Joseph News-Press, September 22: 5.—. 1968. "Victim of assault testifies four men struck, kicked him." St. Joseph News-Press, July 4: 1.Stewart, Paul. 1981. "Grand jury disappoints lawyer." St. Joseph News-Press, September 26: 1.Stay in the know - wondery.fm/morbid-wondery.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: Who are the hosts and what is the podcast about?
Hey weirdos, I'm Osh. And I'm Elena. And this is Mormon.
This is morbid. It is morbid. We're fresh off a vacay. Yeah, we had a little vacay. We hit Disney for a day. We hit Disney. I met a bunch of people. I only met, I think, two.
Chapter 2: What was Ash and Drew's recent Disney vacation experience?
Yeah, because you went one day. Me and Drew rolled deep and we did... Five? Four days. We did four days. And one at Universal. We did the one because, yeah, we... Well, you have like a lot of kids.
And we wanted to redeem the Disney vacation. And guys... I didn't have a bad time. No. She had a good time. I did. Because I ended up like, I never, I don't do rides. It's just like not, and it's not me being an asshole. It's just not me.
Well, not everybody likes rides.
I've never liked rides. I've just never been a ride girl. I didn't go to theme parks as a kid. It just wasn't a thing.
Yeah.
And I don't like the feeling of your tummy flipping. It's just like people love that feeling and I get it. Literally my favorite feeling. Yeah, it's just not a feeling I enjoy. Like if you're in a car and even and you dip down and it gives that like whoop, I don't like that. Oh, sometimes on those bumps, I speed up for them. Yeah, see, I don't like that. And so I'm just that kind of person.
So usually I will do like the very chill, chill, chill rides. Yeah. And other than that, John is the ride guy. Ash is the ride person. The ride team. I know that, like, you know, Ash and Drew and John are going to take the reins. There's always an adult for each kid. And I'll hold all the shit, you know, and take the pictures. And you have to have that person. And I'm so good at that.
You're great at that. You're great at holding shit. But this time, my kids... Now the new Tiana ride opened up. I can't even express to you how fucking good this ride is. Well, here's the thing. If you know anything about me, you know I fucking love Princess and the Frog. She rides hard. I love Tiana. She's my favorite princess. She's great. That's my girl right there.
Yeah.
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Chapter 3: What are some useful travel and Disney trip hacks shared by the hosts?
It was so worth it because they used it several times.
No, it was smart.
And I was low-key making fun of you before we were going.
everybody was fucking parasol i saw so many people with parasols it's worth it you're with the trends so let me tell you if you're thinking about it it really does work and take this from somebody who's essentially translucent yeah and who has children who are also pretty translucent i'm translucent too and i didn't even burn this time i was so good about my sunscreen
you that's right oh as you should be a recommendation another one oh um that there's an elf like elf setting spray that has spf 45 that's all i use for face sunscreen because a lot of times when you do like the cream it gets in your eyes and shit this one spray it on your face good i spray it on my face probably like three four times throughout the day not a hint of a sunburn i love that so that's a good one even just for the summer so there you go
These are summer recommendations. That's our summer recommendation. I thought of something when I was there and I said, I got to tell the listeners. I got to tell everybody. I don't remember.
I'll post some. I went real ham with like preparing for this trip. Yeah. If I think of any like interesting hacks that I came up with, I'll be sure to post it for you guys just in case you have kids or are traveling or just traveling in general. Yeah.
you and drew capricorn so hard because like you have kid like a million kids so you had to get like 45 different things yeah it was just me and drew going yeah every day that i got home leading up to this vacation he had a new thing for our trip because we drove yeah so you have to be like prepared for that he got this is a little bit gross but i don't care he got these toilet seat covers
He got these toilet seat covers and you put them down and they like adhese to the toilet seat. It changes your going to the bathroom experience. I hate a public restroom to the point where like even in school, like in high school, I didn't like going to the bathroom. Yeah. Incredible. But yeah, I'll try to link the toilet seat covers.
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Chapter 4: What is the upcoming Pope conclave and why are the hosts interested?
Coming from the Disney community. No. You're like, just kidding. No, seriously. But for real, shut up.
But yeah, so that was good. We got some good stuff coming up that we can't tell you about yet. Fun stuff. But you will find out and it will be awesome. I think we say that every episode at this point. But it's coming. It's coming. Yeah. Manifesting it. And I think with that, we can probably, this has been a long intro. Yeah. We don't do those all the time, so sometimes it happens. You lived.
Hopefully. You lived. Hopefully. Gosh. Geez. Pouring out if you didn't. Oh, my goodness. But yeah, so, oh, quick little side quest. Are you going to talk about the post? Anyone else hyper fixated on the conclave coming up? The way I knew you were about to talk about the post. I know.
Did you see me call that?
I'm sorry.
I said, are we about to talk about the congolese?
I think it's wild that this happened like right after the new papa and ghost was announced. It's suspicious timing. It's crazy timing. I'll give it to you. But also, guys, and like this is no, I am not a religious person. You know this. I'm pretty clear by now. Honey, are you new here? If you're shocked by that, I don't know what to tell you.
But I'm hyper fixated on it because I feel like it's very gothic the way it all happens. It's very metal. Yeah. It is interesting. This whole conclave and the burning of the ballots and the black smoke and the white smoke and everybody waiting for that smoke to happen. Love it. Yeah. Love it. And if you want to bone up on the conclave. On your Pope knowledge. Hold on.
I'm going to look it up because I'm going to give you somebody that you should follow. I love this creator. To get all your the Pope games here.
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Chapter 5: Who was Ken McElroy and what is the significance of his story?
I have nothing to hide. My life is in the balance, and it shouldn't be.
I just want people to go back to who the victim is in this. It's not her.
Listen to episodes of Karen, The Retrial, exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+.
So today, we're going to be discussing a very strange, it's brutal at parts, and then has a wild ending case. Fun, question mark? Well, this is the death of Ken McElroy. Okay. But he was known as the town bully. Oh, okay. I don't want to tell you too much up front about what happens.
I would like to leave the ending for the moment it happens because you're just going to be like, what the fuck is going on? Okay. So I'm going to give you very little of what, I'm not going to tell you how this ends. Until the end. Just know that he dies. And that he was the town bully. All right. So this did happen. The act itself happens on July 10th, 1981. Okay.
When he, Ken McElroy, was about 47 years old. This took place in Skidmore, Missouri. That's all I'm going to tell you about the end of it. Let's start at the beginning now.
It's so funny that this is 1981 because when you said the town bully, for some reason that just read as like 1900s to me. Right, didn't it? Like 1904. Yeah. Yeah.
That's how I thought too, but it was in the 80s. Okay. Bully is a nice way to describe him, I would say. The town predator, the town monster, the town criminal, the town abuser, the town assaulter. He was pretty terrible.
Okay.
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Chapter 6: What was Ken McElroy’s early life and family background like?
Oh, no.
So the apple does not fall far from this tree.
Fourteen.
Yeah. Born during the height of the Great Depression. Ken's early life was a bit of a struggle, for sure. The whole family was. Tony McElroy had always had a lot of difficulty finding and kind of like maintaining work. But it was because of his attitude and explosive temper. Not just the depression. It wasn't because it wasn't available.
Oh.
According to author Harry McLean, the complete loss broke Tony, and he eventually just had to go back to working really low-paying construction and farming jobs in and around southern Missouri. Mm-hmm.
In the years that followed that, they continued having children and struggling to get by on Tony's very meager wages, moving from one rented home to another whenever things would become hard or unaffordable. When the four oldest McElroy boys became strong enough, they were put to work farming, clearing land. This allowed the family to finally settle down in a rented home in Skidmore, Missouri.
Skidmore is a wild name. I don't know why.
Skidmore is a wild name, and I feel like it's been featured in something that I saw lately.
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Chapter 7: How did Ken McElroy’s behavior and reputation evolve over time?
According to McLean, people whispered, quote, that he had raped a 14-year-old Quitman girl who became pregnant and died delivering twins at home because she couldn't afford to go to the hospital. Oh, my God. Yeah. About a year later, McLean went on to say Ken, quote, returned and raped her older sister, who ended up marrying one of his best hunting buddies.
What the fuck?
Yeah. Oh, that's terrible. He's a fucking monster, and it gets worse. The extent... These are rumors. These are all like things that are hard to verify. Right. But they are things that people were talking about and believed and they are reports of it. The extent of these, like how much is fact and how much is exaggerated as fiction for those specific rumors that I just talked about.
But what is true is that around 1960 or so, Ken started hanging out with a lot of young people. And he's a full-blown adult. Yeah, so much younger than himself. Yeah. During this period of his life, when Ken was about 21 or 22 years old, his best friend was reported to be a boy named Larry, who was at least a decade younger than him. That's not normal. Yeah.
Now, that relationship is strange, just as a friendship, but it was his relationships with younger women and girls that people around town were really concerned with.
Well, and I'm sure he used Larry to meet girls that young. To make them comfortable. Right. Right.
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Lamont's cousin's death is just one of many, and powerful forces are working to keep the truth buried. With never-before-heard interviews and shocking revelations, Death County PA pulls back the curtain on one of America's darkest institutional secrets. This isn't just another true crime story. It's happening right now. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Chapter 8: What criminal activities was Ken McElroy involved in before his death?
Now, according to McLean, this type of behavior was quite common for Ken, who always seemed to have young women hanging around him. Ew. He wrote, he would laugh and tell them they didn't have to worry about him. And this is gross. He would say, you're too old for me. I like my women young and tender. I like that young meat. Ew.
When Dave helped me with this research, he sent me a note on one of these that said, I'm so sorry for this when he sent that because he was like, I'm sorry you have to read this. Yeah, that's fucking heinous. In fact, it was known around Skidmore that although he was married to Aletta at the time, Ken would often carry on sexual relationships with girls as young as 12 or 13 years old. Oh my God.
Meaning... Not sexual relationships. Rape. Rape. He was raping 12 or 13 year olds and he was claiming like these are relationships. And poor Oletta too because I remember she was 14 when he got her. Yep. Ugh. One of those girls, who is referred to as Donna G, that's not her real name, would frequently sneak out of her house at night to meet him. She was probably excited. To be assaulted by him.
Yep. About a year later, according to McLean, Donna gave birth to Ken's first child, a son. Oh my god. Of all the crimes and awful behavior that the people of Skidmore were tolerating from Ken, the hardest for most of them to tolerate was his predatory behavior with young girls. Of course, I can't imagine.
And also his violence against women in general, because just giving you a heads up, he is a violent, abusive man. And I'm going to mention a couple of instances, and it will be difficult to hear. Not surprising. Not long after moving back to Skidmore from Denver, Ken started an affair with a 15 year old local girl named Sharon.
One evening in either 1959 or 1960, Ken and Sharon were arguing in his car when he pulled out a shotgun and held it to her face and said if she didn't shut up, he was going to blow her head off. Now, nobody knows if it was intentional or not, but the gun discharged. And it tore open the underside of Sharon's chin. Oh, my God. And it seriously injured her in the chin and neck.
It's incredible that she even lived. For the first time, the police were called and charges were filed. Good. Finally, against this fucking asshole. But as always... He found a way to avoid any consequences. How the fuck? So he explained things to Oletta, his wife, and Ken insisted he had to divorce her and marry Sharon in order to avoid being convicted for the shooting.
Because you can shoot your wife?
What? Aletta agreed, and the two were soon divorced, and Ken took up with the teenager, Sharon. Well, Aletta probably saw that as her ticket out. Yeah. Who soon gave birth to a son. And she's 15. They named Jerome. Yep. Jerome would eventually be taken in and raised by Ken's sister, Helen. Luckily.
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