Re: Bully’s Killing Is Unsolved, and R esidents Want It That Way

I started watching a bad movie based on this case. I  never finished. The
case is fascinating. The film was pedestrian.

Johne Cook
| http://raygunrevival.com | http://authorculture.blogspot.com |


On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 9:32 AM, Bruce Geerdes <[email protected]> wrote:

> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/us/16bully.html
>
> Town Mute for 30 Years About a Bully’s Killing
> By A. G. SULZBERGER
>
> SKIDMORE, Mo. — The murder of Ken Rex McElroy took place in plain view
> of dozens of residents of this small farm town, under the glare of the
> morning sun. But in a dramatic act of solidarity with the gunman,
> every witness, save the dead man’s wife, denied seeing who had pulled
> the trigger.
>
> The killing was a shocking end for a notoriously brutal man who had
> terrorized the area for years with seeming impunity from the law until
> he was struck down in a moment of vigilante justice. It was also the
> first major case for a young county prosecutor, not far removed from
> law school and just months into the job, who said he was confident
> that the case would be solved soon.
>
> But the silence of the townspeople held. Now, nearly 30 years later,
> that prosecutor, David A. Baird, is preparing to leave office with his
> first and most famous case still unsolved.
>
> No one has ever been brought to trial in Mr. McElroy’s death, and,
> although there is no statute of limitations on murder, most people
> around here suspect that no one ever will be.
>
> “Once the shroud of silence fell, there was going to be no one
> talking,” said Cheryl Huston, whose elderly father had been shot by
> Mr. McElroy and who watched the killing of Mr. McElroy from her
> family’s grocery store but, like the others, said she did not see the
> gunman. “They could have pushed and dug, pushed and dug and gotten
> nothing.”
>
> “We were so bitter and so angry at the law letting us down that it
> came to somebody taking matters in their own hands,” she said. “No one
> has any idea what a nightmare we lived.”
>
> As his long tenure comes to an end questions about the lack of
> resolution in the murder case — perhaps the most infamous in the area
> since Jesse James was shot nearby a century earlier — continue to
> follow Mr. Baird. He was charged with wading through the sensational
> details and moral ambiguities of the case to ensure that, in his
> words, justice was served.
>
> But justice is a loaded term in a case that challenges the usual
> assumptions of victim and perpetrator. And Mr. Baird, all these years
> later, is still unwilling to give his own view on whether justice was
> served even though — or because — the killer was never tried.
>
> “You could talk to everybody in this case, and they’d give you a
> different answer,” he said in an interview at his office in the red
> brick county courthouse in nearby Maryville. “I’m never going to
> answer that question. It’s never going to happen.”
>
> Richard McFadin, 87, a lawyer, now retired, who represented Mr.
> McElroy in numerous cases and, after the killing, his widow, said he
> believed there was enough evidence for a prosecution. He believes one
> of the gunmen was the suspect named by the widow. “The town got away
> with murder,” Mr. McFadin said.
>
> The police chief who oversaw the investigation, Hal Riddle, disagrees.
> He said that Mr. Baird pushed aggressively to bring a case to trial,
> but that investigators were never able to secure enough evidence to
> charge someone with a crime.
>
> “If we could have proved who done it, he would have prosecuted him,”
> said Mr. Riddle, 72 and also retired, who describes the case as the
> most frustrating of his career.
>
> The last three decades have been tough on this agricultural community
> of 342, about an hour and a half north of Kansas City. Like so many
> other small towns, Skidmore has shrunk inside itself, watching
> businesses close and residents depart.
>
> Perversely, the town’s share of tragedy has grown. Road signs bear a
> picture of a young man who disappeared nine years ago and is feared
> dead. A memorial in the tiny downtown park displays the name of an
> expectant mother murdered six years ago, her fetus cut from her womb.
>
> Even with these raw wounds, the memory of the nightmare surrounding
> Mr. McElroy — during his years of troublemaking and after a killing
> that many here feel was forced by an impotent criminal-justice system
> — continues to loom large.
>
> “After all these years, people talk about it still,” said Marla
> Messner, 37, a restaurant manager who remembers being hurried inside
> her home for safety anytime Mr. McElroy came to town. “I think it’s
> something that’s going to define this town forever.”
>
> Just months after Mr. Baird became county prosecutor — a post he was
> encouraged to take because “nothing exciting ever happens in Nodaway
> County”— he found himself in a courtroom for the first time with Mr.
> McElroy, who had shot an elderly Skidmore grocer in the neck with a
> shotgun. Known for stealing livestock, harassing women, destroying
> property and threatening lives, Mr. McElroy had been charged with
> numerous felonies over the years — his lawyer estimated at least three
> a year — but had never been convicted.
>
> The streak ended when a jury convicted Mr. McElroy of second-degree
> assault in the grocer’s shooting. A conviction should have been a
> victory for the people of Skidmore, but the jury set a maximum
> sentence of two years, and the judge, without protest from Mr. Baird,
> released Mr. McElroy on bond pending appeal. Mr. McElroy was quickly
> rearrested after he appeared in town with a rifle, but he was again
> released.
>
> When a court hearing was postponed, there was a meeting in town, with
> the mayor and the sheriff attending, to discuss Mr. McElroy.
>
> Within hours, Mr. Baird heard that there had been a shooting downtown.
> He was sure it was Mr. McElroy who had done the shooting. It was hours
> before he learned that it was Mr. McElroy who had been shot, sitting
> in the front seat of his pickup truck alongside his wife, after
> picking up some beer at the town bar. Bullet casings from two guns
> were found. As many as 60 people were reported to have been at the
> scene, but not one of them would say who had wielded the weapons.
>
> The local major-cases squad investigated, then the Federal Bureau of
> Investigation. Three grand juries heard evidence. But even after a
> federal prosecutor forwarded to Mr. Baird what he called “substantial”
> new evidence, no one was indicted. Instead of playing out in court,
> the details emerged in newspaper and magazine accounts, as well as a
> best-selling book, “In Broad Daylight: A Murder in Skidmore,
> Missouri,” which was later made into a television movie.
>
> Reached by phone, Mr. McElroy’s wife, who has since remarried and left
> the state, said she was not interested in talking about the case.
>
> Mr. McElroy has been dead for almost three decades now, a round number
> that has residents here bracing for the next round of visits by
> reporters. The bar that provided the backdrop for the shooting is
> closed and for sale for $20,000. The man identified by the widow as
> the main gunman recently died, something Mr. Baird raised in
> suggesting that the case may never be reopened.
>
> And Mr. Baird lost his first election, in the Democratic primary this
> year, by just 25 votes, a loss noted by The Kansas City Star because
> of his connection with the case. He said he was not at all
> disappointed to leave office with the case still unsolved. “My
> experience is that trying a case is not always good at bringing
> closure,” Mr. Baird said.
>
> As he packed up his office last week, he gave his successor a memo
> that listed a dozen or so unsolved cases in Nodaway County including,
> down toward the end, the killing of Mr. McElroy. “Just to be aware,”
> he explained.
>
> His successor, Robert Rice, already knew how Mr. McElroy died. He grew
> up hearing the story. And he has already asked the sheriff’s office to
> re-examine some of the unsolved cases. But not that one.
>
> “I don’t know if I will,” Mr. Rice said.
>
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