Ken McElroy: The Bully Who Met His Match

It’s 1981. A rural and sleepy American town gathered together, a community united under one banner. The car park rings with the unmistakably deep clink of a shotgun loading before all Hell breaks loose. This was the town of Skidmore; a town deadset on ridding themselves of a pestilence that had brought them to their knees.

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On the other side of the coin was Ken McElroy; a man who’d been born into abject poverty. He was fifteenth in a line of sixteen children born to Tony and Mabel McElroy, but by the end of things, he would become the most infamous McElroy to walk the streets of America.

He dropped out of school when he was only fifteen years old, not to work or to help support his family but to learn a trade. Ken was a burgeoning criminal, testing the waters and dipping his toes into the world of robbery and cattle rustling.

By the time Ken was a grown man, he stood six feet two inches tall, had thick, burly hair and sideburns and was known locally to be a heavyweight criminal with a womanizing mean streak.

“He didn’t have a bank account, didn’t have a Social Security number, he didn’t read,” Author Harry MacLean later wrote in his book about Ken. “How did this uneducated person – how is he able to outwit the criminal justice system for twenty years?”

That question has a complicated answer, the first part of which comes quite easily. His name was Richard Gene McFadin, a boisterous and quick-witted defense lawyer who would represent Ken on the rare occasion that he did see the inside of a courtroom.

“Best client I ever had,” Richard later spoke to the press. “He was punctual, always said he didn’t do it, paid in cash and kept coming back… He told me he would pay me whatever I needed to keep him out of jail.”

For twenty years, Ken stole grain, gasoline, alcohol, antiques and livestock from the community around him. A total of twenty-one charges were brought against him, but Ken’s lawyer could only protect him so far and there were times when Ken had to look out for himself.

Ken had a way of being persuasive. When his reputation wasn’t enough to keep people from filing charges against him, Ken would pay them a visit, often repeatedly. He was known to sit outside people’s houses in his car for hours at a time. He would make threats to family members and friends. He would more often than not bring a gun.

The prosecution had a hard time making anything stick, especially when their witnesses would suddenly either drop their charges or change their stories.

It looked like Ken had the town of Skidmore in an iron-clad grip.

That was especially true when it came to the women and young girls of the community. Ken had a total of ten children with a slew of different mothers, but very few of those mothers were actually willing participants.

His last wife, Trena McCloud, was only twelve years old and still in eighth grade when Ken barged his way into her life. He was thirty-five years old when he began sexually assaulting Trena and there was nothing the young girl could do to stop it. When she fell pregnant at the age of fourteen, however, Ken realized that he was potentially about to get into legal trouble.

To avoid statutory rape charges, Ken demanded that Trena marry him, but that plan hit a snag along the way. Trena was still a minor and needed permission from her parents in order to get married. Needless to say that when Trena’s parents found out that it was Ken McElroy that wanted to marry their daughter, they were completely against it. They refused to give permission and hoped that that was the last time they would ever see Ken McElroy.

But Ken had a way of getting what he wanted and it always came at the cost of those around him.

Ken then snuck his way over to the McCloud household and set a fire. The blaze completely demolished the home, but to make sure that he was getting his point across, Ken shot the family dog for good measure.

This was their warning and a promise of much more to come if they didn’t hand their daughter over to Ken.

The McClouds reluctantly signed the papers and Trena and Ken were married.

After that, Trena dropped out of school and went to live with Ken and his second wife Alice, who he had to divorce in order to marry Trena. The three of them shared a house while they waited for Trena to give birth and then the women made a daring escape. Desperate to be rid of Ken, Alice and Trena wrapped the newborn baby up and ran away to Trena’s family.

Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for Ken to track them down and bring them back to his house. After that, he waited until Trena’s parents were away to burn their house down again and to shoot their new dog so they wouldn’t get any more ideas about helping out their daughter.

Trena then went to the police and told them what Ken had done to her and to her family. He was charged with arson, assault and statutory rape, but was then released on a 2,500 dollar bail.

Instead of focusing on his defence, Ken left that bit to his lawyer and set his sights on tracking down Trena and her baby, who’d been placed into foster care in the attempt to protect them from Ken.

And somehow Ken managed to track them down again.

He began sitting outside the foster home that had taken Trena in for hours at a time and on at least one occasion approached the home to speak with her foster parents. He told them that he was willing to make a trade. “Girl for girl” were the words he used and then he went on to explain that he knew who their daughter was and what way she came home from school. 

“Hand Trena and the baby over or I’ll go after your daughter” was the warning, but the foster parents daringly refused and filed charges against Ken instead.

This didn’t deter Ken, however. He had over two decades of getting away with things behind him that had bolstered his confidence and had taught him that he could get away with anything. He eventually managed to wrangle Trena out of the system and back into his home, but by then he was also dealing with even more charges.

On July 27th, 1976, local farmer Romaine Henry approached Ken about shooting weapons on Romaine’s property. Instead of being apologetic, however, Ken did the unthinkable and shot Romaine twice in the stomach with a shotgun.

Romaine miraculously survived the attack and filed charges against Ken. Ken, of course, denied everything and used the time in between court dates to sit outside Romaine’s property to try and intimidate him. Ken was spotted there at least 100 times.

Romaine, however, held strong, but in an unbelievable twist in the case Ken’s lawyer, Richard Gene McFadin, revealed Romaine’s criminal history. Romaine had a petty conviction from thirty years ago and somehow this piece of information was enough to ruin Romaine’s reputation with the jury and to acquit Ken.

Ken had literally just gotten away with attempted murder and this was not something he was going to forget any time soon.

Four years later, with the next generation of burgeoning criminals growing up fast, one of Ken’s children got into an argument with a store clerk after trying to steal some candy. In retaliation, Ken began stalking the Bowenkamps, the family who owned the store.

The tensions between the two families reached their peak when Ken confronted seventy-year-old Ernest Bowenkamp with a shotgun behind the store. During the struggle that followed, Ernest was shot in the neck.

Miraculously, Ernest survived and was able to tell his story. Ken was arrested and charged with attempted murder yet again, but the town of Skidmore had been down this road before.

The attempt on Ernest’s life was a turning point. Almost every member of the community had tried to stand up to Ken at some point in time and most of them had filed charges against him that had gone absolutely nowhere.

After Ken was released on bail yet again, he went to a local bar with a rifle equipped with a bayonet and began drinking. The more he drank, the more he bragged about the punishment he would dole out onto Ernest Bowenkamp.

The community knew that Ken meant business. They organized a meeting with the local sheriff to ask for advice on what could legally be done to stop Ken’s rampage. The sheriff suggested that the community form a neighborhood watch and advised against directly confronting Ken.

The sheriff then did something rarely seen in cases like this one. He then got into his police cruiser and drove straight out of town. He did this knowing that the men sitting in that meeting that day had just received word that Ken was already out drinking in the pub.

Could the sheriff have known what was about to happen? Was there anyway that he possibly didn’t? Was there anyone in the small community of Skidmore who would find him at fault for walking away that day?

After the meeting with the sheriff, around fifty members of Skidmore’s community made their way over to the local bar. Ken was already fully drunk and up to his eyeballs with liquid confidence. He bought another six pack of beer before ordering Trena out into his pickup truck. Ken followed behind her and got into the driver’s seat.

Perhaps he’d already noticed the angry glares the townsfolk had been sending his way. Perhaps he was still too confident in himself and his lawyer to think anything would actually come of them.

Several shots filled the air of the car park that day, only two of which actually hit Ken, but they were enough to kill him. Trena remained unharmed in the passenger seat of the truck and despite there being around fifty witnesses there on the scene, no one had seen anything. Nobody called for an ambulance and nobody tried to help Ken.

Ken had just been killed in broad daylight, but even the DA didn’t feel the need to press charges. He was buried in Memorial Park Cemetery and Trena settled a wrongful death case against several members of the community out of court for 17,600 dollars.

“Those were fathers and grandfathers on the street in Skidmore that day,” Highway Patrol trooper Richard Stratton later said. “Ordinary, hardworking people. They did what they did because we didn’t do our job. Then they went home and kept their mouths shut and kept them closed all these years.”