Here is a story for the picked-on. There has been a lot of talk about bullying lately. Bullies at school. Bullies on the internet. A bully in – of all places – an NFL locker room. There is a national conversation about how to deal with bullies. And there is an equally important conversation about how to help the victims. I mention this because Harry Maclean’s In Broad Daylight is a bully story. It tells of a mean, hulking man, a man with guns and a taste for liquor and a touch of sociopathy who stalked and terrorized and threatened the meek farm-folk of the backward, back-road town of Skidmore, Missouri. This is the bully story to end all bully stories. The bully’s name was Ken Rex McElroy. He’s no longer a bully, because the town of Skidmore shot him down in the streets, and then refused to point fingers. That happened in 1981. To this day, the murder is open and unsolved. Even though it took place… Well, in broad daylight. Ken was the fifteenth child of poor tenant farmers. He dropped out of school in eighth grade and embarked on a lengthy career as a statutory rapist (he met the last of a string of wives when she was 12), a thief, and a rustler. He also attempted to murder two of his neighbors – Romaine Henry and Ernest Bowenkamp. He was charged with 21 felonies and was only convicted once – the result of a fancy Kansas City lawyer, a cowardly judge, indecisive prosecutors, and pusillanimous juries. The Skidmore “vigilante” shooting was national – even international – news when it took place. As tends to happen when complex news events are broken down into thirty-second to one-minute increments, the Skidmore shooting was reduced to its most shocking and sordid elements. MacLean’s book is an antidote to that. In Broad Daylight is an exhaustive account of McElroy’s reign of terror, leading to his violent end. It scrupulously refuses to take sides, even though no one paying attention is ever going to take McElroy’s side. MacLean spent years on this book, living in the area, talking to as many of the reticent denizens as he could. He also spoke in-depth to McElroy’s wives, to get – and weave – his side of the story into the narrative. MacLean begins his book with the end of his story. He immediately thrusts you into the final minutes of McElroy’s life, as he is ambushed as he sits in his truck, his wife at his side. Behind the driver’s seat, the rear window had been blown out. The driver’s door hung open, its window shattered. There obviously had been a hell of a lot of shooting, probably from more than one rifle, and much of it had been wild…Teeth and pieces of bone lay scattered on the dashboard in front of the steering wheel. Blood splotched the seat and formed a deep puddle on the floor; it had run over the edge of the doorjamb and collected in a purplish, jelly-like pool on the ground. The air was dead still… From there, MacLean takes you back in time, to McElroy’s hardscrabble upbringing, his troubled youth, and his nascent criminality. The arc of McElroy’s life bends from youthful rogue making trouble and making kids, to a fat slob who rolled around in a pickup with his rifle and his dog.True crime tends to be a somewhat disreputable genre. It wallows in misery and death; it is fueled by graphic and salacious details. The more blood, the better. In Broad Daylight is at a whole other level. It is ambitious, and consciously strives to reach the summit of literary crime reportage occupied by In Cold Blood. As in Capote’s masterpiece, MacLean spends as much time as the setting and the place as he does on the death of Ken McElroy. He marks time – as a local farmer would – by the turning of the seasons. The Great Planting Debate began in March and was in full swing by early April. The discussions went on continuously in the café, at the gas station, in the tavern, in the grocery store, on the sidewalk outside the post office, over the dinner table, inside the farmers’ heads. An early spring intensified the debate, because the farmers could start planting earlier, and the earlier they planted, the more time the corn would have for growing, and the bigger the yield would be. MacLean pays close attention to these details, many of them mundane. By the time I finished the book, I had the physical layout of the town well-formed in my mind. I felt like I could walk the streets; I believed I could spot the various stores and watering holes on sight. Eventually, some of the detail becomes overwhelming, and the book feels longer than necessary. There is a lot of repetition, because Ken McElroy’s life was a cycle. He’d commit a crime. He’d get arrested. He’d be released on bail. He’d scare all the witnesses. His charge would be dismissed. This wheel kept turning until someone – perhaps Del Clement, who was identified by McElroy’s wife – blew him away. In Broad Daylight is interested in much more than McElroy’s damaging existence. By the end, it is a marvelous exploration of systemic and communal breakdowns. MacLean is a lawyer, and proves a good guide to all the ways that the justice system could be abused by a sophisticated operator. (I can only assume that many of the laws that protected McElroy have since been changed. For instance, at the time, Missouri’s laws regarding bond did not seem to take into account a defendant’s potential dangerousness. I doubt that is still the case. Had McElroy’s bond been properly revoked, he wouldn’t have caused as much trouble as he did; and he wouldn’t have been shot). Throughout the book, you will continually shocked and outraged at the inability of anyone to stand up to McElroy, to hit him on the nose to back him down. It is breathtaking how he’d cowed everyone, including law enforcement officers. At one point, he stuck a gun in a police officer’s face, and never picked up a charge. One of the refrains you hear from the Skidmore residents, time and again, is how the “system” failed them. By the time I read the last page, however, I was convinced they’d failed themselves. This was a community problem. The problem being that their community sucked. Skidmore is a tiny farming town, a place certain politicians would call “real America.” These are self-reliant people. They don’t like governmental intrusions. They don’t like governmental institutions. Their little “town” lacked basic services, such as a full time marshal. They rolled with guns and relied on those guns. Instead of banding together in the face of McElroy’s assaults, each family entrenched themselves. Just about the only thing the community ever did together was keep silent about who gunned McElroy down. The fate of Ken McElroy was the obvious result of Skidmore’s values. If you don’t respect civil institutions, if you don’t try to make them work, then of course they are going to fail. If you elect a weak prosecutor or a weak judge, then you are going to let criminals who go free. If you create a town in which everyone lives in their own bubble and minds their own business, then you are susceptible to falling one by one. Skidmore’s mentality naturally meant that in order to take care of McElroy, a private citizen would have to use a gun. The citizens of Skidmore deeply resented the media invasion following McElroy’s death. They felt that they were being unfairly maligned, and that all the facts hadn’t been told. Having read MacLean’s comprehensive tale, I think all the facts are out. And Skidmore had good reason to resent the media. I wouldn’t want the rest of the world to know this is my town either. They were embarrassed. They should have been.
On July 10, 1981, as the residents of Skidmore, Missouri watched, Ken McElroy was shot to death. When the police interviewed the witness, their statements were more or less identical,“Where were you when he was shot?”“Standing in front of the tavern.”“Did you see anything?”“No, I didn’t see a thing. I heard something, a couple of shots and then I hit the ground. There were more shots and, by the time I got up, it was all over.”There were forty-five witnesses to the shooting and none of them saw anything. Of course that was impossible, most of them knew who shot McElroy.In a news report about the killing, the announcer reported the Ken was “the most hated and feared man in Nodaway County.” Even the police and at least one judge were afraid of him. He had a history, he robbed, raped, burned (as in committed arson), and shot the citizens of Skidmore, Missouri. If anyone pressed charges, while waiting to go to trial, his lawyer would delay the trail as long as possible and McElroy would terrorize the witnesses. In one case, the bedroom window of a witness faced the road. He and his wife would wake to find a bright light flashing around the walls. When the husband would peek out the window, he say McElroy’s car parked on the road. As a result of these tactics, many times witnesses changed their stories or simply disappeared. Often the victims trying to get justice felt isolated because everyone was too afraid of McEroy to support them.With all this it is easy to see how the townspeople felt the only way they could get justice was to take matters into their own hands. And so they did. The media called the shooting a vigilante killing which the town objected to, and in the strictest sense of the word it wasn’t, but still …… there is no denying the fact that some people made themselves judge, jury and executioner.MacLean interviewed the people of Skidmore, he also consulted interviews that were taken right after the shooting, by a person who was not law enforcement. We get the full life story of Ken McElroy, MacLean also takes us through the year so we get a feel for the type of community it was. He also explains the idiosyncrasies of Missouri law, which is another reason people may have felt McElroy was getting away with his crimes. The fear and inaction of some people may have also fueled the towns peoples frustration and while you may not agree with their actions, you can certainly understand it.One person I felt sorry for, which some may not understand or agree with was McElroy’s wife Trena. I feel she is another of Ken’s victims, her actions after he was killed are understandable and can be explained.I enjoyed this book and recommend it to true crime fans.
Do You like book In Broad Daylight (2006)?
I remember hearing about this story years ago, and when Oprah had the family and the townspeople from Skidmore, MO on her show. What was so mind boggling about this story is how the people of Skidmore did something that most people have a hard time doing~~keeping their mouths shut!Ken Rex McElroy was Skidmore's worst nightmare, and after all his hellish ways, bullying, shooting, terrorizing, raping and drinking and beating up on women, the town had had enough and so on July 10, 1981 they took the law in their own hands and shot and killed Ken. If you've never read this true-crime novel, you most definitely need to add it to your list. No wonder why this book won so many awards. This is one of the most horrifying novels I've ever read, outside of the Ted Bundy story which gave me nightmares, even though I knew Ted was executed. I have to say, Skidmore did the right thing. Ken was the devil himself. Wowwwww, what an incredible story. Outstanding read for any true-crime buff!
—Kimberly Hicks
In Broad Daylight: A Murder in Skidmore, Missouri by Harry N. MacLean (Harper & Row 1988) (364.15). This is the real deal right here, folks: nonfiction that a novelist couldn't propose with a straight face. On July 10, 1981, a man named Ken Rex McElroy was shot and killed on main street in his hometown of Skidmore, Missouri. Forty five of his fellow townspeople watched, but none ever admitted to seeing what happened. How could something like this happen? Ken McElroy was the town bully. He was a full-time thief. He intimidated. He shot people. He broke his wife's face with a rifle barrel. He committed rape. There was probably not a crime he did not commit, yet he got away with all of it. It appears that there was a tacit agreement between the witnesses to McElroy's execution that his death was necessary and that, as far as they were concerned, no crime had been committed. It has been over thirty years since the shooting, but no one has ever been conclusively identified the shooters. I'll file this one under “truth stranger than fiction.” My rating: 7/10, finished 1/27/15.
—David
A crushing disappointment. Years ago I bought his previous book and it was superb so I was chuffed to find this one available on my Kindle. However, it was clearly never edited or checked once it was formatted as an e-book. There were these strange big gaps in the text on almost every other page and then these random headings would appear on the following page such as In Broad Daylight 11 or 12 Harry N Maclean. Very, very annoying. Words were replaced by the wrong ones such as be when it should have been by. The number 450 was replaced by 4S0, the word one was repeated for no reason. I got 7% in and 175 was replaced by 17S and it was enough for me.Authors, PLEASE look at your work when it's been formatted to check what you're releasing in your name is up to the standard of the printed word because this was clearly not checked.
—Lynda Kelly
