Читать книгу Murder In The Heartland - M. William Phelps - Страница 19

By approximately 3:18 P.M., Becky Harper was getting worried about her daughter. She hadn’t heard back from Bobbie Jo after their last conversation, which Harper believed was interrupted by a customer who wanted to purchase one of Bobbie Jo’s rat terriers. A law enforcement official later said Bobbie Jo had even told Harper the person’s name.

“Darlene Fischer.”

Harper needed a ride to the garage to pick up her truck. But where was Bobbie Jo? What was taking her so long? Why wasn’t she answering her phone?

Something was wrong.

According to law enforcement, at around the same time, Lisa Montgomery, posing as Darlene Fischer, was inside the house with Bobbie Jo. They were in the den, a room off to the left after you walked in, talking about several rat terriers Bobbie Jo had for sale. What wasn’t clear later would be how Bobbie Jo reacted to meeting up with Lisa on that day, rather than with a woman named Darlene Fischer, whom she thought she had never met.

“It seems clear to me, but we don’t know for certain,” that same law enforcement official said, “that Lisa Montgomery likely knocked on the door and just introduced herself as herself, maybe playing like she was ‘in the neighborhood.’”

If that were the case, Bobbie Jo would not have felt threatened in any way. She and Lisa had met and talked fairly regularly online. Bobbie Jo was under the impression Lisa was pregnant, too; and Lisa knew, of course, Bobbie Jo was expecting in a matter of weeks. Perhaps Lisa told Bobbie Jo she was just stopping by to say hello and wanted to swap stories as expectant mothers often do.

She was born Bobbie Jo Potter on December 4, 1981. That same year, Skidmore was on the verge of moral collapse. Not because the town’s soybean or corn crop had dried up from the little bit of rain the region somehow endured, or the pig farmers had lost herds to disease. No. If that were the case, those problems could be dealt with agriculturally, or even governmentally, with funding and grants.

Instead, Skidmore’s biggest problem was an event that would set an eerie precedent for some twenty years to come.

In 1981, a man had been running through Skidmore causing chaos and havoc. Ken Rex McElroy, a bull of a man with a beefy chest, tough jawline, and “I-don’t-care-about-anybody-but-myself” attitude, had bullied his way through life in the same fashion an obnoxious senior in high school might torment a few chosen freshmen. The only difference was, McElroy beleaguered an entire town.

In fact, McElroy had terrorized not only Skidmore, but much of western Missouri for years. Locals had complained about his taking what he wanted, abusing the women in his life, drinking, fighting, shooting people, burning down houses, intimidating witnesses called to testify against him, and seemingly always finding a way to escape the mighty sword of the law, simply because people—judges and prosecutors included—feared his fury.

No one, it seemed, could catch McElroy committing a crime; thus he continually found a way to evade prosecution, having been arrested seventeen times without spending a night in jail.

On July 10, 1981, McElroy’s violent run finally ended. Several townspeople, in an act of congregated and choreographed vigilantism, unloaded round after round of ammunition into his head and chest, killing him almost instantly, as he sat in his pickup truck alongside his wife, Trena, in downtown.

The brutal crime, immortalized in the bestselling book and movie In Broad Daylight, gave Skidmore a bit of unfortunate, violent notoriety that contradicted the true soul of the town.

McElroy pushed his luck. The breaking point for townsfolk came after he beat a reported twenty-two criminal counts in court, but was convicted of an assault for shooting a helpless, seventy-one-year-old town grocer whom he had intimidated and threatened for months.

Law enforcement had seen enough; the judge ultimately sentenced McElroy to two years in prison.

Shortly before he was murdered, Skidmore residents were astonished to learn that instead of going directly to prison, McElroy showed up in town hours after he was convicted. Apparently, he had been “freed on bail during a twenty-one-day appeal” process.

People were dazed. They couldn’t believe it. After all he had done, everyone he had hurt, here was Ken McElroy, at last being sentenced, yet escaping justice one more time.

On the afternoon he was murdered, McElroy walked into the D&G Tavern downtown, as he had many times before, proudly displaying what was said to be “an assault weapon.” After purchasing “a six-pack of beer, cigarettes” and a package of acid relievers, McElroy and his wife walked out the door and sat in his Silverado truck.

McElroy seemed to be patronizing an entire town by showing up after being sentenced. He was gloating, once again intimidating the people who had wanted him to pay for his crimes.

Locals who had heard McElroy was back in town gathered at the local Legion Hall a few blocks from the D&G.

Dan Estes, the local Nodaway County sheriff, was at the meeting, too, he later said on a radio program, trying to get a handle on what had become a mob mentality. But when he left, reports claimed, thirty or more angry residents, all armed, walked down to the D&G.

As the mob came around the back of the storefront, McElroy’s wife, just getting into his truck, asked, “What are they doing?”

McElroy was at a loss for words.

“They got some guns,” Trena screamed, looking around.

“Get in the truck,” McElroy said, starting the vehicle and lighting a cigarette.

One shot rang out, hitting McElroy in the head. After that, another…this time hitting him in the chest…then another…and another.

As McElroy bled to death, his foot hit the accelerator of his truck and raced the engine.

Thirty-five to forty-five townspeople reportedly watched the murder take place and later refused to talk about it to anyone, including law enforcement. McElroy’s wife, who was sitting next to him in the truck as he was shot to death, came out of it untouched.

One resident later called McElroy’s killers heroes, comparing them to the inventors of penicillin.

The McElroy slaying was the first of a set of bizarre and unusually rare murders in Skidmore. In 2000, a local woman, Mary Gillenwater, was reportedly stomped to death by her boyfriend. Months later, a twenty-year-old, Branson Perry, vanished after leaving his house one afternoon. Law enforcement speculated Perry had been abducted by a local convicted child pornographer, but to date, the case remains unsolved.

Sixty-four-year-old Jo Ann Stinnett, Zeb and Bobbie Jo Stinnett’s aunt, was Mary Gillenwater’s grandmother. Branson Perry was her grandson. Such is life in small-town Skidmore.

“People will ask,” Jo Ann told a reporter later, “‘What’s wrong with Skidmore?’ But it’s not Skidmore’s fault. I love Skidmore.”