One night in 1982 I watched a segment on the TV show 60 Minutes and never forgot it. In the town of Skidmore Missouri, while sitting in his pickup truck, the town’s nightmare, a bully by the name of Ken Rex McElroy, was shot to death.
During the segment I never once had any shred of sympathy for him.
Here is that segment.
Years passed. I never forgot that segment, done by my favorite correspondent, Morley Safer, one of the most intelligent, charming yet daring news reporters I had ever had the pleasure to watch. In the story above, it seems he was blatant about asserting McElroy’s death was a justified crime. But watch closely and it’s clear that he talked to people who wouldn’t go on record; he was no one to be superficial in his job.
Then, in 1992, I met one of McElroy’s relatives while working retail. She was a new hire, and for some reason I one night happened to mention the story. That’s when I learned that she was related to him, and I can’t remember the exact familial relationship, but she told me that my ideas about his death were justified.
I knew she was telling the truth. He was the reason she had moved as far away from Missouri as she could, the Eastern coast of the United States. Oh, he was long dead, but people remained who were brainwashed by the bully (clearly his wife and attorney were) and she had to get away from the situation. (1)
It’s hardly insignificant that his wife, a witness, either failed to identify McElroy’s killers, or, if she had, nothing came of it, and that in this report, her chance to go nationwide with names, she still didn’t do it.
There’s an active link about the town that got away with murder everywhere I look now, down amongst the click bait below news stories. I haven’t bothered.
Because there are only two reasons to keep this story alive: politics on the right, and politics on the left, in a deepening polarizing of the country and its issues.
The woman told me that there was much more to the complex reign of terror and the man who claimed the right to run it than anyone else in the country could know. She herself had been terrified of him, and would not go into detail except to mention that she was young. The fact did not escape me. Anyone who can terrorize children, know that they are doing it and even face charges but show no remorse, especially after beating the rap, is a serious threat to society. (2)
Police arrived that July afternoon to find the streets empty, and Ken Rex McElroy dead. At least two shooters were involved. Probably still others were there with firearms. McElroy had pushed people beyond the limits of the human brain, a place where it says, no more, and something visceral and primeval takes over. There’s no reason to believe any other motive. Anyone who has been relentlessly bullied can reach this point and will strike back with calculating lethality. This is basic human nature.
But Ken Rex McElroy was not killed because he was a bully. He was an established criminal who shot a man and didn’t intend for him to live through it. He’d fired at a pastor. Molested a child. Shot random animals and stolen others and the justice system utterly failed the people. He needed to go. Even though his wife won’t say a word against him, she too carried weapons to help him threaten a man’s life.
Was it justified? Can vigilantism ever be condoned?
I ask one question: how many people would he have gone on to hurt, traumatize or even kill? He was about to get another slap on the wrist when he died. That slap would undoubtedly have empowered the man. It’s a court, writing a blank check, to a known menace. It happens every day, across the country, always has. How many have died because of it? How many are yet to?
I do not approve of vigilante justice. Murder is a crime against God, man and nature. One doesn’t need to ask their higher power anything; it’s wrong.
Still, I cannot help feeling that at a time in history, destiny caught up to Ken Rex McElroy, and he got what he deserved, but more than that, his death served the greater good.
Even his family said it was so.
Notes
(1) Defense attorneys are forbidden to betray a client. Even if they know the client is guilty they can never divulge such a thing.
(2) A child abuser is almost always a sociopath, able to intellectually differentiate between right and wrong, but incapable of feeling guilty. As such, sociopaths are, under the wrong conditions, a severe danger to society. They will repeat offend until the day they die.
Memoirs of an American Christian 