Every once in a while I stumble upon a story that leaves me thinking wow there is no way this is true. This story is one of those. From stories of the past to some a little more present dark and twist might be an understatement. If you read the title you know what town this is. If you haven’t well it’s Skidmore Missouri. This town puts the misery in Missouri.
Skidmore is a city in Western Missouri. The population in the latest census is 245 people. When you look up this town everything that it’s known for is not good. Not good at all. We use Wikipedia for a lot of stuff and you know this place is pretty dark based on it’s Wikipedia. It’s legit the shortest Wiki page I have ever seen. There are multiple major stories this town has seen I’m not even sure where to begin. Talking with a friend from near the area he suggests starting with the town bully.
The town bully is officially known as Ken Rex McElroy. He was born in 1934 the 15th of 16 kids born to a poor migrant tenant farming couple Tony and Mabel. He dropped out of school at 15 and was known as a thief, cow rustler, and womanizer. For over 20 years he was suspected of being involved in theft of anything from grain to gas to booze to livestock. Somehow was never charged in any of the 21 convictions. He ended up having more than 10 kids with multiple women.
In the ’60s and ’70s, he was more than the town bully and often referred to as a dictator. He ran the town from everything I have read and heard. He legit raped and pillaged for over 2 decades. If he thought you were pretty you were now his. It didn’t matter if you were 12 or older. He would steal whatever, whoever, whenever, and if you didn’t like it, watch out. He stole a 12-year-old girl that he did terrible things to and married and made her have his child at 14. The parents fought back he stalked them, burned their house down, and killed their pets. When the girl escaped and went back home he did the same exact thing to that family again and took her back.
Just like myself, you are thinking how in the heck could he do this? He had such a stronghold over anyone who wanted to press charges. He had a mob-connected lawyer, he would harass you like no other. He would stalk you, shoot you anything he wanted and so feared the police wouldn’t do anything. There is a story that in the summer of 1973 he was arrested for arson, assault, and statutory rape. He was released on a 2500 bail. His very young wife and their maybe fled and were put into foster care in a nearby town. When he got out he sat outside the foster home for hours at a time. He then told the foster family that they would trade him a girl for a girl so he could get his child back. He even threatened the foster family as he knew where their biological daughter went to school and which bus she rode. A few weeks before the dust settled on this he then shoots a farmer twice with a shotgun after the farmer told him to stop shooting on his property. He was charged with assault with intent to kill. He was acquitted after some locals came to his rescue.
1980 McElroy had a daughter who got into trouble stealing some candy at a local store. So what does he do? He stalks the older couple that owned the store. He then goes into the back of the store and shoots the owner twice in the neck. He survived and McElroy was arrested and charged with attempted murder. McElroy was convicted at trial of assault but freed on bail pending his appeal. Immediately after being released at a post-trial hearing, McElroy went to the D&G Tavern, a local bar, with an M1 Garand rifle with a bayonet attached, and made graphic threats about what he would do to Bo Bowenkamp. This led to several patrons deciding to see what they could legally do to prevent McElroy from harming anyone else.
McElroy's appeal hearing was again delayed. On the morning of July 10, 1981, townspeople met at the Legion Hall in the center of town with Nodaway County Sheriff Dan Estes to discuss how to protect themselves. During the meeting, McElroy arrived at the D&G Tavern with Trena. As he sat drinking at the bar, word got back to the men at the Legion Hall that he was in town. Sheriff Estes instructed the assembled group not to get into a direct confrontation with McElroy, but instead seriously consider forming a neighborhood watch program. Estes then drove out of town in his police cruiser. The citizens at the meeting decided to go to the tavern en masse; the bar soon filled completely. After McElroy finished his drinks, he purchased a six-pack of beer, left the bar, and entered his pickup truck.
While sitting in his truck, McElroy was shot at several times but hit only twice — once by a centerfire rifle and once by a .22 rifle. In all, there were 46 potential witnesses to the shooting, including his last “wife”, who was in the truck with her husband when he was shot. Nobody called for an ambulance. Only the wife claimed to identify a gunman; every other witness was either unable to name an assailant or claimed not to have seen who fired the fatal shots. The DA declined to press charges, and an extensive federal investigation did not lead to any charges either. Missouri-based journalist Steve Booher described the attitude of some townspeople as "he needed killing.” The wife filed a 5 million wrongful death lawsuit against the town and they settled for 17,600. There was a movie, In Broad Daylight made about this as well as several books and news reports.
Well, that’s enough craziness for one town, right? Well yeah but there is more.
20 years or so pass and this town gets back on the radar.
In April of 2001, a young man walked out of his house and told a friend he had to put some jumper cables into a shed outback. Then vanishes. The young man's name is Branson Perry. He worked several different jobs after graduating high school and was living with his father Bob. He suffered from tachycardia, a condition that made his heart race excessively. He was a black belt in Hapkido. Which is Korean martial arts. So as the story goes he invited his friend Jena over to his house to help clean the residence as his father, Bob Perry, who had recently been hospitalized, was due to return home. At this same time, two other unnamed men were outside the residence working on Bob's car, which needed a new alternator. At approximately 3:00 p.m., Perry told Jena he was going to take a pair of jumper cables outside to a shed adjacent to the house. This was the last time he was seen. They searched everywhere and were unable to get any clues. Nobody had seen him or heard from him. Even the jumper cables were missing. Two weeks later they are found just outside the door. There were talks that he started using drugs recently. The rumor was he owed drug dealers money and they took him but nothing was found from it. Turns out that there was a minister and Boy Scout leader who was arrested for very nasty things like first-degree assault and practicing medicine without a license after removing a trans woman's genitals in a makeshift gender reassignment surgery at a hotel in Columbia. They then find disturbing information on his computer. They then discovered he picked up a blonde hitchhiker and did terrible terrible things to them. With all the facts of him in jail he never admits to having any involvement in his disappearance. To this day nobody has come forward and his body has not been found.
I mean that has to be it right? Nothing else could happen in this small town. WRONG.
There was a brutal murder that occurred in 2004. Lisa Marie Montgomery a 36-year-old meets Bobbie Jo Stinnett a 23-year-old who had a dog breeding business in their house with her husband who was expecting a child. They met in a rat terrier chatroom called Ratter Chatter. They talked about being pregnant and dogs. Nothing crazy right? Well, it’s reported that Montgomery entered the Stinnett house pretending to be Darlene Fischer who was a buyer for a terrier. Apparently, she then proceeds to strangle her to death. As if that isn’t bad enough she then proceeds to cut out the unborn child from her womb and run away. The body was found by her mother within an hour of the murder. It was described to medical personnel that her stomach exploded. Allegedly Montgomery called the husband who was on a shopping trip pretending to be his wife and saying she went into labor and gave birth.
The following day, December 17, police arrested Montgomery at her farmhouse in Melvern, Kansas. A witness would later report that on the morning before her arrest, Montgomery took the infant, her husband, and two teenage sons to a restaurant for breakfast. Police had initially gone to Montgomery's home after tracing online communications to her IP address, hoping to interview her as a witness. When they arrived, they found a car matching the description of the one at the crime scene and, when they entered the home, they found Montgomery inside, holding the infant and watching television. Montgomery was arrested an hour later after her story fell apart and she confessed. The kidnapped newborn, whom she claimed as her own, was recovered and soon placed in the custody of the father. Thankfully the police were able to track her down so quickly because of their online chats.
Montgomery was tried and found guilty in 2007. She was executed by lethal injection shortly after midnight on January 13, 2021, having exhausted the appeals process. Montgomery became the first female federal inmate since 1953 to be executed by the United States federal government, and the fourth overall.
Quote
People in small towns, much more than in cities, share a destiny.
Richard Russo
Not sure what destiny is but man it’s not great.
Sources: https://medium.com/@michaelmoran/the-creepiest-small-town-in-america-skidmore-missouri-deb4d0cc1c22
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