‘No One Saw a Thing’: When a Midwest Town Banded Together to Kill the Town Bully

https://www.thedailybeast.com/no-one-saw-a-thing-when-a-small-midwest-town-banded-together-to-kill-the-town-bully

207 250 7 years ago

neaden3• 7 years ago

To be clear, community murders like this happened all the time in US history. The thing that makes this special is that the man killed was white and actually guilty of crimes.

Frondo• 7 years ago

The parent poster is referring to race-motivated lynchings, of which there have been thousands over the decades.[1]

[1] https://www.naacp.org/history-of-lynchings/

braythwayt• 7 years ago

100% true. This is the history of lynching in America. Community murders where nobody saw a thing, and the justification was always that the murdered person was a degenerate who would not receive what the town thinks would be adequate punishment under the law.

vinceguidry2• 7 years ago

Great reading on the culture that gave rise to lynching:

https://www.quora.com/Did-slave-masters-actually-lynch-slave...

viburnum• 7 years ago

Lynchings frequently happened because white people wanted to steal land from black or native people.

cmurf• 7 years ago

Yep. Although you don't have to go back too far for the latest lynching and subsequent revisionism.

https://psmag.com/social-justice/the-shocking-legacy-of-amer...

chrisco2553• 7 years ago

You were half right until you dug into the helplessly racist narrative. The wild west had many incidences of such events and the victims were often white. One need only look at the story of Billy the Kid and the regulators or Wyatt Earp's arc for evidence. The only thing that makes this unusual is it was in 1981.

EDIT: person I'm responding to makes the case that this case is SPECIAL in U.S. history and draws a direct line to racially motivated lynchings even though there's plenty of evidence that white-on-white lynchings occurred. I am not saying racially motivated lynchings didn't occur. I'm saying that history is not black and white.

widowlark• 7 years ago

helplessly racist? Thousands of lynchings occurred like this across the country for a hundred years - you can bet they weren't lynching whites more often.

coldtea• 7 years ago

The wild west had many incidences of such events and the victims were often white

Yes it did. But there were many incidences of such events AFTER the wild west era, and the victims were mostly black...

mieseratte5• 7 years ago

The thing that makes this special is that the man killed was white

From https://www.naacp.org/history-of-lynchings/

Out of the 4,743 people lynched only 1,297 white people were lynched.

Would not appear that being white and lynched are not necessarily unique, though perhaps for the time period.

pazimzadeh• 7 years ago

Many of those whites were probably black-sympathizers who would have been called n*-lovers or "black on the inside."

neaden3• 7 years ago

the rest of my sentence was important too, I don't really appreciate you cutting it off to pretend I said something I didn't.

bediger40002• 7 years ago

The thing that makes this different is that the US government has kept better track of its citizens since about 1955. Despite our fear of the Mark of The Beast, we track (effectively) everybody via Social Security Number. I don't think this was true until on into the 1970s.

I'm sure that this kind of thing went on all the time in the US, in smaller towns and rural areas. People disappeared all the time. Probably most of them moved to the big city or California, but a bunch probably ended up in unmarked graves. A friend of mine had a grandmother who lived in Milwaukee. She was Jewish. She fell in love with the Polish butcher. They disappeared from Milwaukee. A couple of months later, they were in Denver, married, and she was now Catholic. The special thing about my friend's grandmother, is that he knows the story. The bitter thing about that story is that it can't happen today, because we all are tracked. There are good reasons, but that doesn't mean that giving up segmentation of risks is all that great.

macintux• 7 years ago

Clearly the “and” was not strong enough, based on the negative comments.

“is that the man was both guilty and white” might have done the trick.

SolaceQuantum• 7 years ago

This is a review of the documentary covering a 'Town Bully' who had evaded authorities and continued to harm people repeatedly. In order to protect the community, a group of vigilantes murdered them, and the community refused to issue any statements to authorities regarding anyone's involvement.

I think broadly, I wonder what the place of vigilanteism like this should serve. The sentiments to protect the community against a man who isn't being recieved adequate justice- this in my opinion seems to echo the justification of other movements I'm aware of. There's often community discouse online on what to do with known bad actors when moderatorship isn't adequate for example.

leetcrew2• 7 years ago

it seems like a more extreme version of jury nullification. if it became widespread, it would essentially be the end of rule-of-law. but in isolated and rare situations, perhaps it's a beneficial escape valve? easy to suggest from my comfy office in a quiet suburb of course.

vkou3• 7 years ago

It's not a 'beneficial escape valve' when the community decides to, say, kill the n_______ who had the audacity to sleep with a white woman.

Which is a far more common application of lynching. We should not be glorifying this.

yummypaint• 7 years ago

I think this is different. Jury nullification is about a lawbreaker not being punished. Vigilantiism is about an innocent person (innocent until proven guilty through judicial process) being punished. If we as a society have committed to the idea that option a is better than option b, then they seem more like opposites.

PeterisP2• 7 years ago

Rule of law is essentially about process for resolving disputes. In this case, it doesn't seem to be any dispute - it seems that the community had came to a consensus (almost unanimous if we discount McElroy himself and his wife Trena) about what how they wanted things to be.

tootie2• 7 years ago

It sounds like the justice system was either non-functional or corrupt. He committed plenty of crimes that should have put him away for a long time yet didn't. If government isn't serving the people appropriately then it gets replaced. Hard to say if it was really justified here. Maybe a call to the FBI would have been more productive.

mixmastamyk7• 7 years ago

There was a federal investigation, but without witnesses stalled.

gwbas1c• 7 years ago

I think it's just a symptom what happens when the rule of law fails

fallingfrog3• 7 years ago

Over the long timespans of human evolution I’m willing to bet that this is a significant selective pressure.. bullies probably just disappeared or were kicked out of the community to fend for themselves

nostrademons• 7 years ago

He had 14 children, though - that doesn't seem like a failure to pass along his genes.

pixl97• 7 years ago

Well, its probably easy to have kids with a large number of women if you actively include 'poor choices' relative to your social standing. Seemingly most people want to move up or at least stay equal in social ladders when it comes to the choice of a mate.

puranjay2• 7 years ago

Human beings are weird in that "failure to integrate into society" and "failure to pass on your genes" don't necessarily overlap.

In fact, failure to integrate into a social order often increases your chances of passing on your genes.

epx3• 7 years ago

This kind of guy has no no problem passing genes on. There are many more single mothers than single fathers for this reason.

stallmanite• 7 years ago

Barring rape it makes one wonder wtf is up with mate choice

smt88• 7 years ago

It's more likely that most antisocial people just failed to thrive rather than being actively murdered.

yellowapple• 7 years ago

Britt Small, in fact, says that the only mistake made during the entire ordeal was not killing Trena too

Wait, what did Trena do to also be a potential target here? Just guilt by association? Or was she actually actively participating in the criminal acts (and not being coerced to do so, as I imagine one might be before/while/after marrying a violent criminal at age 12)?

The article couldn't, you know, delve into this a bit more?

moate• 7 years ago

This article is a very brief commentary on the documentary. Presumably the show would explain that point of view and dig deeper into the whole matter.

Verdex• 7 years ago

I remember watching some news program about the event (maybe the 60 minutes piece mentioned in the article). I believe they interviewed Trena and she expressed anger that her husband was murdered and nobody would testify or try to bring the murderer(s) to justice.

My guess is that Small doesn't like that she caused waves after the murder. As opposed to just going along with it.

pstuart• 7 years ago

I'm guessing she wanted to name names.

mixmastamyk7• 7 years ago

Someone posted the wikipedia article. Apparently she tried to get one of the shooters prosecuted, started a lawsuit, and was ultimately able to wrangle a settlement.

Anthony-G• 7 years ago

To add to the other responses: according to http://mentalfloss.com/article/574749/ken-mcelroy-murder-ski...

She became his accomplice, accompanying McElroy on several of his nocturnal visits to people he had targeted for harassment. As McElroy ranted, she would stand nearby, a firearm in her hands.

dwheeler• 7 years ago

frontier justice came for McElroy courtesy of the residents of Skidmore (population 440 at the time of the crime). Shaken by the man’s ability to evade jail even after being convicted of a near-fatal attack on a grocery store owner... Belkin also details Skidmore’s plague of subsequent violence ... the series persuasively contends that these crimes indicate that the McElroy episode taught younger Skidmore generations that doing as they savagely pleased was OK—and that they could get away with it, because their friends and neighbors wouldn’t speak out against them.

I'm not persuaded, at least by this text. Another possible interpretation is that the legal system around Skidmore was completely unable to convict a repeat violent offender (McElroy), leading to a widespread (correct) belief that the legal system would not also provide any kind of useful restraint to future offenders. Indeed, that interpretation seems more likely to me.

That doesn't make the actions acceptable, of course. But it does put a spotlight on the importance of having a working legal system that provides some reasonable level of protection to the larger community.

ProAm2• 7 years ago

That doesn't make the actions acceptable, of course. But it does put a spotlight on the importance of having a working legal system that provides some reasonable level of protection to the larger community.

This man was tried and convicted by a jury of his peers, it was just in a different courtroom.

jgwil2• 7 years ago

That's the kind of logic used to justify lynchings. We have a legal system that enforces a certain burden of proof, that takes place in a courtroom where strict procedure is enforced by an ostensibly impartial judge, and evidence is weighed by an impartial jury. The system is carefully set up to balance the rights of the accused against the interests of the community. It may not work all the time, but it exists for a very good reason, and mob justice is no substitute.

ceejayoz2• 7 years ago

The Constitution provides for an impartial jury, along with other important factors. A lynch mob is no such thing.

inscionent• 7 years ago

This was a mob execution.

r00fus• 7 years ago

A jury that is inconsistent and hard to rouse. The subsequent crimes show the criminals their understanding of the broken justice system

jcims4• 7 years ago

This is my prevailing theory as to why minority enclaves in metropolitan areas tend to have higher violent crime. It's not socioeconomic as much as it is folks being forced to mete out justice on their own.

Stronico• 7 years ago

The book Ghettoside by Jill Leovy goes into that in quite a bit of detail. Her conclusion - yes, very much, with a strong overlap between community and extended family. An excellent book.

Retric• 7 years ago

Alternatively, crimes are more common in metropolitan areas due to increased contact.

Crimes are also more likely to be reported in poor metropolitan areas. Poor minorities are more like to stay in metropolitan areas. Resulting in a rather insidious bias that's hard to adjust for.

http://www.hngn.com/articles/75816/20150309/dea-was-told-not...

PS: It is also easier to hide a body in the country, so missing persons can hide many murders.

persistent3• 7 years ago

Are you sure this isn't just a bias of yours? Urban areas in the United States have a lower rate of fatal injuries due to violence than do rural areas. Perhaps this is not what you meant by "violent crime"?

I know the output of these reports is difficult to interpret but see [1]. The top decile of per-capita violent deaths are rural counties, not urban ones.

1: https://wisqars.cdc.gov:8443/cdcMapFramework/output/m5886273...

tr3ndyBEAR• 7 years ago

It was already said that violent crime rates are actually higher in rural areas than urban ones, but it should also be mentioned that areas with high minority populations, especially black communities, are more heavily policed.

In addition, studies like this one (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1745-9125.1...) have found that the relationship between crime rates and undocumented immigrants actually decreases

As someone who came to America undocumented at the age of 5, my personal intuition is that undocumented people tend to be more fearful of authority and therefore more likely to avoid getting in trouble

nickpsecurity2• 7 years ago

It's probably also the thug culture. Going to a black school for years, I got to watch the transformation happen for many of them. Young people usually like imitating rebels and cool people. For whites, it was rockstars that had money, drugs, sex, and ran from the law. The rap stars those black students idolized were the same with two differences:

1. They encouraged or at least bragged on beating folks down or killing them for respect and money. They emphasized the need for this. They did it to people in their own neighborhoods rather than other areas and groups like whites preferred.

2. Many of the gangs recruiting with such ideology had a rule where you couldn't leave. If oppression or lack of resources started it, the person who had a come up with still expected to commit the crimes backing up their group. We've seen this plenty with celebs in hip hop with Tupac gunned down over a rivalry.

3. Many of these areas discourage reading/literacy since it's a "white thing" vs oral traditions of black culture. The local gangs might even beat up kids for carrying books. In those areas, this further contributes to poor test scores and other things that hold people back.

The more apologetic sources don't bring this stuff up with three getting virtually no reporting. They want to shift all the blame toward white folks instead of assigning it appropriately. I keep bringing it up. It keeps coming back to me, too, with each hiring wave at my company with young blacks having one or more people that believe the same bullshit. Fortunately, they're far from a majority. Most aren't anything like them. They tell them they're idiots. Might drive them away more, though.

Of course, don't take my word for it. In Memphis, TN, they'll tell you if you ask:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxBIVnjlKos

https://wreg.com/2014/09/30/young-men-say-kroger-mob-attack-...

Although they mention cops as usual, they also emphasize how fun and profitable the drugs and violence are. Most of them get a kick out of it. It's power that's easy to have. Just have greater numbers than and some weapons for a target. Bam! Bang! Quick high they don't get solving bigger problems.

Also, the mindset works against most solutions people describe here which assume they even want a regular job. The locals tell me they're independent businessmen ("my own boss")who go for high gains despite the high risks, "just like stocks" one said. Some of the small-time dealers make $50,000 a year without a degree. They said they were on-call and on-guard at all times, though. Gotta work to make that money. Just not legal work cuz then they making nothing while other people make big money off their backs. Doesn't sound too far from the logic of founders set to be billionaires while their workers make average or less wages.

tootie2• 7 years ago

The fact that the Sheriff was involved in the conspiracy is fishy.

saidajigumi• 7 years ago

Or completely expected, if the broader narrative of a legal system that has ceded to lawlessness is true. Law enforcement is on the literal front-lines in dealing with violent repeat offenders as described here.

whenanother• 7 years ago

this is promoting a logical fallacy in the belief that there exist a perfect system. this is the same argument that many who are trying to deregulate the government have with the ultimate intention of privatizing everything.

tomc19853• 7 years ago

I'm with the mob on this one. As another comment put it, he was tried by a jury of his peers... if the justice system cannot help you then you have to take things into your own hands.

Might be hard for all us city slickers on HN to fathom, particularly when these sorts of country towns are frequently mocked or derided by people like us.

wallace_f• 7 years ago

While this case looks to be justice, I have the fortune of experiencing real-life extreme bullying, stalking and ill will for no other reason than profit incentive and having been abused in the first place. Sometimes this sounds crazy to people and it would to me, but I think everyone sees this in school growing up, and history is all about it if you stop and think about it. I've seen examples of it, too, all the time in my life. I'd be weary of promoting justice being taken "into their own hands." But these problems are indeed very challenging, especially in a world where merit and virtue are not necessary, and even are deleterious, to your group's survival.

mcphage2• 7 years ago

particularly when these sorts of country towns are frequently mocked or derided by people like us

You bring up a good point, because that's another thing these country towns are known for—having a lot of respect for big cities and the people that live in them.

everdev• 7 years ago

if the justice system cannot help you then you have to take things into your own hands

Fortunately not many people seem to feel this way, maybe because revenge doesn't work as a criminal defense.

People who have been wronged are usually highly emotional and it's hard for them to put themselves outside of their circumstances and view the incident objectively.

Justice is supposed to be blind for good reason. If we all carried out our own version of justice, I'm sure you'd eventually run into someone who thought being too loud at night should be punishable by death.

There are many instances where victims of bullying feel they have no recourse other than revenge. I don't know the answer for how to make that situation better, but I know it's not murder.

idoubtit• 7 years ago

if the justice system cannot help you then you have to take things into your own hands.

If you apply this rule strictly, then the mobs could first hit the police. In many countries, police officers are violent and have a de facto impunity when they break the law.

In the US, the police kills more than 1000 citizens each year, especially black men and teenagers. They very rarely face jail, not even loosing their job.

In my country, France, over the past year several dozens of citizens have lost an eye because of police shooting, a few have lost a hand because of grenades. The justice system protects the policemen, even when the videos are explicit. And when a juge tries to do his work, he can't. A grandma was killed while closing her window because she received a grenade in her head. The commanding officer refused to let the juge expertise the grenade launchers of his squad. He was promoted soon after.

Most people that prone self-defense and rant about some bad guys' impunity do no wish to see this fact: most policemen can break the law and not face the consequences. They're the only category of citizens that are above the law.

bitwize• 7 years ago

Some states, like Texas, still have the "needed killin'" defense: if a person accused of murder can prove to the jury that the victim needed killin', the jury will not convict (or will convict on a lesser charge). You have to pass a high bar to need killin': generally the defense only works if the accused can show that while not in immediate danger of life and limb, they felt sufficiently credibly threatened by the victim to believe they were at continual risk of injury or death if they didn't strike first.

In most other states, homicide is only justifiable under the higher threshold of being in immediate danger.

HarryHirsch• 7 years ago

Something's wrong here, though. Why was this fellow allowed to carry on as he did into his mid-40s? Even if you are built like a bear you can't take on a whole village. Some group must have backed him up until he became intolerable even for them. Was it his clan, or the perhaps the lawmen? The article is silent, unfortunately.

fortran77• 7 years ago

It also seems that this is a little bit different from usual "lynch mobs" or vigilante justice because it was an act of self-defense. This man was going around shooting people and was actively making threats (though not at the exact moment he was shot).

This makes it a little more morally justified than shooting someone who committed some real or perceived wrong, but isn't a current threat to others.

They stopped him because he was dangerous.

philwelch• 7 years ago

I think I’ve heard stories of eg battered wives killing their husbands and then claiming self-defense because they reasonably feared for their lives (and perhaps their children’s lives) in the long run.

IronWolve2• 7 years ago

This is still going on in Alaska, many remote areas have some bullies getting away due to no police. I'm sure some end up missing too, but there is a big lack of funding for state marshals to deal with the problems.

jascii• 7 years ago

I am not saying you are wrong, however this comment would be a lot more useful/interesting if you mentioned some sources.

majos• 7 years ago

Not parent, but this well-researched and gripping anecdote [1] may offer a helpful picture of American places where the law is not so dependable.

[1] https://magazine.atavist.com/outlaw-country-klamath-county-o...

ceejayoz2• 7 years ago

It's worse than that in some spots. In some areas, the bullies are the police.

https://www.propublica.org/article/stebbins-alaska-cops-crim...

In Stebbins alone, all seven of the police officers working as of July 1 have pleaded guilty to domestic violence charges within the past decade. Only one has received formal law enforcement training of any kind.

IronWolve2• 7 years ago

Alaska has some of the highest crime/rape rates, gang activity.

https://www.apnews.com/03b5999242a9414e856cdce36e9360aa

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/09/rape-cult...

https://www.ktva.com/story/37361490/alaska-deemed-most-dange...

prestonbriggs• 7 years ago

Peter Matthiessen's book "Killing Mr. Watson" centers on a similar story in south Florida.

futureastronaut• 7 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_McElroy#1981_killing for a more to-the-point account.

mixmastamyk7• 7 years ago

Thanks, was going to write that this article was rather disappointing. It is more concerned with metadata about the miniseries and economic consequences rather than the story at the center.

AndrewBissell4• 7 years ago

Would have liked to have heard more detail about why the local justice system was unable or unwilling to restrain McElroy.

The whole situation raises some interesting parallels to wealthy & powerful malefactors routinely skating past legal consequences in our federal courts system.

douglasfshearer• 7 years ago

Criminal, the podcast, did an episode about the killing of Ken McElroy. [0]

An episode that stuck in my head.

https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-66-bully-5-5-2017/

kenforthewin• 7 years ago

I highly recommend the book In Broad Daylight, which the TV movie was based on. Surprised they didn't mention this in the article.

betenoire• 7 years ago

It's there:

...an incident that became so notorious they even made a TV movie about it (1991’s In Broad Daylight, starring Brian Dennehy, Cloris Leachman, Marcia Gay Harden and Chris Cooper)

praptak• 7 years ago

A similar incident from 2005: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_at_W%C5%82odowo

logfromblammo2• 7 years ago

Midwesterner here: Skidmore, MO, is not in The Midwest. It is on The Prairie. Which is the easternmost part of The West.

The Midwest starts west of the the line between Fort Duquesne in Pittsburgh to the southwest corner of New York. It is north of the Ohio River, and east of the Mississippi River. St. Paul is Midwest. Minneapolis is Prairie.

St. Louis is "the Gateway to the West", not "the Gateway to More of the Midwest".

tlb• 7 years ago

The term is famously ill-defined. FWIW, the US Census bureau includes the entire state of Missouri. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwestern_United_States#Defin...

theandrewbailey• 7 years ago

It is north of the Ohio River, and east of the Mississippi River. St. Paul is Midwest. Minneapolis is Prairie.

Then what's this "Upper Midwest" place I keep hearing about?[0] It definitely extends the Midwest past the Mississippi.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_Midwest

bediger40002• 7 years ago

Midwesterner here: grew up in or near Kirksville, MO, about 165 miles east of Skidmore. I hereby swear or affirm that Skidmore is in the Midwest, geographically and culturally, although northern Missouri/southern Iowa have their own version of "midwest". That part of the world is definitely not plains geographically or biologically: it's oak/hickory forest growing on dissected glacial till. You don't get to "plains" geographically until you're well into Kansas at that latitude, and even then, Kansas and Nebraska are culturally midwestern, despite their pretensions to cowboy.

logfromblammo2• 7 years ago

You might say "pop" instead of "soda", but you will never escape your Louisiana history. No true Midwesterner grows their corn and soybeans anywhere west of the river.

It's not our fault that true Midwestern culture is so rich and interesting that the folk of the Great Plains were compelled to emulate it. But to be fair, you are the second-best completely-distinct-and-separate cultural region in the US, so don't feel too bad about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

"The Midwest" is poorly-defined. Most polls conclude that Midwesterners believe that the Midwest is at least their state and neighboring states, and non-Midwesterners have basically no idea where it starts or ends.

The census region more or less covers the Northwest Territories plus that part of the Louisiana Purchase that became Missouri Territory. Largely settled by Germans and Scandinavians, and mostly free states (except Missouri itself).

I refer to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwestern_United_States#Cultu... for further info on how the definition of "Midwest" differs depending on what part of the Midwest you're from.

MrLeap• 7 years ago

Counterpoint: I grew up 90 miles south from there. I graduated from college in the same county as Skidmore, MO (Nodaway County, NWMSU). I never heard a real person refer to any of those regions as "The Prairie". It's the midwest to the people who live there.

commandlinefan• 7 years ago

There was a case not too long ago in India where a serial rapist kept evading conviction, so the women in the town gathered together, stabbed him to death, and then all confessed to the crime together. None of them ended up being convicted.

scarejunba3• 7 years ago

If the man were innocent and the town’s people ganged up on him, Salem style, would the evidence look different?

raspie• 7 years ago

For more than two decades, McElroy was suspected of being involved in theft of grain, gasoline, alcohol, antiques, and livestock, but he avoided conviction when charges were brought against him 21 times—often after witnesses refused to testify because he allegedly intimidated them, frequently by following his targets or parking outside their homes and watching them.
McElroy began stalking the Bowenkamp family, and eventually threatened Bo Bowenkamp in the back of his store with a shotgun in hand. In the ensuing confrontation, McElroy shot Bowenkamp in the neck; Bowenkamp 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 Mr. Bowenkamp.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_McElroy

Does an innocent person look like this? You tell me.

scarejunba3• 7 years ago

Oh, I don’t think he’s innocent, but all information about this is post facto. All those sources exist after he was killed.

I’m less conspiracy theory about this, and more just remarking (pointlessly, I suppose) how information deteriorates over time. Some may even be true, but used as a tool to build the rest around.

kemiller2002• 7 years ago

So my family actually knew the sheriff from the next county over. He picked up McElroy a couple times for various things. (I think being drunk etc.). Now when this was explained, this was 26-27 years ago, so my memory is a little fuzzy, but he explained that the man was a monster of an individual. (like huge.) The guy could pick up a hog from the other side of the fence and just walk off with it. Dead lifting a few hundred pounds, that's hard, and really scary to think someone can do that who doesn't like you. You don't cross an individual like that lightly.

You have to remember this was 35+ years ago when this all happened. Things aren't what they used to be now. People didn't make long distance calls back then, because it was too expensive. You lived out it in the middle of nowhere especially back then, you're on your own. No one is coming to help you if you're in serious trouble. My parents had this joke. They said the fire department had a perfect record around where we were. They hadn't saved a house yet. Don't get me wrong, they really respected the firemen. The point was that when you live 20+ miles away from the fire station, there is no possible way they are going to save the house in time. There was no GPS, and 911 had only been invented a little over a decade before. A lot of people didn't even own phones.

It's easy to talk about the rule of law, and how they should let the justice system work it out, but it's a different kind of law in those parts. In a town that size, everyone knows everyone, and you're always talking to someone's brother, cousin, sister, etc. Oh you filed a report against someone?...yeah word gets around. The kind you don't want. Evidence gets "lost", etc. A lot of times it was (and still is in certain places) easier to just keep your mouth shut and move on. I'm not saying I agree with what they did, and I wasn't in their position, so I don't know what I'd do. I can sure see why they thought that was the only recourse they had though.

ryanmarsh2• 7 years ago

My grandmother in-law relayed a similar story growing up on a farm in Kansas. When she was a little girl there was a gypsy camp up the river. The gypsies would occasionally steal chickens. Her father eventually put a stop to it when they brazenly tried to use a car (I don’t know where they got it) to steal several chickens. Her father got his hands on one of the women and beat her senseless and one of the men engaged him and he pounded the man till he went limp. They were carted off by the other gypsies. Possibly dead.

I asked “Wasn’t there a sheriff? Didn’t he get in trouble?” She said “no, there was no law”. I said “you mean like no law enforcement?” She said “no, there was no LAW”. Implying it was completely lawless way out there on the farm.

Crazy to think about. This was in the 1930’s.

dmix2• 7 years ago

It probably just means the gypsies didn't want to go to the police over an assault when they were committing a robbery.

puranjay2• 7 years ago

This might be strange to HN readers, but in large parts of the world, going to the police for protection or justice isn't the default. The police is often corrupt and complicit with the perpetrators, especially if they happen to be from a privileged class or social strata.

mixmastamyk7• 7 years ago

Reminds me a bit of the series Gunsmoke, which I recently watched for the first time online. Surprisingly good. Time frame is earlier but the feeling of "frontier justice" resonates.

marktangotango• 7 years ago

So much great writing in those old western TV shows. Check out Bonanza and Gunslinger if you have the chance.

smacktoward2• 7 years ago

This is also the overall story arc of my favorite show ever, HBO's Deadwood: a bunch of people, who were all attracted for various reasons to a place specifically because it had no law (the town of Deadwood stood on land that had been ceded by treaty to the Sioux, and was therefore outside the jurisdiction of U.S. law), slowly discover over three seasons all the reasons they actually need law after all.

defen• 7 years ago

Which episode? There are 635 of them...

maxden• 7 years ago

Maybe a little bit similar is the case of Paddy Moriarty missing from a small (10 ppl) Australian town.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-03/a-dog-act-homicide-on...

cossatot• 7 years ago

A similar episode was the basis for the historical novel "Killing Mister Watson" by Peter Mattheissen, which is one of my favorite books.

A ruthless man named Edgar Watson, who had purportedly killed several people in Oklahoma and Florida, settled in the coastal Everglades of Florida (Chokoloksee area) around the turn of the last century and started a sugar cane plantation. He was known for the 'Watson payday' where, at the end of the harvest season, he would gather all of the drifters and ne'er-do-wells he had hired as fieldhands and gun them down. Additional bad behavior toward his neighbors lead to all of the town's men standing in line and gunning him down as he landed his boat on Chokoloskee Island one day.

gameswithgo• 7 years ago

That many people feel what the townspeople did here was wrong is fascinating to me. It seems many people believe in certain ideals, as dogma, to the extent that they expect other people to suffer or even die upholding those ideals. The rule of law is important, yes. But why does anyone expect a town to let themselves be maimed and murdered to maintain the rule of law? This is an insane expectation. The people defended themselves. Nobody can criticize them for that. Yes of course it would better if law enforcement was fixed, but people often have no ability to fix that in any reasonable time frame. Meanwhile people are getting murdered.

Akinato• 7 years ago

You can only act reasonable so long as your enemy is willing to extend the same courtesy. When someone is this far gone, there's nothing you can really do other than violence, if the legal system has failed you. It sounds like they tried all reasonable options and were left with just one.

rocqua8• 7 years ago

Perhaps sometimes, people need to do things that, whilst we would do the same in their position, we still want to condemn as wrong. Not because we disagree with their action, but because we need to signal to the outside world that actions like it are wrong. The circumstances that made such an action acceptable to our minds privately are too nuanced, too easy to stretch to publicly say they made it okay.

As a consolation, in these kinds of cases, taking action and dealing with condemnation is still better than not taking action. Of course, it is not right that people have to choose between two wrongs (living with the situation, or taking action and being condemned for it).

But life isn't fair. That isn't a statement of 'pushing the world into a fair state is infeasible to the point of imposiblity'. Instead, it is a statement that 'there is no state of the world that could be described as fair.

Moreover, the effect of such 'unfair condemnation' is tempered by people like you. I suppose that an actual working society needs both voices. Certainly, the signaling effect does not require that the condemnation be universal, just that it is substantial.

chrisdhoover2• 7 years ago

We? Do you have a mouse in your pocket? Are you the queen?

Faark• 7 years ago

Totally agree with this sentiment. Especially in situations of deadly but hardly justified self defense.

Sure, if you feel threaten you should use your gun. But you're feeling being would have a significant cost for society and you should have to bear your part of it.

chrisdhoover2• 7 years ago

It insane and the rule-of-law take is a new one to a very old story. The story surfaces every few years and until this posting the consensus was he got what he deserved. The law fails people on a daily basis.

bsder• 7 years ago

The people defended themselves. Nobody can criticize them for that.

Humans normally have a strong aversion to murdering one another. Lots of soldiers in WWII simply would NOT fire their gun under any circumstances.

The fact that the situation got to the point where an entire town decided to murder a man speaks to a series of epic failures on a lot of fronts.

anigbrowl2• 7 years ago

to the extent that they expect other people to suffer or even die upholding those ideals

The key word here being other people. This is why I don't support 'nonviolent' politics; it basically encourages people to be punching bags in hopes of activating the conscience of people higher up the social scale...which is a lot better for the latter group than for the 'nonviolent demonstrators' getting brutalized. Turns out that people's consciences are pretty darn calloused these days, so if you're depending on on other people's empathy to solve your problems you're going to be waiting a long time.

naasking2• 7 years ago

It seems many people believe in certain ideals, as dogma, to the extent that they expect other people to suffer or even die upholding those ideals

Good ideals are worth suffering and risk of death. I'm honestly surprised you think otherwise. Not saying this is one of those cases necessarily, just responding to the general idea that principles should never be dogmatic.

myrandomcomment3• 7 years ago

One could see this as a man being tried by a jury of his peers.

dmix2• 7 years ago

https://www.amc.com/shows/no-one-saw-a-thing/full-episodes/s...

sunstone• 7 years ago

This kind of thing has been happening since humans roamed the plains of Africa. A smallish group of humans can only take so much anti-social behaviour before a permanent solution is required. Now, with larger groupings of towns and cities, society can afford to be somewhat more merciful.

mirimir• 7 years ago

TFA doesn't explore at all how McElroy managed to "evade jail" after so many crimes. But it seems that basically there were enough people who would provide false alibis.[0] Maybe because he had threatened them.

0) http://mentalfloss.com/article/574749/ken-mcelroy-murder-ski...

ascorbic• 7 years ago

That's a much better article

HocusLocus• 7 years ago

OBVIOUSLY this vigilante justice was not planned over the entire time span of McElroy's rein of terror, or it would have happened long before. So there is no intrinsic aspect of flash-mob vigilantism we should be concerned about.

OBVIOUSLY no one here is in a position to exonerate any of the specific crimes McElroy committed.

Sounds like a nice place to live, but if you were to be drawn there because of this they probably wouldn't want you living there. That is the attitude of people who feel resentful that 'doing what needs to be done' has drawn more national attention than the collected crimes of McElroy ever did.

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