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Hey weirdos. I'm Ash. And I'm Elena. And this is Moram. [Music] This is morbid. This is morbid. We're
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fresh off a vacay. Yeah, we had a little vacay. Uh, we hit Disney for a day. We hit Disney. I met a bunch of people. I
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only met I think two. Yeah, cuz you went one day. Me and Drew rolled deep and we
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did five. Four day. We did four days and one at Universal. We did the one cuz Yeah, we Well, you have like a lot of
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kids and we wanted to we wanted to redeem the Disney vacation. And guys, I didn't have a bad time. She No, she had
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a good time. I did cuz I ended up like um I never I don't do rides. It's just like not and it's it's not me being an
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[ __ ] It's just not me. I never liked rides. I've just never been a ride girl. I didn't go to theme parks as a kid. It
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just wasn't a thing. Yeah. And I and I I don't like the feeling of uh your tummy
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flipping. It's just it like people love that feeling and I get it. Literally my favorite feeling. Yeah. It's just not a
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feeling I enjoy. Like if you're in a car and even and you dip down and it gives that like I don't like that. Oh,
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sometimes on those bumps I speed up for them. Yeah. See, I don't like that. And so I'm just that kind of person. So,
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usually I will do like the very chill chill chill rides. Yeah. And other than that, John is the ride guy. Ash is the
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ride person. The ride t. I know that like, you know, Ash and Drew and John are going to take the take the ride.
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There's always there's always an adult for each kid. Always. And I'll hold all the [ __ ] you know, and take the
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pictures. Have to have that person. And I'm so good at that. You're great at that. You're great. You're great at
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holding [ __ ] But this time, my kids. Now, the new Tiana ride opened up. I can't even express to you how [ __ ]
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good this ride is. Well, here's the thing. If you know anything about me, you know I [ __ ] love Princess and the
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Frog. She rides hard. I love Tiana. She's my favorite princess. She's great. That's my girl right there. Yeah. And
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when I heard there was going to be a Tiana ride, I said, "Oh, [ __ ] I'm going to do that." And then I looked it up and
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I was like, "I'm not going to do that." And then my kids said, "Mom, will you do
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that with us?" And I said, "Yep, I'll do that with you." So, I literally went into this saying, "Fuck, I have to do
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this 50 foot drop and I should know how to do it." The thing about the drops at Disney, though, is that they slow them
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down. This one was It's so fast that I don't remember it. I think I blacked out. So, like, this one is I just showed
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her Veloca Coaster and I was like, "Now that's a [ __ ] roller coaster." I don't do Here's the thing. Tiana ride.
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If you haven't been able to do it, if you go to Disney, do the [ __ ] Tiana ride. Her Bayou Adventure. So much
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[ __ ] fun. A gorgeous ride. The end of that ride. One of the coolest things I've ever seen. The whole thing. And
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it's a It's long. It's long, but like in a good way. Very fun. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the little drops. I was able to
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handle them and I was like, "Okay." And maybe even the little drops are good. They're pretty decent. I was impressed,
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you know, and but I I think it was like my kids loved it so much and I was sitting next to one of them and it was
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fun. It was so cute. Uh so that was a lot of fun. I recommend doing that. I always
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love the Haunted Mansion. It's the best ride. That's a very fun one. Um I I had a I had a good day. She wore ears. I
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did. I wore ears. I did for part of the day. They gave me a headache halfway through. I know. Sometimes they press on
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the back. Yeah. It was [ __ ] hot. It was blazing hot, which I don't love. I don't know how y'all live in Florida,
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but here's a little tip from me to you in case you're going. Uh, I prepared for this cuz I said, "We're not having a
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disastrous Disney trip like we did last time." Never. And I said, "We're going to make this a fun day, which means I'm
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going to make everyone as comfortable as humanly possible, even though it's going
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to be a thousand zillion degrees." And it was. Um, I highly recommend the cooling towels you can get like
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anywhere. You can order them anywhere. Sometimes you can even get them at the park. Yeah. And you just all you do is
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wet them and they stay wet and cold for a long time. So you can just drape them over your neck or your shoulders. They
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work. I don't know what the science is behind those, but they're incredible. They're very and they're really easy to
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store in a backpack. So it's like if you're looking for that those little misting fans that you can get, highly
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recommend. They're good for a little, you know, little zap of that. And I took it up a notch this time. What' you do?
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Cuz I said, I know my kids. I know they're going to want to see this [ __ ] Main Street parade. That
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parade's pretty awesome. Oh my god. It was pretty great. It is. I had a good day. See, that's all I needed. I just
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needed a good day. I don't I still I don't want to do it again anytime soon. But we're going to We will eventually.
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But like like I'm not a theme park girl. It's just not my thing. You guys know that. But I had a a good day, which is
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exactly what I was looking for. I just wanted a good time. She's open to doing it again. I am. Absolutely. And my kids
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had so much fun. That's really all I'm looking for is like the last time we everybody got sick and it just wasn't
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get to see their faces. Their faces during the parade. The parade was I said I need to have eight children right now
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just to experience experience that experiencing that as an aunt. Incredible. I can't imagine how that
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made you feel as a mama. Oh yeah. Seeing the little the waving at the princesses.
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Tiana again with Tiana. I think I meant to be Tiana's friend. I think so. They she
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when she went by she pointed at one of my kids and did the little heart formed a heart and my child beaming. I have not
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seen her that beaming in a and she was like Tiana just did a heart to me. Like it was I was like all right this is very
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worth it. I was borderline about to cry. Yeah. It was the sweetest thing ever. But what I did for that was I got a
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parasol and they sell parasols at Disney, which I didn't even know that. I just bought one my own. Get a parasol if
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you don't like the heat and you're worried about that kind of stuff. I got one that like um maybe I can try to post
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a link to it. I'll find where I got it cuz it folded up really small. It like even the um little spokes of the of the
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umbrella itself bent upward to make it smaller. It was super compact. So I could put it in a bag, easy peasy, and
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it like just crunched up. It was so worth it cuz they used it several times. It was smart. And I I was like lowkey
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making fun of you like before we were going. I was bought a [ __ ] parasol. I saw so many people with parasol. It's
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worth it. You're with the trends. So let me tell you, if you're thinking about it, it really does work. And take this
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from somebody who's essentially translucent. Yeah. And who has children who are also pretty translucent. I'm
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translucent, too. And I didn't even burn this time. I was so good about my sunscreen. You That's right. Oh, as you
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should be. A recommendation. Another one. Oh. Um that there's an E.L.F. like ELF setting spray that has SPF 45.
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That's all I use for face sunscreen cuz a lot of times when you do like the cream, it gets in your eyes and [ __ ]
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This one, spray it on your face, good. I spray it on my face probably like three,
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four times throughout the day. Not a hint of a sunburn. I love that. So that's a good one even just for the
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summer. So there you go. these summer recommendations. That's our summer recommendation. I thought of something
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when I was when I was there and I said, I got to tell the listeners. I got to tell everybody. I don't remember. I'll
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post some. I I went real ham with like preparing for this trip. Yeah. If I think of any like interesting hacks that
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I came up with, I'll be sure to post it for you guys just in case you have kids or are traveling or just traveling in
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general. You and Drew Capricorned so hard because like you have like a million kids so you had to get like 45
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different things. Yeah, it was just me and Drew going. Every day that I got home leading up to this, he had a new
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thing for our trip. So, you have to be like prepared for that. He got This is a little bit gross, but I don't care. He
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got these toilet seat covers. He got these toilet seat covers and you put them down and they like adhes to the
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toilet seat. It changes your going to the bathroom experience. I hate a public restroom to the point where like even in
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school, like in high school, I didn't like going to the bathroom. Incredible. But yeah, um the I'll try to
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link the toilet seat covers. Yeah, cuz they were great. Yeah, anything that works. I mean, I'm by no means a
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gatekeeper or or like a a professional when it comes to traveling or anything like that, but if it works with my kids
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or and us, honey, I'll share it. Disagree. I think you became a professional planner. I think you should
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start a Tik Tok page of trips even though you go on one once a year. Yeah, I go I don't go on many at all, but but
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hey, when I do, I really prepare for it, right? So, yeah, I found a lot of uh good hacks. I'm just so happy that you
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had a good time. I'm glad we turned our Disney trip around. That was it was real
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rough that everybody got the stomach bug and like John was super sick. I was everybody was sick and it was just such
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a lousy trip the first time and it was weighing on us that that's the Disney trip that we had been planning forever.
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And so we were just determined new memories. I needed a good and it was and you have them. We got this one picture
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of John and one of my kids in front of uh the castle fireworks going and we're I was like we're framing it.
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There's just it was it was a good day. I didn't want to say it during the time cuz I was like don't say it. You'll jinx
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it. No. But they had a great time and that's all that matters. During the firework I cried the first time I saw
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the fireworks at Disney. I'm not Disney adult. When Tinker Bell came flying by, sobb. Full sob. Don't care. Cry every
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time. You know, it's hilarious. You hate that. Do you hate that? No, I love it. I
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think it's adorable. Uh, that's what I was like, "Oh, that's so cute." I And I turned to one of my kids who is very
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like myself. Oh. And I turned to her and I said, "Oh my god, it's Tinkerbell." What did she say? If your kids are
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listening right now, please, I'm going to say something that's going to ruin the magic. So, like, skip forward. I
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just don't want to ruin other kids magic. No. Uh, but I was like, "Look at Oh my god, it's Tinkerbell." And she
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goes, "Yeah, I can see the wire." I was like, "What?" I was like I was like I was
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like, "What?" I was like, "Wires like what? What wires?" And she literally she's crying. She goes, "She's
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ziplining." Okay. And I was like, "Yeah." And she was like, "She's not flying." All right.
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Like she was literally like she was looking at me like, "Mom, are you sorry I'm ruining the magic for you, but she's
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not really flying." You know what though? As long as Tank is ziplining as I thought you were going to say
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something even worse. She was just like she was like, "Fuck that. That's not Tinker Bell." She was lit. Oh, well, no.
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I think she essentially was like, "That's a zipline. That's not really Tinker Bell flying across." Whatever.
00:11:01
Whatever child. So, I looked and I looked at her and I was like, "Please don't like say anything in front of a
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younger one." And she was like, "Of course I won't." And she hasn't. No, cuz the younger one brought it up and she
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was like, I know. Wasn't that crazy? Did you say don't tell Titi either? Don't tell Ti. Don't tell Titi. She thinks
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that's Tinker Bell. But I was like my such my logical child who's always looking to see how anything works. Well,
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she wants to be an engineer. Yeah. She immediately saw those wires and was like, "Oh, I get it." One thing I will
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say, and I say it every time I see the parade in between my tears. Where are those projectors?
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How do they project those images onto because like they if you've ever seen the castle show like it's [ __ ] crazy.
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I've never seen the projector. I haven't either. And there's only so many ways you can make Tink flyer, right? It's
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[ __ ] beautiful. I think it's great. I think it's beautiful. So So there you go. It's a much different take on on
00:11:52
what happened than There it is. Cuz a lot of I displeased a lot of people who love Disney that last time. You don't
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want to piss those people off. Yeah. And it it wasn't me. It was just a bad trip
00:12:01
coming from the Disney community. No, just kidding. You're like, "Just kidding." No,
00:12:06
seriously. But for real, shut up. Um, but yeah, so that was good. We got um we got some good stuff coming up that we
00:12:13
can't tell you about yet, like said, but uh but you will find out and it will be
00:12:18
awesome. I think we say that every episode at this point, but it's coming. It is. Yeah. Manifesting it. Um and I
00:12:25
think with that we can probably This has been a long intro. Yeah, we don't do those all the time, so sometimes it
00:12:30
happens. You lived. Um, you lived. Hopefully. Jeez. Pour it out if you did. Oh my goodness. But yeah, so Oh, quick
00:12:39
little little side side quest. Are you going to talk about the Anyone else hyperfixated on the Conclave coming up?
00:12:46
The way I knew you were about to talk about the Did you see me call that? I'm sorry. I said, "Are we about to talk
00:12:51
about the the conclave?" It's wild that this happened like right after the new papa and ghost was announced in purple
00:12:58
stuff. It's crazy timing. I'll give it to you. But also guys, and like this is no, I am not a religious person. You
00:13:05
know this. I've It's pretty clear by now. Honey, you knew if you're shocked by that. I don't know what to tell you.
00:13:10
Uh but I'm hyperfixated on it cuz I feel like it's very Gothic the way it all happens. Very metal. It is interesting.
00:13:16
this whole conclave and the burning of the ballots and the black smoke and the white smoke and everybody waiting for
00:13:21
that smoke to happen. Love it. Yeah, love it. And if you you want to bone up on on the conclave on your pope
00:13:30
knowledge and the Hold on, I'm going to look it up because I'm going to give you
00:13:33
somebody that you should follow. I love this creator to get all your uh the Pope
00:13:39
games here. He also covers the Baronstein Bear books and it's great. The He's a Tik Tok creator. He's on
00:13:45
other platforms too though, but I mainly follow him on TikTok. Um, Rob Anderson.
00:13:50
So funny. He's doing a thing where he's calling it the Pope Games and he's treating it like a Real Housewives kind
00:13:55
of thing, but he's introducing all the wouldbe popes and telling you what they stand for and against. So, it actually
00:14:02
he's giving you the information in like a very funny way. It's fun, but I'm like
00:14:06
I would not This is very interesting. He also gives them a house tagline. Um because again I I don't care at all
00:14:13
about this stuff, but I'm weirdly hyperfixated on it from a purely curiosity level. It's interesting. Like
00:14:21
it's a pure curious just me being like this is a wild situation. It is. I didn't know really anything about it.
00:14:28
Yeah. When was the last conclave? Uh Francis has been a a pope for for a minute. I thought he wasn't the pope
00:14:34
that long. I mean, a lot some popes are popes for like 30 years and [ __ ] That long, but I thought Francis was like
00:14:41
kind of a short pop. It was only a few years, I think. That's what I think. Yeah. So, it's only been a few. That's
00:14:45
what that's also what I think. So, that's So, they couldn't it couldn't have been
00:14:50
that long since the last conclave. I'm googling. Yeah. Google it. Find it out. Um, but again, none none of like to each
00:14:57
their own. The religious stuff doesn't really do anything for me with this, but it's I'm just purely curious. 2013. So
00:15:05
he's been there for a minute. I mean that is a very long time ago, but in my brain it's not. Yeah, it's over 10 years
00:15:09
ago. So there's that. Shutters. Uh but yeah, so become hyperfixated on that with me because uh it's fun. It's wild.
00:15:18
It's a wild thing. And follow Rob Anderson because he's really funny. All his other content. All his stuff is
00:15:24
funny. Um and that I think is the end of our very long intro. Wait, no, I'm just
00:15:29
kidding. [Music] So today we're going to be discussing a very strange very it's brutal at parts. Okay.
00:15:52
And then has a wild ending case. This fun question mark. This well this is the death of Ken McElroy. Okay. But he was
00:16:01
known as the town bully. Oh, okay. I don't want to tell you too much upfront about what happens. I would like
00:16:09
to leave the ending for the moment it happens because you're just going to be like, "What the [ __ ] is going on?" So,
00:16:17
I'm going to give you very little of what I'm not going to tell you how this ends. Just know that the end he dies.
00:16:23
Um, and that he was the town bully. All right. So this did happen the the the act itself happens on July 10th, 1981.
00:16:30
Okay. When he Ken Mckel Roy was about 47 years old. This took place in Skidmore,
00:16:35
Missouri. Uh that's all I'm going to tell you about the end of it. Let's start at the beginning. Now we It's so
00:16:40
funny that this is 1981 because when you said the town bully, for some reason that just read as like 1900s, right?
00:16:47
Like 1904. Yeah, that's how I thought too, but it was in the 80s. Okay. And bully is um a nice way to describe him.
00:16:55
I would say uh the town predator, the town the town monster, the town criminal, the town abuser, the town
00:17:02
assaulter. Like he was a he was pretty terrible. Okay. He was pretty terrible. Okay, so let's talk about him. Let's His
00:17:08
name was Kenneth Rex McElvoy and he was born June 16th, 1934. That's why he's so
00:17:14
terrible. He's a Gemini. There you go. Male Geminis are the most frightening. I say that as Gemini, so call that. Okay.
00:17:20
Uh, he was born in Overland Park, Kansas, and he was one of 16 children. That's a lot. That's many children. One
00:17:28
might say, too many. One might say, uh, me. No, cuz I won't step in that. But he
00:17:34
one might say it. I don't know who that one is, but not me. That's what I said. One. I didn't say it. Uh, his parents
00:17:40
were Tony and Mabel McElroy. Mabel had married Tony when she was just 14 years old, and he was 20. Sounds illegal. Uh,
00:17:49
very much so. Uh, and it really sets the tone for how Ken is gonna act later in life. I think I'm not gonna like that.
00:17:55
Um, he married her because at 14 she was pregnant with Ken's oldest brother, Hersel. Oh, no. So, the apple does not
00:18:03
fall far from this tree. 14. Yeah. Born during the height of the Great Depression. Ken's early life was a bit
00:18:11
of a struggle for sure. But the whole family was Tony McElroy had always had a lot of difficulty finding and kind of
00:18:17
like maintaining work but it was because of his attitude and explosive temper. It
00:18:22
wasn't because it wasn't available. Uh just before the depression started he and Mabel had saved enough money to rent
00:18:28
uh 14 or no 400 acres of farmland in southern Missouri. God damn. And they planted a very large corn crop there
00:18:36
thinking this is their time. Unfortunately, they had two rainless weeks in the summer of 1927 and it wiped
00:18:43
out the entire crop. Just two weeks. Yeah. So, he lost his entire investment. Oh. According to author Harry McClean,
00:18:51
uh the complete loss broke Tony and he eventually just had to go back to working really lowpaying construction
00:18:57
and farming jobs in and around southern Missouri. Mhm. In the years that followed that, they continued having
00:19:03
children and struggling to get by on Tony's very meager wages, moving from one rented home to another whenever
00:19:10
things would become hard or unaffordable. When the four oldest McElroy bo boys became strong enough,
00:19:16
they were put to work farming, clearing land. Uh, this allowed the family to finally settle down in a rented home in
00:19:22
Skidmore, Missouri. Skidmore is a wild name. I don't know why Skidmore is a wild name and I feel like it's been
00:19:29
featured in like something that I saw lately. Really? Skidmore. I don't know. Well, it's a small town of less than 100
00:19:36
residents. Damn. And it's in Nawway County in northern Missouri. Okay. So, less than 100 residents. Very small
00:19:44
town. According to man, Ken McElroy spent the first 13 years of his life as the child of a tenant farmer, living in
00:19:52
someone else's house, subsisting at near poverty levels in a large family. And the bitterness of those years just never
00:19:58
left him. To make matters worse, with 14 kids in the house, Ken was uh definitely
00:20:04
not ever his father's favorite child and never even came close to being the favorite child. I mean, that's a lot of
00:20:09
competition. That's a lot of competition. But also, you're not allowed to have a favorite child. You
00:20:13
have to love them all. Now, with so much activity in the house though, both Tony
00:20:17
and Mabel were working 12 or more hours a day. They were out of the house a lot.
00:20:22
So, Ken and his siblings came and went as they pleased and were never really noticed by his parents. Like, they just
00:20:27
let it go. It was a very different time. But when Ken did get noticed, it was usually long enough for his father to
00:20:32
yell at him for not doing what he was supposed to be doing. Okay. So, not great. That's shitty. One would think
00:20:37
that in a family with so many people in it that maybe there'd be some close bonds between most of them. I don't
00:20:43
know. At least those close in age. But when it came to Ken, his brothers and sisters seemed to not really pay a lot
00:20:50
of attention to him. Kind of like his parents didn't. A. So, it was basically that because Ken spent a lot of his
00:20:57
childhood by himself. In the winter, he skated on the pond and in the summer he would hunt and trap animals, usually by
00:21:03
himself. And that's really sad. Yeah. During the depression, it was common for a lot of like adolescents and teenage
00:21:09
boys and some girls to be not going to school, absent from school a lot because they would need to stay home and help
00:21:16
the family earn money essentially. In Ken's case, this was true, but even if they weren't growing up during the
00:21:22
depression, he probably would have been absent anyways. Uh he didn't like authority. He was not into education.
00:21:29
And when he did show up for school, his appearance and hygiene were occasionally
00:21:34
so bad that the teachers would either have to take him to the washroom and show him how to clean himself, or they
00:21:40
would just send him home because they said he smelled so bad that it was distracting to other kids. Oh, that's
00:21:46
really awful. This lasted until Ken turned about 15 and he dropped out of school. Now, when it came to friends, he
00:21:54
was never super successful at forming bonds with other children in the area either. At best, his teachers would find
00:22:00
him kind of like surirly and like sullen, like he just wasn't. But at worst, he was mean, aggressive, and
00:22:07
unmanageable. Um, one of his former classmates said, "When I came to Graham school in fourth
00:22:13
grade, one of the first things the other kids told me was about Ken McElroy, the
00:22:17
type of kid he was. I was told to stay away from him, that he pushed other kids around." Damn.
00:22:23
Yeah. Yeah. It's wild. Another classmate said that on his first day riding the bus with Ken, Ken got into a fight with,
00:22:30
and this was Ken's first day riding the bus, Ken got into a fight with another student and Ken and one of his brothers
00:22:36
pulled knives out and threatened to cut the other boy. Holy [ __ ] And they said
00:22:41
after that, Ken had plenty of room on the bus. I would I would assume so. Yeah. So, it turned out the aggressive
00:22:47
behavior that he was demonstrating at school was something he was definitely learning from home. Usually is. In one
00:22:53
incident uh that man talks about in his book, Ken was caught stealing from a general store in town and the owner
00:23:00
called his father Tony to tell him that Ken had stolen from him. Yeah. Rather than like reprimand his son for stealing
00:23:07
and saying like, "Hey, that's not good. You can't do that." Yeah. Like we're not
00:23:10
allowed to. Tony quote burst into the store with a long curved hunting knife in his hand, slammed the owner up
00:23:17
against the wall, and held the knife to his throat and said, "If you ever touch my boy again, I'll cut your heart out."
00:23:24
I think that's super rational. I was like, "Whoa." Here's the thing. The report that I that we saw was that he
00:23:32
just called the father and was like, "He's stealing." Yeah. He's saying like, "You ever touch my boy again, I'll cut
00:23:39
your heart out. I don't know what happened if the owner like did something to him. Uh it's never good to threaten
00:23:45
somebody with a knife. Don't do that. Yeah, we don't recommend it. I could understand the rage component there. If
00:23:49
somebody touched my kid, I would also want to cut their heart out. But like you don't threaten people with knife.
00:23:54
It's illegal. Um but it also sounds, you know, this is this is a situation where
00:23:59
you can both be angry at the owner if he touched your kid. Absolutely. But again,
00:24:03
this was a time period where this probably wouldn't have been looked at as crazy if an owner like slapped against
00:24:08
the ceiling. But also, you have to reprimmend your kid for stealing from someone. Yeah. You can't because
00:24:13
otherwise they're just going to keep stealing and think that you'll attack people with hunting knives. Well, that's
00:24:18
this incident sent a very clear message to Ken and to everyone else in town that
00:24:23
no matter what he did, no one had the right to control him or tell him what to do or they'd have their heart cut out.
00:24:29
And from then on, Ken operated accordingly. Oh. Cuz this just did send a message to him. I'd be [ __ ] terri
00:24:35
like as a as a community member. I'd be [ __ ] terrified. Absolutely. And they were they eventually really were. Now,
00:24:41
as Ken grew older, his reputation got worse and worse, and his behavior became more and more problematic. Former
00:24:48
classmate Bruce Roberts said he was in trouble so many times. After dropping out of school, he found work at a local
00:24:55
plant nursery, but he was fired within his first week when the owner caught Ken quote, "Fooling around with a young girl
00:25:01
who also worked there." Oh, no. Now, this began a trend of Ken finding work and then losing work a short time later
00:25:09
because of his temper, his disinterest in authority, his disinterest in work. It would get the better of him. As far
00:25:15
as Ken's former friend John saw it, he said he was always in a kind of self-sabotage mode. Sounds like it. Um,
00:25:21
he said Ken never got over the fact that he was poor and he resented people who had money. He could never bring himself
00:25:27
to do their [ __ ] work. Huh. It's like, but that's not like you can't treat people like [ __ ] No, that's not gonna
00:25:34
get you anywhere. Exactly. You'll never work your way to the top with that attitude. In 1952, when Ken was 18 years
00:25:39
old, he married Oleta Holland, which was a girl two years younger than him. So, she was 16.
00:25:46
This was the first time Ken left the Mckelroy farm and struck out on his own. He didn't go very far, though. I was
00:25:51
going to say, how'd that go? Yeah. After the marriage, Ken and Oleta moved to Denver, Missouri, which was a small town
00:25:57
about an hour away from Skidmore, and that's where one of Ken's sisters lived at the time. Oleta at the time was
00:26:03
pregnant when they moved to Denver. Unfortunately, they did have a stillborn baby. Oh, that's awful. Which is really
00:26:09
sad. The move to Denver wasn't just an opportunity to start his own life with his new wife, though. It was also looked
00:26:16
to be like he was trying to start somewhere fresh where no one knew him and knew his reputation for being a
00:26:22
complete dick wad. Yeah. You already like pissed off too many people to get work. Yeah. Like you piss off a town of
00:26:27
a hundred people. That's going to be tough. Yeah. Word travels fast. That's going to be tough. Not long after they
00:26:32
relocated, he found work on a construction crew. And he was determined. He was like, "I'm going to
00:26:36
keep my anger in check." Like he was telling Oleta, "This is going to be different until an accident derailed his
00:26:41
newfound success." One day while he was working at the site, and he had been doing well up until here, a large piece
00:26:48
of cribbing, which is a temporary support structure, fell from one of the beams 30 feet above him and landed
00:26:55
directly on his head. Holy [ __ ] He was wearing a helmet. The blow split his construction helmet in half. Oh my god.
00:27:03
And it cut him obviously in his head and compressed his spine as well. Oh [ __ ]
00:27:08
Which caused muscle and nerve damage in his neck that he would have forever. Yeah. compressed his spine. So for Ken,
00:27:15
who had never been one for an honest day's work, this was just a sign to him that the straight and narrow way of life
00:27:21
was not for him. Okay. He took that as I tried to be good. I tried to go on the straight and narrow and look what
00:27:28
happens. [ __ ] that. Struck down. Not long after that, he and Alleta picked up their things and went back to Skidmore.
00:27:34
Was workers comp a thing back then? Right. when he figured in Skidmore he could find less dangerous and less um
00:27:41
scrupulous ways of finding money. Uh so throughout his early adolescent and teen
00:27:46
years, Ken had engaged in all manner of illegal activity, typically for no other
00:27:52
reason than just enjoying doing illegal activity and hurting people. Like much of his other very undesirable behaviors
00:27:59
and characteristics that he demonstrated in his youth, there was never any consequences for any of these illegal
00:28:06
activities, which appears to have enforced his own little [ __ ] up belief that regardless of whether it was right
00:28:12
or wrong. No one was stopping him from doing it. There was never going to be any consequences, so I'll just keep
00:28:18
going. He always got himself out of [ __ ] and he did that for his whole life. Now, a slippery slope. It is. It
00:28:25
does not work out for him. Now, once he and Alleta had settled back in a farm in
00:28:29
Skidmore, he started out his criminal career pretty small. According to Harry McClean, Ken quote, "Rigged a toggle
00:28:36
switch to shut off the running lights in his Ford and short up the plywood lining
00:28:41
in the back so that he could bear more of a substantial load in the back. With his truck now altered, he would drive
00:28:48
the back roads of Skidmore and the surrounding areas, looking at the properties of local farmers and looking
00:28:54
for calves or hogs that looked ready to be slaughtered and brought to market. Once he would find one that he deemed
00:29:01
suitable, he would make note of the closest entrance and return in the middle of the night, sneak on the
00:29:06
property, and steal the animal. He was stealing people's farm animals. He was stealing people's farm animals. That's
00:29:11
messed up. Most of the times he would just go a short distance to another farm and sell the stolen animal to that
00:29:16
farmer who didn't ask where it came from. He's like just putting cows in the back of his truck. Yeah. Now throughout
00:29:22
Skidmore and the surrounding towns, most adults knew how Ken made his money. But
00:29:27
they looked the other way because they didn't want to get on his bad side because he was a scary [ __ ]
00:29:32
That sounds like it. And on schoolyards across Nawway County, there were other stories about Ken. According to Mlan,
00:29:39
people whispered, quote, that he had raped a 14-year-old Quipman girl who became pregnant and died delivering
00:29:45
twins at home because she couldn't afford to go to the hospital. Oh my god. Yeah. About a year later, man went on to
00:29:53
say Ken quote, "Returned and raped her older sister who ended up marrying one of his best hunting buddies." What the
00:29:59
[ __ ] Yeah. Oh, that's he's a [ __ ] terrible. And it gets worse. the extent these are rumors. These are all
00:30:08
like things that are hard to verify, right? But they are things that people were talking about and believed and they
00:30:13
are reports of it. The extent of these like how much is fact and how much is exaggerated as fiction for those
00:30:20
specific rumors that we just talked about. But what is true is that around 1960 or so, Ken started hanging out with
00:30:27
a lot of young people and he's a full-blown adult, some much younger than himself. Um, during this period of his
00:30:34
life, when Ken was about 21 or 22 years old, his best friend was reported to be a boy named Larry who is at least a
00:30:41
decade younger than him. That's not normal. Yeah. Now, this that relationship is strange just as a
00:30:48
friendship, but it was his relationships with younger women and girls that people
00:30:53
around town were really concerned with. Well, and I'm sure he used Larry to meet
00:30:57
girls, right? [Music] Around the same time that he was spending considerable time with Larry
00:31:16
and using him to find girls, Ken also met a young woman in her late teens named Barbara, who soon became his go-to
00:31:24
drinking buddy. Oh god. A teenage girl. It's so sad cuz when you're that age, like as a teenager, and somebody older
00:31:30
wants to hang out with you, it's so exciting and it's so fun and you don't think anything's wrong. And then you
00:31:35
become an adult and you're like, "Why the [ __ ] did that adult want to hang out
00:31:39
with me when I was that age?" No adult wants to hang out with teenagers like this for anything but nefarious reasons.
00:31:45
It's so hard to tell teenagers that. Like, I was a teenager who hung out with older people. And I remember you being
00:31:50
like, "No adult should want to hang out with you like that." And I was like, "Fuck it." You're like, "Fuck that." I
00:31:55
was like, "You're so wrong. I had a great time." And now I realize it was [ __ ] weird. That's nefarious as [ __ ]
00:32:02
But it's so like like how do you tell kids how do you teach kids that? I know. It's like cuz you have to like shatter
00:32:09
completely their illusion of the world. Yeah. And their sense of self, too. Yeah. Like you really have to you have
00:32:14
to be a little You have to be a little You have to play them this honest with them. And you have to be like not
00:32:20
everybody is a good person. I' I've already had to tell my kids that. Yeah, not everybody's a good person. There are
00:32:26
adults who are really bad people and they want to do bad things to kids and you have to be on the lookout for that.
00:32:32
Yep. Now, according to man, this type of behavior was quite common for Ken, who always seemed to have young women
00:32:39
hanging around him. Ew. He wrote, "He would laugh and tell them they didn't have to worry about him." And this is
00:32:46
this is gross. He would say, "You're too old to make for me. I like my women young and tender. I like that young
00:32:53
meat. Ew. When when um Dave sent like did like helped me with this research, he sent me
00:33:01
a note on one of these that said, "I'm so sorry for this." when he sent that cuz he was like, "I'm sorry you have to
00:33:06
read this." Yeah. That's like I apologize. [ __ ] heinous. In fact, it was known around Skidmore that although
00:33:12
he was married to Alleta at the time, Ken would often carry on sexual relationships with girls as young as 12
00:33:20
or 13 years old. Oh my god. Meaning not sexual relationships. Rape. Rape. He was
00:33:28
raping 12 or 13y olds. And he was claiming like these are relationships. And poor Oleta
00:33:35
too cuz remember she was 14 when he got her. Yep. One of those girls who is referred to as
00:33:42
Donna G, that's not her real name, would frequently sneak out of her house at night to meet him. She was probably
00:33:47
excited to be assaulted by him. Yep. About a year later, according to McClean, Donna gave birth to Ken's first
00:33:54
child, a son. Oh my god. Of all the crimes and awful behavior that the people of Skidmore were tolerating from
00:34:00
Ken, the hardest for most of them to tolerate tolerate was his predatory behavior with young girls. Of course, I
00:34:06
can't imagine. and also his violence against women in general because like just giving you a heads up like he is a
00:34:12
violent abusive man like and I'm going to mention a couple of instances and it will be difficult to hear not
00:34:19
surprising. Um not long after moving back to Skidmore from Denver, Ken started an affair with a 15-year-old
00:34:25
local girl named Sharon. One evening in either 1959 or 1960, Ken and Sharon were
00:34:32
arguing in his car when he pulled out a shotgun and held it to her face and said
00:34:36
if she didn't shut up, he was going to blow her head off. Now, nobody knows if it was unt
00:34:42
intentional or not, but the gun discharged and it tore open the underside of Sharon's chin. Oh my god.
00:34:49
And it seriously injured her in the chin and neck. It's incredible that she even
00:34:53
lived. For the first time, the police were called and charges were filed finally against this [ __ ] [ __ ]
00:35:00
But as always, he found a way to avoid any consequences. How the [ __ ] And explain So he explained things to Oleta,
00:35:08
his wife. Uh-huh. And Ken insisted he had to divorce her and marry Sharon, in order to avoid being convicted for the
00:35:16
shooting. Cuz you can shoot your wife. What? Alleta agreed and the two were soon
00:35:22
divorced and Ken took up with the teenager Sharon. Well, that's a Alleta probably saw that as her ticket out.
00:35:28
Yeah. Who soon gave birth to a son they named Jerome. Yep. Jerome would eventually be taken in and raised by
00:35:37
Ken's sister Helen. Luckily, the fact that this woman had to marry a man who shot her in the face and then birth his
00:35:44
child and then have that child taken away from her, that's so [ __ ] I feel for Sharon big time. Now throughout the
00:35:52
1950s and60s, Miguel and his various criminal associates continued continued their theft, their illegal sales
00:35:59
schemes. They assaults, batteries, breakins, they did every they were literally tormenting this town. I like
00:36:07
this town lived in fear of this man and he would just avoid arrest or consequences through intimidation
00:36:14
tactics or just threats of violence. like he was literally running it and he shot a girl in the face. That those t
00:36:21
tactics actually worked is a testament to his reputation for how violent he was. Um and Ken's capacity for violence
00:36:30
was on full display in the summer of 1968 when Ken and three of his associates, Larry Comolmes, Raymond
00:36:37
Hayward, and Glenn Hayward were arrested for a brutal assault on 52-year-old Glenn Graham, a farmer in Skidmore. Oh,
00:36:46
now according to Graham the farmer, he and his daughter went out to the pasture, their pasture that evening on
00:36:52
June 13th to check on their horses when they were the victims of a completely unprovoked attack. Uh, and it was by
00:37:00
four men who were armed with brass knuckles and clubs. Oh, [ __ ] Graham's daughter, Anita Foster, told police she
00:37:06
heard her father call out for help. And when she ran to see what was happening, she saw the men had her father on the
00:37:12
ground and were kicking and punching him all over his body. This gets gnarly. The
00:37:18
sheriff's report stated one of his eyes was kicked out of his head. Oh my god. Yes. Holy [ __ ] The actual report states
00:37:32
one of his eyes was kicked out of his head. How does that even happen? That is brutal on a level I can't even describe.
00:37:40
Oh my, I just keep closing my eyes. When Anita, the daughter, ran to help her father. Quote, "One of the four men
00:37:47
assaulted her, held her down against the hood of a car, choked her, hit her in the stomach, and threatened her with
00:37:53
death." A neighbor, Jim Swope, came called the police when he heard the assault. And when he ran to help, one of
00:38:00
the amen the men tacked him as well. Holy [ __ ] Because all four men were known to Graham and his daughter, they
00:38:07
were quickly rounded up and charged with assault and intent to do great grievous
00:38:11
bodily harm. Even did do grievous bodily harm. Despite the severity and completely unprovoked nature of the
00:38:18
beating, a judge agreed to release the men on as little as $2500 for bond. Even Blanch was just like, "What
00:38:28
the [ __ ] was that?" I was just going to say that. What? Most of them were out of
00:38:32
jail within a couple days. They kicked a man's eye out. Yeah. Threat and were literally beat his
00:38:39
daughter brutally and threatened to kill her. In his testimony given during the preliminary hearing a month later,
00:38:46
Graham the the victim the the farmer told the judge when they arrived in the pasture, Ken McElroy quote came from the
00:38:54
direction of a nearby house and accused Graham of calling him names. That's what this is from. Graham tried
00:39:02
to tell McElroy that he didn't know him and certainly hadn't called him any names, but McElroy only punched him in
00:39:08
the face and then the three other men joined in after that. Among the injuries he sustained during this attack were
00:39:15
several broken bones in his face. His jaw was broken in two places. He had damage to his left eye which had to be
00:39:22
stitched back into its socket cuz remember it was kicked out of his [ __ ] head. Before fleeing the area,
00:39:29
Ken McElroy told Graham, quote, "We're going to do the same thing to your daughter if you report this." Oh. And he
00:39:36
repeated it twice as he ran out of the scene. What the [ __ ] is wrong with this guy?
00:39:42
He's a demon. He's a demon. A few days later, the charges against McElroy and Glenn Hayward were dropped. Don't even
00:39:49
[ __ ] say it. But this is this proves you right here that polygraph exams are [ __ ] [ __ ] No, they were dropped
00:39:56
after both men passed polygraph examinations testing whether they were involved in the beating, which they
00:40:01
denied. What a joke. But Glenn Graham and Anita Foster were also given polygraph examinations, the two victims,
00:40:09
during which they insisted Miguel Roy and Hayward were the asalants, and they also passed. It's also like, guys, in
00:40:15
this town of a hundred people, there's one man who's been terrorizing all of you for lying. Like, come on. And the
00:40:23
prosecutor told a reporter, "It's the first time I have been faced with defendants and prosecuting witnesses
00:40:29
telling the truth and being of opposite beliefs." What? Like they were like literally like this is the first time
00:40:34
that the polygraph exam has said they are telling the truth and they are also telling the truth but they have opposite
00:40:39
stories. Like at that point they should have thrown it out the window. Yeah. Like that's [ __ ] Hot dog. Like
00:40:45
truly. Yep. So the dismissal of charges against McElroy and Haywood caused outrage among the locals. This was the
00:40:54
moment when everybody was like [ __ ] this [ __ ] The fact that he's going to get
00:40:57
out of this. You can't kick a man's eye out and not expect public outrage. One resident wrote to um a letter to the
00:41:03
local paper and said, "Are these people released to go out and conduct other crimes and maybe kill next time, should
00:41:09
I and other men take the law in our hands to protect the ones we love?" Yes. Which is like, I mean, if the law
00:41:16
enforcement in your town is going to let that [ __ ] happen, so the letter writer
00:41:20
was right to assume that they would go on to commit other crimes. In fact, in the months that followed, Ken and these
00:41:26
associates only seemed to increase their criminal activities in and around Skidmore. Of course they did. They were
00:41:30
emboldened. They were emboldened. In the winter of 69, a farmer's co-op warehouse
00:41:35
was robbed twice of several cases of fertilizer and pesticides, totaling in the thousands. Wow. Expecting that these
00:41:44
thieves were going to return a third time, the co-op hired an elderly night watchman to guard the place and armed
00:41:50
him with a shotgun. A few weeks later, when the guard heard the sound of somebody trying
00:41:54
to break back into the building, he called out and the thieves ran away. But the guard aimed the shotgun in the
00:42:00
direction that they were running away and fired several warning shots just to scare them. The night watchman said he
00:42:07
never saw the faces of the men trying to break in and he couldn't identify them.
00:42:10
But according to Harry McClean, quote, "The night of the third burglary, a man had some shotgun pellets removed from
00:42:16
his rear end in a small town not far from St. Joseph. The man was Ken McElroy." I love that. That elatch man
00:42:24
shot his ass. He shot his ass. Literally. Now, Ken McElroyy's violent and very unpredictable temper and his
00:42:31
growing criminal enterprise at this point were a constant threat to the town and the locals. Yeah. But equally
00:42:37
problematic and much more disgusting to the locals was his constant predation on
00:42:43
teenage girls. In 1961, he was 26 years old and he met and began an affair with Alice Wood, who was a 15year-old girl
00:42:52
who worked at a local pharmacy. And did he he ended up marrying another 15-year-old girl like a few
00:42:58
years earlier. Oh yeah. Yep. Okay. In 1964 he had left his previous wife. Good. And now moved in with Alice and in
00:43:06
1968 they were married. Who was allowing this? That's what it's this time period
00:43:12
is wild. Well, but even at that time I like this is like the 70s. You if your parents allow it then
00:43:19
a lot of these the parents would end up having to they would be like bullied into it. going to keep my mouth shut.
00:43:24
Yeah. Uh like all the other women in his life, Alice suffered constant physical and verbal abuse from Ken that went
00:43:31
unreported for the most part. In one instance early in the marriage, and this is very upsetting, just so you know,
00:43:38
this is like um domestic assault, just so you're aware, Ken returned home to find Alice packing clothes in a box and
00:43:45
immediately exploded into a violent rage cuz he assumed that she was leaving him
00:43:49
before she could explain that she was just putting the clothes into storage for the season. Oh my god. He had quote
00:43:56
grabbed her by the hair and swung her into a wall. Oh my god. Yeah. And this apparently was a very typical experience
00:44:04
that women or young girls who got involved with Ken Mckelroy would deal with on a regular basis. Swing them by
00:44:09
the hair into a wall. He was very physically abusive. Sexually abusive, physically abusive, verbally abusive,
00:44:16
emotionally abusive. Nearly all of Ken's relationships were frowned upon by the town's people, but no one seemed like
00:44:25
they were going to do anything about this behavior. Like they were like being bullied into submission almost. the
00:44:30
worst and most egregious of his relationships, which would also prove to be his last and I think the tipping
00:44:37
point that ended his reign of terror, uh, began sometime in 1969. He met 12year-old Trina McNeely 12. You have to
00:44:50
remember that right now he is 27 years old and she is 12. 12. 12. He was 15 when she was born. Yep.
00:45:02
He's 27 years old and she is 12. He is a [ __ ] monster. I don't even want to know. Yep. So, although he
00:45:14
couldn't prove it at the time, Trina's uncle, Sheriff's Deputy Russ Johnson, suspected Ken of preying on school girls
00:45:21
when he stopped by a school dance one night and found Ken hanging around the middle school girls. Middle school? Like
00:45:28
what the [ __ ] dude? Later, Johnson learned that Ken had intimidated Trina's date into picking her up and bringing
00:45:35
her to him at the school, then bringing her home after. What the [ __ ] So, like
00:45:40
delivering Trina to him essentially. Ew. From that point on, it became common knowledge among the kids on the
00:45:46
schoolyard that Ken had been arranging to meet Trina before or after school, often picking her up at the end of the
00:45:52
school day. Sometimes Trina would get other students to sign her mother's name on absentee
00:45:58
notes and instead of going to class, Ken would meet her at the bus stop and take
00:46:02
her to Skidmore for the day. And again, she's probably excited that an older man
00:46:06
is expressing interest in her because she doesn't know better. Exactly. And also he was keeping her c like he was
00:46:12
threatening her like this was a captive situation and she was just doing whatever she could to survive it. Yep.
00:46:18
Um cuz one former friend said in the beginning she was more or less a captive and then she said then they said and
00:46:25
sooner or later when everybody abandoned her she just gave up and went along with
00:46:28
it cuz that's what they do. They isolate you. Of course that's exactly what he [ __ ] 12year-old. Oh my god.
00:46:35
Throughout the years that he'd known Trina, Ken had abused her in nearly every way possible, including stalking,
00:46:41
sexual assault, setting fire to her parents' home. What? And shooting her dog. No, he has literally stalked, abused,
00:46:54
raped, committed arson to her parents house and shot her dog. Like, I just don't understand why they're not putting
00:47:00
him behind bars. That's what I'm saying. That's how you stop people from doing crazy [ __ ]
00:47:07
[Music] Well, in 1971, when Trina was 14 years old, she became pregnant with Ken's
00:47:24
child and dropped out of school to move in with him and Alice, who she is still living
00:47:30
with. Alice later denied that they lived together at any point, like all in the house together, but he was fearing that
00:47:38
he might be facing statutory rape charges, which uh yes, you absolutely. Why all of a sudden is he fearing that?
00:47:46
bullied her parents into letting him marry her and then and divorced Alice and they married in
00:47:52
1974. Like he like threatened that he would like kill her, threatened he would kill them. Like they were totally put
00:47:59
into a horrible like the whole thing is just beyond anybody's comprehension. Yeah. To
00:48:08
allow certainly beyond my comprehension. I can't comprehend allowing that to happen. I just can't. But you have to
00:48:14
think about if they did allow that to happen, what was going on here. You know what I mean? Like how bad it was. Yeah.
00:48:20
And when you find out what happens to Ken and how um how many people are uh complicit in it happening, he was really
00:48:30
bad for it to go everything you've say. He's raped a 12-year-old. He's raped like multiple 12y olds. Multiple
00:48:36
multiple children. Throughout the 1970s, Ken McElroy continued to terrorize the people of Skidmore with violence, theft,
00:48:44
being a sexual predator, all the fun things. In 1973, he was facing charges of forcible rape, assault with a
00:48:52
dangerous and deadly weapon, and arson, but he was released on bond, and managed
00:48:57
to get the charges dropped. That's good. That makes sense. A few years later in 1976, Ken shot his neighbor, Roma Henry,
00:49:05
in the stomach after a minor argument and was quickly arrested for the shooting. Cuz like you shot your
00:49:12
neighbor bother arresting him, though. Um, this one's wild. Uh, before the trial had even begun, Ken burned the
00:49:20
judge's barn to the ground and stalked several members of the jury and got himself acquitted. Oh, okay. He burned
00:49:28
the judge's barn down and stalked the jury until he was acquitted. That's just a Tuesday for Ken. There is no stopping
00:49:35
him. No, the there is though. Uh the pattern continued four years later when McElroy shot 72year-old Ger Ernest
00:49:44
Bowenamp in the neck. My god. Ken was indicted for the shooting, but when the trial came in summer of 1981, the charge
00:49:52
had been reduced and Miguel Roy was convicted of a simple assault charge and he was released on bond pending an
00:49:58
appeal date which was scheduled for early July. That's good. Bowen Camp's wife Lois said, "Same old story. Police
00:50:05
arrest him. Courts let him go." So, like she told the reporter that she's like, "When is this going to stop? Like, are
00:50:12
we really just going to keep this going?" And the town said, "Yeah." A few days later, one of the locals spotted
00:50:17
Ken and Skidmore waving a gun around, which was in direct violation of the terms of his bond. The witness signed an
00:50:24
affidavit and agreed to testify at the bond hearing, which was brave as [ __ ] When the hearing date arrived, the
00:50:29
town's people learned that the bond hearing had been pushed back to an undecided date in the future. Fantastic.
00:50:34
To everyone in Skidmore, it seemed like Ken McElroy had managed to find a way to
00:50:38
avoid facing every single consequence in his entire life. That must have been maddening. The result they were fearing
00:50:45
was that Ken would only become angrier, more vengeful, more powerful, and eventually he would take it out on the
00:50:52
entire [ __ ] town. Yeah. Had he not already? Like he they were like, "Something even bigger is going to
00:50:56
happen here." Like, "He's not going to stop. We're all going to be dead at the end of this." Yeah. On the afternoon of
00:51:00
July 10th, a large group of Skidmore locals met at a Legion Hall. Town meeting. at a Legion Hall, little town
00:51:09
meeting at the Legion Hall, just to discuss the situation that they found themselves in. For decades, Ken McElroy
00:51:16
had prayed on the people of Skidmore. He had terrorized them. He had kept them hostage in their own homes. I mean, they
00:51:24
were terrifi they were he had victimized them all in one way or another. And it seemed like even law enforcement was too
00:51:29
afraid of him to do anything about it. By that point, he'd shot more than a handful of people. Like, and was liable
00:51:38
to go on doing so until he finally killed people, killed everybody in the town. Yeah. They all agreed something
00:51:44
needed to be done about the situation and if the law wasn't going to do anything about it, maybe they would have
00:51:50
to do something about it. Girl, as the group was talking, as they're talking in the Legion, this is a true like take a
00:51:58
sip of your drink. I'm getting ready like [ __ ] I'm getting a little comfier. As the group was talking, Ken
00:52:04
entered the DNG tavern, which was just like a bar. He had been in a few days earlier after the conviction for
00:52:10
assault. Oh, yeah. And the bartender remembered him saying, "I've been fighting prosecutors since I was 13
00:52:15
years old, and I'm damn near 50. This is the first time I've lost." Oh my god. Imagine that man being in your town for
00:52:21
nearly 50 years, doing the [ __ ] he was doing. Yeah. The conviction, or more likely the loss, had made Ken angry. And
00:52:28
on that day, he was in one of his shittier moods, which almost always meant to the people of Skidmore.
00:52:35
Something bad is going to happen. He's going to hurt someone. As Ken sat quietly at the bar, muttering about the
00:52:40
conviction, pissing and moaning, getting angrier and angrier, one of the patrons
00:52:44
slipped out of the bar and ran over to the Legion Hall and told everybody, "Hey everybody, Ken's over there and he is
00:52:50
[ __ ] spitting mad, so like something bad's going to happen." And the fact that they all knew like this [ __ ] is
00:52:56
mad and bitching about something, somebody's going to get hurt. That's bad. That's scary. Now, ordinarily, this
00:53:03
news would have cleared the room and sent everyone scrambling back to their homes just to wait, locking their doors,
00:53:08
closing their shades. They would like wait things out like until he had chilled out. The group of men, though,
00:53:15
all left the Legion Hall and walked over to D&G Tavern where they found Ken finishing his drink. And the group of
00:53:22
men just stared at him silently, wordlessly until he got up from his bar stool. And then he walked out the door
00:53:28
and they just wordlessly, no one said a [ __ ] word. They all just walked out after him. And again, no one's talking.
00:53:36
And he goes outside and he gets in his truck where Trina, his 12-year-old bride, who is now, you know, she's a few
00:53:43
years older now, but that's that Trina was waiting for him in the truck. The men all watched as Ken put the keys in
00:53:50
the ignition. And then before turning and starting the engine, they watched him light a cigarette. And then out of
00:53:57
nowhere, nobody could figure out where, gunshots rang out. Stop it. One after the other after the other from different
00:54:06
vantage points, different guns, just pow pow pow pow. All whoa, what happened? A
00:54:14
barrage. By the time the shooting had stopped, the car had been riddled with bullets. Was Trina okay? Trina's okay.
00:54:21
Okay. The But the car had been riddled with bullets of various calibers from various guns. Strange. The first shot, a
00:54:29
slug from a 30 3030 rifle, I think it's called. I don't know anything about guns. I apologize. Like, please don't
00:54:35
get mad at me. It's a rifle. Uh, it shattered the back window of the truck and it struck Ken in the base of his
00:54:41
skull, tearing through his tongue and teeth before exiting through his cheek. That's like low-key poetic because
00:54:47
remember that time when he shot a child in the face? Exactly. It would eventually be found a few yards away in
00:54:52
the wall of a small hut down the street from the cavern. Nobody was hurt, don't worry. That's good. Never can. Uh, the
00:54:57
second shot that hit Melroy came from a 22 caliber rifle and was fired from farther down the street. The bullet hit
00:55:04
him in the upper skull and into his brain before exiting the other side of his head. According to man, there was
00:55:10
also quote substantial evidence that a shotgun was also fired at the truck, which would have accounted for the
00:55:16
smaller pellet wounds found in Melroyy's neck and face. How terrible. When the shooting stopped, someone someone pulled
00:55:24
Trina out of the car while this was happening as well. Like literally dragged her to safety. Wow. This is a
00:55:30
movie. Um, and they kept her there until it was all over. When it was clear there
00:55:35
would be no more shootings, someone called the sheriff's department to report the death of Ken McElroy. I said,
00:55:41
"That's crazy. He just killed over." Of course, the sheriff was already in town.
00:55:46
In fact, he had been at the Legion Hall with everyone not long before the shooting. Wait, no way. He He was
00:55:52
getting a drink at that same time. He was at the Legion Hall where the meeting occurred.
00:55:58
Oh, under the circumstances, it wouldn't really be appropriate for him to investigate the
00:56:04
case. Feels like a little bit of a conflict. He said, "You know what? I I have something going on right now." You
00:56:10
know, uh, how about the deputy? The deputy. Maybe get the deputy on this one. So, the case was handed over to the
00:56:18
Northwest Missouri Investigative Squad or Nomis. um a task force of law enforcement officers from the
00:56:24
surrounding counties who occasionally called were called upon to investigate uh unusual crimes. No, don't bother the
00:56:30
task force with this. This he just he it was a bad time he died. This we're not even done. What? Cuz the news of Ken
00:56:38
McElroyy's murder spread quickly and soon journalists from around the country flocked to Skidmore to interview the
00:56:44
town that from all appearances had taken the law into their own hands. Unfortunately for those people, no one
00:56:51
in Skidmore would talk to anybody. Well, they didn't. Literally anybody. And they
00:56:56
never would. What? When I tell you no one talked. No one saw nothing. Wow. No one. Not one person in this town
00:57:08
said, "Let me tell you what I saw." That's brotherhood. In his statement to Nomous investigators and eventually to
00:57:14
Missouri FBI agents, Sheriff Dan Estes, the sheriff that was like, "Whoops, can't be there." Uh, he admitted that he
00:57:21
had met with a group of 35 or 40 men at the Legion Hall that afternoon to discuss their concerns about the Bowen
00:57:27
camp case and like the guy who this 70y old man ger who was shot in the neck. Yeah. And of Mick Elroy in general. They
00:57:35
were just discussing their concerns that he's a problem. That's all. But he adamantly desi denies having anything to
00:57:41
do with the shooting. No. In fact, when the man from the tavern came into the hall to tell them McElroy was in town,
00:57:47
Estes distinctly recalls telling them all, "We're not going to go down there and do anything." Right, boys? Then he
00:57:53
left, assuming everyone would simply go home. That's what he said. And and they did. He said, I told him, "We're not
00:58:00
going down there and doing anything." He did his job. As far as I'm concerned, that sheriff did his job. He said,
00:58:04
"We're not going to do anything, are we?" And they said, "Nope." and he said, "I'll believe you." He said, "Wink."
00:58:10
Based on the evidence collected at the scene and from Miguel Elroyy's body, there had been at least four shooters,
00:58:16
all firing from different positions along the street. That's crazy. One was directly behind the truck. One was off
00:58:22
to the driver's side, another was down the hill a few yards, and another was about half a block away by the post
00:58:28
office. Damn. Despite the fact that there were about 40 people in town that day, investigators found it nearly
00:58:34
impossible to find anything who would admit they saw anything. Anyone? Anyone, anything, nothing, anywhere,
00:58:44
anywhere, anytime, any place. One elderly man, one elderly guy told investigators he'd seen at least three
00:58:52
men with guns just before the shooting started. Couldn't tell you who they were, just that they were guys with
00:58:57
guns. But a short time later, his attorney withdrew the statement that citing his client's health problems. He
00:59:02
never said that and he didn't mean it either. And those who would talk would talk mostly to reporters. Lois Bowen
00:59:09
Campamp who had everything. She said, "I have something to say." She told reporters justice had finally finally
00:59:14
been served. She said, "You know how awful it was living in a town with Ken McElroy?" She said, "My neighbor and I
00:59:20
took turns sleeping at night. It was frightening. God." Yeah. That's how scary it was to live in that town with
00:59:26
him. That tells you something. Yeah. A few weeks later on August 2nd, a grand jury was assembled to review the
00:59:32
evidence and determine whether it was sufficient to warrant an indictment for murder. On who the problem was,
00:59:38
investigators had no suspect to indict. Trina said in her statement, "It seemed so strange. There were vehicles lining
00:59:47
the street, but no people anywhere. A man in the crowd told me to stay in the truck, that they wanted to shoot me,
00:59:52
too, but someone else pulled me out." In the end, the grand jury determined there
00:59:57
wasn't enough evidence to indict anyone, and the district attorney declined to press charges against any of the people
01:00:03
who were there the day McElroy was shot. The coroner's determination was that Ken
01:00:08
was killed by a person or persons unknown. And Trina's lawyer, Richard McFaden, said, "We are disappointed, but
01:00:14
not surprised. Now, we can only hope for the Justice Department to complete its report soon." If Trina and her lawyer
01:00:22
were hoping that something would come out of the Justice Department's report, they were probably disappointed by the
01:00:27
outcome. When he was asked about the potential for an arrest or indictment, District Attorney David Baird told
01:00:33
reporters any hope of making a case against McKelroyy's killer or killers faded when a county grand jury disbanded
01:00:39
to September 28th without issuing issuing any indictments. They said, "We just don't know." A short time later,
01:00:46
the the Missouri FBI wound down their investigation, too, finding little evidence that would lead them to to a
01:00:52
suspect, and virtually no one who would even admit to being in town that day. Damn. Trina and a few members of the
01:01:00
McElroy family tried to speak out against the injustice that they saw, but eventually that died down, too. You feel
01:01:06
for his family? For sure. For sure. That's tough. After spending years researching the case for his book, Harry
01:01:13
McClean isn't convinced that there are many people left in Skidmore who really know what happened. He said, "I don't
01:01:19
think the guys on the street that day went home and told their wives and kids. I think they went back home, got on
01:01:24
their tractors, and shut up." Former sheriff's deputy Dick Luzier more or less agrees with that assumption. He
01:01:32
told a reporter in 2001, "They were so relieved that Ken McElroy was gone that it didn't matter to them whether the
01:01:38
shooting was right or wrong. In the four decades since his murder, no one has ever been charged with or even
01:01:46
suspected of Miguely's murder. No suspects. Damn. Mayor Tracy Shuy said, "Just because those bad things happen doesn't
01:01:57
mean the whole town and the whole community is bad. For newcomers, it does come up. But what we say is that's not
01:02:03
all that we're about. We've had a couple of things that have been not so pleasant, but to us, that doesn't define
01:02:08
the town. Please see past that. If you can't, you've got to move on. She said, "If you can't, get the [ __ ] out of
01:02:13
schedule." Tracy said, "Get the [ __ ] out of here. We don't have much anymore. It
01:02:16
is what it is." She said, "Shut your mouth." And that is the wild death of Ken McElroy, known as the town bully,
01:02:26
which is a nice name, I would say, for him. It's a good anecdote to learn from. Yeah. You can't spend your life
01:02:33
terrorizing your community. Don't do it. that the ending of that case had my jaw
01:02:42
on the [ __ ] ground. Well, I know. I didn't really see that coming. I'm very glad that Trina was not hurt in that
01:02:47
that somebody pulled her out of the situation. And I'm sorry for his family that they didn't because it's like, you
01:02:54
know, it's it's a person. It's a person that Yeah. And you know, I'm sure they had different feelings for him. Of
01:02:58
course they did. Like there are monsters in every family that, you know, that their family loves. So it's like, you
01:03:04
know, that's just the way it is. And obviously vigilante justice is a very slippery slope and a very a lot. It's a
01:03:13
complex and very nuanced thing. There's it's you know this is a situation where you go by wow
01:03:21
that I'm more I'm mostly interested in the fact that I rarely see people come together and just keep a secret like
01:03:30
that or keep just no one saw nothing. That's wild. But I think they're right. I think this is a this was a community
01:03:38
of like farmers and you know bluecollar workers and they're all you know like they're working hard during a hard time
01:03:45
and they're getting their [ __ ] rocked every day and they're getting their [ __ ]
01:03:48
rocked every day by this guy. Most of them are scared to go to sleep and like the fact that she said the children
01:03:53
aren't safe. The children aren't safe. He's going to schoolards like he's going to school dances. Like there's nowhere
01:03:59
that anywhere is safe here. And if you didn't know like any other detail other than the fact that one woman said her
01:04:05
and her neighbor took shift sleeping. That alone tells you tell you what kind of fear he had them living under. Can
01:04:11
like genuinely sit here right now and imagine you call up your neighbor to wake them up because it's their turn to
01:04:16
watch for the town bully. Yeah. Like that's crazy. And that was not even that long ago. And they were just they were
01:04:22
tired of living under complete tyranny and just like you know well and if the law is not
01:04:28
going to do anything in a case. I'm not saying what's right and what's wrong. I'm just saying like this is a wild
01:04:34
case. Yeah. It's a wild case of you can't treat people like [ __ ] for your whole life. Yeah. And expect anything
01:04:39
good to come out of it. It's hard to say too much, but Exactly. Like because again I'm not condoning shooting people
01:04:45
by any stretch of the imagination. It's a horrifying sight to think about. Yeah,
01:04:51
it actually it's more or less just me saying you got to think about how you treat people. Yes. Because people do
01:04:58
people in in every different way. So you don't know what you're doing here. I've
01:05:02
never heard another story quite like that. Me neither. It's shocked. That's the thing. It's just a shocking shocking
01:05:07
story. Dave found that one. Dave found that one. Dave Dave Dave craziest [ __ ] Dave finds the crazy like the some of
01:05:15
the most fascinating stories and most interesting ones I've heard. Everyone came out of the mind of Dave for real.
01:05:22
Damn. Wow. Well, yeah. We hope you keep listening and after that we're pretty sure you will. Hell yeah. And we hope
01:05:30
you but not so weird that you terrorize a town to the point where there's quite literally no return. Yes. Don't just
01:05:37
don't do that. They'll meet at the Legion Hall. They will. Or the VFW. That's all I could picture. Yeah, that's
01:05:43
basically it. Bye. [Music] [Music]