Vigilantism is the act of preventing, investigating and punishing perceived offenses and crimes without legal authority.
Nodaway County is a county located in the northwest part of Missouri. As of the 2020 census, the population was 21,241. Its county seat is Maryville. The county was organized February 14, 1845 and is named for the Nodaway River. It is the largest in area of the counties added to Missouri in the 1836 Platte Purchase and the fourth-largest county by area in Missouri.
Skidmore is a city in western Nodaway County, Missouri, United States. The population was 245 at the 2020 Census. The small farming community is known for the unsolved extrajudicial killing of Ken Rex McElroy, the murders of Wendy Gillenwater and Bobbie Jo Stinnett, and the disappearance of Branson Perry. Skidmore also has a yearly "Punkin' Show."
In Cold Blood is a non-fiction novel by American author Truman Capote, first published in 1966. It details the 1959 murders of four members of the Clutter family in the small farming community of Holcomb, Kansas.
Dennis Lynn Rader, also known as BTK, is an American serial killer who murdered at least ten people in Wichita and Park City, Kansas, between 1974 and 1991. Although Rader occasionally killed or attempted to kill men and children, he typically targeted women. His victims were often bound, sometimes with objects from their homes, and either suffocated with a plastic bag or manually strangled with a ligature.
Francis Dolarhyde is a fictional character and the main antagonist of Thomas Harris' 1981 novel Red Dragon, as well as its film adaptations, Manhunter and Red Dragon.
The following events occurred in July 1981:
Ken Rex McElroy was an American criminal and convicted attempted murderer who resided in Skidmore, Missouri, United States. He was known as "the town bully", and his unsolved killing became the focus of international attention. Over the course of his life, McElroy was accused of dozens of felonies, including assault, child molestation, statutory rape, arson, animal cruelty, hog and cattle rustling, and burglary.
Edward James Adams was a notorious American criminal and spree killer in the Midwest. He murdered seven people–including three policemen—over a period of around 14 months, and wounded at least a dozen others. At age 34, Adams was surrounded and then killed by police in Wichita, Kansas.
Robert Joseph Silveria Jr., also known as The Boxcar Killer, is an American serial killer currently serving double life sentences in Wyoming. Silveria was also convicted in Kansas for the killing of Charles Randall Boyd, and in Florida for the killing of Willie Clark.
Louis Till was an African American GI during World War II. After enlisting in the United States Army following trial for domestic violence against his estranged wife Mamie Till, and having chosen military service over jail time, Till was court-martialed on two counts of rape and one count of murder during the Italian Campaign. He was found guilty and was executed by hanging at Aversa. Till was the estranged father of Emmett Till, whose murder in August 1955 at the age of 14 galvanized the civil rights movement. The circumstances of Till's death remained largely unknown until they were revealed after the highly controversial acquittal of his son's murderers ten years later. Till's guilt would be called into question many years later via an analysis by John Edgar Wideman. In a book documenting every court martial and execution of GIs in North Africa and Europe during World War II, United States Army Colonel French MacLean called Wideman's research and conclusions into question. According to Colonel MacLean, even though justice was not done to Emmett Till's murderers, the documents kept on the case by Judge Advocate General's Corps suggest that justice was in fact done to Till.
Gleydson William MacDonald was an English serial killer responsible for the deaths of five people in the Australian states of Queensland and New South Wales between 1961 and 1962.
The Kansas City crime family, also known as the Civella crime family or Kansas City Mafia, is an Italian-American Mafia family based in Kansas City, Missouri.
Lawrence Fobes King, also known as Latisha King was a 15-year-old student at E.O. Green Junior High School in Oxnard, California, who was shot twice by a fellow student, 14-year-old Brandon McInerney, and kept on life support for two days afterwards.
Harry MacLean is a writer and lawyer living in Denver, Colorado, who writes true crime books and won an Edgar Award for his book In Broad Daylight (1988).
Mary McElroy was an American kidnapping victim. She was the daughter of Henry F. 'Judge' McElroy, City Manager of Kansas City, Missouri.
In Broad Daylight is a 1991 American made-for-television thriller drama film about the life of Ken McElroy, the town bully of Skidmore, Missouri who became known for his unsolved murder. McElroy was fictionalized as the character Len Rowan, portrayed by Brian Dennehy. The film is based on Harry N. MacLean's nonfiction book of the same name.
No One Saw a Thing is an American documentary television series that was first shown on SundanceTV on August 1, 2019.
In Plain Sight: The Kaufman County Prosecutor Murders is a true crime account by American journalist and author Kathryn Casey of the 2013 murders of two prosecutors and a wife by a disgruntled justice of the peace. William Morrow released the book in March 2018.
Anthony Joe LaRette Jr. was an American serial killer and rapist. Convicted of one murder in St. Charles, Missouri in 1980, he later confessed to thirty-one murders in eleven states dating back to the late 1960s, fifteen of which were closed based on information provided by him. Sentenced to death for his sole conviction, LaRette was executed in 1995.
