All language subtitles for No.One.Saw.A.Thing.S01E04.WEBRip.x264-ION10.English

I have no sympathy for Ken Rex.

He scared this poor community
half to death.

During that time, to protect
myself and my family,

I carried a gun.

So he brought out
the worst in me.

No one talked,
everyone stuck together.

That's what small towns do.
They just band together.

They planned that murder.

They had a town meeting,
they all sat down together,

they decided that they were
gonna do it, and they done it.

It was my estimation
that we did not have

sufficient evidence
to go to trial.

After he decided
not to press charges,

pretty much everybody

in Skidmore thought
it's finally over.

This is a town
full of vigilantes.

Everybody else suffers,
but they all carry on.

Aren't you now concerned that

now that he's gone,

this town has
a dirty little secret,

and that, in it's own way,

will have as bad an effect
on the town as McElroy did?

The people
who were involved in this

and the people who covered it up

think they may have been doing
a good thing for the community.

They didn't realize
that their children

are going to be
negatively effected by this.

I think I counted
nine mysterious deaths

since Ken Rex died.

It perpetuates itself.

When's the next type
of situation gonna occur

when the community
turns on an individual?

- Rolling.
- All right, here we go.

I'll wait for the car to go by.

- Hair looks OK?
- Ah, yeah.

OK, here we go.
Three, two and one...

It's one of America's
most puzzling murders

and it happened
20 years ago today.

Hi, I'm NBC 8's Jim Reich.
I'm in Skidmore, Missouri.

It's where they killed
the town bully

right in front of this bar.

All right, so we're rolling.

- Ah, first of all,
thanks for taking your time. -Sure.

And, uh,
this is weird, isn't it?

I mean, the way I see it,
and especially goin' over there,

I mean, you can see
all the books

and all the movies,
but this is pretty weird.

It's an unusual case

and it's gotten lots
of attention in 20 years.

I thought,
for all intents and purposes,

it was over.

They shot Ken Rex, he's dead.

It's pretty clear nobody's gonna
be apprehended for that crime.

People get away
with crimes all the time.

I mean, we would like
to say that's not true,

some of them get more attention
and some of them get less,

but we have murders
and other crimes

that occur all the time,
for which there is no prosecution.

Unfortunately,
in the United States,

we have cases
like that all the time,

we have cases in this office
like that all the time.

Skidmore was trying
to move past it...

but it seems like
every anniversary,

there'll be journalists
who'll come into town

dredging all
this stuff up again.

This town is so small.

You know, there's that phrase,
"small town gossip".

During the past 20 years, uh,
any validity to that?

Well, I'm sure there's
been a few discussions,

but for the most part,
people never talk about it.

The newspaper people
and TV people, you can say,

"I don't want to talk to you,
go away and leave me alone."

Him, you couldn't do that to.

So yeah, we had put up
with all those,

but we didn't have
to put up with him.

I think they'd
been victimized by McElroy

for such a long time,
then you had a lot of outsiders

trying to find out
what happened.

You know,
it was a bonding thing.

It's us against them now.

It used to be us against him.

And now it's us
against everybody else.

McElroy's wife, Trena,
has remarried,

and is living somewhere
in the Ozarks,

still fearful
of setting foot in Skidmore.

See, the only thing
I ever get out of this,

is a do get some free publicity.

I've gotten a lot of business
through McElroy.

I've had a lot of people that
have hired me to represent 'em.

I thought it would die down--

about a year, year and a half,

I wouldn't hear
anymore about it.

Every year,
it gets bigger and bigger.

I know, all the people
here, they want to forgotten,

put it behind them,
because it wasn't a good time

for Skidmore and their citizens.

The shooting--
the McElroy shooting--

definitely shriveled
the town up.

It just sucked it right up.

People stayed in their houses.

People who socialized
prior to that,

stopped socializing.

And that really
was the bad thing

in the long run.

It just was so terrible,

it ruined the town.

And it was a shame.
You know, it's a shame.

There are people
who couldn't wait to get out,

people left town.

The next thing
you know, the bank closes,

the grocery store
goes out of business,

and the town
just starts to dry up

and evaporate
from the face of the earth.

This is where the old
schoolhouse used to sit.

But it's gone now.
Everything's gone.

I don't think Skidmore
would've come down like that

if it hadn't been
for that killing.

Since Ken's death,
we've had a lot of tragedies

in the town that is unusual
for a rural American town.

We're talking murders,
suicides, deaths.

Here's a crime that hasn't
been solved for decades.

No resolution, no closure.

So how do you cope with that?

It's there, it's constant,

it's part
of your fabric of life.

Does that compel
more violent acts to occur?

Maybe it does.

On my first visit to Skidmore,

I was confronted with the trauma

of the murder
of Ken Rex McElroy immediately.

I went in there to buy lunch

and I was greeted
by a waitress who told me

that I wasn't welcome there and I
would not get any service there.

From there, I went up
to a convenience store,

and as I got to the door,

there was a man
with his arms folded and said,

"No, you can't come in here."

Skidmore tends to view
any outsiders

as someone coming in

to make an attack on their town.

But I did talk to one woman
who said to me,

"Go ahead and write about
McElroy and his murder,

but while you do that,

look at the whole picture."

The thing that really got to me

was the current crimes.

There was something wrong here.

That's the inexplicable
thing about it.

If Ken Rex was such a problem,

then why didn't the town
live happily ever after?

Why didn't the violence end
with his death?

Because it hasn't ended.

Horror and mayhem
have visited that town

over and over and over again.

Skidmore wasn't
on the map for anything

until Ken Rex McElroy.

And now, any little bitty thing
that happens,

okay, it's Ken Rex McElroy
and then this happens;

it's Ken Rex McElroy then this
and this and this has happened.

But I think the outside community
that looks in on Skidmore,

they would want you to think that,
"Oh, Skidmore's this really bad place."

Well, it's not.

There's a few people
that's made it look bad.

My name is Ben Espey.

I was the Nodaway County
Sheriff for 16 years.

Back in the time
Ken Rex McElroy was operating,

I had a different occupation.

I grew up on a farm.

Then when farming
got really tough

in the early '80's around here,

I went to the Nodaway County
Sheriff's Department.

People will tell you this
and it's true.

If you get law enforcement
in your blood,

you can't get it out.

In the time that
I was the sheriff,

methamphetamine was beginning
to become pretty popular.

Back then,

prosecuting attorney
was David Baird.

He was prosecuting attorney
for years and years

in Nodaway County.

Took a lot of cases
in front of him.

In the early 2000's,
methamphetamine was

by far the big issue.

The recipe's not that hard.

We arrested a guy who was
walking around Walmart

with his shopping list
he'd downloaded off the Internet

of what he needed to make meth.

On October 16th, the year 2000,

we got a call
at the sheriff's department

that there was a female
layin' in the backyard

that was non-responsive.

I, myself,
went and when we got there,

there was a young female
layin' in the grass

on the backside of the house.

It looked like
she was just beaten to death.

There was no...

life left in this girl.

Wendy Gillenwater
left this house on 406 Elm

for the last time Monday.

The house remains quiet now,
as the sheriff continues

its investigation.

Because no one knows exactly
what happened inside this house,

friends and family
are just going to have to wait

to see what the autopsy
will bring them.

Wendy Gillenwater was
a small town girl in Skidmore

who grew up in the shadow

of the murder of Ken McElroy.

She was the next generation,

and so was her husband,
Greg Dragoo.

I really didn't
know much about the girl,

just knew that she was involved
with wild parties,

and involved with drugs, heavy.

And that's about all
I knew about her.

She was living
about six blocks from me.

And, of course, everybody
lives six blocks from me

in this town.

She was killed four houses down.

Domestic.

We had police
and ambulance come in,

and I heard that
this young lady Wendy

had been killed.

And I'm going,
"What is going on here?"

And it turns out it was the man

that was living with her.

He'd been abusing her
for a long time.

You live with an abusive man
long enough,

he will kill ya.

Greg brutalized her for years.

From early in their marriage,

she was beaten up
by him regularly.

On the final day of her life,

he started beating her

and he just wouldn't stop.

A story I heard was
it was methamphetamine rage.

He was high to the point,

he didn't just beat her up,

he pulverized her.

He broke eight ribs in one side

and six ribs in the other.

There were lacerations
all over her face,

all over her arms.

He was merciless.

There was some mad blood there,
over something--

And I don't remember
what it was, but...

He beat her to death
with a flashlight.

He dragged her body

out of the house,
down the stairs,

threw her in the yard,

and he saw a neighbor
next door, looking on.

That didn't stop him.

Nobody would stop

and help Wendy Gillenwater

when she was laying,
bleeding in her front yard.

That shows that there's
a lot of people in that town

that don't care.

When she was gasping
for her last breath of air,

he took a bottle of
Dawn dishwater soap

and poured it down her mouth.

It was a horrific scene.

A preliminary coroner's
report said

Gillenwater died
of severe trauma

to her chest and stomach.

Been the coroner for four years,

and we haven't dealt
with one of these before.

As a policeman,

we've had some experience
in this.

No.

Wendy's mother was only able
to identify her daughter

by the rings on her hand.

Dragoo's grandmother says

that seeing Gillenwater
in the hospital

gave her nightmares.

The Skidmore residents
don't want to talk about it,

and neither does the sheriff,

who points all inquires
to the prosecutor.

We've got to figure out
what the cause of death is,

and then you must be able
to link that cause of death

to the actions
of a particular individual.

All I know is,

he got life in prison over that.

For years, Greg was beating her.

People had to know about it
that lived nearby.

In a small town like this,

everybody knows
everybody's business.

Why didn't someone
raise a red flag

and say, "This isn't right,

something's wrong here,"
but nobody did.

The silence
was literally deadly.

There's no reason
to move to Skidmore.

If my family didn't have
a farm in Skidmore,

I would never go there again.

My name is Martin Edward Small.

I am the oldest kid

in the Festival family.

I'm an Eagle Scout,
and I'm in my 19th year

in the United States Army.

My son Marty,

he's a captain
and a paratrooper,

served in Iraq
with Special Forces, twice.

My son was raised
on three points.

Know your enemy,

never leave an enemy alive,

the guy with
the most bullets wins.

My son happens
to be a specialist

with a knife though,

because I am.

So he was taught
how to kill with a knife

long before he was taught
how to shoot.

You can't--
No you can't wander around, Dad.

- That's in the shot.
- Oh, I see.

And if you're in the bedroom,
you can't have the TV up.

OK. Phew.

There's only certain things

that can be solved
only within the legal system.

And if that works, that's great.

But sometimes violence
is the only option.

Ken Rex McElroy was a problem
in the '80's.

And I was a kid
growin' up there.

The next major violent time

was when the Wendy
situation happened.

Wendy Gillenwater was two years
ahead of me in high school,

and she was another one
of those great examples of,

you know, you get out of school,

you find a guy local,

and you never leave.

That happens a lot--

in which, in turn,
resulted in her death.

And that's really sad.

And then soon after that,

Branson disappeared.

Folks here
in Skidmore have lived

with a big question
on their minds.

What happened to one
of their own?

Branson Perry said he was going
to put away jumper cables,

he hasn't been seen since.

Perry, who was 20,

vanished from outside his home.

Signs across the area
are getting the message out

about this missing man,
but still, there have been

no signs of Branson himself.

Branson is my stepson.

My name is James Klino.

I was married to Becky Perry,
which is Branson's mother.

I believe
it happened on a Thursday.

Branson's father
was in the hospital,

and he was getting
the house clean

for his dad to come home.

He was also working on getting
his father's car running

so he could pick him up.

Gina was the girl that happened
to be in the house

trying to help him out

to get ready for
his dad to come home.

While they're
cleaning up the house,

Branson went into
one of the kitchen cabinets

and starts rooting around
and he came out with something,

and went outside and then
came right back in again.

And Gina said,
"What were you doing?"

He said, "Oh, nothing.
Don't worry about it."

He went to go to the shed
to return some jumper cables...

and at that point,
was not seen from thereafter.

Everything just seemed like

it was a normal day
in Skidmore, Missouri.

It took awhile
for everyone to realize

that something
was going on here.

Jo Ann Stinnett went
to check on her grandson

at this house,
where he lived with his dad.

Stinnett says the stereo
was blaring

and the furnace blasting.

The 20-year-old Branson Perry
was gone.

They found no blood, no weapons,

nothing missing.

He didn't take a thing with him.

By Saturday,

they still hadn't heard
from Branson.

One of Becky's
biggest frustrations

was the fact that the police

did not jump
onto the investigation

as soon as they should have.

They should've jumped on it
when it was first reported.

Early on,

I don't think anybody

suspected foul play.

The police said,
"He's probably just out

sowing his oats.
He'll be back."

And that upset her pretty much.

She goes,
"He's not that kind of a boy

that would just do that."

The first question
everyone wants to know is,

did he run away?

Well, when Sheriff Espey
explored that possibility,

he found Branson's van,
his wallet,

all his personal possessions

seemed to be there at the home.

The thing that kind of
strikes me about this case is

that he just disappeared
in thin air,

just taking some jumper cables
out to a shed

behind his house
and was never seen again.

The jumper cables
were never returned

to the shed until

weeks after the fact.

All of a sudden,
the jumper cables showed up.

Two weeks later,

those jumper cables that Branson
was taking out to the shed

suddenly showed up in the shed
right by the front door.

It's like somebody's
trying to cover something up,

cover their own tracks.

It was beginning
to look like someone

in Skidmore was responsible
for whatever happened

to Branson Perry.

That is really strange.

Bob, his dad, and his mother

were good friends of ours.

In this particular case,

I think we had some strange
people in town that day

and nobody really knows
much about it.

But those signs have been up
a long damn time.

They tried everything they could

to find what happened
to the Perry boy.

I don't know
if this is true or not,

but I was told

some man did it
and he fed him to the hogs.

He was out in his yard
and he just up and disappeared.

They even dug up places

and done all kind of stuff
all around there,

but I don't know.

Was this drug related?
Sex related?

We don't know.

Nobody saw anything,

nobody overheard anything,

but make no mistake about this,

just like the murder
of Ken Rex McElroy...

somebody knows.

It wasn't long before
Nodaway County authorities

began to suspect foul play
in Perry's disappearance.

Officials say there's
a lot of rumors circulating

about Branson's disappearance.

But still, no answers.

He's considered and listed

as an endangered missing person.

We've always believed in,
and I think the investigation

has yielded that some kind
of foul play has taken place.

You know,
growing up I learned that

there are predators
out there everywhere.

And not all of them
are in prison.

There's really two kinds
of people in the world,

there's sheeps and wolves, okay.

The sheep is just happy
to sit and eat all day.

And life is great, okay,

but then there's wolves.

The wolf is a predator.

It takes from others.

Branson was a pretty cool kid.

I used to go over to his house.

Branson was
a friend of my children.

He had a really cool play set

that his father built.

His dad decided they
wanted to be the fun place.

If all the kids
come to his house and play,

his kids were going
to be safe, right?

He was a young
energetic high school boy

when I knew him.

He just got out of high school.

I knew his folks pretty well.

They were a very good family.

They were respected

by all the other people
and the neighbors.

I knew who he was.

I think he was younger
than my kids.

I knew his dad.
I knew his grandma.

So I knew who he was.

The question, I think,
that you have to ask

with Branson Perry,
certainly the one, you know,

that I ask as a journalist is,
"Why him?"

Branson had a lot
of potential in life,

but wolves look
for weakness, right?

And you don't always have
to be physically weak.

Sometimes you can be
emotionally weak.

And sometimes,
that's even better,

because all they have to do
is attack those emotion pieces

and latch on
and give you some hope.

He became an easy target.

Branson was a sheep.

The world can't function
with only sheep.

And the world can't function
with only wolves.

You gotta have both.

Branson Perry
was the son of my neighbor.

He was always a sweet child.

It's just one of those things,

we sit there and go,

"Why is this happening?"

There were no tell-tale signs

of something being wrong.

There was no, "Mom, Dad,
I'm going, and,

well, I think I'll see you."

There was none of that.

It was one day he was here

and the next day he was gone.

They put out rewards,

they hired investigators.

They even brought a medium in,

to a séance or do whatever

to feel the vibes
of the property.

That was our last resort.

And when you run completely out,

what's it gonna hurt?

No matter how trivial

you may think
the information may be,

it could be a very vital clue
that will help.

This is the case
that's went a year,

and we don't have
anything really concrete.

We don't have anybody
arrested for it,

um, we don't know
he just completely disappeared

off the face of the earth.

Sheriff Estes reminds

all information
is strictly confidential.

I just ask that
the community get involved,

you know, for our closing,
for the family.

They wouldn't want one of
their own children missing

for a year.

So the community is gonna have
to assist our department

in trying to solve this.

Story's kind of
got out, you know,

that maybe some of
the other kids in town

knew what happened and,
of course, didn't say anything.

There were a lot
of different theories

about who was in the town
and who wasn't.

There are other details,

very gruesome details,

that were told to my son.

Two years after
Branson Perry went missing,

they got a break in the case.

A young man's disappearance
unexplained,

and now there's a push
for new leads in a cold case.

Two years
after Branson vanished,

the FBI arrested
Jack Wayne Rogers of Fulton.

They found disturbing
messages on his computer

claiming he had driven
to Skidmore and abducted

a blonde-haired boy.

Jack Wayne Rogers

was a lay minister
in Fulton, Missouri.

He went into chat rooms

and he talked about...

how he had abducted and murdered

a blonde-haired young man

from Skidmore, Missouri.

That is what brought
Jack Wayne Rogers

to the attention
of the authorities.

It was pretty gruesome.

He was investigated,

and as part of
the investigation,

they searched his home.

We ended up in Fulton, Missouri

for three days doing a search
warrant on a guy's house

and diggin' up his backyard.

And among the things

that they found

was a leather necklace

that had a turtle's claw on it

that Branson Perry's father

positively said,
"That's his necklace."

When they looked
at that guy's computer,

they found child pornography,
for one...

...but they also found images

of botched gender
reassignment surgeries

he performed in motel rooms
for another.

Jack was a mutilator.

He allegedly
performed procedures

on people who didn't like
what gender they were,

and he would perform
gender nullifications.

Sick-o people, right?

It's unfortunate--
there's people like that

out there in this world.

I got hold of the transcripts

of his chat room

and I couldn't believe

the horrible things
he talked about.

Rogers claimed that
he knew the perfect way

to impale an individual,

make them suffer.

I heard Branson
was tied to a tree naked...

was impaled by a stake

through his nether regions,

had his genitals cut off

and eaten in front of him
while he was still alive.

Like, they got a picture of 'em
on a paper plate,

and then ate 'em
right there in front of him

while he was dying.

Everyone thought
Jack Wayne Rogers

had something to do with
Branson Perry's disappearance.

But he always insisted
that he was totally innocent

of any crime
against Branson Perry.

He claimed that

what he wrote in a chat room

was not fact,

but fiction that was based

on a story
he read about Branson Perry

in the local media.

When you're in law enforcement,

you can't determine
if a lead is good or bad

until you follow through
with it and check it out.

it was just tough because
you gotta follow every lead.

Every lead, you have to follow.

And the Branson Perry's case

led us in a lot
of different directions.

There was rumor

that Branson was mutilated

and a lot of really bad things
happened to him.

And of course, I imagine,

over the years,
that got out to the public

that oh, that's
what happened to Branson.

No, we figured that out.

And we went in
with search warrants,

and that was not the case,
we was led astray.

That didn't happen.

The necklace,
they believed was Branson's,

in his possession, later
found out it was not Branson's,

but Branson had one like it.

But Becky was at
every one of his trials,

because, at that point in time,

she believed Jack Rogers
had something to do with it.

Authorities charged Jack Rogers

with the pornography,
they charged him

with the body mutilation

and the gender
reassignment surgeries.

He was sentenced to 30 years
in prison.

Branson Perry's mother
was there.

She begged him to tell her

where her son was,

even if dead,
where his remains were.

And Rogers insisted

he had nothing to do
with Branson's death.

He would not give
an inch on that.

When the police
did more investigation

against Rogers
and they said that they are

99% sure that he is not
involved in this case,

Becky was devastated.

But she believed the police.

Needless to say,

Bob and Becky had a hard time

Bob was never
the same after that.

There were times I'd just see
him walking down the street,

just walking.

I have
to keep believing he's alive.

I can't go the other side yet.

I can't go that way.
I can't give up hope.

I know the family holds out hope

that Branson Perry
is alive somewhere.

That's what
we all want to believe,

but he's probably not.

It'd be easier to know

that he went off with that man

and was murdered.

And, to me,
that's what happened.

But it's a terrible thing
for the family

to not know for sure.

We don't know what happened.

Really, just nobody knows.

I don't know. I don't know.

The last I knew
about that boy was,

he was seen in the afternoon

by some friends,
out here in a white van,

north of Skidmore,

on the side of the road.

That was the last that
this one person'd seen him.

There's stories
out there, around town.

I have no idea, but...

something talk about,
nothing else goes on here.

I grew up in a small town.

I knew who the bad kids were.

So did my mom and dad.

I heard talk

about things that went on
in my small home town.

You can't tell me that
somebody in that town

doesn't know who Branson Perry
was associating with.

Skidmore is a mysterious town.

Things go on there,
but nobody has answers,

and nobody wants to come
forward with the answers.

Mr. Rogers had nothing
to do with it.

I think people
are using Mr. Rogers

as a scapegoat for the truth.

They're trying to push it off

to somebody else

to relieve the pressure

from the investigation on them.

And that explains

the deathly silence

surrounding the disappearance

of that young man.

And that brings us back

to someone in Skidmore.

Skidmore has
the unlucky history about it

of having
some very violent crimes

that's taken place there.

Why it happens in Skidmore

and why it's so infamous

and why the murders
are so spectacular...

I have no idea why that happens.

We are now working
the disappearance

of Branson Perry--

that case, I have open now,

since I come into office
January 1.

We believe it is a homicide.

We believe we know who
is responsible

for the murder.

Branson was
no innocent young kid

that somebody
just walked up and shot

that he didn't even know.

He got involved
in the wrong crowd,

and they got to where
there was drugs being made.

Fixing and making
methamphetamine.

And Branson Perry got shot

because they thought
he might talk.

Stories kind of got out,
you know, that maybe it was

a drug deal that went bad.

They killed him
and got rid of his body

and end of the story.

We knew it was drug-related.

Back then, they would have labs

all over the entire county,

and we made a lot of arrests
for methamphetamine.

And we hit 'em pretty hard,
as hard as we could.

I'll be a son of a gun
if they didn't have a drug house

two doors down from me.

Had one three doors down

the other way from me.

There was about 11 drug houses
here in town.

We had one
just down the road here,

this old gray house
on the corner

where they was makin' meth.

Legalize the stuff!

Let 'em have to go buy it.

Instead of
goin' out to the street

and doin' all this and that.

When you're from a small town,

there's nothing to do except
for go out and drink,

smoke, and nowadays,
even more, do drugs.

Branson wanted to do things
a certain way in his life,

and it came back to haunt him.

When you look at Branson

and the silence there,

it just makes you think

Skidmore is so haunted

by the vigilante killing
of Ken McElroy

that it permeates their culture

and makes violence more likely.

I'm sure a lot
of the people that were

the sons and daughters
of the witnesses

and perpetrators
had to have had an effect,

whether they knew
what it was or not,

because the father or the mother

would not be
the same person again.

You cannot experience

something like this and not have
part of you die as well.

So I'm sure it had an effect

on the next generation.

If a parent
gets by with something,

then your next
generation down, or two,

and they can think
they're gonna get by with it.

And in the case of Skidmore,

there's a possibility
that it did drop

from one generation
to another to another.

Because we know exactly
what's happened

to Branson Perry.

We know who was involved.

And I can tell you right now
that they were from Skidmore.