The case of the murder of Ken Rex McElroy in 1981 still reverberates 38 years later. Why? Because no one in the small town of Skidmore, Missouri, where it took place, will say who exactly did it. Even though there were sixty witnesses, people have gone to their graves with the secret. No One Saw A Thing takes a long look at the famous case of vigilantism and how its affected the town in the decades since.

NO ONE SAW A THING: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: The quiet, empty streets of Skidmore, Missouri. As we pan down, we come across a parked pickup truck, with a man slumped over the steering wheel, the man and the windshield covered in blood. A voice over talks about how people still come to the tiny town as “crime tourists” of sorts, almost 40 years after its most famous case happened.

The Gist: The case of the July 1981 murder of Ken Rex McElroy in Skidmore has been fascinating the national media since it happened 38 years ago. Why? Well, first of all, it took place in broad daylight, in front of 60 witnesses. And to this day, not one person has come forward to say who pulled the trigger.

Director Avi Belkin (who directs the upcoming Mike Wallace Is Here), with the help of the blood-and-gore folks at Blumhouse, goes back to Skidmore to talk to people who were there almost four decades ago about McElroy and why it seemed like the town took it upon itself to get rid of what everyone called the “town bully.”

In the first episode Belkin combines new interviews, a recreation of the crime scene, and archival footage from all the various media who reported on the story back in the 1980s. Much of the footage is from a 60 Minutes report where Morley Safer, in a brown jacket and ascot, blends in like an elephant in an elk reserve, talking to people around the town about the murder, including McElroy’s wife.

Suffice to say, McElroy was not a good guy. He sexually assaulted a 13-year-old girl then married her to keep her quiet. He threatened a number of people in town at gunpoint, and shot a few, including the owner of the general store, whom McElroy thought accused his daughters of shoplifting. That last incident, for which he was convicted but was still living in town while the case was being appealed, is what led the town to think the justice system failed them. The question is: Was the town’s vigilantism justified? Even the people who lived in terror of McElroy were split on this issue. But it has led to other violent incidents in the tiny town over the decades. Is it now in their DNA?

Our Take: Belkin does a good job of revisiting a case that captured the nation’s — if not the world’s — attention in the 1980s and brings some fresh perspective to it. Instead of completely rehashing the case, he endeavors to compare how the town reacted to it back then with how they’re reacting now, which is why he at times puts archival interviews side-by-side with current interviews with the same person.

It’s an amazing picture of people who have kept a secret for so long and will continue to do so, no matter how much pain it brings to the town, which has fallen on hard times since then. It also shows that in a small town like Skidmore, the residents tend to circle the wagons against threats or outsiders, as if they’re pioneers on the western frontier. Even local law enforcement don’t always follow the rule of law, as we see when a town meeting about the returning McElroy is discussed; the sheriff was there, and all of a sudden he’s driving out of town as McElroy was driving in, shortly before the murder. Did money change hands? Was there a conspiracy? Hard to know since no one who is still alive is talking.

We’re not 100% sure where Belkin will be going in subsequent episodes. There will be a deeper dive into McElroy’s misdeeds to try to get a handle on why the town was so desperate to be rid of him, and the investigation — and stonewalling by the town — will be examined. But so will the murders and disappearances that happened in the early 2000s. How Belkin links them to the McElroy murder two decades prior will be interesting. Is it because the town just can’t get closure on McElroy? At this point, it’s hard to say.
Photo: SundanceTV
Parting Shot: At the end of the episode, the other cases are mentioned, with a voice over saying, “If McElroy was as big as bully as they say, then how come the violence didn’t stop?” Resident Britt Small ends by saying “There’s no limit on murder or conspiracy,” then smiles.

Sleeper Star: Small, who died in June, is the standout in part 1. He was a musician and a paratrooper in Vietnam, and he almost takes glee in discussing the conspiracy and what he would have done if he was in the position to get rid of McElroy. “I would have killed his wife. I probably would have ambushed him in his driveway. And then I’d set his house on fire.”

Most Pilot-y Line: The first episode lingers a bit too long on recreations of the crime scene. Yes, it helps build suspense, but it also just feels like Belkin going, “Well, this is a Blumhouse production, so let’s have a little blood.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. If you remember the Skidmore case, No One Saw A Thing will be a good refresher. If you don’t, though, it’ll be a good examination of a tiny town that may have taken its ability to protect itself a bit too far.

Fiction writers have long played with the idea that violence begets violence, and not always in a linear way. Action movies often deal with the literal repercussions of violence, but there have been some great pieces of fiction built around the idea that once you open the door to a violent world, you can’t close it again (several Coen scripts play with this theme). The best parts of Avi Belkin’s six-part Sundance docu-series “No One Saw a Thing” examine the theme that violence, especially of the vigilante kind, leaves a scar. It doesn’t end when the violent act ends. It changes the tenor of the atmosphere. It changes the way people look at their neighbors. It alters the landscape of what could possibly happen in a small town in the heartland. Belkin’s docu-series could have accomplished much of what it set out to do in roughly half the running time, but it’s never boring and often fascinating, especially when it confronts how a society built on a foundation of violence is bound to suffer again.

On July 10, 1981, Ken Rex McElroy was shot dozens of times in his truck, sitting in the middle of the street in Skidmore, Missouri. It was in broad daylight. His young wife was with him, so an eyewitness was left alive. And almost the whole town watched as it happened—three to five people pulled out weapons and plugged McElroy’s body so full of bullets that his body came apart. McElroy was the town bully. He shot at a grocery store owner and was accused of raping a 13-year-old, who he then married to stop from testifying against him. He also may have burned down a house. And the authorities seemed unable to stop him. He terrorized a small town—although Belkin is careful to present the counter-argument that all of this was overblown after the fact, especially from McElroy’s children. Despite nationwide news coverage and a federal investigation after the murder, no one was arrested. No one saw a thing.

Why and how an entire American smalltown conspired to kill a man and then keep it a secret for generations is the focus of the first few episodes of “No One Saw a Thing.” A lot of the major players are already deceased—most of the “town elders” were, well, elder then and this was almost forty years ago—so Belkin weaves together a great deal of archival footage with modern-day interviews. A lot of the archival stuff comes from a Morley Safer segment from “60 Minutes” in 1982, which leads one to wonder if Belkin didn’t come across this story doing research for his “Mike Wallace Is Here,” the director’s recently-released documentary about the legendary newsman (Wallace would have liked this film, by the way). The modern-day interviews sometimes reminded me of Errol Morris’ wonderful examinations of small-town American life – both insightful and a bit loving of the eccentricities on display.

Belkin’s project gains depth when he confronts the idea that the McElroy murder destroyed Skidmore. Over the next few decades, Skidmore saw more than its fair share of crime per capita—subsequent episodes examine a horrible spousal abuse case, the saga of a missing young man, and a brutal murder of a pregnant woman—and the place has basically turned into one of those heartland ghost towns. Would Skidmore be a bustling metropolis if its residents hadn’t become vigilante murderers? Doubtful. And yet there’s something to the idea that a secret that big—knowledge that the entire town is full of either murderers or their accomplices—destroys a place and weighs on its people. Safer seemed to understand way back in 1982 in his segment that what the residents of Skidmore had done could have way more lasting damage than anything McElroy could do. Belkin’s series proves him right.