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childrenswore never to shop there again, and the Bowencamps banned all McElroys from their store.
    Ken McElroy and Trena showed up twenty minutes later, bellowing, cursing and issuing threats. After this badgering, Bo refused to sell McElroy the pack of smokes he wanted to buy.
    That night, McElroy’s truck drove past the Bowencamp home again and again. A deputy sheriff told the elderly couple not to worry. McElroy “won’t do nothin’,” he said.
    McElroy showed up at their home and knocked on the door. “Lois, I’ll give you one hundred bucks if you challenge Trena to a street fight and then we can call it all quits.”
    â€œThat’s absurd,” Lois said.
    The next morning, Ken and Trena were outside the Bowencamps’ door taunting Lois to come out and fight. Lois called the cops. On his police scanner in his truck, McElroy heard the dispatcher sending officers his way. He was long gone before the state highway patrolman and a deputy sheriff pulled up at the Bowencamps’ home.
    Once again, the law was on McElroy’s side. As long as he committed no overt act, law enforcement was powerless to stop his harassment. Even when the Bowencamps reported that McElroy was shooting off his shotgun in front of their house, no report was filed.
    The shop was closed for the day on July 8 while Bo met with an air-conditioner repairman. He was out back cutting up cardboard boxes when McElroy pulled up and commenced harassing Bo again. Bo tried to ignore him, but that only enraged McElroy. He pulled a shotgun out of his truck, pulled the trigger and dropped Bo where he stood.
    McElroy was arrested that night. He claimed innocence and the next morning was released on a $30,000 bond. That night, Ken and Trena sat in the D&G Tavern sipping beer and daring anyone to mention Bo.
    Bo, meanwhile, spent ten days in the hospital recovering from the gunshot wound to his neck. For a full year after that, he was unable to speak above a whisper. It was morethan a year before the last of the shotgun pellets rose to the surface of his neck like a boil. Doctors lanced the ugly red protrusion and removed the pieces of metal.
    Bo’s daughter, Cheryl Huston, still worked at the family store, but no longer lived at home. She had a family of her own now, but she was frightened by the incident and scared of Ken McElroy. “I woke up terrified. I spent all day terrified. I went to bed terrified.”
    She carried a shotgun with her everywhere she went. One day, she forgot to carry it out of the house and to the truck. When she climbed in, her 2-year-old daughter said, “Mommy, where’s your gun?”
    With that simple question, Cheryl realized embracing her fear was no way to live—and no way to raise her children. She never carried her shotgun with her again. Still, she took precautions. While most mothers posted their children’s birthday party announcement in the paper, Cheryl did not. She did not want to alert Ken McElroy, who knew her children were the grandchildren of Bo Bowenkamp.
    Although Bo was old and bedridden, McElroy continued his campaign of harassment. He threatened the Bowenkamps, the minister who visited Bo in the hospital and anyone who expressed any sympathy for their fate. He even pulled a shotgun on the part-time town marshal who was planning to testify for the prosecution, telling him he would kill anyone who put him behind bars. The marshal reported this incident, but when the county authorities did not back him up and revoke McElroy’s bail, the marshal turned in his badge to the mayor.
    McElroy’s shooting of Bo was a pretty open-and-shut case. However, since McFadin’s legal maneuverings earned a change of venue, neither the judge nor the jury who heard the case was aware of McElroy’s past. The jury gave him a short 2-year sentence. The judge released McElroy on bond for twenty-five days while his attorney filed an appeal. He was due back in court