'No One Saw a Thing' Timeline: from Mcelroy's Reign of Terror to Modern Media
In August 2019, director Avi Belkin and Blumhouse Television revisited the killing in the six-part SundanceTV documentary series No One Saw a Thing. Rather than rehashing the 1981 shooting as a quaint Midwestern folklore tale, Belkin examined how community-sanctioned vigilante justice dismantled Skidmore's moral fabric over the succeeding four decades.
Belkin secured interviews with aging town elders, original investigators, and descendants of the primary actors. The series made a clear case: the collective pact that saved Skidmore from McElroy corroded the town's ability to maintain standard civil norms. Following McElroy’s death, Skidmore experienced a startling series of bizarre, violent, and unresolved tragedies:
In 2000, 20-year-old Wendy Gillenwater was beaten to death in town. In 2001, resident Branson Perry walked out of his home to return a jumper cable and disappeared without a trace. In 2004, Bobbie Jo Stinnett, a pregnant 23-year-old, was strangled to death inside her Skidmore residence by Lisa Montgomery, who cut the unborn infant from her womb. Montgomery was later executed by federal authorities. Belkin highlighted how a town that had celebrated silence as an act of unity became trapped by it, developing a reflexive suspicion of outsiders and law enforcement that poisoned community life.
