Sundance TV series on Ken McElroy, Skidmore, Missouri

There's a six part Sundance TV series called No One Saw a Thing about the murder of Ken McElroy in the small farming town of Skidmore, Missouri. McElroy terrorized the place for years, shot at least two people. He was about to be sentenced for the last attempted murder. He had a lot of money, apparently from stealing from other farms and stealing and selling antiques but he had a very good lawyer who kept him out of prison.

As I recall, a large group of people in town were going to go see him get sentenced, but his lawyer got it delayed. McElroy drove into town. Bought beer. Was smirking at the helpless rage of the people who thought they were going to see him put away. He got into his truck with his daughter and was shot a couple of times with two different rifles. No one in town would admit seeing who did it.

As I recall, McElroy was suspected of committing at least one murder and a couple of arsons.

I guess once they killed him, the town felt free to act. McElroy's widow filed a lawsuit against the town so they burned her house down and she and her horrible children fled. 

I always thought it was good riddance. To hell with him.

There was already a TV miniseries or docudrama about the case,  it was reported on 60 Minutes and Frontline and I heard that the Patrick Swayze movie Roadhouse was vaguely inspired by it. 

Rick Schmidt's book Feature Filmmaking at Used Car Prices includes an outline for a movie he never made based on the case. It was about how Ken McElroy's poor self-esteem drives him to criminality and how the townspeople, after they kill him, must contemplate their own responsibility for not being nicer to him.

Schmidt's idea sounded terrible and it couldn't be filmed on 16mm for $6,000.

I tried to come up with my own ideas. One was to do something Roshomon-like, or Chan is Missing-like---have a couple of detectives or reporters go back a few years later and talk to people. I don't know if that would have been any good, either.

My other idea was, the guy who everyone knows killed McElroy returns to town after getting out of treatment for alcoholism. He finds he alienated most of the town during his time as town drunk and a few people, like his soon-to-be-ex-wife, have reason to be especially mad at him. He's afraid they'll report him for the murder, so he starts peeling them off one by one.