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.
Despite nationwide news coverage and a federal investigation after the murder, no one was arrested. 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. 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.
No one saw a thing full#
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. His young wife was with him, so an eyewitness was left alive. 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. 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. It alters the landscape of what could possibly happen in a small town in the heartland. It changes the way people look at their neighbors. It doesn’t end when the violent act ends. 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. 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). Fiction writers have long played with the idea that violence begets violence, and not always in a linear way.